October Books...

I know without a doubt that I'm not the only person with busy seasons in life. For us, October - all by itself - is a busy season! The fair, lots of birthdays, Halloween, the beginning of the holiday months, etc. I have one more "big" thing tomorrow and then I can sit back for a few weeks!

All that to say, I didn't do too much reading in October. I've been working on a long list of books I want to get through, but I only managed two.

The first was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson. I jumped on the bandwagon a little late with this one, but I kept hearing it talked about so I bit the bullet. I have to say that for probably the first quarter of the book I could not have cared less about it. It was slooooow and all about business, which, again, I could not care less about. :) Sonny (Poppy) had read it, though, and told me to keep on reading. I did and once I hit the halfway point it started flying! It was great! It's set in Sweden so the names can be a little tough at first! The main premise of the book is that Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, has been convicted of libel, and although he claims he's innocent, he's sentenced to a few months in prison. The result is the destruction of his journalism career, as well as his magazine. He takes a leave of absence from the magazine and is approached to investigate a decades-ago murder of a man's neice. There are twists and turns and it goes from feeling very business-y and political to a thriller. LOVED it by the end and will definitely read the next one. There's also a movie coming out soon and has Daniel Craig, Robin Wright, and Christopher Plummer in it. I can't wait!

The other book that I read wasn't actually on my radar for this month but I'd requested it from the library months ago and it was finally my turn to read it. Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo is a true story written by a father about his son's trip to Heaven. At three, Burpo's son was extremely sick when he appendix ruptured and went undiagnosed for several days. When they finally realized what had happened, Colton undergoes emergency surgery but the diagnosis is grim. He does recover and several months later he starts recounting the things he saw while he was in surgery. The book will leave you with goose bumps as you realize some of the things he knows he couldn't possibly have known unless his story is true. He claims to have met people in Heaven that a three year old would never have known about and the descriptions that he gives of Heaven are biblically based and acurate as much as a Christian can know. I picked the book up from the library Thursday at lunchtime and had finished it before we went to bed. It was FANTASTIC. Get your hands on this book soon!

Like I said, life will slow down for us (a little) in the next few days and I'll be able to read a little more this month. I have several things on my list and can't wait to get into them. Any recommendations for me?