16. Steve Pinker. How the mind Works. hands down one of the best books read in 2010, i'll put the full review at http://canguro3.googlepages.com/

17, 18, 19. (audio) Millenium trilogy. The girl with the dragon tatoo; The girl who played with fire; the girl who kicked the hornest's nest. Stieg Larsson. Ok, if I'm going to read some best selling crime novel, the least I cna do is to stay away from american cliché. But the main reason why I decided to vdive into the Millenium trilogy is because i read Larssons' bio and I quite impressed with the guy, his fight against neo-nazis, bigotry, and corruption. The kind of guy I would be if I was a better person.

It is indeed refreshing to read a book that takes place in Sweeden. I can't help but notice that in american movies a cave man, a dark-ages priest, knights and extra-terrestial creatures, all feel tiresome californian, as that's the only character development they give them; instead, this novel takes you to a place geographically familiar, but with subtle different psyche that it feels truly alien.

The novel has a few flaws, we are constantly reminded of the same facts over and over, particulary on the third novel. Also, it goes into excrutiating detail about computer equipment, lunch details (do sweedes really have cheese sandwiches and cofee for a meal all of the time?) and dives into the background of seriously secondary characters... which I would usually appreciate on a literary novel, but this is a crime novel, so i'd appreciate trimming some of it.
The character of Lisbeth Salander is credible, incredible annoying in her non-comprommising atttitude, I guessed the asperger syndrome way before Blomkvist mentions it on the 3rd novel. Blomkvist's irrestibility to women is annoying only because of the jealousy it causes, but his cruzade against financial corruption makes him one of the few fiction heros that has the attributes to be a real life hero (sorry Batman).

While not the most stylish writter, Larsson's trilogy is quite entreteinining, it does give you the feeling of good defeating evil (evil being a moving target witht he common theme of man hating woman). and it reads much more easily that the next book I got my hands into, also called Millenium, but a very different kind...