Odd. There's a movie version of Sense of Snow. It was one of the stranger movies I had seen at the time I saw it, a few years ago.

The movie’s okay. Suffers from the usual problems of adaptation. The book is amazing. (Okay, except for the MacGuffin, which only appears at the end, so you can ignore it.) And Bangkok 8 is the only book I can think of that’s put me in the same head space.

(There has got to be a less 60s way to say that.)

Among other things, both books are excellent non-SF examples of how to stealthily deliver ferocious infodumps — under the cover of giving the reader a deeper insight into the narrator’s character.

I loved Bangkok 8, so odd and dreamy and yet focused. I read it on an airplane to somewhere and it was the perfect type of book for that.

Peter Hoeg's work is, in general, amazing. :)

The Høeg book is sitting on my bookshelf, but our copy is in Swedish. I don't have the patience to get through the whole thing in Swedish, but I'd feel silly buying a second copy in English. So for the past year or so I've remained at a standstill in my Smilla-reading status.

Eventually I will either acknowledge that my Swedish's not good enough and buy an English copy, or I'll get more fluent so I can read the book we've got.

That’s what happened to me with the Spanish edition of Kalpa Imperial. I did eventually give up and start in on the English, but it took me a couple of years.

'sfunny, I was just looking at my movie list the other day and remembering how much I disliked the movie of Smilla's Sense of Snow. I didn't enjoy most of it very much, and then I really hated the MacGuffin at the end.

But I've heard good things about the book from various people, so I may well give it a try sometime.

You will still hate the MacGuffin. But the rest of it is very enjoyable.

I'll tell you, if the English version of Smilla had LeGuin as translator, I would have read it by now.

Bangkok 8 is, indeed, a lovely book. I bought three copies when it came out in paperback: one for me, two to shove into the hands of friends. It's been a long time since a book sent me running to the book store like that.