This is the first in a short series of summer reading recommendations from some of the authors I have interviewed in recent months. New posts will appear as they arrive.
Our first guest is historian Helen Rappaport. Helen studied Russian before becoming an actress, but in recent years she has developed a successful second career as an author, specializing in Russian history. You can hear my interview with her about book, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile on the Blackwell website by clicking here.
Here is her recommendation:
As a historian in love with real people and real lives, and one who reads virtually no fiction – ever – let alone contemporary fiction, I was totally gripped by the first two books of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy* like no other crime novels I have ever read. And for me that is saying something.
Why did they have such an impact on me? Simple: it’s all down to the brilliant, quirky, compulsive and utterly believable central female character, Lisbeth Salander, the best feisty heroine created by a male writer ever, in my humble estimation.
And, weirdly, I just love all the technobabble about computers and hacking and the internet, probably because I am a Luddite who finds even laptops hard to work on. I am saving book three, like a guilty box of the very best chocolates, for hunkering down in bed with in the autumn.
* The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire.
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