Kingsolver’s Great New Novel: Flight Behavior

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior, published 2012 by Harper

Yesterday I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Flight Behavior.

I’ve been a fan of Kingsolver for a while. Kingsolver’s books are on my favorite authors shelves at my home – alongside Primo Levi, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Percival Everett, Sherman Alexie, Arundhati Roy, Chester Himes, Junot Diaz, Kobo Abe, Michael Ventura, Franz Kafka, Somerset Maughm, Jorge Luis Borges, and a few others.

I really enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s earlier novels – especially The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Prodigal Summer (my favorite Kingsolver book so far.) I also like her non-fiction, including Animal Vegetable Miracle, plus her essays in High Tide in Tucson and Small Wonders. I blogged briefly about Kingsolver’s most recent novel, The Lacuna, earlier here.

Flight Behavior is excellent – I definitely recommend it.

Grrr – USA Book Retitling

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Last night, I just stayed up until 4am reading almost all of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – a fun smart well-paced Swedish detective novel by Stieg Larsson. (I confess that I am sort of a Swedish detective novel junkie, being a huge fan of the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – looks the same, but it’s a different Ö than Mesut Özil!)

In Swedish, the title for Dragon Tattoo is Män som hatar kvinnor which translates literally to “Men Who Hate Women” which is an excellent title that actually offers insight on the book. I think that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an unnecessarily titillating title to cast on a fierce kick-ass book… why is Lisbeth Salander reduced to a girl?? She’s a 24-year old sexually-active smarter-than-I-am strong woman. I think if she really existed she might track down the publishing executive responsible, and kick that man in the groin.