More on Stieg Larsson’s millions

This week even the Guardian reported on the state of Stieg Larsson’s money. They didn’t have much to say that I haven’t already blogged about, except that Stieg’s father and brother have now offered his partner Eva some money. Of course, neither I nor the Guardian know all that much. We recycle facts and come up with clever guesses as to what’s what.

We’re all guessing, because Stieg can’t tell us a thing. So it makes a change reading this blog post, written by Annika Bryn, who is a Stockholm based crime writer, and who knew Stieg.  I met Annika over on Sara Paretsky’s blog, and she has previously left a comment on Bookwitch saying it’s true that Lisbeth Salander has Asperger Syndrome because Stieg said so.

This week Annika wrote about her own feelings and ideas as to how all this mess over the Millennium money happened. She says that ethically it should have been Eva who inherited the money, and that it ought to be she who’s in the position to be able to offer the Larsson men 20 million kronor, out of the 130 million total so far, instead of the reverse. Annika says that Eva wasn’t just ‘a part of Stieg’s life’, as his father and brother put it, but he always referred to Eva as his wife, and he felt they had ‘grown together’ and he could never leave her.

Stieg’s brother has said to Annika that the fact there was no will must have meant Stieg didn’t want Eva to inherit him. (But most of us don’t consider our mortality soon enough, do we?) Another thing that is easily forgotten, is that when Stieg died, he had no more money than most people. He didn’t know there’d be millions to fight over. And Annika reckons he also thought the three people in his life would get on better than they do.

She feels that although the offered 20 million is a lot of money, it’s not enough, and that a fifty-fifty share would be the fair way to do it. They should also cooperate over the intellectual property Stieg left behind. She mentions a dispute over the English translation, too. So it seems nothing is easy in this sorry saga. As for anyone finishing the fourth book, Annika reckons this would be wrong, unless it’s practically all finished anyway.

There was a very early will, in which Stieg left his money to a communist organisation. So it doesn’t seem as if he’d intended his father and brother to enjoy whatever he had to leave.

Annika’s blog usually has many, and friendly, comments left by her visitors. This time feelings have run high, and people have left some much more strongly worded comments than usual. Not all are on Eva’s side, and some don’t manage to comment politely, whatever their opinions.

and then I’ll have a book festival

Not content with imagining a bookshop, I need to dream a little about my imaginary book festival. As Amanda Craig said on her blog recently, everyone seems to think they should run a festival of sorts these days. And they don’t always do it well.

That’s the part I don’t get. If you ask people round for dinner, most hosts don’t go out of their way to ignore the guests. So what’s different running a festival? It’s surely just one big dinner party or children’s party or whatever?

I’m too lazy to go ahead with anything like a book festival, but the idea really appeals. Shows how lacking in originality I am; having the same dream as countless other well-meaning idiots. I’d also find it too stressful, but I would want to offer any visiting authors all the comforts of home to keep them happy (and me popular).

Or maybe I just expand a little on my literary Tupperware party? Come and talk about yourself and your books in my living room over some nibbles and wine, with some book sales at the end. Some of the time I even have a spare bed to offer.

A Necklace of Raindrops

Some years ago Daughter begged a copy of Joan Aiken’s A Necklace of Raindrops from my friend Pippi when we visited her. It was an old battered paperback, and she just had to have it. I didn’t forget about it, but I must admit to not having looked at it carefully enough to realise it was illustrated. Daughter was past needing it reading to her, so I just didn’t get involved.

That’s why I was so keen to see a copy of the book now that it’s being published again. I somehow thought the illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski were new. They are, in fact, original, and were in the 1968 version as well.

Oh, well. This is a lovely book, and two copies can be better than one – old and battered.

I love Joan Aiken, although I’ve not read much of hers for this age range, which is younger than the Wolves Chronicles. There are eight short stories, which are all perfect either to read to a child or to have them read on their own. I was going to say nicely old-fashioned, but perhaps they were simply normal forty years ago. They are the sort of stories we read when I was young.

This is a larger size hardback, so Jan Pieńkowski’s pictures look marvellous. They have that authentic 1960s half modern, half old style feel to them. If you know what I mean?

Y is for yay!

Unsolicited books get shorter shrift than the ones I ask for. But there can be real gems, that I didn’t even know I wanted. This is one such occasion. There is a pop-up book out to celebrate that Sesame Street is forty years old.

Generally I am more of a C is for cookie kind of person. Offspring and I watched Sesame Street with our lunch for years, and then out of necessity we had to stop. I wouldn’t mind watching it again, but I get the impression it’s no longer on in Britain. Why not?

A Walk Down Sesame Street is some consolation. Elmo walks round, meeting some of the regulars, and doing a little educating as he meets and greets. Good Elmo! There are even pull-thingies to make Grover fly and Cookie stir his cookie mixture. Big Bird is really an awfully big Big Bird.

Ernie has put down his duckie, believe it or not, and Oscar and his trashcan are very much in-your-face, popping out. If only they knew of the agony suffered at witch headquarters over the elephants Oscar keeps. I thought we were heading for a major bin phobia at one point.

As Daughter walked in through the door after college, she jumped on this book. Maybe 17 isn’t too old for pop-ups after all? She made Elmo dance, which was something I had missed.

Oh, now I want to get out all my Sesame Street videos again and watch…

In my pink imagination

I walked past the empty shop again. Well, since it’s in amongst our nearby row of shops, I go past it often, so it’s hardly worth mentioning. The shop front is rather pink and purple, which might be because it was a florist’s before. In these hard times it’s not surprising they went out of business, and neither is it strange that the premises still stand empty.

When I pass the shop, or even when I think about it, it turns into our local specialist crime bookshop. My bookshop, to be precise. Well, a person can dream. As someone who had a house covered in vividly pink carpets for a few years in the mid 1980s, I can assure you it is much cheaper to imagine, than actually to do. I never did have pink carpets, really, but in my – inexplicable – pink period I wanted them. Lack of money meant they remained in my mind, although I tried to get visitors to see them too.

So, I have the loveliest little bookshop, a mere three minutes walk from our house. Couldn’t be more convenient. We considered making it a children’s bookshop, but since one opened a few miles away very recently, we felt it’d make more financial sense to pick another speciality. I have already – in my mind – invited lots of authors to come to events. I’ll use the upstairs for my cosy author events.

It’s a far better shop than the one we imagined 25 years ago. I suppose it just goes to show that we don’t change much, just mature a little and improve on the dreams. And they had better remain dreams. I am not a good shopkeeper. I read. I dream. I don’t sell.

But I’ll repaint the shop premises. This time I don’t want pink. In my mind the shop looks like an amalgamation of everything I love in my house magazines. Except it’s a shop, not a house.

I, Coriander

I, Coriander is a prize in several ways. Daughter won her copy, personally signed by Sally Gardner herself, when the book was new. I forget what she did that was so good, but she won it nevertheless. It was something at the local bookshop, and Sally had been meeting the owners, and so the signed book came this way.

It is a beautiful book, just like Sally’s two later novels, with old pictures of London on the cover and inside. A red ribbon to keep the right place for the reader. Very old-fashioned and attractive. But I could never quite get away from visualising a bunch of green herbs. Extremely stupid of me, but that, and lack of time, meant I didn’t read I, Coriander until now.

The lovely thing about having been a prize idiot over Sally’s book, is that this way I was rewarded – undeservedly – with a wonderful read so much later. It’s set in the era of Cromwell, and I realised yet again that I need to improve my knowledge of British history. Coriander was born in 1643 and the novel ends in 1660. Her family were Royalists, which wasn’t a good thing to be just then.

What actually struck me was that it’d be easy to read the descriptions of what London was like at the time, and what Cromwell’s regime was like, and think that nowadays everything is so much better and more refined. But pessimist that I am, I feel the story describes pretty much what it’s like here and in other countries today. I don’t think we ever improve. We just like to think we do.

Coriander’s mother dies when her daughter is young, and the effects of her death almost ruin the lives of all those around her. There is a lot of fantasy or magic, which is never quite explained. Coriander finds she can do magic, a bit like her mother, but that’s not good. In Cromwell’s England magic is dangerous, and in Coriander’s fantasy world things aren’t so great either.

Sally has come up with an appalling stepmother figure, and her even more appalling ‘helper’. Coriander has a hard time, and it takes her years to find her way back to some kind of normal life. In fairness, she has also created some wonderful and strong minor characters, who all have their part to play. I loved the story, but I must admit to not having ‘got’ the very end.

Foreigners – who wants them?

A little over ten years ago I was called for an interview at what I understand is often called Heroin House locally. To be honest, I forget what the government department is called these days, but it’s where you get your benefits, if you’ve been good. The only benefits I’ve ever been after is child benefit, which I always felt fairly entitled to, having produced the two Offspring. What I didn’t have at the time was a National Insurance number, which was hardly my fault. After all, it’s handed out by the authorities, not grabbed by the recipients.

So, an interview was required, to ascertain that I was really me and that Offspring really existed. I was treated to a very condescending ‘chat’ by someone half my age, whose educational background I don’t want to speculate on, but I doubt she outranked me, so to speak. Even though I’m a mere foreigner.

It was quite clear that any foreigner is considered to be roughly on a level with monkeys. What’s more, they were fairly certain I’d want to flood this country with other foreign family members. It was the thought that my lovely, but ancient, aunts, who spoke no English, and who had wonderful flats and their own holiday homes, would be desperate to enter Britain and be a burden on the UK benefits system, that really upset me.

In some ways, it’s to their credit that they love their country so much, these benefits people, that they feel the whole world will want to come and live here, too. But that’s what my aunts would have said about their country, and why they were so worried about my safety and happiness when I left for Britain.

Anyway, the reason I’m moaning about this right now, is that I was sent an email from one of my regular publishers, about an illustrator who isn’t allowed back into Britain because his educational status is too modest. Nikhil Singh has lived in Hampstead for three years, but after briefly returning to South Africa, has to reapply for a visa, for which he needs to be university educated.

So he missed his own book launch for the comic book Salem Brownstone: All Along the Watchtowers. Without a degree Nikhil can’t have a visa, and he has had to take an English test, which seems a little superfluous for someone who has worked as a journalist here. He has also lost his London home, and has not seen his long term girlfriend for months.

I don’t know Nikhil’s work, but I can sympathise with his situation. There is a petition you can sign, which isn’t about Nikhil in particular, but about this whole idea that this country can’t let in just anyone.

I fully expect to be kicked out after this. Or maybe they can’t do that? I have a degree. Doesn’t make me a better person, though. In fact, they wanted me to sign a piece of paper that ‘guesstimated’ my date of birth, because without a proper British birth certificate you can’t be too sure.

Not done with the horror yet…

Now that it’s safely November, I had intended the horror to be over until next year, but then I read Fiona Dunbar’s blog post recommending spooky books. Very good list. And of course she reminded me of that book I prefer not to dwell on. Because there are spookier books than my suggestions this past week.

You know I said before how scary Celia Rees is? When Celia isn’t writing wonderful historical novels, she writes spooky horror stories. I have read  several, and most of them are sort of ‘cosy spook’, which to my mind just means they are good stories with something ghostly, somewhere. Nothing to lose sleep over. Fiona’s recommended Blood Sinister is one of the cosies, to my mind. Enjoyable, but leaving with me with my wits intact.

I had to go hunting in Son’s bookcase for that other scary book. It’s City of Shadows, and I wouldn’t dream of ‘reviewing’ it here. It was scary enough just reading it, all those years ago. It’s a trilogy, and whereas I would normally have hastened out to buy the other two books, in this case I didn’t. Still haven’t. Maybe they won’t be too bad. But you can’t be sure.

(If anyone out there has read A Trap in Time and The Host Rides Out, and found them lovely and sunny stories, please let me know.)

So, that just shows how brave I am. Do try them, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Gates to Hell and all that

I should have known you can’t have just one book about dead bishops. Here is another one, although the bishop isn’t the main character, or anything. This is a Halloween book, so go get a copy to get you into a nice demonish mood for the day.

It can be very dangerous for the TBR pile development to go and poke around on other people’s blogs, but when Declan on Crime Always Pays put the first chapter of John Connolly’s The Gates up, I couldn’t resist. And John was extremely charming about being begged for a copy.

The Gates is a very funny book, and very exciting, too. (And what’s more, it’s short, in this age of four-inch thick books.) Samuel Johnson and his dachshund Boswell are out trick-or-treating, slightly prematurely, when they come across something at the neighbours’ house that doesn’t look very good.

It’s not good. Earth is about to be invaded by really bad demons. (But as the more alert readers can work out, Halloween is not a good time for demons to invade anywhere.) 11-year-old Samuel and his friends and his dog have to try and save the world from this new threat. They get some assistance from a friendly demon called Nurd, and information – if not useful help – from the scientists involved with the Large Hadron Collider. Because it just happens to accidentally help the demons find a way in.

John believes in footnotes. Lots of them. They are very amusing footnotes, which is lucky, because I really don’t like the flow of my reading interrupted all the time. But I forgive him, because they are funny. And necessary.

As with far too many authors, I don’t know John’s books at all. In the case of The Gates, think Douglas Adams meets Eoin Colfer. That should do it.

Witch Baby and me after dark

Oh, Witch Baby, how lovely and normal you are! First and foremost you are a sweet little toddler. I know you just happen to be able to do magic, because you’re a witch, and you’re getting really good at it now. As with all toddlers, you are slowly learning to interact with friends and family, too. And you love that dog of yours.

So when WayWoof disappears, we can just about guess why. After all, there are puppies on the way, somehow. And you just have to find your WayWoof again.

It being Halloween, you go round the neighbourhood with big sister Lily and her friend Vivaldi. Never mind that they are trussed up in sheets like mummies. Your costume is marvellous, and very convincing. All of them are. I think I like the little devil one is best.

Everyone seems to be out for Halloween, including the Chin. I think you’re proving to be a good influence on both the Chin and the Toad. Possibly even on the Nose. Love is beautiful for witches and lonely Daddies and imaginary werewolves.

This grumpy old witch thinks that everyone should read about you, Witch Baby. And your kind of puppy is the best kind.