The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (#8, Contemporary Literature)

It took me a loooooooooong time to finish this one. I started it after I got back from Portugal, but had to read book club books in between, and of course became obsessed with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.

Although it took a long time to finish, that doesn't mean that it wasn't good! It is not an "exciting" book, but I actually really liked it. It's bizarre, but just the perfect amount of bizarre for my taste. I feel like I knew all the characters by the end, and man were they all messed up! This is the perfect dysfunctional family book.

Somehow Franzen is able to take sad events, and completely depressing situations and make them funny. A very clever writer.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (#7, Fiction)

I also really liked this book. I might have liked it more than the first one!

Can't wait to read the third!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (#6, Fiction)

I'm a big fan of this series. Mystery, crime, and well-written! My dream come true.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (#5, Fiction)

Enjoyable overall. But a bit sad and depressing throughout. It is a present day story of a young African refugee who leaves Africa and illegally enters the UK. She spends her first two years in a refugee prison, then upon release calls the one person she knows--the young couple who happened to encounter evils happening to her and her family in Africa.

The story is quite sad, with lots of death and depression. After calling the husband following her release the reader finds out that he commits suicide the next day, and she shows up on the doorstep the day of his funeral.

The story had some potential, but I found some of the information superfluous, and the ending just kept going and going and going, and I really disliked how the author finally chose to end it.