Any parent will tell you that (adult) reading time is limited when you have a little one to chase after most of the day. Though I certainly won't dispute the literary merits of Goodnight Moon or Guess How Much I Love You, I do miss getting caught up in a good story. But since I have been back at work, my daily commute has given me the opportunity to read lots of great books. Some are old classics that I have had to revisit so I could teach them (The Hobbit, To Kill a Mockingbird, All Quiet on the Western Front, Lord of the Flies). Others are more contemporary novels from my "To Read" stack that somehow keeps growing instead of getting smaller (The Time Traveler's Wife and The Lovely Bones are two of my most recent reads). I even managed to read the first three books in the Twilight series. My feelings about this series could take up a whole other blog entry, but I'll leave that till another time. Let's just say that I'll read the last one only because I feel like since I've already committed so much time to the series I ought to find out how it ends.
But the books in the Millennium trilogy by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson are definitely the ones that have kept me turning the pages long after my stop is announced over the train's loudspeaker. So far, I have read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and am halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire. There's been a lot of hype about these books, mainly because Larsson died just months before the books were published. I see at least one person a day reading one of them on the train. They can definitely be classified as "adult material," and some of the scenes are quite graphic, but if you want a book that will make you ask yourself whether you have enough time to read just one more page before your stop, then I would definitely recommend this series.
