The Millennium Battle

by Julia Buckley
My sixteen-year-old son and I are reading Stieg Larsson together. We didn't actually plan this as a mother-son activity; I bought the first book on a whim and left it lying around. He picked it up one day and asked if he could read it.

This was a dilemma for me. On the one hand, any book that encourages my son to read--especially when gaming and texting compete for his attention--is a good book. Larsson's first book in the series is obsessively readable and exciting.

On the other hand, sending him into this book was sort of like giving him permission to fly off to observe at a Swedish sex resort. Whatever sexual imagery he hadn't already seen on tv or conceived of himself, he would probably learn from Stieg Larsson.

In any case, he read the first book and we discussed it, and then he bought me the second book for Christmas. He may have had a hidden agenda, because he promptly started reading it on December 26th. I didn't get at it until recently, when I had jury duty. I went downtown with about 200 pages under my belt, then read about 400 more in my time at the Daley Center in Chicago. The second Larsson novel was even better than the first.

My son and I discussed this one, too, and I found that I liked having reading material in common with him (which I really haven't had since I read him the books myself). And who knows when we will both like the same book again? So I ordered the third one, and we are snatching bits of reading when we can pry the book away from each other. We have arguments like this:

IAN: Mom, did you take out my bookmark?
ME: No, it fell out. Sorry.
IAN: You took it out! You were mad at me for not taking out the garbage!
ME: That's ridiculous. It's hard to keep the bookmark in when you're turning pages beyond it.
IAN: It's going to be hard to find my page.
ME: I think you were on 118.
IAN: (already reading) Mmmmmrph.

Or, when we are less confrontational, like this:

IAN: Did you get to anything significant yet?
ME: I don't know--they're doing a lot of background checks and stuff.
IAN: But nothing . . . big . . . has happened?
ME: No! Is something big about to happen?
IAN: I can't say. Just keep reading.
ME: Take out the garbage.

And thus, we have shared a special bond--the joy of reading, the wonder of shared discovery.

I waited a long while to read these books, but better late than never. And it's nice to discover a great treasure like this series just sitting and waiting patiently for you--and your offspring--to pick it up.