Of course it is not an either/or situation. Having never been to Sweden, when I think of this country I usually conjure up images from Igmar Bergman films or photos of Mats Sundin fishing in the off season. What I don’t think of is a crime ridden nation with terrible murders happening in every corner followed quickly by determined and brilliant detectives who are hot on the trail.

[In fact, after writing this entire post, I realized that several of my co-workers have already written about Swedish mysteries so I urge you to check out some previous entries on this topic. So this will be more of a refresher of what came before…we librarian types read a lot of mysteries apparently]

Lately, with the emergence of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy better known as The Girl…with the Dragon Tattoo, who Played with Fire, who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Sweden’s reputation as an excellent source of quality mysteries has been solidified. Unlike the rest of the planet’s population, I have not read these books, but I have become a fan of another Swedish crime writer: Henning Mankell.

After finishing the entire run of Ian Rankin’s books featuring the Scottish detective John Rebus I was looking for another series to embrace. At first I considered Peter Robinson but instead opted for Mankell and his main detective Kurt Wallander. I’m currently on the fourth Wallander book Sidetracked.  In a slightly more modest way than Larsson and his Lisbeth Salander character; Mankell and Wallander’s Sweden seems to have captured the imagination of the reading public and now the viewing public can enjoy these works as they have recently been made into TV movies entitled Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh as the main hero.

But Swedish crime novels aren’t limited to these two authors.  Long before either Larsson or Mankell even considered their writing careers there was Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo who co-wrote the Martin Beck books in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  I don’t read a lot of straight mysteries (I’m more into the Jim Thompson, James M. Cain variety of crime novels) but from what I can gather, these two authors were pioneers in the police procedural and went on to influence a whole host of mystery writers who came after them.  Some time last year I read the first book of the Beck series and will definitely go back for more in the future.  

A quick search of the VPL catalogue also comes up with several other Swedish mystery/crime novels which I am not familiar with but look very promising. Among the available titles are: Missing by Karin Alvtegen, The Black Path by Asa Larsson, The Shadow Woman by Ake Edwardson, The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg, and the aforementioned Sjowall and Wahloo who wrote a few books found in our collection, including The Locked Room: The Story of A Crime. A google search will get you many more Swedish authors not mentioned here.

So with all these writers turning out quality books (wikipedia has individual entries for 30 Swedish different crime novelists!), the mystery remains for me: Why Sweden? I may have to read many more of these books before I get to the bottom of it all.

Chuck Klosterman is a journalist, rock critic and writer of fiction who I for reasons I’m unclear about have avoided or at the very least never pursued. This, in spite of the fact that I have many friends with great taste who read rock criticism, music biographies and the like incessantly and they all seem to read Klosterman and like him.

About a year and a half ago, my brother in law gave me a copy of Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story as a gift and it sat on my shelf until last week.  I was looking for a lighter, funnier book after the last two subjects I read dealt with anti-Semitism and the dark side of using sports as a way out of poverty…so when my eyes alighted on Killing Yourself to Live (I’m assuming he took this title from the Black Sabbath song of the same name) I knew it was going to the top of my short list…which might seem like a strange choice for a lighter book given the subject is the author’s three week road trip visiting the final resting spot of various musicians..that is to say..the place where they died. So off he goes in search of the same intersection where two members of the Allman Brothers died at different times in different accidents, the trip also includes a visit to Graceland, the field where Buddy Holly crashed etc before finally ending up in Seattle to visit the death site of Kurt Cobain.

Throughout his trip his thoughts are concerned with:  why death makes celebrity more interesting in many cases, is rock criticism a waste of time as well as the more than occasional excruciating detail from his own troubled dating history.  As he spends long hours driving followed by nights in cheap hotels he manages to mix it all together with some really funny observations about popular culture that can only come from someone who has spent far too much time thinking about such things (he spends several pages comparing his ex girl friends to the various members of KISS even including the band mates from 80s and 90s… the ones no one remembers or cares about) and while looking for a particular bridge that Cobain had supposedly but in fact never slept under in Aberdeen (as mentioned in the Nirvana song “Something in the Way” off of their album Nevermind) only to find so many bridges in Aberdeen it prompts him to write that the town would be “a wonderful community for trolls”..a great line.

In the end, I breezed through this book and found that I in fact fall exactly within the demographic that books like this are written for – Mostly guys around my age (although I do know women who like him as he is the essence of the smart, literate, funny, music/pop culture nerd) who see the world through Star Wars references, self aware to an extreme and can appreciate the power of a great rock riff. In short, I am his target audience; I just never could admit it before. It’s like saying you don’t like brussels sprouts but without ever having tried it first. But Chuck Klosterman is a lot more fun than brussels sprouts.

Other Chuck Klosterman books you may enjoy:

Eating the Dinosaur

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Fargo Rock City: A heavy metal odyssey in rural North Dakota

And a work of Fiction – Downtown Owl

For the first time in a long time I am living without TV. Actually I still have one, I just don’t have cable and haven’t gotten around to trying out rabbit ears.  As a result, I have to say that if it wasn’t for newspapers plastering Oscar related news above the masthead for the past few days, I think this year’s Oscars would have totally passed me by.

About the two hosts: I do have a soft spot for Steve Martin (although I wish he would choose better roles, funnier films more often) but even that isn’t enough to get me to watch. Alec Baldwin is riding a wave of popularity on the back of 30 Rock which I suspect is a pretty funny show but have yet to see more than a few episodes so he too is not enough to lure me in.

But most importantly it’s the nominated films themselves I have don’t know much about.  There are a few films which managed to filter through my pop culture ignorance and register with me. Not surprisingly, the list starts with Avatar, but also The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, Up, Up in the Air and A Serious Man.  District 9 I actually saw already (it was shown in flight) and thought it was quite good.

Hmm..I started this post thinking I didn’t have much interest in seeing many of the films but now that I look at the expanded list of nominations, I’m starting to feel differently.  With all the attention spent on Avatar the other movies are a bit overshadowed. I’m sure at some point I will go see Avatar. It is a bit of an odd feeling that I still haven’t seen the highest grossing film of all time. Growing up, the first three Star Wars films (i.e. the good ones…) or the Indiana Jones trilogy or even Terminator 2 and Titanic were all big cinematic events and I saw every single one in the theatre…but maybe the chasm between real and digital finally caught up with me..or maybe it was James Cameron’s insane ego…I’m not sure…but there was a time when I never would have taken so long to see Avatar ( confession: I did try to go see it on December 27^th but it was sold out and I never managed a second attempt)

So I’m blindly going into this event hoping that The Hurt Locker at least gets Best Director…I mean it’s been 82 years now and not a single female director has won this award so it would be nice to see Kathryn Bigelow win. And it seems like Jeff Bridges is a lock for Best Actor…the Academy apparently likes films about down and out country singers as they gave the 1984 Best Actor award to Robert Duvall for his portrayal of hurtin’ honky tonker Mac Sledge in one of my favourite films Tender Mercies. It seems most reviewers pick Avatar for Best Film and I’ve even heard that Sandra Bullock may win Best Actress for Blind Side…which is sad to think about as I’ve silently passed judgment on that film from a position of total ignorance. I mean…Meryl Streep can never have too many awards can she?

I realize not everyone is as grumpy about the Oscars as I am…perhaps if they edited the speeches and the fashion out (which are the two main things a lot of people care about) I’d watch…but I doubt it. However, if you enjoy the spectacle, I hope you a great time on Sunday night. If you want a warm up to The Big Show, why not stop by the Pierre Burton Resource Library for a Road to the Oscars celebration on March 7^th at 2 pm.  George Clooney won’t be there but on the bright side, neither will James Cameron…which is a good thing since the host room probably can’t accommodate his ego.