John Ajvide Lindqvist

**sonofcana** · March 10th, 2013

Handling the undead is nothing like the typical zombie stories we are used to. No running battles or shopping mall sieges. Great book with an original take on the zombie myth.

**~Ally~** · March 10th, 2013

Originally Posted by Lily Sawyer

I just saw The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest with Noomi Rapace playing Lisbeth Salander. Awesome. Those Swedes, man...they also know how to tell a story.

Have you read the books in this series? Dunno why, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get into that guy's style of writing. Great movies, though. I found John Ajvide Lindqvist to be the total opposite to Stieg Larsson, thankfully, his stories translate very well to English/American. I definitely recommend him.

**Moderator** · March 11th, 2013

Originally Posted by ~Ally~

Have you read the books in this series? Dunno why, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get into that guy's style of writing. Great movies, though. I found John Ajvide Lindqvist to be the total opposite to Stieg Larsson, thankfully, his stories translate very well to English/American. I definitely recommend him.

I'd wondered if it was a translation issue with Larsson as I didn't think his writing was particularly good from a technical standpoint, certainly not to justify the feedback I was seeing about how great a writer he was, but I did enjoy the stories so put my internal editor aside as I was reading.

**Lily Sawyer** · March 11th, 2013

Originally Posted by ~Ally~

Have you read the books in this series? Dunno why, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get into that guy's style of writing. Great movies, though. I found John Ajvide Lindqvist to be the total opposite to Stieg Larsson, thankfully, his stories translate very well to English/American. I definitely recommend him.

No, I haven't read the books. And Hornet's Nest is the only movie I've seen of any Larsson story.

**~Ally~** · March 11th, 2013

Originally Posted by Lily Sawyer

No, I haven't read the books. And Hornet's Nest is the only movie I've seen of any Larsson story.

The movies are very good. I definitely agree with Marsha, something was lost in translation with his written word.

**Jojo87** · March 11th, 2013

I haven't read any Swedish author's books lately even if Sweden is our neighbor country and Swedish is my native language.

I was thinking when I get some time I will try to read Stieg Larsson's books and this John Ajvide Lindqvist sounds interesting too.
Have to search if I can find them somewhere.

**KJ Norrbotten** · March 11th, 2013

On translations to English (and other languages, as well), it depends on the translator, but there's always something lost. Quite often it may ruin the entire book. I once read the English version of the Finnish classic Unknown Soldier be Väinö Linna, and it was absolutely terrible. It was lacking all the characteristic from the original.

From John Ajvide Lindqvist, I've only read Handling the undead, and it was kind of heavy reading, certainly not easy. It could work on film, though.

**Mr Nobody** · March 21st, 2013

Originally Posted by Moderator

I'd wondered if it was a translation issue with Larsson as I didn't think his writing was particularly good from a technical standpoint, certainly not to justify the feedback I was seeing about how great a writer he was, but I did enjoy the stories so put my internal editor aside as I was reading.

Some of his reputation may be down to having died so young (iirc, he was only 40 or so). Then of course there was all the fallout from his death, most of which remains unresolved.
Put all that to one side and focus on the story/ies, though, and yep, it's pretty good stuff (even if I couldn't help the odd wince at something that really should have been caught).