David Nicholls reading at Stockholm's version of Book Slam London.

On Thursday night, I went to Book Slam London at Kulturhuset. This was not your typical author event. Instead, it was a literary nightclub. There were book readings sure, but there were also poetry readings as well as hip-hop and jazz music. But even that doesn’t begin to explain the night very well. Because poetry readings can be just plain weird, book readings dull. This event was cool. And it felt good to call myself a writer.

The book slam band.

Lemn Sissay served as the emcee of the event and read his own very good poetry, then he was followed by a reading from Swedish author Amanda Svensson. Kate Tempest was next and she exceeded all my expectations. She is an amazingly talented and wacky combination of rapper and poet. And as I expected, David Nicholls’ two readings and a q&a session with Lemn were all fantastic. I read his book One Day some time ago and loved it, so I will now have to read his other two books.

In between all the different readings, either a DJ or a band played. And there was also a performance from Swedish hip hop performer Alexis Weak, who was not as good as I hoped he would be. Oh well. Overall, the evening was a whole lot of fun. To see if the literary nightclub is coming to your city, check out Book slam London.

Kate Tempest performing.

A recent afternoon shot of Hamngatan in front of NK department store. Is this scene in the movie you might logically ask? No. But like the movie, it captures the look of Stockholm in the winter! Photo by Robert Corkery.

I woke up with “I come from the land of the ice and snow” – lyrics from Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song – blasting through my head. Last night, we saw the new Hollywood movie version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and a hard-rocking cover version of the song launches the movie. And it got stuck in my head.

Don’t worry – ı won’t give away specific plot or movie details here to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen the film yet. Read on for my more general overviews instead.

Having read all three books and seen all three Swedish movie versions of the books, I guess I could have been a harsh critic of the new version. But I liked it and was pulled in and kept entertained during the whole long movie for the most part – things only got just a bit slow in the middle. As the Swedish movies really were good, I would have liked to see the Hollywood version push the suspense just a little more. The trailer that was released a few months back was nerve wracking and did a wonderful job of making your palms feels sweaty. It compelled me to see the movie. But the movie itself didn’t quite live up to my expectations of total terror. So maybe I am judging the new version by what came earlier! All that said, the plot is mostly true to the book and I actually liked Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara was excellent as Lisbeth Salander.

I loved seeing parts of Stockholm that I know so well in the movie and felt that the cinematography did a great job of capturing the gray/dark that characterizes Sweden in the winter. Nici, Robert and I rated the movie as 3.5 stars out of 5 and Roger gave it a 4.  Check out a few more details on the books at fun facts and the Swedish movie version.

Stieg Larsson is making Stockholm look cool. Thanks to his books The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the others in his millennium trilogy which are set in Stockholm, this city is becoming known. And with the popularity of the movies on top of it, viewers are seeing Stockholm and more specifically, the island of Södermalm where much of the action in the books takes place.

Just before we left Cincinnati, we went to the theater to see the movie version of the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I loved hearing Swedish in my hometown and it was fun to see places on Söder that we know on the big screen.

Then last night as we watched BBC World News, I saw Söder again. There was a special segment on Stieg Larsson’s Stockholm that focused on the millennium tour that I took about a year and a half  ago. (See  Millennium walk.) It featured the island, as well as several locations on it including character Mikael Blomqvist’s home on Bellmansgatan and the restaurant Kvarnen, both of which are in walking distance of my home.

With this kind of publicity, maybe people will actually come to realize that Stockholm is not in Switzerland!

While I’ve been in Cincinnati, I’ve had a lot of questions about the Stieg Larsson books. I have my answers down – yes we really live on the same island that Larsson did, as do his characters Lisbeth and Blomqvist. The island is called Södermalm. We used to live just by the street Lisbeth’s first apartment was on– Lundagatan – and now we live by her fancy apartment on Fiskargatan in Mosebacke.

And I just read an amazing statistic: Last summer, books from Stieg Larsson’s millenium trilogy – including the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – were selling one per second in the US. The books have sold 50 million copies worldwide. That’s not at all bad for a Swedish writer!

The view from the cliff walk between Lisbeth and Mikael.

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I want to watch the filming of  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Maybe my zest for Hollywood came after that audition for the TV commerical (see Hollywood calling), but I’m not really sure. I’ve never been a celebrity stalker or even someone who buys the tabloids like People magazine. But I am curious about the filming here in Stockholm.

What I do know thus far  is that Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara or Blomqvist and Salander have been spotted around town. And apparently filming is supposed to start in October. The locations are being kept secret, but some of the stuff just has to be done in Södermalm, right? So I think I am going to need to do a little scouting around town. Let me know if you see anything, OK?

Taking in the view from the cliff walk on Södermalm. Photo by Robert Corkery.

We’ve had some friends in visiting from Australia and so today we took them on a cycle tour of the city. After meeting up at the appropriately touristy Stadshuset or City Hall, we then took them to Riddarholmen to see the church there, then on to Gamla Stan and Södermalm. Söder is the island where we have lived most of the time while in Stockholm, so it felt good to be back in our old haunts.

Since Bill and Jenny had read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we gave them a bit of a where art meets life tour and showed them some of the spots made famous in the book, including Mikael Blomkvist’s apartment at Bellmansgatan 1 and Mellqvist coffee bar, where the real-life author of the book Stieg Larsson actually sat and worked. Then we showed them Montelius Vägen where Salander walked on her way to see Blomkvist.

From there, we went off the tourist trek and on the cycle path around the island, stopping to see Långholmen prison and the garden houses along the way. We had brunch at Kvarnen, a spot where Blomqvist and Salander frequently met up, but which I had forgotten about until later. Our brunch was a Swedish feeding frenzy with salmon, herring, meatballs, reindeer, Västerbottenpaj or a cheese quiche and much, much more. It was so good and just what we needed after cycling for hours on a gray and chilly Sunday.

Is this the elusive Lisbeth Salander's new apartment? Photo by Robert Corkery.

About a week before we left our old apartment, we saw someone new moving into the lower level. When a name tag was posted to the door, we could not help but notice it. “How cool is that,” I said to Robert. “Lisbeth Salander has moved to our building just as we have to move out.”

Of course, I was referring to the fictional character of Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larson’s Millenium series, first made famous as the girl in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As we were living on Södermalm and just around the corner from where Lisbeth’s old apartment on Lundagatan was, the fiction seemed like it could be true. Or maybe we just wanted it to be.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are the top three bestsellers in Australia right now. I’ve seen posters and signboards for the books at the airports and all around town. Borders even has a win a trip to Sweden contest going on to further promote the millennium trilogy.

This all makes me feel right at home. And downright proud of this Swedish author as well.

It also shows me that I can’t quite get away from Sweden. Even when I am thousands of kilometers away in Australia. I’m OK with that.

I finished reading Stieg Larsson’s third book in his millenium series last week. And I have to say, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest did not disappoint. As I have said before in talking about Larsson, I am not a fan of crime stories. But these books have captivated me. And since the books have sold more than 12 million worldwide, I am not the only one.

For me, part of the appeal of reading this Swedish author is that so many of the events that take place in the books occur on the island that I live on. And Södermalm is also where the main characters of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist live. I feel cool just by association.

After finishing the third book in the trilogy, I am left wanting more. There is rumored to be a partially finished fourth book. Now I guess I just have to wait and see if it ever makes it into print.

Where life meets art: Bellmansgatan 1 – The real building where fictional character Mikael Bloomkvist lives in the attic apartment.

Yesterday, I played tourist in my own town for the afternoon. More specifically, I did a Stieg Larsson Millennium walking tour of the island that I live on. Larsson was a Swedish writer whose trilogy of books  were released just before he died four years ago. Since then, the books have been hugely popular not only in Sweden and Scandinavia, but also around the globe, selling more than 10 million so far. And the third book in the trilogy has not even been translated into English yet. (I started it in Swedish and it looks fantastic.)

The crime/detective genre is not typically one of my favorites, but these books completely captured my attention. The story lines are captivating and since I live on the island of Södermalm where a lot of the books’ action takes place, I was doubly intrigued. And I had to laugh when the tour guide pointed out that all of the good characters live on Söder, while the bad guys live on Östermalm – the wealthy part of town. (Sorry about that, my wonderful Östermalmian friends!) Anyway, it was fun to check out my island from the perspective of the books and to swing by some of the beautiful old cobblestone streets around Bellmansgatan as well as the view from Monteliusvägen. But I have to admit that there reached a point in the tour when we were standing in front of a packed cafe that I began to feel a bit too much like a tourist!