Federer Wins 64th Tour Title; Tied With Sampras At 4th Most All-Time

Roger Federer won the 2010 Stockholm Open over Florian Mayer 6-4 6-3 to tie Pete Sampras for 4th on the all-time list of ATP tour titles won at 64. Jimmy Connors leads with 107, followed by Ivan Lendl at 94 and John McEnroe at 77.

Federer's career record is now 64 wins and 28 losses in finals, which is significantly better than his 2010 record in finals which is 3-4 (losses to Rafael Nadal in the Madrid Masters on clay, to Andy Murray in the Toronto and Shanghai Masters on hard courts and to Lleyton Hewitt in Halle, on grass).

Federer is now 29 years old but has promised to play through thw 2012 Olympics in London, which will be held on grass. He won the Gold medal in doubles but Nadal won the Gold in singles in Beijing in 2008.

I predict Federer will surpass McEnroe's total by the time he retires  but Lendl's total is safe. Another record Federer would dearly like to have, is the most weeks at #1, where he is exactly one week behind Sampras' record of 286.

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

The third (and final?) book from Steig Larsson is The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which follows in the footsteps of the publishing sensations The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

The books are set in Sweden and revolve around the character of Lisbeth Salander, one of the most celebrated anti-heroines in all of fiction. Salander is a boyish-looking, multiply pierced, very short woman with an eidetic memory and world-class computer hacking skills.

The other main character of what is now known as the Millennium trilogy is Mikael Blomkvist. He is a crusading investigative reporter, 40-something and devastatingly attractive to women.He is clearly a proxy for the author, who was editor-in-chief of an alternative magazine in Sweden for years before dying suddenly of a heart attack shortly after delivering the manuscripts for the first two books.

Both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire are intensely suspenseful novels that became blockbuster bestsellers in Sweden and around the world. They have been turned into Swedish-language films with a major Hollywood version on the way.

The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is a fitting third chapter in the Millennium trilogy but is not the best book of the series (it's hard to choose between the first two books but  I think I'd have to give an edge to the second one for sheer suspense, although the plot and atmosphere of the first is compelling). Although familiar themes of misogyny and little guys fighting the big guys crop up again in Hornet's Nest, for some reason it's not as gripping as the first two novels even though the stakes involved get higher and higher. This is probably primarily because the book has no central mystery any longer, it devolves more into a police procedural combined with a courtroom thriller. These are not bad aspects, but they are not exactly the same elements which made Dragon Tattoo so enthralling. For the first time I noticed the somewhat leaden dialogue, as well as the multiple shifts to first-person narrative, often to secondary characters.

Overall, I'm glad I read the trilogy and would heartily recommend to anyonje who likes mystery or suspense to read either of the first two. I really can't imagine anyone having done that not completing the entire series, despite the diminished return of the third book.

Author: Stieg Larsson.
Title: The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Hardcover: 563 pages
Publisher: Knopf.
Date Published: May 25, 2010.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl Who Played With Fire

The sequel to Stieg Larsson's amazing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is The Girl Who Played with Fire.

As I mentioned in my review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the book was nearly impossible to put down. It's sequel is even more addictive. The third book in what is now being called the Millenium series was released on Tuesday May 25th and is called The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

The first book really doesn't treat Lisbeth Salander as the main character, even though she is clearly the title character. The second book is clearly all about Lisbeth Salander. The book begins with her, the plot centers around her back story and the book ends with her.

There is another mystery in Fire, of course; this time it's a brutal double murder of a couple that occurs the same night (probably in the same hour) as the torture-murder of someone who had abused Lisbeth.

The reader's loyalties are severely tested--could the hyper-intelligent, violent, socially unaware, sexually ambiguous, titular Girl also be a murderer? Mikael Blomkvist, the true main character from Tattoo, returns and is basically the only one who believes in Lisbeth's innocence after she becomes Sweden's #1 Most Wanted criminal, blasted on the front page of every media outlet in the country.

Another interesting feature of Fire is that it includes the internal details of the police investigation to solve the double murder as well as an inside view on the manhunt to track down Lisbeth.

The resolution of the mysteries are skillfully done and by the end of the book we find out a lot more about Lisbeth, especially her family background. But to get there the reader is taken on a nail-bitingly suspenseful ride which is well worth the price of admission: cracking open the book.

Author: Stieg Larsson.
Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire.
Paperback: 656 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition.
Date Published: March 23, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

Portugal President Enacts Marriage Equality

Portugal will become the tenth jurisdiction in the world (sixth country in Europe) where marriage between same-sex couples is legal after President Anibal Cavaco Silva agreed to allow the measure become law today, the International Day Against Homophobia, despite direct lobbying from the Pope, who had decried gay marriage when he visited the country last week.

The bill was a priority of Portugal's recently elected prime minister Jose Socrates who had included the measure in his election portfolio. However, to become law the measure needed the assent of the President.

"I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us," Cavaco Silva said.

He said that, in ratifying the law, he was setting aside "personal convictions."

Elsewhere in Europe, gay marriage is permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.

Five U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, as have Canada and South Africa.

Portugal is nearly 90 percent Catholic. However, only around 2 million of its 10.6 million people describe themselves as practicing Catholics and in recent times Portugal has drifted away from the church's teachings.

The current Socialist government has defied the church before. It passed a law in 2007 allowing abortion. The following year, it introduced a law allowing divorce even if one of the spouses objected. It has argued that the legislation is part of Portugal's "modernization."

The new law removes the previous legal stipulation that marriage is between two people of different sexes.

Portugal's Constitutional Court validated the bill's legality last month.

[...]

Portugal lifted a prohibition on homosexuality in the early 1980s. In 2001, it passed a law allowing "civil unions" between same-sex couples, which granted couples certain legal, tax and property rights. However, it did not allow couples to take a partner's name, nor inherit his or her possessions or state pension.

Congratulations! Anyone fancy a trip to Lisbon to celebrate?

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson has become a publishing phenomenon. It's a contemporary mystery novel set in Sweden (Stockholm, mostly), written by a debut novelist who died suddenly before his books were officially published.

Happily he wrote three books before he died, and the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest will be released in May 2010. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has also been made into a major (Swedish) motion picture which was released in the United States in March 2010.

The book is centered around Lisbeth Sander, an anti-social hacker with a photographic memory who works with a corporate security form on private investigations of people, as well as Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist/publisher who loses a libel case against a prominent Swedish businessman. The story is set in Sweden, mostly Stockholm and the fictional Hedestad Island.

The plot is incredibly complex, built around three compelling mysteries: solving a disappearance of a 16-year old girl from a remote Swedish island over forty years before, unearthing the truth about the complicated business deal which caused Blomkvist to commit libel and fiiguring out what makes Lisbeth Salander tick.

Salander is one of the great characters in the mystery genre; it is no wonder that Oscar-nominated British actress Carey Mulligan has aggressively gone after (and apparently won) the role, with David Fincher directing.

Despite a viciously negative review from The New York Times, the novel has gone on to become a publishing sensation in several countries and won multiple awards. This is not surprising to understand. Once begun, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is almost impossible to put down. I got it for Christmas last year and had finished it and the sequel before New Year's Eve!

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Author: Stieg Larsson.
Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Paperback: 608 pages.
Publisher: Vintage.
Published: June 23, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

Eye Candy: Martin Elkholm

There has been quite a buzz about the multiracial model Martin Elkholm, who is of Swedish and Jamaican descent, on lots of the "eyecandy" blogs.

I'm sure you can appreciate why. Enjoy!

Eye Candy: Daniel Norell

Smoking hot photographer and model Daniel Norell is a pulchritudinous specimen of multiracial and Swedish ancestry. It's surprising someone this good looking would want to spend time behind the camera instead of in front of it, but apparently Daniel is "quite versatile." Gosh, I hope so!

Sweden Becomes 7th Country To Legalize Marriage Equality

On May 1, 2009 Sweden will become the seventh country in the world in which marriage is a gender-neutral contract between two individuals after a vote in the Swedish Parliament on Wednesday. The vote in the Riksdag was 261 to 22 with 66 abstentions.

From The Advocate's website:

Gender-neutral marriage licenses will begin to be issued starting May 1, replacing a civil union option that has been offered since 1995. Religious institutions will not be compelled to perform ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples. A majority of bishops in the Church of Sweden said that churches should not be allowed the task of handling legal registrations of marriages.

The Netherlands (2001), Norway (2008), Belgium (2003), Spain (2005), Canada (2005), and South Africa (2006) already allow same-sex marriage.

Hmmmm, as evidenced in the links above I notice that 5 of the 7 countries which have legalized gender-neutral marriage have done so since this blog came into existence in January 2005. Coincidence or cause and effect?