Yep, mw speaks true.

I liked the first one all right, but DAMN the second two were good!

It's good to keep hearing that, because I keep trying to get into the first one and it's not working that well. Right now I'm simply too distracted, but I know there's a payoff, so.

I was just coming here to post this -- I started the first one over the weekend (we were out of town), and I'm only on page 70 and just want to chuck it. Seriously, a libel lawsuit, and pages of details about corporate theft or some shit? I'm waiting to care, and yet, I have not.

Also? I totally understand that what I'm reading, since I'm a monolingual American, is a translation, but the writing style, such as it is, is almost enough to make me give up.

So, the second and third are worth slogging through the first?

Yes. Steph, get through the first 150. Skim the corporate bullshit and the libel lawsuit because they don't matter.

They don't matter??

That reminds me of William Diehl's books. I read Primal Fear and the sequel (sequels?), and there seemed to be entire chapters dedicated to cases the main character was working on that were completely irrelevant to the plot.

I think the libel lawsuit was really designed to explain WHY Mikael was so able and willing to go out to Whozzits and felt so disconnected from his usual world. I also think they could have been edited down to less than the 150 pages it filled.

But from a Larsson standpoint, they were probably critical.

Has anyone read China Miéville's Kraken? It sounds AWESOME.

Has anyone read China Miéville's Kraken? It sounds AWESOME.

It's in my to read pile, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

So, I'm about 40 pages into An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard. Does a plot show up at any point, or is the whole thing just word pictures from the point of view of a kid in the 1950s ? 'Cause I'm still waiting for something to happen. Or even something to suggest something will happen between now and page 255.

Hmm: Literary Buffistas, do you think the following a fair take on Defoe's views on faith vs works? (based upon Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Years and Moll Flanders.) :

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Defoe saw evil and improper acts as distractions that made it impossible to pay attention to God. Evil was always foolish in that it made you blind to God. Virtue included pragmatic self-interest so long as only proper action was taken in pursuit of that self-interest, and so long as self-interest was not all there was to you. Virtue did not ensure salvation, but salvation was unlikely, perhaps impossible without it. The virtuous had the choice of paying attention to God, in way the wicked did not, almost did not.

Defoe did not think you attained salvation by wrestling with the devil and winning. To Defoe, you obtained salvation by wrestling with God and losing.