Patrick’s Comments (group member since Mar 09, 2009)

Patrick’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Some of the translation novels are really great for just the story like 'Let the Right One In' or 'As God Commands.' It's good if you plan to read it for the story but not good if you want the language accurate.

Yeah, I always fantasized about taking langauge courses like Greek and Latin at community college but the tutitions are too much for me right now.

Yeah, I read his Lolita and liked the beginning, but in the middle, it kind of sagged and I got bored with author's descriptions of Lolita. It's funny how after a man have his way with a girl or a woman he pursit, he doesn't want her afterward.

I read his novel, Pop. 1280 and while on the surface it looks like plain and simple (but fine) writing, Jim Thompson seems to reveal what a psychopath the sheriff is.


(SPOILER ALERT!) The ending really is emptied of morality and righteous justice.

It seemed that Achebe based on his short story really knows the value of people over money. The narrator was really happy, even when he lost a lot of money, he was still happy for his family still have heads.

Yeah, I plan to read up on the two of the mentioned novels. I got them at the library. They looked thin and seem detailed at the same time, a sign of a fine writer.

Jeez, now I wanna go to library and get these two books.

I think I have his complete word for word commencement speech if you wanna.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12217...

People tend to be APPalled when you wave your peter at them is all I could think of to add to this thread. :)

Next to having a cool name with lotsa of consonants, I really fell in love with his vampire novel, "Let the Right One In."

I feel that he saves the vampire genre novel from being trampled as a paranormal romance like the Twilight Trilogy (Or tragedy as I call it.). In his novel, the vampire sells her body and soul to have someone be a caretaker in the daylight. It also broaden my interest in foriegn novels like As God Commands and The Slap. His novel is up there with Stephen King's "Salemn's Lot", if a little less scarier but creepier and sadder.

Have anyone read his fine novel here at f.f.? What do you think of his work? I love the opening chapter 1 in where the reader is pulled in a familar classroom setting of a police officer visiting the school to warn the kids about the evils of drug abuses. Then it just gets darker and darker until the end just like the nightime. Also what do you think of the movie?

I really like the global brand names myself. I think it makes a self involved person like me get into the story more. When I see a Mcdonald in Russian or that book Matt mentioned, I get excited and say, "Hey! They like our food too! Awright!" To be honest, I totally identify with characters who go to Mcdonald for a Mcsnack. I think the brands are the signs of modern times. A person driving a Volkswagen is more detailed than a person driving a car, a person going to Mcdonald is more detailed than a person going to take out. Also you can tell a person by where he or she eats. Like I remember in Stephen King's novel, he described a nice person who is low middle class as someone who calls going to McDonald 'eating out.' I think Larsson is merely detailing the globalization of our world by including Mcdonalds and giving us a taste of the local Billy Pan Pizza, maybe I don't know...maybe Swede's version of Pizza Hut or Schoffer's frozen pizza.

Those kids NEEDS to lug around books. It's called toughening up. Beside I am still paranoid about cyber terriorist changing stuff in the computerized works.

Not sure what to make of it. It is very dense and compressed so I had a hard time reading it. It reminds me of Peter Straub in his old days before he started writing books that are easily read although I still find his Floating Dragon one of the best if a bit sentimental at the end.

Congratulation from me too as well!

It is contradicting to call a writer a bad novelist and a fool and claim that's why he's popular in America and then brag that your copies outsold John Updike's like Gore Vidal did in his reviews.

Yes, that's a good one. I am almost done with that one and look forward to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet Nest. It got me slightly interested in math when before I hated it in school.

Yeah, I read his Catcher in the Rye and loved it, and attempted Nine Stories but the Nine Stories was really dense and over my head in term of subtle details and I did not really understand most of his short stories.

Salinger seemed to overeact to the mistake of the writer's earnest attempts to publish his work because he only made a tiny mistake of going S.O.P. with entering the book's number into the database.

Guess I'll check out these books Matt recommends and maybe become more focused with my rage against Islamic facism.

Martyn, I think you meant not the slightest bit of sense. I am deaf, not blind. :)

Sorry. I was reading Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept and was really bewildered by how we Americans lost France as a partner in Europe to the slowly growing Islamic fascism. It is one of the important book that warns of events that might drag us into another global war on a larger scale than the so called war on terrorism. But I guess that Larsson had finished his three books before then and if he had seen the events that Bruce had, I believe he would have been outraged at how the socialists and progressive parties of these countries bow down to fear and political correctness. I hope that clears it up. Sorry for the previous rant.

I wondered what Larsson makes of the spread of Islamic fascism in his home country...I have been reading While Europe Slept and found out that we don't really have France anymore and that it is one of the Mid Eastern countries or considered to be on the Muslim fundamentalists team?