The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

When I was home in Seattle a few months ago I took a trip to my favorite book store, The Elliott Bay Book Company, in Pioneer Square - the city's most historic neighborhood. Unfortunately, it was most likely my last visit at its current location. The bookstore is preparing to move to another part of the city. Considering the fate of many independent bookstores, this outcome is far from terrible. And reflecting on it objectively, I should actually be happy.

For those of you unfamiliar with Seattle, Pioneer Square captures perhaps the last glimpse into the origins of our modern city. While I have a hard time believing the commercial- residential buildings constructed in the last decade that include a Quizno's Subs and tanning salon on the ground floor will withstand the tests of time from an architectural standpoint, Pioneer Square with its brownstone edifices offered something different. This "difference" also included the aroma of stale beer and urine on the vast majority of its sidewalks. Yes, Pioneer Square is truly dying and with the loss of Elliot Bay it's destined to become an urban carcass of its former self. Notwithstanding the verbal assault by numerous panhandlers and con artists, I thoroughly enjoyed the trips into Pioneer Square to visit the bookstore. There is a certain sense of loss. Yet as I already said, the move will actually benefit me because Elliot Bay will now be located in an area I actually do frequent for its nightlife.

It was exactly for this reason that Elliot Bay was forced to move locations after a very difficult last 12 months in terms of sales. An independent bookstore relies on foot traffic, especially in the evening. And you can trust me that those going out in Pioneer Square after dark were not the same market segment likely to pop into the reading room to hear an author present her latest work.

I respect Elliot Bay's store as well as its business model and wish it the best of success! We should all be cheering it on as the outcome "post-move" will tell us a lot about what businesses will work and which will fail in the future. One mantra of business strategy is based around the belief that a company must either focus on being a cost leader or a high value-add specialist. Finding yourself in the middle is a recipe for disaster due to the competition you will face from both sides.

Elliot Bay Bookstore does not discount its books. In the days of Amazon, I know it is a hard concept to grasp that a bookstore may actually sell its goods at the list price found in small print on the back of the cover. But it is the case. They do this because they clearly recognize that a war based on price cannot be won against the likes of online retailers or massive chain stores. What they do offer is exceptional staff who know what they are talking about. My favorite thing to do there (and what can also be done in an excellent music or wine shop) is to go in with a set amount you want to spend, say $100, and let them recommend different books for you based on your interest. It is a great way to get guidance in new directions you may have not normally ventured and it is not something Amazon can offer you - even though they try.

However, as this move is eluding to, the specialization they are offering may still not be enough. It is my belief that our ever enduring quest for low prices is devastating large aspects of value and we are not fully aware of it. This value is what lies between a normal versus a basement bottom price. Before parting on too extreme of a tangent, I will just say that the subject of pricing will be further addressed in an upcoming post.

And how is this connected to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I was in Madrid last July. It was a balmy afternoon and we had made an appointment to meet a friend who was getting off work for her lunch hour. She arrived toting the huge, hardback copy of this book. She was in full addiction mode and was unwilling to part with it even on her lunch break.

During my discussion with a salesperson at Elliot Bay a few months back, I noticed my basket of books becoming disproportionately overrepresented with non-fiction and I therefore asked him for a good piece of 2009 fiction. He pointed me towards this book and thinking back on my friend in Madrid, I grabbed it without hesitating.

It is certainly an engrossing story which combines mystery, sex, violence and Sweden. I consumed it in a couple of days much in the same way I would plow through a good TV series if I had the whole thing on DVD. It is entertainment above all else.

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The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

After three rather arduous non-fiction reads, I was more than eager for a quick injection of crime mystery, one of my favorite fictional genres. Hammett, most famous for The Maltese Falcon, is certainly one of the most well-regarded American mystery writers. And it was a late night viewing of The Maltese Falcon with its solid performance from Bogart and a quirky and devilish Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo that prompted me to dive further into the works of Hammett.

It is clear that Hammett knows what he is writing about after having been a private investigator for many years. His writing style is tight, direct with no superfluous words. In both The Maltese Falcon and The Dain Curse the stories move at a breakneck speed. To be honest, some time the speed and number of characters in the latter was too much for me. I often had to flip back a few chapters to remind myself who was who and what had they done. The book does not disappointment but it did not leave me floored either.

What crime/mystery writers do you like?

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L'eleganza del Riccio (The elegance of the Hedgehog) by Muriel Barbery

Ah, France! This novel, with such French attitude, scoffs at the wealthy for their shallowness, as well as their unmerited sense of cultural superiority over the social classes below them. Barbery does this by focusing her story around two central characters: the door-woman of an elegant resident building in central Paris and the twelve year old daughter of one of the families living in the building. Both of these characters are made to be the most culturally and intellectually astute individuals in the novel, much more so than the barbarians that grace the floors of the building.

It would be easy to dismiss the stereotypes portrayed of French society as cliche', however, they are made so apparent throughout the novel that their blatancy somehow makes them comical. Instead, the subtler aspects of the book touch on more philosophical arguments regarding such subjects as art, beauty, the purpose of life, and human existence - shall we say the pain et beurre of French intellectual thought.

The story is simple and for this reason pleasurable. The door-woman, Ms. Michel, lives what at first glance appears to be a monotonous life, ignored by the inhabitants of the building. However, she finds comfort in this solitude and actually makes all efforts possible to draw as little attention to herself as possible. To do so she must hide all her intellectual pursuits as not to raise any questions in the eyes of the pseudo-intellects around her. However, they are probably too stupid to pick up on them anyway. When Ms. Michel is not reading Russian literature, she is hammering away at the shallow and miserable lives of the rich around her. There is a certain sense of irony here since the pursuits such as shopping, shampooing hair multiple times and wearing make-up are looked down upon by her that is until she catches the eye of a new resident to the building - Mr. Oke, a retired Japanese.

Mr. Oke, being someone truly steeped in culture and intellectual capacity is quickly able to see how the door-woman is not a typical type. He then begins inviting her to various activities much as Richard Gere did to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The response of Ms. Michel is not much different in that those superficial activities of the wealthy become appealing as soon as someone comes along who is interested in her.

When compared to modern American novels, this book is more layered in that it offers a straightforward story of its characters but also dives deeper into more philosophical discussions. There are a lot of cultural references as well. What I see as being the major difference when compared to modern American novels is how Barberry writes to a more educated, cultured audience than most writers do in the States. As this book was the bestselling one in France over the last couple of years, we can assume therefore, that it was read by people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Heaven help us if it had only remained in the upper echelons of French society!

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Herzog by Saul Bellow

"I think I can say, however, that I have been spared the chief ambiguity that afflicts intellectuals, and this is that civilized individuals hate and resent the civilization that makes there lives possible. What they love is an imaginary human situation invented by their own genius and which they believe is the only true and the only human reality." Saul Bellow

The above quote was taken from one of the hundreds of letters, never sent, that were written by the protagonist of this novel - Moses Herzog. Herzog's letters are rich with philosophical insight and show the depth with which Bellow was able to write.

However, the purpose of this post is to turn to the readers of my blog to ask their own interpretation of Herzog. The book centered on one character the entire time. We are provided access to his writings, conversations and thoughts. Yet, even with such insight I struggled to understand him and therefore could not fully appreciate the book. What was driving him? How enraged was he by the divorce with his wife? How did he view modern society? I am curious for answers to these questions. Fresh insight from others is always appreciated.

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Cathedral by Raymond Carver

The stories in Cathedral are longer compared to those in the previous two collections. I am not the first to say it, but after having read through a series of Carver's works, one can see the development he made as a writer. There were many Carver readers who saw signs in Cathedral of something larger than a short story ready to come out if we had not lost this great American writer at such an early age.

After having read through several dozen stories, I was eager to settle down with a more substantial piece of literature. John Updike's Couples proved to be exactly the type of novel which I was in need of.

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What we Talk About When we Talk about Love by Raymond Carver

This post is really a continuation of my previous one on Raymond Carver

I have not read many short stories in my time. After now having completed the second collection by Carver I am beginning to appreciate the skill involved in delivering messages about the characters using very little text. A full length novel has the luxury of being able to develop characters over time, and often still does not succeed. How do you, therefore, accomplish it in seven pages? Perhaps "developing" the character is not even the right term. How do you give glimpses of insight into the characters that allow you to, even momentarily, understand them? I am finding Carver's writing to rely on the logical thinking of his readers. Each sentence has a purpose in his writing and he leaves it up to us to determine their significance based on our own interpretation.

There are two stories that stayed with me the most. The first one is titled "Viewfinder". It is about a man with no hands who takes photographs of peoples houses and then sells them to the owners. He visits one house where the owner offers him coffee not necessarily because of his hospitable nature but instead due to a nagging curiosity to see how a man with two hooks for hands would hold the cup.

The second has the same title as the book itself. It is essentially a discussion between two couples about love. Their openness to elaborate on the more intimate aspects of their relationships is greatly aided by two bottles of gin. The conversation is good, honest and disturbing.

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Will you Please be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

I do not exactly recall how I first came across Slavoj Zizek. I believe it was in my search for contemporary philosophers who discuss the events of modern society at a deeper level than journalism is able to do. A few online pieces of his work proved to be rather interesting, especially his fascination in film and the underlying messages it often conveys. So, I was happy to see an interview with him in the Financial Times a few months after my initial introduction. The interview jumps from the financial crisis to Marxism and even includes a brief anecdote on the movie, Titanic. However, it was one reference he made to the film, Short Cuts that caught my attention. He claimed it be a Hollywood film which deserves to be called "art" compared to many "fake" European films. This stuck with me namely because I remember as an early teen looking at the VHS case of Short Cuts at my local Blockbuster. It was a blue case with little cut outs of all the different actors in the movie. I never did rent it, most likely opting for True Lies instead.

Nearly 15 years after having first seen it dawning the wall of the New Release section at Blockbuster, I finally sat down to watch Short Cuts. It did not disappoint. As an American living abroad now for several years, I am becoming more and more curious about my native country. I find myself constantly in search of those cultural works which best describe the true essence of the U.S. This serves two purposes. The first is that it allows me to have a portfolio of recommendations for those individuals who actually show a curiosity in better understanding the U.S. and its people beyond the stereotypes often conveyed by our own pop culture. I have not come across many interested takers yet but I am ready when it does happen. The second is simply because I relate to these albums, books, or films more now than when I am living in America. I appreciate them more, mainly due to nostalgia. Returning to Short Cuts it depicts the real life of normal people living in the more mundane neighborhoods of Los Angeles and confronts the difficulties they face in their day-to-day lives.

The film was based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. The director, Robert Altman, took a dozen of Carver's stories and weaved them together. The Criterion Collection of this film included a documentary on Carver. Thus my introduction to Carver began here with the first scene being of his widow reading one of his poems above his gravestone in Port Angeles. I only discovered he was buried there after the fact. However, I only needed to see the evergreens in the background running up to the cliffs edge above a large body of water to know that she was in the Pacific Northwest. Such an interesting string of connections served as the sign to me that the author's works deserved reading.

Will you Please be Quiet, Please? is Carver's first collection of short stories. He lived his entire life on the West Coast and this comes through in the stories. I found myself relating with his words. I have two more collections of his short stories to read and will describe in my future posts those that I enjoyed the most. In the meantime, go and rent Short Cuts. It is certainly no longer in the New Release section of Blockbuster, especially the one on N.E. 8th in Bellevue which closed down two years ago. Actually, the action "go and rent" isn't really valid any more either. It can be substituted with "go to 'Your Favorites' folder on your browser, left click, Search on Netflix 'Short Cuts', left click three times".

15 years is a long time.

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The Ambassadors by Henry James

I often found myself calling out to my junior year high school English teacher while reading The Ambassadors. I can only describe this undertaking as a literary journey in its purest form and frankly it was not one I was prepared to make on my own. Ms Tramontine would have certainly provided the explanations needed to fully appreciate some of the finest uses of the English language I have ever come across.

The journey was the same as one would experience in its more traditional definition with moments of frustration and confusion later disregarded after witnessing glimpses of sheer beauty - in this case a result of a series of sentences written with such fluidity that left me smiling and then rereading the prose out loud.

I have since read a handful of literary reviews on this work that James claimed to be his best. One theme emerging more than once is how it is a difficult book to break into initially. I concur, succeeding only to do so in the last one hundred pages.

The story in itself, is simple in nature especially when comparing it to modern fiction which is constantly being required to push the creative envelope. A young American in the early 20th century is having too much fun in Paris. His concerned mother sends her fiancée to convince the son to return to the States to take over their successful business. However, upon arrival the fiancée is overcome with the beauty and splendor of Paris and its gens. He meets the son and his friends who he finds to be fabulous in all senses. Several different women play vital roles throughout the story yet the book is free of sex and expressions of hedonism. Yet, James' greatest ability is how he enhances the tensions in these relationships using the subtle aspects of human nature often not written about - the longer than usual glance, the words not spoken in that moment.

I do want to read this book again as there is bound to be so much more to be gotten from it. If anyone in my vast blog audience would like to join me on this journey please let me know. I cannot offer to be the guide, per se, but perhaps the role of the scout could be a more realistic and suiting one.

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Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

I am back. It was a long journey but well worth the effort. This trip was in the metaphysical sense though real none the less. Vikram's dense novel leads the reader through the underworld of Mumbai, weaving an intricate tale of gang lords and detectives. I was introduced to this novel by Rampini's account of modern India that I had read over the summer. Sadly, this fictional work took on a whole new meaning as half way through reading it, the tragic real life terrorist attacks occurred.

Rampini described how Chandra lived among Mumbai's gangsters for several months to put together the material for this book. It shows. The depth of the story and the characters is wonderful. This book further confirmed to me the important role fiction plays in our learning. A well-written tale is able to provide a certain type of shading on a certain subject that non-fiction is not capable of doing. I thoroughly recommend this novel to anyone interested in crime, mob bosses, India or all three. It will entertain you while opening the door into many cultural nuances of the Indian culture.

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A Confederacy of Dunces by John K. Toole

I do not have to much to add about this wonderful book that has not already been said by Mr. Abrams here.

Except I now know where the name of my dear friend's cat comes from. I was not convinced that he was capable of naming his cat, Ignatius, after the founder of the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church.

This book was very refreshing after slugging through the very intense non-fiction work by Stern. Actually, I reached for this book about half way through the other like a lost wanderer in the Gobi desert would do for a bottle of water. A Confederacy of Dunces is funny and written in such a tight manner that not one word seems superfluous.

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The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

This book is a work of historical fiction. In 1909 Sigmund Freud visited the United States for his first and last time. He returned to Vienna thereafter declaring it a land of savages. We really proved him wrong nearly 100 years later. American Gladiators is coming back.

This book is about Freud and his psychoanalytical friends working together to solve a murder that has taken place during their visit. Rubenfeld does tie in a few of basic principles of Freud's contribution to psychology which may benefit some. This way you can have this pseudo sense of intellectual stimulation while you are reading what really is the simplest of murder mysteries. I would not not recommend this book. Instead I would highly recommend reading the stories of Sherlock Holmes instead. It is hard not be satisfied after having read one of Arthur Conan Doyle's timeless tales. To me it seems like the better option.

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