Courtesy of the ACLU of Northern California, timeout for a little PSA aimed at our California readership (though the argument is really applicable in all death penalty states) regarding maintaining the death penalty in a time of budget crisis. You can take action at the ACLU's site:Cut This: The Death Penalty from aclunc on Vimeo.
It's our mystery month and this time we chose Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire. I'm not sure who is behind the site, but for a compendium of Stieg Larsson links, you could start with stieglarsson.com or try this Life of Stieg Larsson interactive feature from the New York Times. In addition, the NYT offers a couple of useful articles on the backstory of the series, The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson and Pippi Longstocking and Lisbeth Salander.Every spring and autumn, back when he worked for the news agency, he was assigned to write reviews that summed up the season’s releases of translated crime fiction. “I’d include the top five crime novels at that particular time,” he said. “Some of the writers I’ve praised are Sara Paretsky, Val McDermid, Elisabeth George and Minette Walters. Strangely enough, almost all are women.”If you'd like to get a jumpstart on the discussion, check out Slate's Culture Gabfest on Stieg Larsson. Otherwise you can dig in and wrestle with some of the issues the book raises:
