11/19/2006

Reading Wolves of the Calla, the fifth book in the Dark Tower series, by Stephen King. He's been reading the series over the past year. His favorite authors--Steven King, Dean Koontz, and a couple of Sweedish authors (he's Sweedish)--Olov Svedelid, who writes crime and history novels set in Stockholm; and Henning Mankell, who writes the same sort of books, but sets them in southern Sweeden.

By coincidence, he actually knows the Sweedish translator of the Steven King novels, but he reads them in English. Something, he says, gets lost in the translation. When I asked him to elaborate on this he explained that it's like this--if you pick up an English version and read the first few sentences, you're hooked, but, if you pick up the Sweedish version, it usually takes until the end of the first chapter.

His favorite book--The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.