Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

Kate Braestrup loses her husband in a car accident. She has four children and she begins a new life, this time serving as a minister, something her husband had always wanted to do. She attends seminary, and begins serving as chaplain for search-and-rescue missions. This is the true story of Kate and her mssion to bring comfort to people she meets through her job as a chaplain to the Maine Warden Service. Join the Tipp City Library's book discussion on Monday, February 22nd, at 7 pm. Once again we will examine a woman's life choices and her continuing impact on her family and her world. Check our catalog

Challenger by another blogger, I am reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely, 2004. It is a difficult book to read. The protagonist, Ka, visits his hometown Kars, in the middle of a snowstorm that cuts off the town from the rest of Turkey. He is only visiting; he has immigrated to Frankfurt, Germany. A poet, he returns to find a woman he remembers from his past as a schoolmate. Hearing she is single, he returns to ask her to marry him. As he travels through the city, he finds an inner happiness that brings forth his poems freely, writing them down in his notebook that he carries in his hip pocket. He is caught up in a revolution, with violent repercussions. The thoughts of the Islamic fundamentalists are told to him, a non-practicing Islamic. Halfway through the book, I am trying to stay with it.

The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo

A taunt mystery by a Swedish author is the first of a three-part series. Taking place outside Stockholm, the protagonist, journalist Mikael Blomqvist, has been asked to investigate the disappearance of a Vanger family member, Harriet Vanger. Harriet disappeared during a family get together on their island, cut off from the mainland by a unusual accident on the bridge. She was the sixteen year old niece of a rich and influencial industrialist, Henrik Vanger. Now almost forty years later, Henrick wants to try once again to have help with the investigation, and Mikael Blomqvist agrees, only because he faces a jail term for slander, and he needs time away from his magazine, Millenium, to give the magazine a chance to survive. Another one of my snow books for this winter, the book starts with the end of December, and the time is current. A good well-written novel. No gory stuff has appeared in the novel and I am half-way through. A link to the author's website is embedded in the title of this blog.