The other night I searched my bookcase for something to read that wasn’t on my Kindle. I chose The Girl Who Played with Fire , the second book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. I had read the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , when it first hit big in the United States. I loved it. I’m not sure why I didn’t continue the series at the time, but maybe it was because I had seen both the Swedish and American versions of the filmed trilogy and decided to wait. I contemplated why these books became almost instant bestsellers. The noir feeling to the stories, high degree of tension, and well-drawn characters are the elements of page-turners I love to read, but why did this particular series generate six movies and bestseller status? The answer is simple: the “Girl.” Lisbeth Salander is without a doubt the most intriguing character I’ve ever read. She’s an anti-social, computer-hacking genius with a photographic memory who is probably on the high Asperger’s scale of autism...

This top post of 2016 was first published on May 31. I have been absent from The Blood-Red Pencil for several months. Just thought I'd point that out in case you hadn't noticed (smile). I was laid low - really low - with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome the end of January, and it has just gotten to the point where I can do more than recline and listen to audio books. No reading, no writing, no television, no driving; and for several weeks nothing more than hobbling from the bed to the bathroom to the couch at my daughter's house. One of my sons joked that Ramsay Hunt must have been a CIA interrogator in a past life. I believe it. While being incapacitated, I did a lot of thinking about how other authors deal with health issues that throw great challenges at them. A blind writer who continually loses tools no amount of technology can replace. A friend who slogged through her last book hampered by the sludge of a mind drowning in personal problems. Another friend who continued ...