You may be wondering if I’m talking about the book or the HBO series. Well, I read the book first, so the TV show paled in comparison, as is usually the case. I was optimistic at first, mostly because of the glowing reviews and comparisons to Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson undoubtedly won the hearts of purists and lovingly captured the spirit of the books. Unfortunately, the Game of Thrones TV series falls short of this benchmark. It’s not terrible, but not awesome either, the way LOTR inspired awe.

The screenwriters obviously took great delight in exaggerating and extrapolating on certain scenes and themes in the novel. It seems like there is some sort of mandate at HBO to maximize on vulgarity and shock value. I’m sure some people get a kick out of this, but if you’ve read the book first, it all seems so unnecessary.

As for the book, I can only say that it’s rooted in political intrigue without being mired down in politics. The characters are well fleshed out, but nothing genre-bending. I like long epic stories with many interwoven plot lines, and this exactly is what you get here. Perhaps my only real complaint is that the few brief battle scenes are often told through second-hand accounts instead of diving first-hand into the action.

I’ve just finished reading Clash of Kings as well, and there is a lot to enjoy so far in the Song of Ice and Fire series. I can’t say I’m looking forward to a mangling of this excellent second book on TV though. Not that I won’t watch it anyway.

I’m a little late to the party, but I finished reading this Swedish crime thriller last night. It’s been on the best seller lists for a while and thought I would give it a go. The story centres on a downtrodden journalist, Mikael Blomkvist as he investigates the mysterious disappearance of a girl who went missing 40 years earlier. He gets some help from the gothic, autistic, troubled, grown up Pippi Longstocking character, Lisbeth Salander. She’s the one with the dragon tattoo by the way.

The title doesn’t have anything to do with the story. In fact, the original Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women, which is a far more accurate description of a story populated with sadists, rapists, serial killers, and a combination of those. But that all comes later. Most of the first three quarters of the book is filled with a languorous stroll through textual analysis of old documents, family trees, aging photographs, and red herring interviews punctuated by the anarchy and violence of Lisbeth’s story. There’s also a vendetta against a banker mafia thrown in there.

This translation is crisp and uses sparse, yet vivid English. There is no miring in waffling prose here – the author cuts straight to it but still gives us plenty of atmosphere and tension. The balance between character development and action was perfect for me, but I could see some action-junkie readers starting to drift off if they expect a car chase or shootout on every page (there is only one of each of these in the whole book). Overall, this was a great read and I’m looking forward to the next two books, which are part of the Millennium Trilogy.

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again.

Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind – a scene, a locale, a character, whatever – and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.

Sound familiar? The hardest part about writing is definitely the writing part. Anyway, just wanted to share that with you.