Stieg Larsson & The Millenium Trilogy

They drink a lot of coffee in Sweden. Or at least that is the impression one is left with after reading the novels that make up the so-called 'Millenium Trilogy' by Stieg Larsson: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl Who played with Fire", and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." These books, translated from the Swedish, have been runaway bestsellers and a worldwide publishing phenomenon. The third book in the series was released in May 2010 and together with the first two trace the story of Lisabeth Salander (the 'Girl'), who is, to put it mildly, a somewhat unique heroine in contemporary fiction: she is antisocial, covered with tattoos, an extremely talented computer hacker, bisexual, slight of physical stature, but a skilled boxer, and with her own sense of morality. However, the underlying theme is her fight against the establishment that victimized her early in life under the pretext of national security. Playing the male protagonist is Mikael Blomkvist, a slightly left leaning investigative journalist. He is also the co-founder of the magazine "Millenium" from which the trilogy takes its name. Mikael's character is not quite as complex as Salander's, but is nonetheless multifaceted and far from being flat.
The first book ("Dragon Tattoo") finds Blomkvist trying to solve a decades old missing person mystery that he eventually does with the assistance of Salander. The next two books focus more on Salander and the gradual unraveling of the conspiracy against her.
The stories are well plotted and despite their length (they average over 550 pages each) the reader's interest rarely flags. Most books of this genre resort to a cheap manipulation of the reader: manufacturing cliff hangers merely by switching the context. Larsson does none of this and I found that I really enjoyed reaching the end of a chapter with some kind of crisis situation and then have the scene continue at the start of the next chapter.
The real life back story to this trilogy is almost as interesting as the books themselves. The Blomkvist character is clearly meant to be a stand-in for Larsson himself (Larsson was a left leaning journalist who started and ran Expo, a magazine similar to Millenium) and some friends of Larsson have even suggested that parts of the Salander character may also be inspired by the author's own self. All three books were published posthumously: Larsson died in 2004 from a heart attack and the manuscripts for the books were discovered after his death. There is speculation that he never intended the books for publication and that he wrote them simply for his own pleasure. This in itself make these books intriguing as examples of works that were unaffected by commercial considerations or by the supervision of an editor. Incidentally, these are the only three fiction books published by Larsson. Supposedly he left behind some more incomplete manuscripts and outlines, but much of that is the subject of much wrangling between his heirs and long time girlfriend. A side effect of the success of these books has been a renewed interest in foreign authors - publishers have been scouring the best seller lists of countries around the world in a bid to find the next Stieg Larsson.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of coffee is drunk by the characters in these books (it is a wonder any of them are able to sleep at all). There is also lots of detail about towns in Sweden and in particular lots of mention of place names and road names, most of which I could not pronounce. After a while, one tends to glaze over these names, but as might be expected you don't really lose much by doing so. Despite the translation, a sense of the place and people does come through - the echoes from the Wallander books or even Smilla's Sense of Snow are faintly evident.
All three books have been made into movies in Sweden and they have all received strong reviews. The first one has already has already made it to the US (in fact playing in San Diego now) and others should follow. Overall, an entertaining set of books that comes with a glimpse into a slice of Swedish society and life.

Cycling, Lance, Baseball, & Doping

The Tour de France (TDF) is arguably the most difficult endurance contest in the world and only five men have won it five times and only one - Lance Armstrong - has won it more than five times. His record tying fifth victory was in 2003 and questions and doubts swirled around the possibility of Armstrong becoming the first ever to win six (he would go on to win 7). Several of the previous 5-time winners had stumbled while trying to win one more. In Lance Armstrong's War, Daniel Coyle gives a superbly detailed account of Armstrong's 2004 campaign. The book was published in 2005, but I just read it - with the recently concluded 2010 TDF whetting my appetite for related stories. You don't just show up in July and try to ride in the tour - the preparation starts many months before and that is where Coyle starts as well. He is there for every training race, every experimental bike, and seemingly around every conversation that goes on between Armstrong and his team. Pro-cycling has more than its share of colorful characters and Coyle profiles a number of the key cyclists who had a legitimate chance of winning in 2004 - Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, and Iban Mayo among others. Making several cameo appearances is 'Juanita Cuervo' (aka Sheryl Crow), who Armstrong was dating at that time. Even though we know how the race ends, Coyle succeeds in building up the anticipation and his blow-by-blow account of key stages of the 2004 race is rather satisfying. The time elapsed since the race helps no doubt, although in my case that is moot since I had not followed the race very closely back in '04. Just as much as an account of the race, the book is an attempt to explain the enigma that is Lance Armstrong. He is not an easy person to know or get close to. With his emphatic victories and inspirational cancer survivor story, he is a sports icon without peer, certainly within the American landscape. He has many detractors of course and indeed there were even threats made on his life during the penultimate stage in 2004 and he had to be protected by armed guards during the actual race.
One question that has dogged Armstrong throughout is the accusation of cheating/doping - the use of performance enhancement drugs. Armstrong does have certain physiological advantages (Coyle explains the science behind his ability to operate at peak performance without going into the anaerobic zone longer than anybody else), but his dominating performances and take-no-prisoners attitude has spawned lots of doubters. The official record is that he has never tested positive, but that hasn't stopped the questions. And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. The conventional wisdom about doping in pro-cycling is that everybody does it, so what is the big deal. Several of his accusers (among others, a massage therapist in his employ, his old mechanic, and Floyd Landis, his old teammate and the cyclist who was stripped of the 2006 TDF title after testing positive) have provided very detailed descriptions of how Armstrong apparently cheated over the years (none of which have been independently corroborated as of date). Although, Steven Levitt (of Freakonmics fame) has argued in a blog that the very specificity of the accusations is proof enough of their truthfulness. Freakonomics was persuasive, but this particular one argument does not wash with me - perhaps I am too much of a Lance Armstrong fan and don't really want to believe. The book is aptly titled: Everything is a 'war' for Lance Armstrong and it continues to this day - even as he was finishing off his last tour, investigations based on Landis' claims and others were just getting underway.
Coyle is clearly interested in being the objective reporter and his book comes across as neither a hatchet job nor hagiography. It is a fascinating glimpse, albeit fleeting, into a world that many of us will never get close to and I highly recommend it.
Doping was rampant in procycling in most of the 90s and the 2000s and the case was no different in another sport in which fair play and chivalry are held paramount - baseball. The rather surprising fact about pro-baseball is that many of the drugs that were banned in other sports were not actually illegal in baseball till very recently. During the last decade and a half the power numbers have been off the charts (basically the batters have been doing very well)and this surge crystallized in the single-season home run record chase of 1998 and culminated with Barry Bonds going past Hank Aaron's all-time home run record (755) - a record that was essentially considered unreachable just a few years ago. However, the home run kings of the last decade or so have mostly been discredited, almost to a man and even Congress has held hearings on this topic. All of this hue and cry may be having an effect: While the single season home run record is now 73 and the top hitters were routinely getting 40-50 homers, this year nobody even has 30 and there is less than a quarter of the season left. Ostensibly, a similar effect can be seen in the TDF - not a single rider tested positive in the last two years, but curiously performances have not really dropped. It is hard to believe that the tour has suddenly become clean, especially when winners of other major cycling races continue to test positive every so often.
Of course, doping is no longer limited to the realm of sports - it is becoming more common place for students to boost their academic performance by improving their focus and concentration by illegally using drugs typically prescribed for ADHD. Next surely, will be genetic engineering. Rather depressing to contemplate, to say the least. But then I wonder, how different are these "aids" from that of the more affluent parents resorting to private schools, extra coaching, and donations to further their child's academic careers?

Dream Layers

I swear I am not making this up. I don't have dreams that often (or at least ones that I can recall the next morning), but lately I have been having a few that seem to involve playing baseball, but with a random set of rules. And apparently this is after I had joined the army. As if this wasn't strange enough, last night really upped the ante.
It started off with the usual baseball-with-strange-rules (this is not that unexpected since the boys and I play a mini baseball game indoors on a regular basis). Then I am driving away from the game and the boys are with me and suddenly I realize that we had left Malini behind. So I whip the car around real fast and end up climbing the curb. As I speed away, I think I hit somebody. I stop and come back, but in the gathering dark, there is nobody to be seen. I am rather shaken as I make my way back to the field only to see Malini waiting, totally relaxed - like I had never left. And the boys are with her. I turn around and sure enough, the boys are not in the car. I realize with a start that the whole driving away had only been a dream. Malini and the boys climb in and we start driving away and all of sudden I don't recognize where I am - somewhere on the east coast, maybe? Oh no, this had been another dream! I am immediately aware that I have just experienced a dream-within-a-dream and start describing this to Malini and realize that she is no longer there. I feel a sense of discomfort (wanted to pee, no doubt) and open my eyes and now I am finally in familiar environs - in our bedroom with Malini curled up next to me. And it dawns on me that I had just experienced a third layer of dreaming. Fortunately that was the end - I fell back into a deep sleep and had almost forgotten about this until just now. What was striking was the strong feeling that I was popping up a 'level' each time I realized that I was in a dream. Maybe there is something to this Inception business? Or maybe, somebody wants me to believe in the premise of the movie and is trying to plant the idea in my head....?