Category: Literature

Unexpected Pleasure

Entertainment, Literature

While New Wife was off doing girl-shopping the other day, I decided that instead of hanging around the department store looking bored (a.k.a. the Husband Exile), I’d go over to a nearby bookstore and browse some second-hand books because I’ve run out of fiction to read.

I have written several times before how much I enjoyed the wonderful Stieg Larsson “Millenium” TV series — The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest — and I’ve watched the series several times.

Anyway, I decided to read Larsson’s original novels, just to see for myself how bad they are — yes, he’s a filthy socialist but then again #Swedish so that’s not entirely surprising — and I discovered something quite rare:  the TV series is actually better than the novel series, but not by much.

What the TV show of Dragon Tattoo  did was to cut out, for example, the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and her boss, as well as Mikke Blomkvist’s affair with one of the murder suspects — both of which were quite extraneous to the plot.

More importantly, the sexual encounters between Blomkvist and Salander, which were numerous in the novel, were pared back to a only a couple in the TV episode — making their relationship much more fragile as a result.

I’ve only read the first novel so far (Dragon Tattoo) because I didn’t want to buy all three in case they sucked terribly and I would be stuck with two unread books.  But now that I’ve read that one, I think I’ll go back and get the other two because once I’d learned to ignore the rampant socialism, I rather liked Larsson’s writing style.

If you’re really stuck for some reading material (as I was), you could do a lot worse.

Better still, though:  buy the Extended Cut DVD version of the TV series*.

And do not repeat NOT buy the non-Swedish version with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, because Noomi Rapace (Salander) and Michael Nyqvist (Blomqvist) are both beyond-words brilliant while the other two aren’t.  We won’t even talk about the stunning Swede MILF Lena Endre…

 

*Be warned that the current version of Millennium available through Netfux has been severely edited, and it’s terrible:  whole scenes have been deleted and even some characters erased, making the show almost incomprehensible, not to say less enjoyable.  (Netflix delenda est)

Answer Delayed

Literature

Several Readers have asked for the translated version of Les Misérables that I have praised quite often before.

Please be patient:  I don’t have my copy of Les Miz at hand — I believe I lent it to the Son&Heir a little while ago, and he thinks he may have it, but he’s just moved house and as it’s not among the books so far unpacked, it might still be in a packing case in his garage.  He’s promised to locate the thing and bring it back to me if this is the case.

However, I believe that this is the book I have:  from AbeBooks, it’s the Les Miz / Hunchback double feature (!), in hardback, from Connecticut/Longmeadow Press.

It’s kinda spendy, nearly $40, but considering that it’s essentially two classic works for $20 each, it’s a bargain.

There aren’t a lot of copies extant, so it’s FCFS.  Good luck, y’all.

Not Really The Best

Literature, Movies

Okay, I admit I was caught by the headline to this article:

‘Masterpiece’ period drama based on ‘best book ever written’ is free to stream on Netflix

Ignoring for a moment the inherent inability of Netflix to make a “masterpiece” anything, I was nevertheless curious to see what constituted the “best book ever written”.

Alas, no.  While One Hundred Years of Solitude  isn’t a bad book, it’s nowhere close to being the best book ever written — hell, even in the “magical reality” genre (to which it belongs) John Fowles’s The Magus  has it beaten all ends up — but while One Hundred  may entertain, it’s not going to change your world in the same way, perhaps, that Les Misérables  might.

Feel free to discuss in Comments, or to nominate your own submission for the greatest.  (Oh gawd, here come the Heinlein / Pratchett groupies…)

Printed Matter

Literature

A parallel thought occurred to me as I was putting together the above post (Rank Stupidity):  what about some decent books about WWII Britain?

Of course, there are thousands upon thousands of them, but what follows are two (unranked) lists of the ones I’ve read.  I’ve mostly ignored the general history books (Churchill’s The Second World War, etc.) to concentrate on novels and biographies.

Let me start with the ones that spawned various of the WWII movies mentioned above. (F) denotes fiction, otherwise historical.

  • Enemy Coast Ahead (The Dam Busters) — Guy Gibson V.C.
  • The Eagle Has Landed — Jack Higgins (F)
  • Eye Of The Needle — Jack Higgins (F)
  • The Hill — Leonard B. Scott (F)
  • The Cruel Sea — Nicholas Monsarrat (F) might be the best naval story ever told.

Then there are others that mostly haven’t been made into movies (yet):

  • Bomber — Len Deighton (F)
  • The entire RAF series (e.g. Piece of Cake, Damn Good Show, etc.) — Derek Robinson (F)
  • The Colditz Story — P.R. Reid (the movie wasn’t that good, hence its exclusion from the top 10 movie list)
  • HMS Ulysses — Alistair Maclean (F)
  • Reach For The Sky — Paul Brickhill (Douglas Bader biography)
  • Cheshire V.C. — Paul Brickhill (about the man who succeeded Gibson at 617 Squadron)
  • The Tunnel — Eric Williams
  • The Sword Of Honour trilogy — Evelyn Waugh (F)
  • Citizens Of London — Lynn Olson

That’s a partial list, of course.  But it says something of all of them — some of which I haven’t read in over thirty years — that I remember them to this day.