And, 'Oh, Step'

My parents both read and enjoyed Stieg Larsson's Millenium series, and have urged me to read it for some time. I finally cracked them open during Easter, and finished the first one, Men Who Hate Women (Män som hatar kvinnor, in the original Swedish) in two days. They're very good crime novels, a genre I don't read other than as a guilty pleasure – in the shape of Cornwell –, and during Easter. Apparently a weird Norwegian tradition, stuffing our faces with crime fiction once a year.

Somewhere along the line I read a list of some sort, and had an epiphany of sorts. The difference between "arty", high-brow fiction (represented currently by Bolano) and straight-forward, plot oriented crime, romance and YA novels is inherent in their lists. Bolano would ramble on, listing everything he could think of, including a digression and digressions from digressions. Larsson, and most writers, do not. They write their short, sweet, to the point lists and move on. Their language is not exceptional, it is functional. Bolano doesn't bother with paragraphs, or introductions. Larsson painstakingly, not always very elegantly, introduces his characters.

I'll have to continue this later, I have a day in which to properly research and write an English Civilisation paper on WWI and its implications for the Empire.

Morgenbladet never fails me, and alerted me to The Literature Police a book, plus supplementary website about Apartheid censorship. It is a bit difficult to navigate, but there are scans of actual reports. I found one of Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K.

And, 'Oh, Step'

My parents both read and enjoyed Stieg Larsson's Millenium series, and have urged me to read it for some time. I finally cracked them open during Easter, and finished the first one, Men Who Hate Women (Män som hatar kvinnor, in the original Swedish) in two days. They're very good crime novels, a genre I don't read other than as a guilty pleasure – in the shape of Cornwell –, and during Easter. Apparently a weird Norwegian tradition, stuffing our faces with crime fiction once a year.

Somewhere along the line I read a list of some sort, and had an epiphany of sorts. The difference between "arty", high-brow fiction (represented currently by Bolano) and straight-forward, plot oriented crime, romance and YA novels is inherent in their lists. Bolano would ramble on, listing everything he could think of, including a digression and digressions from digressions. Larsson, and most writers, do not. They write their short, sweet, to the point lists and move on. Their language is not exceptional, it is functional. Bolano doesn't bother with paragraphs, or introductions. Larsson painstakingly, not always very elegantly, introduces his characters.

I'll have to continue this later, I have a day in which to properly research and write an English Civilisation paper on WWI and its implications for the Empire.

Morgenbladet never fails me, and alerted me to The Literature Police a book, plus supplementary website about Apartheid censorship. It is a bit difficult to navigate, but there are scans of actual reports. I found one of Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K.