10. No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

Warning: I loved this book/the way ideas were presented in it, so this will mostly be overflowing praise. But not without criticism, I swear!

The About:

Beavan, a middle-class family man and an author who is vaguely discontent with his life decides to embark on an experiment, where he will consume as little new products in a year as possible, while also attempting to cut down the possible negative impact his life might have on our planet. This he decides to record in a blog and write into this book. He begins by baby steps: always selecting stairs instead of an elevator, and taking his own, reusable cup to a coffee shop. He struggles with the urge to consume with often hilarious results: when he decides to begin to take his own tote bags to the store, he gets obsessed about finding and buying a French fish net shopping bag, scavenging the entire New York in his attempt of finding one. Then he realizes that he has a house full of absolutely fine canvas bags to use as a tote - the idea of buying new stuff to accomplish something simple is just so ingrained in us that we can't even think about taking a walk without automatically thinking, 'Hey, I think I need new shoes that are specifically designed for walking!'.

This prompts him to question why we are so into Stuff, and how much happier we actually are with Stuff. According to surveys, Americans had less money and less Stuff in the 1950s than right now, but the rate of Happiness has not increased (see the book for more information on these "happiness rate" surveys). Basically, not only does he want to see whether a single person could (if enough single persons would join him) have a positive impact on the environment, he also wants to see whether learning not to get instant gratification from Things would make him happier.

Beavan begins the project by asking his family to not throw away any of their garbage, but instead collecting it in bags at home for a couple of weeks. This is just to get an idea of how much stuff they throw away. Besides the obvious food scraps and food wrapping, the shocker comes from items that are designed to be used for 5 seconds and then thrown away: paper napkins, paper towels, those little wooden sticks you stir your coffee with, plastic straws, plastic cups. It's easy not to pay attention to them because they are so small and so fleeting, but when you realize that you easily fill a garbage bag with them within a week, it makes you pause. An aside: this made me pay attention to such items that I used only today, and the tally so far is: 3 paper napkins along with food/drinks, paper napkins to blow my nose on. I was so horrified with this (and the idea that I waste at least that much probably every single day) that I refused to use a disposable, plastic spoon at a cafe to spoon up the milk froth from my cappuccino, and used a fork instead, probably puzzling the staff.

Before getting into the book, some reactions from other people:
Beavan's simple actions cause interesting reactions, and I'll get back to that in a second. This was evident in the documentary about the No Impact Man (which we watched yesterday - streaming on Netflix!) where the criticism went from "who is this bourgeoisie guy doing this only for a year - some do it all their lives! What a jerk" to "you can't call yourself a No Impact Man if your wife works for a company that promotes consumerism and trees are killed with every single magazine they print".

It's like a competition. Either you do it our way or you have failed. Either you do everything imaginable, or you are just a phony who nobody should listen to. And at the center of it all is Beavan, ready to admit that he is not perfect, and all he is promoting is to see how his family can reduce the garbage they create and hope that other people get inspired by it, too. He is not out to tell people who live miles away from the nearest grocery store to stop using their cars.

You may groan, but I'll say it nevertheless: he should be called a Huge impact man, because I can't look at plastic stuff the same way again, or the way I not only buy junk but use it.

This is, hands down, the best book I have read about the pros of environmentalism and what it actually means in a human being's everyday life. We all know what we should be doing, because we see those lists everywhere from Cosmo to CNN: change your light bulbs to be more energy efficient, drive less, eat locally produced foods - you know the drill. But people are kind of messed up: when others tell us what we should do, we usually find a ton of excuses not to do it or we get offended, because we feel that there is an underlying accusation there of "I am a better person for doing all these things, and you, let's face it, suck." So it's easier to find an excuse why not to use energy efficient light bulbs ("they give off an ugly light and don't go well with my decor!") rather than evaluate the information given objectively. Which, I know, is difficult, when there are also people who don't think we should be doing anything to improve our life on this planet, thinking that people are not to blame for disappearance of animal species, pollution, you name it.

But back to the book. What Beavan does is genius: he admits with a blush that he is one of those people who chastise Americans for driving too much while he himself drives to work/goes by subway. His experiment is for one full year to put his money where his mouth is. If he thinks that Americans should drive less, he should drive less. If he thinks that people use too much stuff made out of plastic he should stop buying stuff himself first and see, how easy it is to find alternative ways to create items that are sold in wrapping (soap, laundry detergent, washing liquids).

He is not doing this to prove himself as a better human being than the rest of us; he's doing it to see with how little he and his family can survive without endangering anyone's health or general well-being. He is willing to have it rough for a full year, and if something still feels rough after a year, they are willing to go back to their old ways. But not without trying.

My reading experience went from one extreme to another. It began with "awww, Americans are so endearing" when Beavan is marveling at how easy it is to bike to work and wondering why more people are not doing it, or coming to the miraculous conclusion that you can take your own bags to stores and fill one up instead of coming out of the store with 5 flimsy plastic bags that are barely reusable because they get holes punctured into them by a cucumber. It ended with "wow, are you serious???" when Beavan's family shuts off electricity at their Manhattan apartment, dreading the winter and long, dark days because the solar panel they have will not produce enough electricity to run his computer (for his work) and lights.

Of course, the premise is not without its problems: he is, after all, a fairly well-to-do person (with a wife who grew up in the world of yachts, country clubs and mink furs), so he can easily change some of his habits. It is no problem for him to start buying items that are only locally produced, or get his ingredients directly from the farmers - that's mainly a problem of directing your ample amount of cash somewhere else. He lives in the middle of Manhattan, which means that using anything else to get around is easier than using a car. 

With that said, this book is not about whether he is the perfect example for environmentalism, or whether he WINS by doing things THE HARDEST WAY. It's all about how a single person changes from what he is used to to what he really needs. He is preaching to people like himself, who are most likely the people who also consume the most and create the most trash - which then affects the lives of everyone, regardless of their income levels.

On his blog he behaves almost guru-like: when people ask him, "what should I do first, where to begin?" he replies with "What would you like to do first?" And when the person responds, "Well, I'd like to start biking to work" he asks, "What's stopping you from doing that?" He does not want to be some almighty adviser, because we all have to pick our battles. He doesn't know how much money I have, where I live or how physically fit I am - he has no authority to tell me that I need to live my life exactly like he does. And that's what he acknowledges, which makes this project so beautiful. It makes you think about whether you could replicate what he does and if not, what are you able to do?
Even if the change you make is to never pick up a plastic bag from a store again, it is still a change, even if it feels small. As a result, you are still consuming and wasting less than what you did before.



 11. Mariposa by Greg Bear

This is the latest installment from Greg Bear, the most charming and unintimidating sci-fi author of the Seattle area. I had the pleasure to hear him give a reading of his previous book, and I was delighted when the reading turned out to be more a lecture on why reading is important and how reading and stories affect our daily lives.

The Plot shortly before I start rambling about the reading experience
Something is horribly wrong with the future United States of America. The Vice President brutally murders his wife without apparently any remorse, and this scares the whole country poopless: were we about to have a homicidal psycho as president? How could this have happened? FBI agent Rebecca Rose is called in to investigate the connections of a CEO of a Talos corporation to a possible plot to bring down the government, only to find that the reality awaiting for them is more sinister than she has expected.


Then the rambles

Mariposa affected me with dread. I have to say that I have been reading this book on and off since late December, which is the result of owning a book and then pushing it further and further down the reading list because you still keep on getting library books, or borrowing books from friends... So Mariposa was definitely a victim of this, and I apologize, because it is a fine book. What mostly stayed with me after reading it was a feeling of dread. It's not a nice book. It's kind of like what might happen if the Baudelaire trio from Snicket books grew up to work in government jobs. Even a happily-ever-after ending would have a silent question at the end... "or did they?"

The book is a sequel to Quantico, which I have not read yet. I wonder if my understanding of Mariposa would have been easier if I had. With Mariposa, I had a terrible time with names: I simply could not remember which character was which, and I had to leaf back many a time to check who this person was now. There are two reasons for this: 1) me reading the book over a long period of time, and hence not really even remembering always what was happening, so I had to re-read bits anyway and b) because to me, the behavior of, say, Nathaniel, on the page did not seem all that different from the behavior of the Silent Man. They all kind of read like the same character to me after a certain point: determined and vaguely paranoid. Not only that, but there is not a single narrator: although Rebecca Rose is brought in as a prominent character, we have at least two others who speak with the authority of a person that the readers should be concerned about, and all of them are involved with the collapse of the United States in one way or another - and all in different operations, under cover or otherwise under the radar. Throw in a plot about imprisoning and giving a death sentence to a kid of an FBI operative to possibly tarnish the name of the institution, and there is a puzzler for ya!

I had a hard time following this book, so I might need to give it another go now that I know what's happening in it. I ended up reading the first 50 pages again because I had no clue of what was going on and who was doing what. Maybe my brain cells are dying from reading too much Cute Overload daily... Nah, Cute Overload, I still wuw ya! Still, this should not be held against Greg Bear, but rather my ability to read the book in my current state of mind. Will try it again!

12. The F-word by Jesse Sheidlower

As the name suggests to many people, this is about the word fuck. Yup, I just wrote it there. Does that mean I have to now put some kind of a disclaimer for my blog that this is not viewable for eyes under the age of 18?
Anyways! Or if you're me, you thought upon seeing the title "Oh, there's a second book out?"

Basically, The F-word is for you if you are interested in the etymology of the word fuck, but you don't have access to the OED. It lists the word as used in compound words, as a verb, adjective, adverb - you name it. Of course as with any slangy and/or expletive expressions, the usage changes quickly because people do get very inventive with language, and therefore this book probably needs an update every now and then. Sheidlower states, which phrases have been taken out because there has not been enough evidence for a wide-spread use, and which terms have included although they are still fairly new (guess whether MILF made it).

The preface to the book is interesting, as it tracks down the first instances of the word, the urban legends revolving around the word's origins, and then naturally, the legal cases that have involved the usage of the word in public places. Fuck is still a word that cannot be uttered in public radio, or basic cable - even if it's past kids' bed time.

I wish there would be an accompanying book that delves more into the arguments for and against letting "indecent" words to be published. The preface of the book already shows that both of the main arguments are wrong: "It's just a word - why are you so afraid of it?" and "It's indecent - we should never make our kids hear it!"

The first is of course absolutely stupid. If words were ever just words, I would not get into trouble if I told a friend that she has a big nose and she wears horrible clothes (and now I can imagine all of my friends going, "is she talking about me...?" NO! This is a fictional example, people). Words are never just words - they express our intent. And the intent of, say, the word fuck depends on the social context. If society at large has deemed that it is an improper word, I can shout the word till my head falls of and people will still think of me as an asshole - no matter how I say that it's "just a word".

The second argument is equally stupid. A word is indecent if we use it indecently or decide collectively that it is such. What is indecent depends on the cultural context, and apparently nowadays anything relating to sex is. Sure, it's right that nowadays the word fuck is censored, so in that sense the argument is right... But the whole "protect our children from seeing it in a dictionary" is quite stupid. First of all, most kids have heard it in one context or another, probably uttered by a family member of a younger age, by the time they turn 13. And the book gives a good argument for including the word in the dictionary: it is in wide usage, and nobody will ever accidentally find it - you have to know what you are looking for. Unless, of course, you are a freak who reads a dictionary like a novel, one entry at a time.

To me the most compelling reason to include the word fuck in dictionaries is that if we don't, later generations will not know how people actually spoke - whether we agree with their way of speaking or not. I find it sad that I might not ever find out how people really spoke in the Victorian era, because most of the curse words (and other, blood-pressure raising terminology) has been banned from written texts. That is, unless you were a clever chap and used puns or foreign languages to convey the meaning. I'm not saying that everyone should be saying the word fuck constantly, but as it is part of the nation's vocabulary, it should not be banned from institutions who keep track of our languages.

I'm not a frequent user of the word myself, which I find funny because I used to use similar curse words in Finnish quite a lot. In English, I hardly ever do. If I say fuck, I'm suddenly transported out of my body, and I see myself as an actor in an American sitcom, or in something like Beverly Hills 90210. I think this is because I personally relate the word to the language of youth, but I did not grow up using it although I knew of its existence - mainly through contacts to English-speaking cultures. If I say fuck or any variants thereof, I want to giggle because I feel like I'm acting American. Does this make any sense?

Next stop: a book about ESL speakers and how they use the dreaded F-word!
Thank you, Wasabi Prime, for the book! (And for the one below, too!)

13. F U Penguin by Matthew Gasteier

Appropriately, a second book whose idea revolves around the word fuck but who is unable to print it out full on the cover. Interesting!

This all started out as a web page called Fuck You Penguin, where this guy Matt insults cute animals who apparently act too pompous for their own good. Obviously, this is a reaction to Cute Overload, where pictures of cute animals are gushed over with cutesie-wutesie language.

Thing is... the website is pretty funny. Mostly because it gets updated often, and it doesn't matter if the insult of the day is just two words, because you probably have time to read only two words during your lunch break from work (because the rest of the time is spent on Facebook). If you don't find something terribly funny, you can always scroll to the next one.

As a book... it was funny, but a bit odd. There is one page that has a picture, and then the insult is either a caption to it or a paragraph on the next page. Then you are done with it and there will be no new picture or caption to replace it once you are done. So, the reading experience is not quite as pleasurable as on the web. Kind of like if The F-word was on the web - I wouldn't enjoy reading it from a glowing screen at all, but I like it as a book.

A good conversation starter for sure, though... That poor penguin! 

Oh no. Why do I always end up, unintentionally, reading things in themes! I have Wetlands waiting for me, courtesy of my friend Saara... I'll try to read it on the bus on my way to work today, and hope no one notices, hehe.

Book side products

Revisiting the cook book.

I did end up trying out a couple of recipes from this book. Surprisingly, one of the items praised as easy and delicious turned out to be just that: the dish took me all of 10 minutes to prepare, and it was really yummy. I have to admit that I was a bit suspicious with Feta Pasta Casserole including items such as red bell pepper - this sounded so much like random Finnish "exotic" foods. Man, although I loved my uni's cafeteria food (it was awesome!), they did have some crazy crap there that they called something foreign to give excuses to their odd choices of mixing ingredients that just shouldn't go together. I will never forget the time they served "Chinese wok casserole", which was rice with feta cheese and olives. I have yet to encounter any style Chinese cooking, let alone Asian cooking in general, that would use feta and olives. I have no idea what was going on there. And of course, the whole term "wok" to describe any pre-cooked pieces of frozen veggies mixed with noodles is questionable, too (slices of carrot? Seriously?)

But I digress big time. The Feta Pasta was a massive success. Encouraged by this, I tried the Lemon Zest Pasta Sauce, just because I love all things lemon. Fun fact: when you mix lemon zest with lemon juice and add some cream/cream cheese, the lemon begins to taste like lemon grass. I thought I was going nuts, so I asked hubby K. to try it. His taste buds are on a totally different level from mine, but he confirmed - you've made this sauce with lemongrass. So, in the end, the pasta sauce really just reminded me of Thai food. Good tip for the future, I suppose!

So, I'm happy to announce that the book really delivered what it promised, at least so far: really easy but yummy foods. I'll be testing out some of the other recipes as well.

Revisiting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The movie for this novel finally came out in the US, with limited shows, and I was there the first evening in Seattle. With me were 3 others who had read the book, and two who had not. I was worried - what if the movie sucks? Then these people will never want to read the book, which is an awesome, awesome book. Like, actually awe-inspiring in the world of crime novels.

Apparently I fretted for nought: we all enjoyed the movie. Census was that it was nicely un-Hollywood, meaning that the characters looked like real people. Action was not explosions-and-blood-and-gore, but scarily realistic - which I think really drove the point home that this is not supposed to be a story that the viewer can distance him- or herself from. In my mind, it's a story of one or two of the Things Wrong with the World Today, and we should all learn from it. Interestingly enough, a lot of the reviews I saw for the movie said that the violence was too graphic and over the top, and that the viewers would be better off waiting for the American remake (which has already been assigned to a director, who, despite my pleas, will not be Quentin Tarantino - come on, man! He would totally get the whole vendetta-story!)

Things that we readers of the book did not like:
- Lisbeth Salander is less of an enigma in the movie. In the book, we don't even know what's going on in her head and whether she really is a mentally underdeveloped psycho of some kind until well into the story. I loved that about the book, because Larsson knew that had we learned Salander's personality from the get-go, we would condemn some of the people who viewed her strangely. But we are first shown how Salander seems through their eyes, so we get to understand both them and her. Genius.
- Mikael Blomqvist is so blah in the movie. Sure, he is pretty blah in the book, too, but he is damned smart. In the movie version, everything seems to just fall into his lap. He's supposed to be this wonderful, controversial and assertive investigative journalist, but we are not shown his investigative skills beyond him looking at some old pictures. It's Lisbeth who comes up with most of the answers, whereas in the book the pair works very equally.
- Some really important characters and storylines were completely left out or changed. I for one was surprised that the whole Wenneström deal made by Henrik Vanger was left out. If I had only seen the movie without reading the book, I'd wonder why on Earth would Mikael want to spend a year investigating something just because he "doesn't have anything better to do", as Henrik Vanger so says? I for one was fairly miffed at Erika, the head of the Millennium magazine, being written as a background character who barely has any spoken lines. Sure, if they had included her, they might have had to include the whole deal about open marriages, women in male-dominated work places etc, which just wouldn't have worked in the movie. In the book all of it is discussed really smartly, mostly because the characters involved are smart, but if the movie could have dedicated only 5 minutes to these issues it would have come out either as preachy or just too shallow a handling. Same with Dragan Armanski, the Croatia-hailing head of Milton Security, for whom Lisbeth works. Having read the books, though, these two characters must be included in the next movies. There just is no other option.

Although that is a lot of Not Likes, the movie still was very enjoyable. A movie can never be as good or better than the book, just because our imagination adds a lot to it. Although a picture is better than a 1,000 words, we do not view that picture the same way, or pick out the same things from it. The author has more of an influence that way. So, all in all, a very good movie, albeit the book's topic got a very soft treatment with the movie.

Now, back to reading.

My favorite new children's book series

9. Tatun ja Patun oudot aakkoset (Tatu and Patu's Bizarre Alphabet) by  Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen

Havukainen and Toivonen are a married couple, who both have a background in illustration: Aino primarily has worked with children's books, while Sami used to illustrate, for a while, one of my favorite comics ever, Kramppeja ja nyrjähdyksiä (Cramps and Strains - also available in English!). Together they began to work on a series about two weird boys, Tatu and Patu. These are more picture books than anything else, but the ones I have read have made me laugh out loud, and because each page is usually filled with a large picture with an incredible amount of detail, you never get tired of finding random references to Finnish (or pop culture) items. I have used their book Tatun ja Patun Suomi (also available in English as This is Finland) in teaching Finnish: the illustrations are great examples of typical (and even stereotypical) Finnish life, and topics from geography to Santa Claus are covered in a humorous manner. The premise is that Tatu and Patu have no idea what a Finn is, so based on the evidence they have found (the hilarious first page of the book) they firstly construct a typical Finn who is surrounded by a variety of typical Finnish knick-knacks and then embark on a mission to find out what is going on in Finland. This here is a sample (click to embiggen):

So when I heard that they have a book coming out about the alphabet, I thought: perfect! Even better for teaching Finnish as a second/foreign language! I first saw the book at my friend's place, and she wanted to show a sample of it. We ended up reading almost the entire book through while giggling, because it just is so silly. Basically, each page (or, with a more commonly used letter, a spread) is a picture not unlike "Where's Wally?" - you just have to find items beginning with the letter stated on the page. Not only that, but sentences are given, such as "Can you find the dog who is looking dour because he despises his Duck hoodie?" And sure enough, there is a really grumpy looking dog in the picture who is wearing a pink hoodie, covered in pictures of Donald Duck.

On the page with "foreign" letters C and D, you can spot, among others, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Cousteau (be still my heart!!), Darth Vader and cheerleaders in a picture that is taking place at a Curling Club's disco... It's genius. I want to be a fly on the wall when Havukainen and Toivonen come up with these things!

The series kind of reminds me of The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket in the sense that it does not patronize children, or make things simpler just because children are the main audience. Instead, the series fearlessly uses words and turns of phrases that make adults like me chuckle, while still remaining totally child-friendly in content.

I think I need to collect the rest of these books. They are super entertaining, and people of all ages seem to love them - there is always something new to find in the pictures or in the stories. One such example is from the Finland book, where Tatu thinks that Santas are elected like presidents. The story itself is pretty funny, and at the same time Patu tries to tell the reader who exactly is elected by votes in Finland and what the president (or Santa...) can do. Adults may find it hilarious that Tatu is dressed up in a Santa outfit, handing out pens, stickers and other swag with slogans printed onto them, especially as the slogans are references to old Christmas songs (that little kids might not even know).

It's a children's book, sure, but it's just so much fun.

The first book I am giving up on in 2010 - shitty writing is inexcusable

I have a bunch of books on the backburner: I have almost finished reading them or then I have started them recently. Then I go to work and I select something small from the pile so that it will fit in my work bag along with all my other stuff. So I never end up reading the massive hardcover books I have started at home, because I do most of my reading on buses, and I do not want to lug a big book with me.
This book was one of those "I'll grab this tiny book with me to have something to read on the bus" -cases. And although I struggled, I decided I am not going to finish it.

Let me first introduce the author: Juha Vuorinen got popular in Finland by writing a blog called "Juoppohullun päiväkirja", which loosely translates to "The diary of a person experiencing Delirium Tremens". You can imagine why it got popular: it was crazy adventures of a young man who basically was on a drinking binge, and no profanity was too much to be used. Here is the very first sentences of the blog (it's still online, though started in 1998):  "Last evening I was at the local pub, where I found a lady (uses the English term) at least a head taller than I am. I already realize at the pub, that this lady can drink at least as much as I can - meaning an insane amount. I  managed to wangle this Big Bertha to our place by promising her more booze. The bitch would've drank like a horse from a bucket had I let her."

I mean, classic literature. Just classic. As a blog it worked: it sounded like it was written by a self-absorbed male whose life revolved around drinking and screwing. I thought that it was almost a parody of that kind of a person - pretty funny. You know the kind who comes to work with bags under his eyes and starts to brag about his drunken adventures? (At least this is a common human subspecies in Finland).
So then he goes and writes a book. It's just short stories written in the same style, except this time... oh man. I don't even know where to begin. I read 4 of the stories before I figured out that it's not going to change. All stories follow a fable structure: the author introduces the main character, shows how he grew up (because they are all a he, except in one story), and then the situation he gets into. But, unlike fables, you can't make heads or tails out of these stories! It's as if he always gets this really, really great idea (in his opinion), gets going with it, and then runs out of steam. 


To illustrate, here's a typical story:
1st sentence: "Already as a kid, Rane Sahanen loved boiled eggs over everything else".
- We are told how Rane has no idea how to boil eggs, and his father beats him up. This is why he becomes a good cook (See how funny physical violence is, muahahha!).
- He becomes a good cook but only prepares egg foods as a revenge to his dad, who doesn't even understand it's a revenge.
- Rane goes to cooking school, and gets a cooking show gig after he insults a fat woman and makes everyone laugh (fat people - they are so funny! Being a total jackass is funny!) at the restaurant. 
- With his money from the show, he goes to Turkey on a holiday. Guess what? He eats local, bizarre foods (OMG a lamb's head! Those Turkish weirdos!) and because the place is not hygienic (of course, those dirty Turks), an insect of some kind lays eggs on him. Or, true to the book's style, lays eggs on his butt.
- At the show's studio, Rane starts to freak out, apparently from whatever the larvae is doing to him. Instead of chopping the celery, he chops off the guest's fingers.


The last sentence is uttered by Rane's dad who is in the audience and who says "Hah hah, hoo hoo, heh heh... didn't I teach you little brat that you can't point fingers at people!"
...
What kind of a nonsense punchline is that?? That does not make ANY sense. Nowhere in the story did the father teach Rane to not point fingers, so he is not referencing back to something the reader already knows and could laugh along with. Even worse, Rane is not pointing any fingers - he cut the fingers off of another person! That is the shoddiest writing I have ever witnessed.
It's as if the author realized that his story has run out, and he needs a funny punch line (believe me, all of the stories end in a nonsensical, non-funny or non-relevant punch line, creating a weird absurdist air), and he tries to figure out how to connect the chopped off fingers to something funny. It's as if he understands how short stories work (introduce the story, take the reader for a ride and then do a surprising twist at the end), but he doesn't actually get how to do it.

What's worse, the story is titled "Potut pottuina", which is an idiom meaning "Payback". Now... who is paying back whom here? Rane was humiliated all his life by his father, and he tries to "pay back" by making only egg dishes. And the father doesn't even notice that this is some kind of a payback. At the end, it's the father who gets the last, nonsensical laugh. So... He's paying back...? Let me reiterate: He humiliates and beats Rane. Then he tells him off for going to cooking school. Then Rane gets sick and does something stupid, and the father gets the last laugh. THERE WAS NO PAYBACK INVOLVED! 
Ugh. There is a time and a place for writing that uses colloquial and crude language, but you still have to use that language to not write a shitty story!

Already the first story in the collection should have alerted me to this. It's called "Ivalolainen vittuilurinki". Now... "vittuilu" uses a very common swear word, and it's a noun for the act of basically being a sarcastic asshole. So this is a ring of such sarcasm in Ivalo. The story begins with the worst crime an author can do: he breaks the classic rule of "show, don't tell", when the main character's childhood is described. "As a teenager, he lived as if he was a big movie star"... You know, instead of saying "As a teenager, he had the money to buy fast cars, and he did not shy away from snorting the occasional line of cocaine". Don't tell the reader that he is living like a "big movie star", because we all have different ideas of that. Big Finnish movie stars are like any people on the street! So... As a teenager, he acted in some movies and then went to have a sauna on a Saturday evening at home? I don't think the author was after this.
Back to the "vittuilurinki". I was actually quite interested in finding out what happens, as this man who had obviously become an asshole is taken to Ivalo, Lappland, to undergo the treatment of the extreme sarcasm ring. But... none of the things they said actually could qualify for "vittuilu": most of it was just outright threats to disembowel him! I looked up from the book with amazement: the guy who has been writing about drinking and screwing and being sarcastic has no idea what it actually is! Telling someone "I think I'm going to cut a hole in you to find your kidneys" is not "vittuilu", sarcasm - it's a threat! I was so disappointed. And not only because any time the main character is not a "purebred" Finn, you can wait for the stereotypes to come in. People from Lappland are all magical and have only one tooth. A man with an Italian name? You need to pay some protection money to him. Closeted esbian? Obviously it's the woman who is fat and ugly.

Maybe the worst offense is just the stupidity of the stories: a hulk of a guy is let through police academy although he almost kills his trainers, just because "the police force needed grunts like him". When do things like this happen outside of a high schoolers story in Finnish class when they want to show what tough kids they are? I felt like I really was reading a story where a 15-year old boy was told "OK, write me a story about a bodybuilder, and don't edit it at all". What else could explain the horribly bad endings?

Maybe I could stomach these stories if they just weren't so badly written. The punchlines are never punchlines, and after reading each story I felt a little more stupid. One time I didn't even understand that the story had ended, and I turned the page only to find a new headline for the next story. One of the worst is a story of Mauri: we spend the first 4 pages reading about how he loved mopeds, then motorcycles, and how he chopped them to go unprecedented speeds. Then he drugs his father and drives his BMW, and crashes it. Half a page is about how he got a job as a driver. The very last page is about a company Christmas party, during which the boss asks Mauri to wrestle with him after sauna. When he comes back to work the next day, his colleague whispers (and wait for it - this is the punch line and the last sentence of the story:) "Did he make you wrestle?". *drums* Badum-chi!
Wow. What a master of humor. The story is also titled "Let's wrestle work". That is not what this story is about. What the hell?? The story is 7 pages long, and out of those, he is employed for the last 1.5 pages, and wrestling is mentioned the first time in the second-to-the-last paragraph.
If you find domestic violence, drunk women and calling them with a variety of degrading names, gratuitous violence, homosexuals and minorities as humorous and things to giggle at, this book is for you!
To Vuorinen's defense, the back cover of the book says that the texts have been edited and shortened to be "more easily digested". So either the editor didn't know what the heck he was doing, or then the original stories are even more nonsensical. 


P.S. How dare the cover artist reproduce Martti Huuhaa Innanen's style of absurdist, naivist paintings? Without any hat tip to Innanen! I guess Vuorinen fashioned himself as a similar story-teller as Innanen, with the exception that Innanen's songs and paintings are actually funny.

ETA: Now I know what these stories reminded me of! When I was 10 years old, it was all the rage to tell jokes that were un-jokes. They would start off like a regular joke, but end nonsensically. Such as "Two rabbits walked into a store, and the second one had skis as well". 
This was funny to us because the listener would be totally puzzled, momentarily would maybe think that s/he doesn't get the joke and felt slightly embarrassed, but then the realization came that the joke just wasn't there.  


That's what these stories are like! Maybe Vuorinen wrote them all as a huge non-joke. In that case... well done! That still doesn't explain why the writing in general is bad, but... at least it would explain the crappy endings!

Cookery

8. Sopan syvin olemus by Anna-Leena Härkönen ("The most profound essence of soup")


"This book is best suited for a person who loves food and is of the enthusiastic type. You may also be a beginner, but you cannot be uusavuton*. As an example, you should be able to construct a sandwich that has some kind of logic - all by yourself. And it wouldn't be bad to know how to make an omelet either. I do not own a mixer anymore because washing the various parts and tinkering around with them really did not appeal to me ... However, I am not at all against technology or progress per se."


Anna-Leena Härkönen is Finland's offer to the army of Gen X-writers: her novels often discuss the mundane life (relationships, mostly) but with an ironic twist. Not to mention that the topic is often dealt with by using copious amounts of black humor and sarcasm.


The cookbook she wrote is tiny, but hilarious. The cover says that the book contains "42 recipes and 687 thoughts", which is an apt description. The recipes are either found by Härkönen in some parts of the world and she is trying to reproduce them as simply as possible, or they are blatantly stolen from her friends because the recipes are so good. And simple.


Simple really is the key word to the book. Although a food lover, Härkönen immediately states that she is by no means a gourmet chef, nor can she cook anything without an exact recipe. She hates instructions such as "cook until beautiful brown" or "add just a touch of salt". "This kind of a communication method is a crime".


Her recipes vary from very simple and supposedly delicious (I have to try them to find out!) Finnish foods to attempts of replicating some amazing foods she has tried abroad. All of the recipes come with a description of how she encountered them, and that is what makes this little cookbook so enjoyable.
Also: who can resist such names as "Hangover pizza", "A Damned Good Sweet Roll" and "The Lazy Man's Lasagna". The latter refers to this myth in Finland that in order to make lasagna you need to make two sauces: one meat-based and one cheese-based, and you ladle them alternatively in between the layers of pasta. Hence, lasagna is made very rarely because it's so laborious. Härkönen introduces the mind-blowing (or, yawn-inducing if you're in any other country) idea that you only need one type of a filling!


Sometimes her writing is a bit grating: being sarcastic is fun to a point. Especially her sections where she talks about "foreign" food and how she has gotten better French food in Finland than in France were painful to read. Maybe because I just recently read discussions where, say, a white tourist tells a Mexican how to make "real" Mexican food instead of what she is making at home. To say that you have better French food in a country other than France just means that... you are not getting French food. You are getting French-style food that has been catered to your (ethnicity's) tastes. Or you are getting food items that people would not eat at a regular meal. This is why white Americans going to Mexico are puzzled at not finding "good" burritos there, or not finding General Tso's chicken in China. I'm also sure that anyone eating at a Finnish restaurant abroad will also be disappointed that, upon coming to Finland, people are not eating bear or reindeer in cloudberry jam, but instead pretty much every affordable place sells just pizza and pasta. Or then people just eat very simple stuff at home. I can just imagine these tourists saying "Wow, I've gotten much better Finnish food in my home country than in Finland - they just can't get it right over there."


Still, there was something endearing with the book's honesty: I'm not a great cook, but I can sweep people off their feet with these recipes ("or perhaps my husband and my friends are gluttons, incapable of any critical thinking"). I think everyone, no matter how neurotic in the kitchen, should be able to cook and take care of themselves.


Being someone who needs another person, or a cookbook, to hold her hand through cooking processes (I partly blame this on having been really stingy in the past and afraid of ruining perfectly good ingredients, so why bother trying...), I can get behind this book. I definitely want to try out some of the very simple sounding recipes that do sound delicious. I'll report back once I have some results.




*lit. "nouveau-helpless", referring to esp. young people who can't even boil an egg because they have been raised on fast food or someone else has cooked for them their entire life

Edited to add: In the past I've half-heartedly taken part in the meme of reading a book a week during a year. This year's half-hearted, themed attempt is to also try to read something by authors representing each of the alphabet! I saw this idea somewhere online and figured, hey, why not. So far the tally is unfortunately pretty sad, because so many of the books I have read (5!) have been written by an author whose last name begins with an L. Ack. I'll keep on adding into this list and link back once either the alphabet is full or the year is done. This should motivate me read some of the books I have waiting at home: they are written by authors whose alphabet I have yet to cover!


Also, I'll go the distance and use the Nordic alphabet. Anybody know authors whose last name begins with Å?


A. Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
B. Bear, Greg. Mariposa, Beavan, Colin. No Impact Man.
C. Cochrane, James. Between you and I--A Little Book of Bad English.
D.
E.
F.
G. Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink., Gasteier, Matthew. F U Penguin.
H. Härkönen, Anna-Kaisa. Sopan syvin olemus.
I.
J.
K. 
L. Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Loe, Erlend: Naive. Super and Doppler.
M.
N.
O.
P.
Q.
R.
S. Saisio, Pirkko. Pienin yhteinen jaettava, Sheidlower, Jesse. The F-Word
T.
U.
V. Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation, Vuorinen, Juha. Tuupovaaran tuijottaja
W.
X.
Y.
Z.
Å.
Ä.
Ö.

Norwegian weltschmertz

7. Doppler by Erlend Loe

If you are at all interested in Loe, you should read Naive. Super first. It will prepare you for the following books, that seem to all be dealing with the same issues and styles: some privileged white dude in Norway becomes disenchanted with his life, and decides to get back to simple, cave-man like living in order to find the true meaning of life. The main characters are kind of like Scandinavian Holden Caulfields.

I don't know if I'm reading these books wrong (shush! an impossibility!, says the lit. prof.), but I imagine they are written with a ton of black humor instead of attempts at being critical at societies at large. In Doppler's case, we have a Norwegian family man called Doppler, whose father has died and this has thrown him off the track. To deal with his sorrow (and the existence of his massive, massive man-part), he escapes into the Norwegian forests, kills a moose and adopts its calf, onto which he projects a variety of human-qualities. He crafts a manifesto for living a better life: no life with obligations, children's repetitious TV shows, fast food. His ultimate enemy is Intelligence. To him, intelligence has brought nothing but sorrow as his main concern in life has become "What kind of tiles should we get in our bathroom?". Thus, kids should be taken out of school, too.

Funnily enough, even with this manifesto, he is unable to completely disengage himself from the world he so loathes: his wife says she is pregnant, and if he does not return from the forest they are going to divorce. Instead of agreeing to this, Doppler simply avoids making any ultimate decisions. He wants to live "freely", with a safety net waiting for him at home. One of his main agendas is to go back to economy based on the exchange of goods - he would be fine (as per his opinion) hunting and gathering, but he needs the Best Thing that Human Has Created: low-fat milk. To obtain this, he needs to visit the store every now and then and convince the storekeep that it's a great idea to exchange some milk to his moose meat. He even visits his daughter's school to inform them about this. Still, his dream of exchange economy is naive at best: he exchanges moose meat for fruit. That was bought by some other guy with money. The man did not grow or harvest the fruit himself. In other words, Doppler believes he is living his dream when in actuality, other people are simply enabling his unrealistic approach to life by entertaining his obsession.

His ranting of the World Gone Wrong-theory gets some followers in the form of a former enemy (the man he calls "the right winger") and his small son - and as soon as they move into the forest Doppler feels uncomfortable. Sure, everyone should be free to do whatever they want - but not on his backyard! It becomes evident that when Doppler says that humans should be free, he is mainly describing himself and his plight.

In the end, the book is about obsession: Doppler is obsessed with this new world order he has dreamed up after his father died; his son is obsessed with children's TV shows; his daughter is obsessed with Tolkien and speaks in Elvish. Other characters have their obsessions and one-track-minds, too. What connects all these people is the thought that if only their obsession was not just understood, but partaken, by everyone, the world would be a better place.

What our minds do when we are not paying attention

6. Blink. The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

Continuing my tradition of reading a book about a decade after everyone else, I picked up Blink from a second hand store nearby on a whim. I'd heard of it, and figured I'd give it a read - and it was definitely worth it. Gladwell writes about the snap decisions we make in a blink of an eye, based on not calculated, logical thinking, but feelings that we cannot transcribe into words. "It just felt wrong" seems to be the first reaction, but we hardly ever stop to think why something felt wrong. The reason for the book's existence is that sometimes we people would be better off if we trusted our first instincts - but then again, sometimes snap decisions can destroy lives for nothing. This odd vague thesis of Gladwell's book is a bit chafing at first, until I figured I'd just read it as an interesting summary of in what ways initial reactions work. What are the prompts for "feeling wrong" about something?

Gladwell has a multitude of examples, varying from the good to the bad. He recounts a celebrated event of an art museum purchasing an ancient statue which later turned out to be a fake. It was, however, such a good fake that many experts could not tell it was one. The ones who could could not put it into words. Instead, they would say things such as, and in paraphrase, "Seeing it I felt revolted for a brief moment", or, "The statue just looked off-putting". All the scientific evidence for its age was supposedly there, but these people felt that something was not right. Because enough people felt that something was not quite right, the statue was put under a more in-depth scrutiny. Then the evidence was clear - it could not have been as old as the seller purported. How could the museum still have bought it? The desire to own a genuine, old statue as this one overshadowed all of their doubts. They wanted to believe, and their eyes disregarded all other evidence to the contrary. Only the experts' gut feelings revealed the true nature of the statue.

Another favorite of mine was the long passage about a police scandal, where 3 police officers fired about 40 bullets at an unarmed man in the Bronx. In a job, where quick decisions are needed, these police officers were still too young to be correctly using their initial reactions. For them, a black man alone in the night, in the Bronx, had to be up to no good. When he saw 3 white guys in baseball caps (the police were undercover) pull up to him and start asking what he was doing, he began to run because his initial reaction was that they must be criminals. It was all a terrible conglomeration of misunderstandings based on stereotypes. Gladwell goes onto explain why police officers are nowadays required to patrol alone - when they are alone in a car, they do not make snap decisions. Most of the times inexplicable police brutality has been the result of a) more than one police man or woman in the vehicle and b) at the end of a chase. The chase, Gladwell and the supporting evidence state, raises the person's heart rate, and the higher the heart rate, the more the body gives resources to muscles to perform a fight-and-flight motions - the energy is not going into logical thinking. This is why police are told, after a chase, to wait for backup. Most of the beatings after a police chase have been the result of the chase hyping the police up so bad that they weren't able to think straight, and, being further hyped with fellow officers in the car, they have done some very stupid things at the heat of the moment. Logic gives way to stereotypes and passion in survival mode. (Gladwell kind of skirts around the issue of racial profiling at this point, but states that the police are not racist for committing acts that are prompted by racist stereotypes... Uh. So, I guess you can only be racist if you are one consciously? Sounded to me like he was trying to cover his back by trying to be very diplomatic).

Also the passage on married couples and predictions on whether they will still be married in 10 years was quite interesting. A scientist would film couples talking about something that vaguely had to do with their relationship. At first viewing, the couples might seem like they were in the middle of some witty banter and were coming along amicably. The scientist would slow the tape down, and describe all of their body language to the T, from the tiniest wrinkles at the side of the mouth to the quick eye-rolls. The thing is, we see all of these things and we process them, but we do not recognize them intellectually nor are we able to put them into words. The people who are used to interpreting very subtle changes in facial expressions and thus, in the person's mood, are usually people who have gone through a very traumatic, abusive childhood, where they had to learn quickly to interpret the abusive parent's/sibling's moods and act accordingly.  To compare, Gladwell follows the case of a high-performing autistic man, who cannot interpret social situations because he is unable to read "minds", ie facial expressions. His interpretation of the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which revolves around human relationships and mostly facial actions, ends up being quite different from a non-autistic person's watching point.

The book was very pop-sciency, but fun to read. The scariest souvenir from this book was the notion that our concept of what our thinking is like is so faulty: we can change our sour mood into a happy one just if we hold a pen between our teeth, forcing our face to make smile-related movements. We think that we smile because we are happy, but studies show that the smile can already begin before our brain registers a happy feeling. A lot of facial expressions cannot be reproduced willingly, and a lot of them also are involuntary. The person in the book who has listed all of human facial expressions, and can describe any one person's expressions in acronyms and then replicate them, should be a rich man at this point, as he would be a better lie detector than any machine. A scary thought.

5. Naïve. Super. by Erlend Loe (read in Finnish translation Supernaiivi)

I started counting my books when I was back in Germany. The reason for this was mainly my friend B., whose acted as my personal librarian and would shove a new armful of books at me during every visit. One of the books I read back then was this, and I remembered absolutely loving it. Somehow, it was exactly the book to read at that point in my life. Reading it now again, my reaction was different. I saw things in it that I did not recognize before, mainly because I did not have the experiences back then that I do now. Now I could recognize Loe's subtle irony in places where I used to think he was being in earnest and critical.

This is a book you'll read in a day, trust me. So you might as well pick it up and give it a go. It is a story of a disillusioned 25-year old Norwegian man, who one day just realizes that he is not excited about anything anymore. A simple game of lawn croquet with his brother which ends in aggressive competition and, subsequently, tears, reveals his state of mind. His brother gives him an offer: he is going to go away on business, so the narrator can stay in his apartment and take care of his mail. The narrator agrees to this, and decides to start with a blank slate: he sells almost everything he has, quits school, and moves in. He begins to take a hold of life in baby steps by making lists: things that used to excite him as a kid (he checks with his friend whether theirs are at all similar), listing animals he has seen (a competition between him and his 2-year old neighbor), and trying to figure out simple joys in life. Such as selecting a perfect ball to bounce against a wall.

Or, my favorite, getting one of these things:

I have no idea what that is called in English, but It's by Brio and called a "pounding bench", and it is well-known throughout Scandinavia as a child's favorite toy. The concept is ridiculously simple: you have a wooden board that is a bit elevated, and it is drilled with holes. The holes fit a peg each. With a little mallet, you hammer the pegs in, and once you can't hammer anymore, you turn the whole thing around and start again. It's genius, and after I read this book the first time I felt this sudden urge to get one for myself. I had one as a kid, and I remember loving to just bang it. There's just something very satisfying in the action, and oddly enough, Loe has managed to capture that feeling in the book.

With the narrator's new found "naivete", he decides to try to be naive in other ways, too, to see if that would help him feel less depressed and concerned about the meaningless of life.

It's an oddly depressing, yet comforting a book. There are hardly any details - just laconic statements from a person who is tired of thinking. That's why it's a wonderful snack read in between other books (I will come back soon with Greg Bear's Mariposa, which is killing my brain...).

The nice kind of snark

4. Assassination vacation by Sarah Vowell

The first time I saw/heard Sarah Vowell was in the They Might Be Giants documentary, where she just seemed like an all-around fun and smart person to hang out with while she expressed her undying love of nerdy rock (and she looked like my Mom's friend from school - weird!).

Little did I then know that although almost all of us have some kind of an obsession, hers would be of... not the most typical variety.

Assassination vacation chronicles her interest (fine, obsession), with American history and especially presidents. The dead kind. The assassinated kind. Convincing and bribing her friends to drive this driver's license-less journalist around, she hops from the Ford theater where Lincoln was shot to the Smithsonian, where curious articles from assassinated presidents are kept. And when I mean "from" I mean "pieces of their body". She ties in the stories of their assassins as well, explaining their reasons and often just pure craziness for their actions, and finally also draws parallels to the Iraq war under Bush administration at the time of her writing. And all with massive amount of deadpan hilarity. There is already something sadly funny with the idea that Abraham Lincoln's son happened to be present or nearby 3 assassinations, and started considering himself as a Jinxy McJinxter - everyone around him was getting killed! Even weirder than that, his life was once saved by a certain Edwin T. Booth, who was the brother of John Wilkes Booth - President Lincoln's assassin. Robert Todd must have been going bonkers with these coincidences.

This is what the Vowell book is about: we know the facts from tedious history textbook passages; now learn why this stuff really is interesting!

Like many of the younger generation journalist, she also ties her own personality and background strongly into her narrative, and does not shy away from the Gen X'ers favorite tools: irony and snark. However, what makes her more palatable than many other snarky writers is that hers just is not that mean-spirited, and often she ends up making fun of herself in the same manner as she does of others. It all ends up in a smart, poignant and funny reading experience that leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Which is not perhaps the expected description of a book that is about horrid deaths and unfortunate circumstances.

Also, I think I might need to get this in audiobook, because it includes Daniel Handler as William McKinley, Conan O'Brien as Robert Todd Lincoln and Stephen King as his father, Abraham Lincoln. How awesome is that?

True metafiction

3. Pienin yhteinen jaettava  by Pirkko Saisio ("The smallest common denominator")

Pirkko Saisio is well-known for taking elements from her life and turning it into fiction-fodder with great results. My previous read was Elämänmeno, and after having read this Pienin yhteinen jaettava, a biographical account of Saisio's father's slow death and her coming to terms with it, I could tell how much Elämänmeno was also, in fact, an autobiography of sorts.

The almost schitzophrenic aspect of this book makes it so interesting: Saisio does not hide it that deep down, all authors are somewhat narcissistic. I'm not saying this as a bad thing - the usual maxim of writing is "write what you know about" - and for most it's something that they are passionate about, which in turn is very much tied into peoples' personas. Saisio, however, takes this one step further: she is describing events from the "I" point of view, when suddenly there is a paragraph break and she describes herself as a fictional character. At the same time, it's a terribly narcissistic yet an artistic thing to do; to create a fictional and an improved and more interesting character out of your everyday self. The book begins with the author awakening within the narrator:

I was eight years old when it happened for the first time.

It was November, a morning.
The street was black and shiny. It swelled behind sleety, wet windows.
I saw my reflection in the window. I was plump and irritated.
I was pulling too tight woollen socks on.
A button was missing from my vest. My mother dug out 5 marks from her purse.
I put it in my sock. 

And then it happened for the first time.

I wrote a sentence in my head: She did not want to wake up.
Then I fixed the sentence: She would not have wanted to wake up yet.
Then I attached another sentence to it: She was much too tired to go to school.
I improved the second sentence: She was much, much too tired to go to school.

I looked at my father triumphantly - he was wearing a t-shirt and reading Työkansan Sanomat newspaper and drinking black coffee.
Mother was applying lipstick from her lips onto her cheeks in front of the foyer mirror, and hummed Ilta Redillä.

Neither of them noticed, that I had become a she; someone under constant observation. 

(Saisio: 5)

Soon a pattern emerges. Saisio describes events from the "I" point of view when facts are laid out without too much emotion, but the "she" narration takes over when Saisio wants to make an additional comment, or seems to be too embarrassed about/scared of saying it in her own voice: instead she steps back and looks at herself as an almost fictional character. Another example:

It wasn't until evening when I called the Hämeenkatu apartment.
I waited long until the phone was picked up.
Father's voice was tired and depressed, again.
- Well it's just me here.

Her voice was soft, somehow sickeningly sweet.
She had begun to speak to her father as if to a child. 

She tells her father, "I came back about an hour ago". Then the next paragraph is just one sentence: Why was she lying?

It is almost like a study in language. "I" is the utterance without a context, an almost a blank slate, whereas "she" becomes the context and the meaning. 


Quite fascinating, I'd say. I can imagine that had I read this at any other point in my life, I would've found it too gimmicky. Why not tell a straight-forward story? But the story is not actually about Saisio's father dying and her getting slowly over it and her memories - it is about Saisio finding the story so difficult to tell that she needs to hire a fictional alter ego for her services. It is basically about how fiction and story telling is crucial to human lives, and how it may be therapeutical. This is Saisio's story, and she has all the right to tell it the way she wants to.

The Millennium story is over, boo.

2. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (read in the Finnish translation, "Pilvilinna joka romahti", the castle in the sky that came crumbling down)

OK. Jebus. Phew. So.

The last of the trilogy does what such should do: tie the story together and come to a solution of some kind. Instead of using the entire book as a story that would nicely wind down, more heart-racing excitement is in store for those who pick this book up. Larsson is able to do this, as he has created characters that, even when they are extreme and go through "unrealistic" events, still feel very real. Which in turn creates the perfect set-up for a crime novel: in real life good people can get killed. Good people can be punished for what they have not done. It's not enough that the reader knows (by the third book) who the perpetrators are - society does not. And they might not believe the evidence either. The question hovering over this reader's head was thus, holy poop - will he really do it and kill his main characters/have them suffer, just to teach us a lesson?

Again, I feel like I can't go into too much details because it would be way too spoilerish, but the book continues with its line of criticism of media, the simple audience who buys anything that gets printed on paper, corruption and authorities. The main characters in the story are still Mikael Blomkvist and the financial magazine Millennium he works at and Lisbeth Salander, the Asperger-Syndrome-ish hacker. New characters and ones from previous books who seemed to be playing just bit parts are brought back to the final, epic battle. Surprisingly, some former major characters are barely mentioned and do not make an appearance, which also reflects the "life-likeness" of the character flow. Of course the story itself is massively fantastical, but it is awesome storytelling: Larsson has put all of his personal experiences in working with publishing houses and the police (such as Scotland Yard!) into this fictional story.

Stuff I really enjoyed in the trilogy in general (no plot spoilers):

- everyone drinking coffee all the time. It was so... homey. "Oh hi, officer. I just poured some coffee for myself. Want some?" I just read some message board comments about the book, and so many (non-Nordic people) were complaining how annoying the coffee drinking was, and that it must have been an inside joke because nobody drinks that much coffee. Hello? Scandinavia and Finland are leaders in coffee consumption.  
- nods at other crime novels, even when I had no other idea of them except that "Ooh, this must be a reference to another crime author".
- The way people experienced relationships, especially the physical kind. It just seemed so... healthy. Really open communication between consenting adults. So... Swedish. Also, not as heteronormative as one would think of a best-seller all over the world.
- Characters. Not only did they feel real, they felt all very equal with their strengths and weaknesses. Which brings me to this...

Yo, Quentin Tarantino! If Hollywood sees the need to do a remake of the Millennium movies, you have to direct them/write the screenplay! Nobody else does the "a badly victimized woman decides not to just take it and have someone else revenge her/save her, but plans to get even with no remorse"-stories as well as you do. You get it.

- Back to the equality of characters. Larsson's private life work in anti-racist associations and in organizing a group that aimed to expose neo-Nazi groups in Sweden shows well. All characters are very Swedish, but they are not just the stereotypical blonde, blue-eyed type. Mikael's sister is married to an Italian man. One of the police officers' last name is vaguely Spanish. Miriam Wu is Swedish-Chinese, and we don't find this out until the second book, when her last name comes up. There are immigrant workers who have Phd's but who can only mop floors because that's the only thing they are hired to do. There are police who use racist slurs (and thus set themselves up later for a verbal ass-kicking). The heterogenous future of Sweden is drawn out in a non-finger pointing way. It's just business as usual.

Now I understand my friend's statement upon me picking up the 2nd and 3rd books. "I am envious of you", she said. I asked her why. "Because you get to experience these books for the first time. I wish I could do it again." Yes. I already miss the feeling of getting to know these characters and being surprised, appalled and exhilarated by their behavior and the turn of events. I definitely want to read these a second time, but it won't of course be the same...

No use in hiding it: I love Stieg Larsson.

1. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (read in the Finnish translation, Tyttö joka leikki tulella).

I was very, very impressed by The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, even if the translated name annoyed me. I knew nothing about Larsson before reading that book, and no wonder: he died before these books that are now best-sellers all over the world were published! He left the manuscripts all at once to be published, and died of a heart attack. Mystery shrouds the author himself...

The second installment of the Millennium-series begins where it left off .This time, the title is translated literally and it also reflects the events in the novel accurately. The first novel was about Mikael Blomqvist, his personal vendetta and the case he was working on. In the second one it is Lisbeth Salander's turn to be the focus.

Mikael is working on a new case: he is collaborating with Dag Svensson, a freelance journalist who is writing an expose on human trafficking in Sweden and the reasons for why there are so little convictions in trafficking cases. His book is based on the facts his live-in girlfriend, Mia, has collected for her doctorate thesis on trafficking in Sweden - he has just gone a step further from academics and pulled out names and perpetrators who would rather not be named.

Meanwhile, the arrangements Lisbeth took care of in Book 1 are slowly falling apart. Her sadistic legal guardian strikes a deal with questionable parties in order to revenge Lisbeth's deeds (you will just have to find out what that was by reading the first book!), which in turn were a reaction to her guardian's abuse of his status. The guardian is not, however, the brightest bulb in the bunch, and he manages to lure out a character from Lisbeth's past whose intentions are to get rid of the girl, once and for all.The character seems to have a connection to Dag and Mia's work.

Lisbeth becomes the target of a manhunt, as her fingerprints are found in two crime scenes involving three murders. Mikael cannot believe that the person he worked with could do such a thing, but the media and the police are convinced otherwise. Or well, Mikael knows that Lisbeth could kill if she wanted to, but... why would she? He is shocked to hear that Lisbeth has been diagnosed with serious mental problems bordering retardation and that at age 25, she has a legal guardian--to him, Lisbeth is perhaps one of the smartest people he has ever met, albeit very, very peculiar. In no time, Lisbeth is painted in tabloids as a Satan worshiping retard lesbian, now hated all over the country for what she has done. It's Mikael's turn to try to find the truth in the matter and protect his former friend, whether she likes it or not.

She does not. Instead, she disappears.

An amazingly exciting book that continues to flesh out its characters from the previous story, and where (almost all of) the twists are surprising and fresh. I would love to write more about it, but that would result in me spoiling the novels! There is plenty of intrigue, computer hacking, old-world espionage, criticism toward media, mental health institutions, authorities, and what have you. And it's all so smartly done. There's even one hilariously twisted nod at American Psycho (just watch out for the part where Lisbeth furnishes her apartment), amidst all the allusions to Larsson's favorite detective stories.

By the way, these novels have been turned into movies! Can't wait to see them. Noomi Rapace looks pretty much exactly as I imagined Lisbeth to look like. The first one should be playing in the US in March, 2010.

Män som hatar kvinnor

Once I have finished the third book (halfway through!), I'll write more about why these supposedly simple crime stories have made such an impression on me.

Books of 2009

This past year was interesting, book-wise. After moving to the U.S. it took me a while to start reading fiction again: the non-fiction shelves of the libraries and second hand bookstores just were too inviting. 2009 began and ended with fiction, and it was good to be in imaginary worlds for a change. Joining the Finnish book club also did me a world of good, as it introduced me to authors I had never read before, thanks to my prejudices about Finnish novelists.

Without further ado, here is the book list from 2009 with short synopses. Once again, I did not get to my goal of reading one book per week--let's see what happens next year!

1. My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki. Japanese-American documentary maker struggles to find a narrative for a meat propaganda project she is hired for. The central question is: who is considered a "real" American?
2. Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi ("The Troll") by Johanna Sinisalo. Speculative fiction where trolls from Finnish fairytales cause as many tabloid headlines as wolves near peoples' homes.
3. Hum Bows, Not Hot Dogs! by Bob Santos. Community organizer Bob Santos's history on the birth and development of the International District in Seattle.
4. Popco by Scarlett Thomas. Creative minds are brought together to create ultimate toys. Code writing, breaking, and criticism of marketing ensues (such a fun book!)
5. The Code Book by Simon Singh. Thomas referenced to this nonfiction book in Popco; it deals with the history of code writing and code breaking.
6. Ihanat naiset rannalla ("Wonderful Women on the Beach") by Monika Fagerholm. Bored middle-class, Swedish-Finnish women and men on the verge of a breakdown on a beautiful summer's day.
7. The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. Discusses the concept of "beauty myth", and in which ways it is a constant stress to women: if you are not beautiful enough, you are ignored. If you are beautiful, your success is explained away with you having used "womanly wiles" and that you cannot possibly be smart--why else would the statement "She's not only pretty; she is also smart!" exist, as if this was some kind of an anomaly...
8. I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski, and What Have You by Bill Green. A fan book for Lebowski fans.
9. How to Live in Small Spaces by Terence Conran. Design tricks for people who live in small apartments.
10. Escape by Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer. An insider's expose on the horrid life of the extreme Mormon community, FLDS.
11. He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know About by Jessica Valenti. A laugh-out-loud funny book on double standards that I think all women already know about. Nevertheless, Valenti provides humor and to-the-point arguments on why such double standards are absolute bull.
12. The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter. An account of fictional characters that the authors deem influential to the everyday lives of people.
13. Dream Catcher by Margaret Salinger. J.D. Salinger's daughter's autobiography.
14. She's Such a Geek! Women write about Science, Technology and Other Nerdy Stuff edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. A collection of essays from women scientists and all-around nerds on becoming what they are.
15. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Short story collection on Indian immigrant experiences in the United States.
16. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher. A classic, where teenaged girls were interviewed on matters that are having a great effect on their self esteem, success and life in general.
17. Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore by Ray Loriga. A dystopian novel about a salesman pitching and partaking in using a memory erasing pill.
18. Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Zine Resource by Alex Wrekk. What it says!
19. Fruits Basket vol 14 by Natsuki Takaya. One in the line of my fave manga.
20. No Logo by Naomi Klein. A classic from the late 90s exposing the ways in which brands make their money, and how branding changed the world of marketing from selling goods that help you to selling feelings and self-esteem.
21. Viimeinen kesäyö ("Last Summer Night") by Leena Lehtolainen. A collection of crime stories.
22. Puhdistus ("Purge") by Sofi Oksanen. The lives of an old Estonian woman and a young Russian sex slave are intertwined in a history of wars and abuse.
23. Viidakkolapsi ("The Jungle Child") by Sabine Kuegler. The daughter of a missionary family in a remote locatin relates her story among an Amazonian tribe in this autobiography.
24. Uutispommi ("The Bomber") by Liza Marklund. Swedish crime!
25. When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen. Personal tragedies and the effects of 9-11 on the psyche of Finns and American immigrants in Finland.
26. Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell. A collection of essays ranging from stories about Vowell's eccentric father to a surreal, hipster-ly ironic trip to Disneyland.
27. Vaimoni ("My Wife") by Tuula-Liina Varis. A man wishes his obese, subservient and quiet wife would disappear. She does.
28. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. A fun guide on how to write.
29. The Museum of Kitchy Stitches by Stitchy McYarnpants. A silly look at old knitted atrocities, with additional snark.
30. Nobelin testamentti ("Nobel's Testament") by Liza Marklund. Swedish crime, again!
31. The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. Accounts of great inventions by men such as Ben Franklin, through sheer curiosity and perseverence and, sometimes, luck.
32. Elinkautinen ("Life Sentence") by Liza Marklund. Swedish crime... I know, I'm a broken record!
33. Sankarit ("Heroes") by Johanna Sinisalo. Sinisalo's modernized take on the Kalevala, the Finnish mythology.
34. Ei kiitos ("No Thank You") by Anna-Leena Härkönen. A bleak look into the life of a middle-aged, frustrated German teacher whose husband rather sits in front of the computer than has sex with her. Trouble ensues.
35. Sinut ("You (object)") by Umayya Abu-Hanna. Vignettes from Abu-Hanna's memories on moving to Finland among one of the first brown-skinned people around, to language-learning hilarity and observations on the changing Finnish society.
36. Heikosti positiivinen ("Weakly positive") by Anna-Leena Härkönen. An autobiographical account of Härkönen's post-partum depression.
37. Kädettömät kuninkaat ja muita häiritseviä tarinoita ("Handless kings and other disturbing stories") by Johanna Sinisalo. A collection of sci-fi stories.
38. Veljeni Pentti ("My Brother Pentti") by Sirkka Garam. Pentti Saarikoski's sister writes about him.
39. Kilpikonna ja Olkimarsalkka ("The Turtle and the Straw Marshall") by Tuula-Liina Varis. Pentti Saarikoski's ex-wife writes about their relationship.
40. Baby Jane by Sofi Oksanen. Two lesbians hatch a plan to make money by selling dirty underwear to dirty men. Soon it becomes evident that this plan is just enabling a mental health problem.
41. Kommentteja kaksoiselämään ("Commentaries on a double life") by Olli Nuutinen. A beloved Finnish textbook writer discusses his life as a homosexual during times when it was far from being accepted, even in "liberal" Finland.
42. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. The history and ensuing confusion of an intersex person. How much does nature dictate how we behave? How much does nurture affect us?
43. Elämänmeno ("The Way Life Is") by Pirkko Saisio. Working class life in the early 1900 Helsinki, where disappointments rather than expectations are met.
44. Raja ("Boundary") by Riikka Pulkkinen. A novel about what personal boundaries are, and what to do with the boundaries between life and death.
45. Luokkaretkellä hyvinvointiyhteiskunnassa ("Taking a class trip in a welfare society) by Katriina Järvinen and Laura Kolbe. Essays on class consciousness in Finland, where class is almost a taboo subject, yet still prevalent in the ways in which people are viewed. After all, acknowledgement of classes might make it sound like everybody is not equal after all...
46. Paikka auringossa ("A Place in the Sun") by Liza Marklund. Swedish crime!
47. Väärän jäljillä ("Chasing the Wrong One") by Liza Marklund. Swedish crime!
48. Miehet jotka vihaavat naisia ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") by Stieg Larsson. Um. Also Swedish crime, but less serial!

Oh, and I apparently have completely forgotten to write about one book:

49. Stalinin lehmät by Sofi Oksanen. Estonian-Finnish girl's trek in trying to find out her identity: in Estonia she hears Finns being derided as loud, drunk and stupid, while back at home Estonian women are called whores by Finns. Between these two expected identities and trying to hide them, the protagonist develops an eating disorder, which is the only thing she seems to be in control of.

Edited to add: Looking at the list, I realize also that this is the first year when the majority of books I have read have been written by women: only 9 out of the 48 were written by men.  Compare this to the previous year, where 24 out of 38 were written by men. Good to have some variety - I have enjoyed pretty much every single book I have read and posted about here, so I'm very thankful for all the new author acquaintances I have met through recommendations this previous year! Now back to my Stieg Larsson...

The last book of the year 2009

45. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Original: "Män som hatar kvinnor") by Stieg Larsson

First off: I hate the English title of this book. The original, Män som hatar kvinnor, translates to Men who hate women (which is also the title of the Finnish translation which I read). That is what the book is about, from single, off-track instances in the book to the quotes provided by Larsson from statistics about domestic and extra-domestic violence, to the actual case at hand. It also creates this magnificently sinister air about the book.

What most annoys me about the English title, though, is that it makes one of the characters of the book the focus. If you read the book with the original title in mind, Lisbeth Salander is an equal character to that of Mikael Blomkvist, whose is the main point of view in this novel. Lisbeth is a woman whose thoughts the reader hardly ever finds out, and for a good reason: her character is there not to be a romantic object of any of the characters (which is not to say that there is no sex...), but she stands on her own, yet in the background. She is the kind of person who would hate to be in the lime light.

And that's exactly what the translated title of the book does to her: lifts her out of the cast of equal characters to be the focus. Which makes the reader subconsciously raise her story line above anyone else's, which I don't think was the point of Larsson's. In interviews, he describes Lisbeth as "one of the characters", not the  main character. Can't blame the translator, I guess: Lisbeth is very interesting.

OK, but what is the book about?
 

The first of the Millennium trilogy, where Millennium refers to a financial magazine, begins with the trial of Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist who has been critical of other journalists for letting Swedish big name economists and companies off the hook without much criticism. He ends up sentenced in a case of libel, where his facts about the criminal activites of Hans-Erik Wenneström and his corporation turn out not to be true -- or at least, so it seems.

After the jury has reached this verdict, Mikael is contacted by a representative of Henrik Vanger, an 80-something CEO of Vanger companies,  who is looking for someone to solve a mystery that happened a good 40 years ago: he is convinced that someone in his family murdered his favorite niece Harriet during a summer event at their island, and he wants Mikael to spend a year at the island to read through diaries, notes and to find evidence through interviews -- all in the guise of being a writer of the magnate's family biography. At the end of the year, Mikael will be rewarded with additional evidence against Wenneström to bring him down. Mikael is not convinced that any foul play has been involved in Harriet's disappearance, as it seems to be an impossible case of a closed room mystery: Harriet has simply disappeared from the island, which at the time was even cut off from the main land by an accident on the bridge. Vanger is however convinced that someone in the island has murdered Harriet, and as an evidence he produces a wall full of small framed flowers: he receives one every year for his birthday from a different location in the world, and is convinced that Harriet's murderer is toying with him.

At the same time, Vanger's representative contacts an agency that is specialized in digging up dirt about people. Their best employee is Lisbeth Salander, who is a 20-some woman with a photographic memory, antisocial tendencies, and the means to hack into every system and find out anything. She is first hired to find out if Mikael is reliable enough to be hired for his detective work, but once Lisbeth finds out more about him and the case he is working on, she begins to investigate on her own until the two meet.

There would be so much else to say about this book, but that would be too spoilery. The story is not just a straight-forward murder mystery, but it also takes jabs at journalism, big businesses, Swedish mental health care system and legal institutions. Mikael and Lisbeth do not remain one-sided, easily described characters: Mikael starts out as a fairly boring, everyday man with a mission, but soon the story fleshes him out to a believable and interesting a character. Lisbeth begins out as a weird, quirky and perhaps even a dangerous girl who is not even given a voice for almost third of the book -- she is just operating in the dark and being observed (and avoided) by others. The reader gets to know her the same way everyone else in the story does. Once the story takes a path to follow Lisbeth after work, the reader finds out more about her and can make his or her own judgements on whether the observations made by others are true or false, or just a game Lisbeth plays...

If you are going to read a crime novel in 2010, please read this. It is amazingly good, even if one part of the ending is fairly predictable... All predictabilities aside, it's just a fun story to read. Also, to read a detective novel of a sort that really has an axe to grind with real-life societal problems is refreshing, for sure.