Weekly Geeks # 25

Yet another fun assignment from Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf. And with the holidays coming up (which is a surprise for me every darn year) we can all use some gift-ideas for those in our lives who loves to read - or whom we want to get into reading perhaps?

Heres what this week's Weekly Geeks is about:

1. Think about the books that you and people in your life love. It’s best to use more obscure books, because we’ve all heard plenty about the more popular ones.
2. Come up with categories, based on relationship, personality, or whatever else you like. I think this is easier to do once you have your books in mind; you can then just assign categories to those books.
3. Post your own gift giving guide! Add short blurbs about the books, just enough so that your readers can determine if it’d be a good gift for people on their list.

Here is my take on a little gift giving guide:

For the serious crime/thriller/mystery-lover I strongly recommend the Swedish mega-bestseller "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. The unlikely pair in this mega-monstrous-super-fantastic thriller is the 40-something journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the 2o-something hacker-girl Lisbet Salander. Both of them with many interesting sides to their personalities. Add to that a gallery of other exciting characters and a plot that will spin you around and you have this the first book in the Millenium-series by now deceased Stieg Larsson, who managed to write three books about Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbet Salander. All huge bestsellers in Scandinavia. TRY THIS ONE!


For the chick-lit reader, I recommend "Girls of Riyadh" by Rajaa al-Sanea. It is not high browed literature and I am not even sure that I will call it that well-written. But it definitely offers a rare glimpse into the life of a group of young, upper-middleclass Saudi girls and what problems they face in life, love, sex, fashion, education and so on. The book has been hot stuff in the Middle Eastern world for some years now and it is said that specially the Saudi boys were curious to read it. Definitely recommended for a light read.

For the picky reader in the family with a more refined taste and the want for someting with a little more meat, I recommend Midaq Alley by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. This novel was written in the 1940's and revolves around the people in an alley in Cairo. Life is harsh, possibilities are rare and gossip abounds. It is not a happy read, but it is masterly written and deals with things that are still going strong in Egypt today. Highly recommendable, but this book is not for all.

I hope this will inspire you to some interesting gifts. I guarantee it is interesting reads :o)