This week's book giveaway is in the Agile and other Processes forum. We're giving away four copies of The Mikado Method and have Ola Ellnestam and Daniel Brolund on-line! See this thread for details.
I'm reading these, because everyone else is, and my wife has them.
1) I don't get why everyone thinks they are so great.
2) The Swedish, it seems, drink a LOT of coffee
3) the author doesn't seem to think very highly of how women are treated over there
Granted, reading 1.5 works of FICTION are by no means a good way to judge a society, but still...I wonder what Swedes think of these books?
Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Barely heard of them, sorry. I recommend Complicity by Iain Banks. It is thriller murder mystery by a sci-fi writer where you are guilty.
Ulf Dittmer
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I'm not much familiar with Swedish society, so I can't speak to that, but I like the books because (at least part of) their setting is so nicely different from most crime novels: not a big, anonymous city with lots of people around all the time - rural countryside, seemingly homely folks, endless forests to drive through etc. And yet, it has an underside.
For the same reason I like the "David Hunter" books by Simon Beckett which are set in the British, Scottish and TN countrysides, for the most part.
@David: The books are huge over here. Of course, we're a lot closer to Sweden :-)
Ulf Dittmer wrote:I'm not much familiar with Swedish society, so I can't speak to that, but I like the books because (at least part of) their setting is so nicely different from most crime novels: not a big, anonymous city with lots of people around all the time - rural countryside, seemingly homely folks, endless forests to drive through etc. And yet, it has an underside.
For the same reason I like the "David Hunter" books by Simon Beckett which are set in the British, Scottish and TN countrysides, for the most part.
I liked the detective novels of Janwillem van de Wetering, perhaps for similar reasons. Although they were often set in Amsterdam, which is certainly a big anonymous city, they didn't seem to be primarily about criminals or low-lifes, but more about the detectives themselves. Perhaps that comes from van de Wetering's Zen background.
I haven't read any Stieg Larson books but perhaps they are like that too?
Vikas Kapoor
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fred rosenberger wrote:I gave up coffee (mostly) a few years ago. If i have one cup of coffee after 10:00 a.m., I won't sleep.
p.m.?
Ulf Dittmer
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Paul Clapham wrote:I haven't read any Stieg Larson books but perhaps they are like that too?
No, not really. There are only these 3 books (the author passed away after finishing the 3rd), and they tell just one progressing story which centers around "the girl" of the title (don't want to give away too much in case someone hasn't read them). But the characters on all sides are looked at in depth - the girl, her friends, her foes, the police who work on the case, the press that covers it. Nobody is a "clean" hero or villain, they all have strength and weaknesses, but are caught up in this extraordinary story and have to adapt as more bits and pieces of it come to light. In the end, the story becomes so powerful that none of the characters remains unchanged by it.
I concur with Bear - it's not great literature, but a great read.
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And I don't care which text editor Blomkvist(?) is using.
