Novels
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I devoured this while on vacation in Cuba. My uncle said he was interested in hearing about how I liked this book from a social worker's perspective. I'm not sure that I really read it that way, but I loved the characters and the parallels between Lisbeth's (often secret/private) experience and Mikael's investigation, such as when she had a truly horrific experience as he was wondering "What happened to you, Harriet?" And also that she had her own set of "rules" about how much to disclose in an investigation based on her subjective understanding of a person's character and then Mikael was forced to make the same sort of decision around publicizing the story he discovered . There might also be something there around lived experience/knowledge vs. mental/intellectual/analytical experience/knowledge...
Pregnancy/Birth/Children
Birthing the Easy Way by Sheila Stubbs
Written in such a casual way, I was snobbish at first about the style. Once I got over that, I loved the stories of her births and her growing knowledge and confidence with each one. I'll have to remember her imagery of slaying the dragons of Pain, Tragedy (What if something goes wrong?), and the Unknown, as well as her recipe for a herbal healing bath after birth.
