Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Book reviews

This week is Saint George's Day and in Catalonia it's typical to buy/gift books so i'm commenting over the fours last books i've read.

El Códice de la Atántida (Decipher) by Stel Pavlov: A Science Fiction book that carries the tag "Best Seller in USA and Italy". Well, i'm not going to comment on these countries taste for books, but this is a book you should avoid, it's a mix of Atlants, nanobots, armies, earth to be destroyed, misc adventures and all, but at the end i just had no interest for keep reading another page, and i just finished the book because it's what i do will all books.

Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) by Stieg Larsson: A noir novel, you should read it if you are not scared of a book were some pages talk about crimes on women being killed by cutting their head and putting it on the fire. It's a book i got addicted fast and could not stop reading it until the end. It features kidnaped girls, assassins, investigators and more important Lisbeth Salander, best good-evil character since Wolverine.

La chica que soñaba con una cerilla y un bidón de gasolina (The Girl Who Played with Fire) by Stieg Larsson: Second part of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You'll have to read it after reading the first one, the story is less macabre than in the first book but as vibrating as the first one and involves some "I'm your father" Star Wars-like scenes that even feature everywhere still impacts the reader.

La verdad (The Truth) by Terry Pratchett: It's for sure not the best Discworld novel, but still worth a read, Pratchett can create jokes from almost everything, and newspapers are not going to be an excempion. In this novel a new character is introducted William de Worde that will try to do real journalism and investigate the charges of embezzlement and attempted murder against Lord Vetinari.

So all in all, don't buy Decipher, read Stieg Larsson books if you like noir novels and The Truth is just another Discworld novel, so it's of course worth a read.

P.S: Stieg Larsson books since to have a much more catchier name in Spanish than in English, wonder which is more closed to the original swedish though.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first of the Stieg Larsson books is called "Men who hate women" in Sweden ("Män som hatar kvinnor"). The second one is "Flickan som lekte med elden", which does translate to "The girl who played with fire".

Damnshock said...

I just wanted to clarify that on "diada de Sant Jordi" the tradition is that the women buy a book to their partners and they buy them a rose. It's the catalonian "lovers day" (Saint Valentine's Day for the americans) :)

Anyway... I might have a look at some of those four books ;)

Unknown said...

On The Truth I have to stronly disagree - one of the *best* Discwold novels. But maybe I have closer connections with newspapers world :)

Anonymous said...

Well, It's true that is a tradition in catalonia, but I commented with several friends that it was a fantastic tradition, and we are gonna "take it borrowed" :-) Men are gonna buy the rose and girlfriends the respectives books. It's great "sharing" good traditions. BTW, I'm from Madrid. :-)

Anonymous said...

Stieg Larsson's "Men that hate women" has been made a film out of which is shown, at least, in scandinavian theatres at the moment.