Hey, kids! It’s your pal, Akatzen, back with another Book Report.

I tend to be somewhat suspicious of hype. If I go see a much-hyped movie, my suspicion helps me keep from getting too disappointed if the movie fails to live up to the hype. For example, following the hype of Black-suit Spiderman, Spiderman 3 was downright awful. Posthumous hype is particularly dangerous. We nearly always remember the dead as someone better (and occasionally, much worse) than they were.
Look at The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan. Heath Ledger’s performance received good notice before he died, but after his death, the hype over his character shot through the roof. Luckily, his performance actually lived up to the hype, and in some ways, I believe surpassed it.

On the other hand, the posthumous hype around Rent was much better than the musical actually is (this is, of course, my opinion, and I’m sure Admiral Eo will disagree).

So I was understandably wary of the hype surrounding Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
When the book hit the shelves in 2005, its author had been dead for a year, due to a massive heart attack. Due to his journalism exposing many Swedish extreme right and racist organizations, some conspiracy theory arose that his heart attack was induced because of the numerous death threats he received. In 2008, he was the second best-selling author in the world, behind Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. The Swedish film company Yellow Bird filmed the movie version of the novel, releasing it in Sweden in 2009. The film hit American shores in late March, and you can read a bit of what Sgt. Angle has to say about it here. An American film version of the book is in the works, with a tentative release date in 2012. Needless to say, the hype behind the book is extensive. (Okay, perhaps “needless to say” is one of those sayings that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since I did say it.)

The Swedish title of the book is Män som Hatar Kvinnor, which translates to “Men who Hate Women”. The content of the book completely lives up to the hype, in my opinion. The novel is a crime thriller, following in the vein of Agatha Christie and Thomas Harris, and maybe with a little bit of John Grisham thrown in. The world the characters live in, however, is totally contemporary.
Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist for (and co-owner of) Millennium magazine, a journal dealing mainly with high-finance investigative reporting. The start of the novel finds him going head to head with perhaps the Swedish version of Goldman Sachs.
Lisbeth Salander is a free-lance investigator for a security firm. She is 26, socially awkward and sullen, has enough tattoos (including a dragon on her shoulder, hence the title) and piercings to front a punk band, and is probably the best private investigator in Sweden.
Their paths converge as they attempt to find out what happened to a missing scion of a wealthy corporate family.

(I’m trying to be incredibly vague here, since the book is, after all, a mystery.)

As a mystery thriller, the book works pretty well. I figured it out pretty early on, but I doubted my guess very nearly the whole way through. Finding out I guessed it actually came as a surprise. Now, I know some of you might be saying, “Hey, um, Akatzen? If you guessed the mystery, how is it that it works well?“
Well, I’d read the book for an hour or so before going to sleep, and as I’m lying their in the dark, I found myself turning over every detail the book gave me in my head. I became just as engrossed in the mystery as the main characters, but from the safety of my bedroom. They had to deal with danger. If I’m engrossed in figuring out the mystery of a novel at times when I’m not reading the novel, then I’d say the book is a pretty damn good mystery.

Thematically, the book deals with some pretty weighty issues too. Reviewer Robert Dessaix wrote, “His favorite targets are violence against women, the incompetence and cowardice of investigative journalists, the moral bankruptcy of big capital and the virulent strain of Nazism still festering away …” (Sydney Morning Herald, February 2008). The “Nature vs. Nurture” debate comes up a bit as well.
The real treat of the novel is Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo. Incredibly intelligent but socially withdrawn, she has an enormous force of will and believes firmly in righteous retribution. There’s incredibly depth to her character, and it’s revealed in delightful — and also sometimes ghastly — ways.

So go and pick this one up. It’s the first book in a trilogy, so if nothing else, it’ll give you something to do for a while.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey, kids! It’s Akatzen, bringing you another Book Report.

January is almost over, and as the first month of the decade draws to a close, I’d like to take a look at the top best-sellers at Barnes and Noble for January. I originally was going to take a look at the New York Times Bestseller List, but they divide it into the top 5 by categories, which would prove to be an awful long post. So I decided that the top sellers of a major chain would probably be an accurate representation of what most of America is reading this month. So here we go!

10. Worst Case by James Patterson

James Patterson novels proliferate the crime thriller genre the way low-calorie frozen foods hit supermarket shelves. There are a lot of them, there isn’t much to them, and ultimately, they just aren’t that good.
“But wait a minute, Akatzen,” you might say, “his novels consistently hit the ranks of bestseller, he’s written more than twenty novels in the past three years, including some for young adult readers, and some of those books have been turned into manga.“
Popularity, unfortunately, does not make a thing good simply because it is popular. Now, it’s not that Patterson’s stuff is bad, it’s just that after reading Stieg Larsson and Thomas Harris you are better able to determine who the masters of the craft really are. Compared to really good crime thriller, Patterson is mediocre, and only very occasionally does a good moment appear in one of his novels.

9. The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks is the guy that wrote The Notebook, which became the movie a guy has his wife watch when he’s too tired for foreplay but still wants to get laid. Sparks writes what I call “High-brow Romance” novels. The formula is: introduce a love story that stretches out the readers emotions, and then have something happen to make the reader cry. It’s probably why several of his books end up on film.

8. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This novel for young adults has been getting good reviews as a taut mystery and amazing fantasy rolled into one, reminiscent of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series. I don’t know much more about it, but in an era of lame vampire novels and cheap Harry Potter ripoffs this sounds absolutely refreshing.

7. Percy Jackson and the Olympians box set by Rick Riordan

Speaking of Harry Potter ripoffs… Riordan’s series has managed to pick up young readers and hang onto them. The basic premise is that the gods of Olympus are alive and well in the present day. And they’ve continued their shenanigans, included mating with humans to spawn demigod children.
Harry Percy is an ordinary boy living an ordinary life until he finds out that his father is actually a wizard Posiedon, god of the sea (and earthquakes), and he is the only one able to stop the evil wizard Voldemort Titan Kronus.
Essentially, the novels sound like a modern day Clash of the Titans ripoff for young adults.

6. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Goolrick’s debut novel is about a man and his mail order bride and the scheming, plotting, and loving they get into. Essentially, this book is a steamy bodice ripper with deep and dark psychological problems.

5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Sebold’s novel keeps popping up on best-seller lists, and there is a good reason for it: The novel is excellent. The latest resurgence in popularity stems from the movie that just came out, directed by Peter Jackson, of The Frighteners and Braindead (released in America as Dead Alive) fame. Oh, and The Lord of the Rings.

4. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

The movie is coming out in February (for Valentine’s Day of course), so a rise in popularity is expected.

3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Set in the sixties in Mississippi, the novel follows 3 women as they come together and work to redefine the social lines that keep them tied down. The book’s been getting good press, and looks worth a read.

2. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

I hate when books release a new edition of the novel, only with a movie poster as the cover.

1. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

This book looked interesting, at first glance. It is touted as being a behind the scenes look at the major candidates in the last presidential election.
At second glance, it turns out that it is mostly gossipy reactions of people who worked on the election campaigns during key moments of the race. It’s news the way Entertainment Tonight is news: BFD.
Still, it is a balanced look at both political parties, which is a rare find when you look for election memoirs.
On the other hand, I’d call it a political book for the American Idol crowd. Thinking readers will want to go elsewhere.

Well, that’s it for this week (and month). See ya in February.
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_