Book 23 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

A couple of months ago I took my mother out computer shopping. She has had a computer for a few years but didn't use it much, as it had an old CRT monitor that she could not position such that it was comfortable for her to use. We went out and got her a brand new laptop, and I have been spending some time showing her how to use it beyond balancing her checkbook, so naturally I directed her to this blog in hopes of doubling its readership. A day or two later, I received a message on my answering machine (rather than email; I know I'm trying) that she had read one of the entries and that it contains a typo. At first I was simply annoyed that this was the only thing she had to say about it, and I didn't even bother to fix it. Well, the other day I was going back through some older entries, and as it turns out, I have many typos. I realize that I'm not always going to write perfectly, but some of these things were really bad. I might have to try and go back through and fix the ones that I can see. I'm not planning on altering the posts substantially. I'm just planning on fixing some of the glaring errors.

So why am I making mistakes that I would never have made in the past? Has a steady diet of bad emails, blog posts and text messages deteriorated my skills? Is it an increased over-reliance on automated spelling and grammar check? Is it a sign of early onset Alzheimer's? I just don't know.

Book 23 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

In keeping with my summertime trend of reading some popular titles, I decided to tackle the first in one of the most popular crime fiction series in a while. I am referring to Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. This riveting novel is one of three books that the author delivered to his publisher simultaneously. Upon delivery, he returned home, ran up 7 flights of stairs and died of a heart attack.

The story takes place in Sweden, and centers around an investigative journalist and magazine editor/publisher named Mikael Blomkvist, and an enigmatic young female computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist has recently been convicted of libeling Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, an extremely wealthy businessman. Despite the fact that it was a setup, Blomkvist does not put up a battle in court, and elects to simply accept the verdict and do his time. Lisbeth Salander is an emotionally distant and somewhat imbalanced computer hacker, with piercings, an attitude, and of course a dragon tattoo. A ward of the state due to her emotional problems, she has found employment with security company that has an investigative service. Here she demonstrates an an incredible ability to gather and organize information on individuals, to the degree that her boss is willing to ignore her methods and the fact that she doesn't play well with others, and basically lets her freelance on a permanent basis.

Blomkvist, disgraced by his ordeal and facing a brief prison sentence for his libel conviction, is lured by an offer by another wealthy businessman, Henrik Vanger, ostensibly to write a family history, but in reality to investigate the mysterious disappearance some 40 years prior of Harriet Vanger, Henrik's grand niece. Henrik has never let go of his search to find what has become of her, and has utilized his wealth to track down any lead, but with no luck. Blomkvist is reluctant to take the assignment, but is enticed by Henrik's offer to turn over evidence which will take down Wennerstrom and restore Blomkvist's reputation.

Blomkvist, who is impressed by the level of detail in a background check she performed on him, engages Lisbeth as a research assistant. and the two start to uncover the Vanger family history. It is a sordid one, filled with spousal abuse, molestation, and Nazi collaboration, and serial sexual sadism and murder. As they get closer to the truth, things get more dangerous, and Blomkvist and Lisbeth's develop a strange relationship that is probably the closest thing to love with a man that she has ever experienced.

The Swedish version of the movie (with subtitles) is currently available for immediate download on Netflix. I just watched it this morning and while remains fairly true to the book, there are some substantial changes. In the book, Blomkvist is mainly motivated to take the assignment, at least at first, by the chance to get the information that Henrik claims to have on Wennerstrom. The movie removes this motivating factor entirely, and seems to focus on the idea that Harriet babysat Blomkvist as a child, frequently flashing to an image of her playing with little boy Blomkvist. There also seemed to be a needless collapsing of the family tree, where Harriet becomes Henrik's niece as opposed to grand-niece. The movie also downplays Blomkvist's "sex machine" status, choosing to ignore the affairs he has with his co-publisher and one of the Cecilia Vanger. Lisbeth's interactions with her first "guardian" and her employer are left out, but the movie provides some additional back-story on her which I'm guessing is revealed in the second book. All-in-all, the movie was quite good though. They did a great job casting Lisbeth, which is something that I'm concerned Hollywood may fall short on when they make the American version. This is not a role for Meghan Fox.

For those who live in the DC area, the movie is also currently showing at the AMC Loew's Shirlington 7, along with the second Swedish movie The Girl Who Played with Fire (separate admission). Also, I just read an recent article regarding the possibility that a forty year old rape that Larsson witnessed but failed to report might have figured into the writing of the Millenium Trilogy, as the three-book series is collectively known. You can find the article here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20012770-10391698.html

Book 22 - Nature Girl - Carl Hiaasen

I finished this almost a week ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing about it. Actually there are three things that I find challenging about this endeavor, and I will present them in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest:

1) Starting the book - Often, I will carry a book around everywhere I go with the best intentions of getting started on it. It will go with me out to the car if I am going to Starbucks, but then I wind up buying a paper to do the crossword and sudoku. I'll carry it back inside, but then get distracted with a TV show or web surfing. I'll take it to the library and wind up reading something else while I'm there. I probably put more wear and tear on a book prior to starting it than I do the entire time I am reading it.

2) Finishing the book - You would think I'd be in a hurry to find out how it ends, but I often find that as plot threads start to wrap up, I flash back to various parts of the book, rehashing and trying to remember details such that the last 50 pages are read in short bursts with numerous distractions in between.

3) Writing about the book - This is probably the hardest part and one of the reasons I am doing the blog portion of the excercise - to force me to write without getting so hung up about it. I have a tendency to not want to get started until I have the whole thing mapped out in my head. By forcing myself to write about each book, and throwing it out there for everybody to read, it helps me get over some of the anxiety that I've experienced in the past about writing. That's right - it's therapy.

So enough about that, let's get on with the book review.

Book 22 - Nature Girl - Carl Hiaasen

It's summer, so you'll excuse me if I escape into a few popular titles. Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite pop fiction writers. I've read three of his other books: Skin Tight, Native Tongue, and Strip Tease - and yes, the book is funnier than the movie. Sure he's formulaic, but it's an entertaining format, at least for me.

Some of the features of the formula:

1) The books seem to be always about Florida.

2) There are always absurdly wacky characters.

3) There is always an environmental and/or social theme.

4) The various characters are thrust into each others lives through an improbable series of events.

5) There's a heavy dose of sex and sexual themes, often with a kinky twist.

6) One or more of the characters are usually mentally ill and/or heavily medicated on pills or booze.

There's a blurb from the The Sunday Times (London) on the dust jacket that sums up Hiaasen's writing: "The undisputed master of organized chaos." On this front Nature Girl does not disappoint. Honey Santana is a divorced mother with a teenaged son and she lives in a trailer in the Florida Everglades. She is bipolar and seems to be mildly schizophrenic as well, as she almost always has not one, but two songs playing in her head simultaneously. Holly takes umbrage with a telemarketer who interrupts her dinnertime with her son and then proceeds to insult her when she chastises him for the rude nature of the call. She devises a plan to get even with him - she doesn't want to kill him, she just wants to teach him some manners - by turning the tables and luring him to the Everglades with a bogus telemarketing pitch and a free eco-tour

The telemarketer, Boyd Shreave sees this as an opportunity to prove to his mistress Eugenie Fonda, who has become bored with him, that he is capable of spontaneity. He convinces her to come along, and tells his wife Lily, who he has not been having sex with, that he has aphenphosmphobia, a fear of being touched, and that he is going to a specialized clinic in Florida for treatment. Lily pretends to believe him, but she had already hired a private investigator a while ago, and he has photographic proof of Boyd and Eugenie's affair, capturing Eugenie performing a rather intimate act on Boyd in a rather public place. Although the photographs would be more than enough to file for divorce, this is not enough for Lily, and she instructs the investigator that she wants pornographic close-ups of the actual act of intercourse, causing him to follow Boyd and Eugenie to the Everglades.

No less important to the story are Sammy Tigertail, the half-white Seminole who talks to the dead, and is hiding in the Everglades for fear that he will be blamed for the death of a tourist, and his "hostage" Gillian, who insists on staying with him despite several efforts to get her to leave him alone. Holly takes Boyd and Eugenie out in kayaks and winds up setting up on the same island where Tigertail is hiding out. They are followed by the investigator, the disgusting Louis Piejack, a fishmonger who is obsessed with Honey Santana and will stop at nothing to have her, and Honey's ex-husband and their son, who are trying to protect her from Piejack.

Hopefully this gives you a taste of some of the wacky plots and subplots that make up this tale. Is this great literature? Of course not. Is it entertaining summer reading? I think so.

Book 21 - I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

I think I'd mentioned before that I had read a fair amount of science fiction in my youth, although I really didn't read much outside the major authors - Heinlein, Bradbury, Herbert, and of course Isaac Asimov. I was fascinated by his Foundation Trilogy, especially the phony science of psychohistory, which allowed Hari Seldon to predict mankind's future through a melding of history, sociology and statistics. Asimov had two other series, The Galactic Empire novels and the Robot novels, neither of which I ever got around to reading. Although written later, The Galactic Empire books are a prelude to the Foundation series, chronicling the empire whose knowledge and culture the Foundation was an attempt to preserve. In the 80s, Asimov wrote two sequels to Foundation which tie in his Robot series. These books, combined with some other prequels, create a vast 15 volume set that covers thousands of years of galactic history. Asimov was even good enough to create a recommended reading order, a copy of which can be found here:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/links/cool_sci_fi.html#asimov-suggested-reading-order

I stumbled across this list a few weeks ago and decided to tackle the first book, I, Robot. I doubt I'll get to the rest of them anytime soon, but this will make 6 of the fifteen that I have already read.

Book 21 - I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

For those of you who are wondering, aside from a few character names and the Robotic Laws, Will Smith's movie bears little resemblance to Asimov's book. First off, I, Robot, is not a novel but rather a collection of short stories originally published in Science Fiction magazines, which Asimov stitched together with an interview with the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin. Calvin, a renowned robopsychologist and an old woman at the time of the interview, is recounting stories of her lifelong career in the development of robot technology. These robots, which were produced starting in the 1980s (it's always fun when you read a fiction story set in a future that is already the past), have varying degrees of artificial intelligence - some are designed to perform very specific menial tasks, some have more general capabilities, and still others are designed to be purely thinking machines, but they all share one thing in common, the three rules of robotics:

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2) A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws form a moral code for the Robots, and are instilled in the brains of every robot that is manufactured. It is against the law to have a robot that does not have these three laws ingrained into its artificial psyche. The laws also provide Asimov with a framework on which to hang a variety of logic puzzles based on the interplay between them. The balance and order of these laws are key. In one story, the third law is strengthened on a particular robot because it is new technology and they don't wish it to be destroyed, but this causes an imbalance between self-preservation and following orders that renders the robot unable to function correctly. In another story, the second half of the first law is disabled for robots that have to work in situations where humans are deliberately putting themselves in harms way, so that the robots don't stop the humans from doing their jobs. As was stated earlier, this is highly illegal, and when one of these robots goes missing, a desperate "manhunt" ensues, not only because of the legal repercussions, but also because of the potential dangerous results that occur from not having the second part of the law in place.

While all of this sounds very "geeky", there is a surprisingly human element to all these stories, and the explorations of the robot psyche seem to apply to humans as well. In "Liar!" an anomaly creates a robot with psychic abilities, however when queried by various researchers about what their colleagues' secrets, the robot is forced to lie to them because the truth would hurt them, and therefore violate the first law. In "Robbie" a young human girl forms a loving bond with her nursemaid robot. In "Evidence," several scientists are tasked with trying to prove that a particular individual running for public office is really a robot. This proves difficult without a medical exam, and probable cause is needed for such an exam. It is suggested that if he were to violate one of the laws, that would be a giveaway. However being good human being behaving with high moral standards (i.e. following the "Golden Rule") would be indistinguishable from a robot adhering to the laws.

Look, I know science fiction isn't everybody's cup of tea. Heck, even I don't read that much of it anymore, although I still enjoy an episode of Star Trek or Babylon 5 from time-to-time. Asimov is one of the greats though, and while I'm not sure if I'd categorize this as his best work, it is still classic and worth reading. However, if you were only going to read one Asimov book, you might opt for Foundation instead.

BTW - Speaking of Star Trek, although Gene Roddenberry chose to use the more specific term android rather than robot to refer to the artificial life form known as Lt. Commander Data on the "Next Generation" series, he used Asimov's coined term "positronic," to refer to the circuitry of the android's brain, and Data seems to be governed by a moral code similar to the Laws of Robotics.

Geez, I'm a nerd!

Book 20 - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

This summer is the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, yet another book that I never got around to reading. Up until now, Scout, Atticus, and Boo were simply the answers to crossword puzzle clues. I now know what I have been missing.

Book 20 - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The story takes place in Alabama during the Great Depression, and is told from the perspective of a bright young tomboy named Scout. Scout and her older brother Jem, befriend a rather diminutive and imaginative boy named Dill. The children have an obsessive fascination with Boo Radley, a reclusive man that few people in the town have ever seen, and they are constantly scheming to get a glimpse of him. Although these efforts are unsuccessful, Boo will eventually touch their lives in ways they cannot anticipate.

Scout's father Atticus, to whom the children refer by first name rather than paternal title, is a well respected lawyer, state legislator, and a devoted father. Atticus is a widower, and is raising Scout and her brother Jem with the help of a black housekeeper named Calpurnia. Despite his many other duties, he finds time to spend with his children and helps them to understand the concepts of tolerance, justice, and fairness, in a society that often seems to ignore those concepts.

Atticus is appointed by the court to defend a black man who is wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. Despite the dangers posed to himself and his family by taking on such a task, Atticus feels a moral obligation to vigorously defend the man. Scout and her brother are forced to endure insults by their classmates and neighbors, and they soon start to realize the concepts of fairness and justice that their father has instilled in them are not always so clear cut in the real world.

The simplicity of childhood, the loss of innocence, justice and human dignity are just a few of the themes explored by Harper Lee in this deceptively simple book. Although Scout's narrative voice is mature, it speaks with a childlike guilelessness that distills and clarifies the events. Her loss of innocence is almost palpable as she learns the realities of bigotry and racism. While this is a book that is typically taught in school, it is worth a read if you haven't already read it, and worth a re-read if you have.

Book 19 - The Plague - Albert Camus

Well, at least I made it through a book this week. However, I need to read seven books just to catch up. How did I get this far behind? Oh well, there's nothing to do but keep plugging at it. I guess I'll just have to double-up for a while.

Book 19 - The Plague - Albert Camus

The Plague is a tale set Oran, Algeria in what I assume is the late 1940's. The townsfolk are a rather self-absorbed sort, going about their day-to-day business without much interest in the community as a whole. One day rats start coming out into the streets to die in alarming numbers. The town's first reaction is one of disgusted inconvenience, as daily rat removal becomes somewhat of a chore. However there is a surreal sense of denial as no one seems overly concerned as to why the rats are dying. Finally the rat deaths start to subside - most likely due to the decimation of the rat population, and shortly thereafter a man starts to develop a mysterious fever, accompanied by a swelling of the lymph nodes in the underarms, groin and throat. More cases start to crop up, and while at first the cases are few, the frequency soon increases. Eventually, certain doctors in the town start to recognize this disease for what it is: Bubonic Plague.

Although the town is slow to react at first, when the death toll starts to mount, the entire city is quarantined. No one is allowed in or out. What ensues is a study in how humankind deals with the relentless onslaught of death, and with the isolation of being separated from the ones that you love. Some cling to faith while others lose it. Some people capitalize on the suffering of others. Some people help alleviate the suffering of others by placing themselves in mortal peril. Some just try to ignore the situation and live some semblance of a normal life. But in the end Camus seems to be telling us that the plague existence is no different than normal existence. Both are equally absurd. Both are equally futile. But one accepts this and chooses to live and fight anyway.

While the subject matter is quite dark, the book is beautifully written, and there are rays of hope in the displays of human spirit exhibited by some of it's characters. I'm always a little suspicious of translations, however. Camus wrote in French. How much does a translator change and color the author's original intent? Good authors choose their words carefully, as word choice can convey many subtle subtexts. I suppose good translators must be equally careful in their word choice, so that they best convey the original intentions of the author. But every reader brings their life experiences and knowledge to each text that they read, and it is impossible to know the mind of the author, so therefore some level of subjective interpretation must occur.

Well, unless I want to take the time to become sufficiently fluent in French to read the book in its original language, I guess I won't know. However my existential conundrum should not stop you from reading this existential masterpiece. I highly recommend it!