In my recap of the trip to St. Louis, I neglected to tell you about the most excellent bookstore of all time, Big Sleep Books. It specializes in crime, detective, and noir fiction — aka my favorite sorts of things. The novels I write about tend not to be explicitly detective novels (rather narratives with a mystery or investigative theme), but as far as genre fiction goes, I am all about a good detective novel.



I bought the classic Dashiell Hammett novel The Thin Man and a novel by a Norwegian writer named K.O. Dahl (hello, I will apparently buy anything designated with the initials K and O). I can’t wait to get the chance to dig into these.



At the moment, however, I am about halfway through the second book in the Hunger Games series, and then there is the matter of my boyfriend David Foster Wallace’s posthumously published novel, The Pale King. I am up to my eyeballs in great reading. Good problem to have.

Speaking of Scandinavian crime fiction, can we talk about The Killing, aka Forbrydelsen? The Danish television crime drama that made it big on the BBC even with subtitles and that has now been made into an American TV drama on AMC? Can we talk, more specifically, about why none of you jerks told me about this?



If you don’t happen to know that I 1) study detective fiction, 2) speak Danish, 3) study Danish narratives, and 4) am obsessed with Scandinavian crime narratives in all forms, e.g., written, cinematic, televisual, then you are not held accountable. How would you know to tell me about this? The rest of you, however, ARE ON NOTICE.

Anyway, this is all to say that I looked all over the dog-gone internet for the original Danish version* with English subtitles and eventually had to download the first season on schmit-schmorrent, if you know what I mean. I would love to become the legal owner of this entire series on DVD, in Danish, if possible. But my point is, I have the entire first season and I am SO exited to start watching it!

*Look, I know it makes me sound like a pretentious dork-nozzle to insist on seeing the original Danish when I’m sure I could watch the American AMC version much more easily, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about American filmmakers’ long tradition of taking shows and movies from other countries, remaking them, and ruining them. The Office is the obvious (only?) exception to this. See also above re: speaking and studying Danish. See also also my over-dansk last name. Familien represent, ja?



But before I can start Forbrydelsen I had to finish Friday Night Lights. I finally watched the last four episodes last night, and I think the reason I feel a little dehydrated today is not the wine I drank while watching nor the bike ride and run I went on in today’s 88 degree weather, but rather the many, many sad tears I shed. Absolutely wonderful end to the series. Also, why oh why is this show (and its amazing writers, directors, and cast) not winning all of the Emmys ever? I call bullshit on that.