Quick (book) reviews: Millenium Trilogy, Scott Pilgrim, and Fault Lines.

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Just before I took off for vacation, I managed to finish a few books recently. Yay me!

First I ended up devouring "The Girl who played with Fire" and "The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest", and hence wrapping up the Millenium Trilogy.

What I loved about all three books (besides the characters) are the fact that the genres are actually so different. "..Dragon Tattoo" is a mystery/thriller with a gruesome finale. "..Fire" read to me like an action novel, and "... Hornet's Nest" is at heart a journalist/courtroom drama. There's liberal doses of action, intrigue, romance, general gruesome-ness and strange relationships thrown in all three, and that just adds to the appeal.

The success of the books (note the breaking eBook sales numbers) suggest there are tons of people agreeing with me. I'm holding off on watching the Swedish film versions for now.

I also just finished Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy. The author, Prof. Raghuram Rajan was one of my favorite professors in b-school, and the book is incredibly easily to read even as it goes over the interplay of political compulsions, economic policy, incentives, and global trade. Highly recommended.

Its rare that a movie trailer can get me to start reading a book, but if the trailer is awesome, and the book is a series of comics, it happens. I really enjoyed the Scott Pilgrim series; the story/characters, the slice-of-life writing and mixing gaming and real-world concepts (e.g.the character doesn't die because he picked up an extra life in an earlier volume:)) , are great but I really like how the author tells and draws the story as well. Will definitely try to catch the movie soon, though after my media consumption binge on the flight over I probably should wait a bit. :)

Comments

UK said…
How do you manage to read so many books ! Anyways, keep the reviews coming.. they might (yes,might) motivate me to read more !
3:53 PM
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