Lost in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Bluenose Ghosts

I was going to post about Carl's RIPIV challenge, but I am having problems narrowing down my list! I have 3 books at the library waiting to be picked up, and 15 books I pulled off my shelves!!! so tomorrow I will choose a list of what I'd like to read...I have begun reading one book, Bluenose Ghosts by Dr Helen Creighton.


This is a way cooler cover than the one I have. I have the first paperback edition from 1976 with a blue cover, and this edition was just released this year. If I'd seen this version, *sigh* I love the cover, suddenly I am afficted with booklust again even though I own a copy!!!

Helen Creighton was a Canadian folklorist, and collected Maritime (which means the east coast, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Newfoundland for us) folktales for over 50 years. This is organized into chapter headings such as : Forerunners, Phantom Ships and Sea Mysteries, Ghosts Helpful, Harmful and Headless, Haunted Houses and Poltergeists, and Ghosts as Animals and Lights. These kinds of stories, related by the living, about what they've experienced of the paranormal or unexplained, always give me delicious chills and half-frighten me just reading them. Lovely! One idea for the challenge that I have from this book, is to give a quote from it - hopefully every day through September and October, at the very least every time I post. So here is today's excerpt:

Through the tutelage of the Hartlan men I understood for the first time the meaning of a strange event in my own life that had occurred not too long before. This had happened just prior to the death of my eldest brother's wife. It had been a long illness, one that was very hard on both the patient and her family. We turned to anything that would distract the children, and one evening three of us sat in the drawing room playing cards. Suddenly we were interrupted by a loud knocking. We all heard it and stopped playing. I made the obvious remark, "There's someone at the door." "There can't be," Kathleen said. "There isn't any door on this side of the house." That was quite true, for the house was built on a hill, and that side, although on the first floor, was high above the ground. Nevertheless to satisfy me Barbara went to the nearest door. "There's no one there," she said in a tone which inferred this was no more than she expected. We were mystified but I forgot about it until the Hartlans took on my education. Then I realized that what we heard were the three death knocks. These are heard in certain houses or by certain people and they come as warning of approaching death. Whether my sister-in-law died on the day following the knocks or a few days later, none of us could recall. Kathleen remembers the incident, but Babara was too young. Certainly at the time we all heard it - three slow deliberate knocks that insisted on our attention.

I think I will copy a tale every time I post, throughout Carl's challenge! See if I can give you chills, dear Gentle Reader.

And, this gives me another book for the Canada 3 Book Challenge!

I am lost in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I am on page 209, after starting the book yesterday morning on the bus. If I hadn't been so tired last night I would have read more, but I sadly fell asleep as soon as the children did! Such is my exciting life with young children. I am amazed at how good the translation is - it reads almost as if it were written in English first. Mikael Blomquist is a quiet intelligent hero, and Lisbeth Salander is an extraordinary character - she literally jumps off the page, alive, exciting, and dangerous. Blomquist has just begun his enquiry into the Vanger family. I love the island he is staying on, and that it's three hours north of Stockholm, so we get to visit some of the Swedish countryside/seaside again. It's also set in the depths of winter, so I will remember this when we reach 0 degrees Fahrenheit, that we aren't the only country that gets that cold! The storytelling is really good - I simply do not want to put this book down. We have heavy rain today, perfect reading whether - unfortunately, I am booked on a date with my daughter: we are going to see Walking With Dinosaurs late this morning, at the Palladium! It's playing for 4 days only, and our youngest child is a little too young - the dinosaurs are very large in this production, and loud, and didn't want to go - but Holly-Anne is so excited she leaps whenever she things about it!

How can you tell when you love books? when everything seems to take you away from reading one!! I love dinosaurs, I know I will thoroughly enjoy this show and day out with my daughter, but I resent that I can't just read my lovely book all day!