THE COMPUTER WAS A DELL INSPIRON, WHICH HE BOUGHT AT A COMPUTER STORE ON MARKETSGATAN FOR APPROXIMATELY TWO THOUSAND KRONER, NOT INCLUDING THE COST OF HIS ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE FROM NORTON (NORTON.COM, 300 KRONER PER YEAR). HE BOOTED IT UP AND WENT TO HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM, WHERE HE FOUND THAT HIS BOOKS ABOUT WENNERSTROM AND THE ULTRA-SECRET SWEDISH SPIES AND ALSO THE SEX-TRAFFICKING BOOK THAT HE EDITED WERE ALL RECOMMENDED TO HIM BY AMAZON'S CONSUMER RECOMMENDATION ALGORITHM. SUDDENLY, AS HE STRUGGLED TO REMEMBER WHAT HE WAS DOING, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE*: That intro was all me, but if you really want to know about the just-discovered fourth Stieg Larsson novel, Gabe Delahaye has it.
*I just read last week that two of Elmore Leonard's few rules of writing fiction are that you should never say that something happened suddenly and you should never say that all hell broke loose.
I don't know. That seems like kind of a big departure from the other three.
ReplyDeleteYea really, everyone knows that they use Macs, not Dells.
ReplyDeleteI cannot remember a book that disappointed me more than The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
ReplyDeleteWhoops, that was embarrassing. You are absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteWell played, Isaac. That was great, both your intro and Gabe's fourth novel.
ReplyDeleteI have heard the second and third books are better than the first but after reading book one I just do not get all the damn hoopla. And the thing with authors having better second and third books is that their first still needs to be good enough to make you pick up the next one.
Love it.
ReplyDeleteExactly. The Hunger Games model - where the first book is the best - will convince me to purchase the others. This one did not.
ReplyDeleteEh, I enjoyed the books and I'm not embarrassed. I definitely found them engrossing.
ReplyDeleteThey're literal roller-coasters -- sloooow build and then the last hundred pages that you cannot stop reading.
ReplyDeleteThat was hilarious, Isaac, thanks! :-)
Book 1: About 250 pages of throat-clearing, then 100 pages of mystery.
ReplyDeleteBook 2: A 100 page vacation story where nothing happens except that Lisbeth Salander gets fake boobs, and then a 200-page mystery.
Book 3: Mystery having already been solved, 300 pages of denouement.
All written like fanfic.
Actually, book 3 is 100 pages of boring internal politics at various magazines, 100 pages of Salander struggling to type things as she recovers, 200 pages of people breathlessly recapping the events of the first two books, and 100 pages of denouement (though Salander's final act of vengenance against the guy who can't feel pain is bad-ass). Seriously needed an editor.
ReplyDelete"and then all hell broke loose." -- John Milton.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently reading The Girl Who Played with Fire, and I've thoroughly the first two books so far. I just went to the library to reserve a copy of the third book. Now I guess I'll have to find a copy of the fourth somewhere ;) Someone I work with warned me that the second book is a lot slower and more boring than the first, but I've found the opposite to be true - I carried marking around for weeks that just wasn't getting done because I was too into the books. I'm trying to stretch out the last 110 (or so) pages so that I'll have the third before I finish the second.
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