notes from the “stormakstiden”

The dust is just starting to settle on the whirlwind that is the semester’s start, so am taking a deep breath and combing through my alerts and blog feeds to see what I’ve been missing . . .

Quite a lot!

Ali Karim has a two part interview with Swedish authors Anders Rosland and Börge Hellström at The Rap Sheet – part one and part two. They have this to say about the climate for the genre:

Swedish publishers have for many years nurtured and treated crime fiction as a strong, independent genre … We share this ethos that the crime-fiction genre is not just “pulp.” The best crime fiction’s duty is to entertain and tell a good story, but [it should also be] imbued with knowledge and question what we see around us.

Writing crime fiction is something that we take very seriously and put our whole hearts into; it is, and should be, just as difficult and demanding as writing any other kind of novel … And when you see it like that, and those around you recognize that genre fiction is as relevant (and important) as literary fiction, then good results are entirely possible. And of course it helps that as Scandinavians, we have so much darkness, so many long dark nights, snow and cold, lack of daylight, that actually the environment is conducive to crime fiction.

In Publishing Perpectives, Lasse Winkler offers an appreciation of how Stieg Larsson’s success has provided entree to US markets for Swedish genre writers and mentions how much Swedish publishers are culling their lists, publishing more domestic crime fiction and less in translation.

Norm (aka Uriah) reckons this might just be a “stormakstiden” – a golden age for crime fiction that we might in future find dominated by Scandinavian authors.

The British version of Wallander is running in its second season on PBS in the US, and I am woefully late in letting folks know. Janet Rudolph was not so tardy in her appreciation. Kenneth Branagh speaks about his role in an interview.  Keep watching Sunday evenings between October 3 – October 17.

Bernadette has finished the Scandinavian crime fiction challenge launched by Black Sheep Dancing, and has a handy set of links to her reviews, the most recent of which is of Jo Nesbo’s The Redbreast.

Geoffrey McNab interviews Henning Mankell for the Dublin Herald.

An interview with Camilla Lackberg is available at the Explore West Sweden blog. (And oh, yes, I would like to explore west Sweden.)

Glenn Harper reviews the television version of the Irene Huss series by Helene Tursten – and in the comments, there is the very good news that Soho will be publishing more of the series – yippee!

And on to reviews:

Maxine reviews Silence by Jan Costin Wagner, a German writer who lives and writes about Finland. She finds it “quietly compelling” and helpfully links to reviews by Karen Meek at Euro Crime and Norm at Crime Scraps.

Bookaholic of the Boston Book Bums reviews Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Last Rituals, “a quick read that blended the macabre with the academic.”

Martin Shaw, a bookseller in Australia, reviews Anders Rosland and Börge Hellström’s Three Seconds and calls it “stellar.”

Karen Meek reviews Postcard Killers, the collaboration between James Patterson and Liza Marklund, which has the trademarked pace uninterrupted by social commentary or much about Sweden that couldn’t fit on a . . . well, a postcard.

Carly Waito has good things to say about Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series and has a lovely photo of them, too.

Karen Russell of How Mysterious! reviews Karin Fossum’s Don’t Look Back, which she decided would be the first of many Fossums she would like to read.

Peter reviews Camilla Ceder’s Frozen Moment, which he thinks shows promise.

Now I feel a bit caught up; if I can just find a moment to read . . .

reviews and resolutions

Karen reviews Death in Oslo by Anne Holt at that magnificent site, Euro Crime. It sounds good, in spite of a somewhat annoying lead character and one plot-driven bit of mind-lapse. “My enjoyment of this series increases with every book and I hope the fourth book, now out in Norwegian, will reach us in English soon” Karen writes. “Also the intriguing character of Hanne Wilhelmsen has a fairly large role in this book and it would be lovely if the other books featuring her were to be translated into English at some point.” I’ll second that. She sounds much more interesting than another (yawn) profiler.

Bernadette points out an article in the mainstream press on 2009’s “bumper crop of crime fiction.” The author has good taste and highlights both Jo Nesbo’s The Redeemer and Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. However his taste, sadly, is not matched by a grasp of geography. Back to the fourth grade for you.

Melanie whose blog is titled “It’s a Mystery … What I Should Read Next” knows one book she’s going to read as soon as possible: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. She may be standing in line a la Harry Potter the day of the release in the US. Maybe she’ll have company outside the bookstore.

The Independent takes a look at the television versions of the Wallander books and their appeal – as well as the differences between the Swedish and BBC productions.

BBC4’s decision to broadcast several episodes of the hit Swedish Wallander series has given British audiences the chance to compare and contrast Wallanders. How does the original, local, Swedish series stand up to the award-winning detective dramas starring Kenneth Branagh?

“They are quite different,” the series’ Swedish producer Ole Sondberg says. “Where they’re really different is that Branagh really focused on the dark side of the character, whereas if you see the Swedish series, we are trying to achieve more humour, more lightness, We were very afraid that the character would be too dark.”

So the Swedes are not so gloomy after all! Yet in spite of different approaches, theses popular crime stories transcend borders.

Audiences in Sweden, Britain and elsewhere, respond to Wallander because he does seem such a vulnerable and grounded figure. He is a middle-aged man whose life is always at risk of falling apart. The detective is estranged from his wife and has a tempestuous relationship with both his daughter and his elderly father.

In the wake of the success of the Wallander TV dramas and of the Stieg Larsson film adaptation, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (made by the same production company), there has been much speculation about why the world is currently so obsessed with Scandinavian crime fiction. Is it the light? Is it the long winters, or the tendency toward introspection? Is it the interior design?

The irony, as far as Ole Sondberg is concerned, is that, in the Swedish Wallander, there has been a self-conscious attempt to introduce more humour and to escape from the stereotype of gloomy Swedes. He suggests that the two series work best in very different markets. For example, the US has no interest in the Swedish Wallander whereas the much darker Branagh version has done extremely well with American audiences.

Arguably, the success of the Mankell and Larsson books isn’t really to do with Sweden at all. The themes and characters have a universality of appeal.

Though a small correction: some cable channels are running the Swedish version, as Glenn Harper can attest – he’s been reviewing Norwegian and Swedish television adaptations at International Crime Fiction. Jut not my cable provider. (Sniff.)

Finally, have you made you new year’s resolutions yet? No fear, it’s not too late to join Dorte’s Global Reading Challenge.

more tidbits from the snowy midwest

The Girl has fans in India, too.

Glenn has further dispatches from the land of Wallander television adaptations, this time of Blodsband (The Black King) – original to the small screen, not from a book. Norm (aka Uriah) also writes about the Swedish television series, saying it had a better balance of ensemble characters than the BBC version.  The Guardian has an article on the actress who played Linda Wallander and how her suicide affected the writer and the series, suggesting that the new female heroine in The Man from Beijing was created because Mankell had to stop writing about the character Johanna Sallstrom played. It’s very sad.

the man with the snake tattoo

BookPage has a review of James Thompson’s Snow Angels, saying he is a “major new talent.” Well, technically speaking, Snow Angels was his second book – just the first for this American writer to be published in the US rather than in Finnish translation at his current home in Helsinki, where three of his books have been published by Johnny Kniga. (What an intriguing name for a publisher – “kniga” is Russian for book. Johnny is … not.) I’ve just started a review copy of this book. So far, so cold. No, I meant good. But it does take place in the winter and it is very, very cold and dark. No wonder they kill each other.

More evidence that I need to learn Swedish: the Bookwitch points out an article in the  Vi (a culture magazine, part of which is available online) with a photo of the high-literary couple who have created a bestselling thriller, revealing their identities when the marketing moment was ripe. In the previous post here, Steve aka Reg Keeland (Stieg Larsson’s translator) takes issue with a claim that The Hypnotist will seize readers’ imaginations the way that the Millennium Trilogy has.  Though he reports it is a “page turner” with plenty of action, it’s “lacking in the major appeal of Stieg Larsson: a moral view.” Which is, of course, the whole point.

a snow-covered god jul post

Having gotten distracted by work, here’s a catch-up post of things that have accumulated over the past few weeks…

A blogger who “never stops reading – no matter what” has added Kjell Eriksson’s The Cruel Stars of Night to her Year in Books blog. She says “I love the way Eriksson writes and I love the slow and methodical pacing of this novel” though she takes issue with a plot turn that required the protagonist to be momentarily dimwitted. But she forgives the lapse and says she can “definitely recommend Cruel Stars of the Night to those who enjoy a really good police procedural, and to those who also enjoy psychological suspense.”

She also reviews a book from Finland written by an American who lives there (and first was published in Finnish) –James Thompson’s Snow Angels. There are some coincidences in the plot, she feels, and some of the characters are not as fleshed-out as she would like, but it has its strong points. “I was drawn in by the author’s ability to set the tone of the bleakness of life above the Arctic Circle in Finland, where it’s dark and cold and to pass the time, people have little to do other than drink. The atmosphere was so well laid out for the reader that for a time you can imagine yourself there.” This one is in my TBR so I will be reporting my reaction here before long.

Peter broods over the meaning of the brooding detective while recommending Arnaldur Indridason’s Erlendur series at Detectives Beyond Borders. As always, his blog is really a salon with many interesting comments on Scandinavians, Italians, families, and more.

The Nekkidblogger (brrrr!) predicts that The Hypnotist by “Lars Keppler” will be the next Stieg Larsson-like sensation even though Lars Keppler is actually a collaboration of two literary authors.

Lars Kepler does not exist. Huge sensation. Lars Kepler turned out to be a pseudonym for two literary authors, husband-and-wife Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril, now writing under the pseudonym Lars Kepler. They have so far barely been able to sustain themselves economically by their writing. Now they wanted to make money. And in Sweden, crime fiction writers make big money. And, of course, when in Sweden, do as the Swedes. So they decided to write crime fiction, using a cool name.

The Nordic Book Blog reviews Ake Edwardson’s Death Angels which he finds a “well constructed police procedural” though less polished than the later books in the series. This was the first, though the most recent to be translated into English.

Naomi of The Drowning Machine reviews Asa Larsson’s The Black Path which she feels suffers from excessive exposition and draggy pacing. “The Black Path has atmosphere to spare, a hallmark of Swedish crime fic, and the characters are thoroughly developed. When I say thoroughly I mean to the point that the details of every character’s life, past and present, drag the pace down to NASCAR (National Association of Snail Crawling and Roundaboutation) speed. . . . An unlikely blood bath as the climax combined with what seemed a brief and pointless interjection of romance at novel’s end, all left me unmoved.” In the comment thread that follows she points out that others who read the book felt differently, but I had many of the same reservations though I was not quite so … em, expressive.

Several bloggers participating in the ABC of crime fiction meme have highlighted Scandinavian crime fiction including

• F is for Fossum (Maxine at Petrona)
• H is for Hakan Nesser (Norm aka Uriah at Crime Scraps)
• I is for Indridason (Dorte on The Draining Lake – I won’t quibble that A should be for Arnaldur, as Icelanders don’t actually have last names)
• J is for Jungstedt (Maxine at Petrona who has reviewed Unseen, Unspoken, and Unknown)
• L is for Lackberg (Dorte again, who offers an appetizer of a book that hasn’t yet made it into English)
• L is also for Asa Larsson (Maxine at Petrona)
• L is furthermore for Leif Davidson (Norm aka Uriah at Crime Scraps)

I have not been playing along, but I might propose A is for Alvtegen, B for Burman, C for Camilla Lackberg,  D for K.O. Dahl, and E for Edwardson … maybe I’ll have enough time to play in the new year. Or maybe not.

Maxine at Petrona points out that Ake Edwardson’s Sun and Shadow, Arnaldur Indridason’s Voices, and Liza Marklund’s The Bomber qualifies for Christmas Crime. Kerrie, who started both memes at her Mysteries in Paradise, scored both with Voices, using it for both the letter I and for Christmas Crime.

More BBC Wallander is on the way.

Those in the UK NZ get to see the Girl on film starting on boxing day, or so this site claims (when I read it properly). Ali has already gotten a sneak peek as well he should, being the world number one fan (GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO GiRl WiTh ThE dRaGoN tAtToO). So did Craig Sisterton in New Zealand. Those of us in the US can twiddle our thumbs. We’re used to it.

Americans, however, will be resposible for a remake. This is not a very good form of revenge.

A Danish film journal has an analysis of the gender roles in the films which, fortunately for us unschooled yanks, is in English. The authors contrast the treatment of gender in the books with the depiction in the films.

Our main argument is that the adaptation from novel to film involves an alteration of the gender representations in the two main characters, and that this alteration corresponds to the genre-specific and media-specific conditions associated respectively with the genre thriller versus crime fiction and with the format of the film versus that of the novel. In examining these differences in relation to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we draw on the fact that gender is a central issue in Nordic crime fiction as bestseller and cultural commodity.

Basically, the authors argue that the gender relationships are simplified in the film as it is condensed for the shorter storytelling format. When I finally get a chance to see the films, I’ll see if I agree.

Finally, glædelig jul, Hyvää joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta, gleðileg jól og farsælt komandi ár, god jul og godt nytt år, and god jul och gott nytt år! I leave you with a photo from Minnesota of King Gustav Adolph enjoying our white Christmas….

"... I seem to have something in my eye..."

and still more from the smorgasbord

There’s an interesting article on Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo by Jack Bumsted in the lastest newsletter from the Whodunit bookstore in Winnepeg, Canada. He points out the social critique that the couple deliberately wove into their Martin Beck series and the similarities between their work and that of both the American hardboiled tradition and current Swedish crime fiction (especially some parallels between Wahloo’s life and Stieg Larsson’s).

Glenn Harper reflects on a new television version of Norwegian author Gunnar Stalessen’s hero Varg Veum which some lucky people are able to watch on an enlightened and worldly cable channel (not available in my neighborhood, harrumph).  It sounds good, and as Glenn points out is a reminder that Scandinavian crime fiction didn’t take a long nap between Sjowall and Wahloo and Mankell. He considers this “an excellent and unique series that should not be forgotten in our appreciation of Scandinavian crime fiction’s current worldwide popularity.” He also kindly helped me learn how to pronounce the hero’s name. Tusen takk.

What can I do in the face of Sarah Weinmann’s astonishing industry but steal her stuff? She reports: “so much THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE! Which is wholly deserved, because it’s an amazing thriller, but there’s Dennis Drabelle in the Washington Post, Alan Cheuse in the SF Chronicle, Daniel Mallory in the LA Times, Brian Bethune’s Stieg Larsson profile in Maclean’s, Vanessa Thorpe’s assessment of Larsson-mania in the Observer, and the National Post’s Larsson-themed travel guide.” She also unearths another story about the new Wallander.  I think I will go take a nap now.

good news

Steph’s wonderful WhereDunnit blog is full of good news.

• BBC has commissioned more Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh – and the first is finally set to run in the US.
• The Nervous Man is a new Wallander novel, and probably the last in the series, that will be published in Sweden this summer.
• And in September, another Erlendur novel by Arnaldur Indridason will published in English in the UK – titled Hypothermia.

Sunnie has her reservations about The Girl Who Played With Fire – and wonders if anyone else did. “Good in parts but annoying and exasperating in others.”  (She calls it a “curate’s egg” – a new phrase to me, but possibly a good book title, eh?)

Cathy Skye reflects on The Princess of Burundi – mixed feelings, but worth reading: “There was just enough of main character Ann Lindell there for me to know that she’s someone special that I would like to get to know better. (I would suggest that, if she has any more children, her maternity leave occurs between books and not right in the middle of one!) I also found Eriksson’s descriptions of Sweden and Swedish society to be very good. As I was reading, I felt as though I were there crunching through the endless snow and becoming better acquainted with the people.”

crimeficreader thinks highly of Camilla Läckberg’s The Preacher and writes a lovely and thorough review to explain why. Go read it.

If you’re going to CrimeFest you can hear all about the art of translation in the “Foreign Correspondant” panel. I believe this is all Maxine’s fault, or is it Karen’s? Anyway, never underestimate the power of blog comments.

this and that

There’s a good review of the BBC Wallander series at Material Witness.  It helps that the lead actor is so talented.

Branagh utterly dominated the screen, making it all but impossible to look away. His unshaven face, stooped gait, and tired red eyes held a raging storm of conflicting emotion as well as an uplifting humanity. It was a moving, mesmeric performance, understated and yet dramatic, absolutely as good as anything I have ever seen on the small screen.

And the fact that it is being filmed on site in Sweden plays a role, too . . .

The canvas on which Branagh was painted was equally dramatic. There is a quality of light and space in Scandinavian countries in the summer that is quite different to anything I have experienced elsewhere. It is captured exquisitely by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. But despite the light and the space Wallander also captures that essential quality of Nordic gloom. It is quite something to pull this off.

Altogether, two thumbs way up. I should also mention that crimeficreader has a thoughtful and excellent recap of a documentary about Mankell that ran on BBC – John Harvey (John Harvey!!) talking to Mankell and others (including a hugely charming Jan Guillou). Do I lose all my Scandinavian crime fiction cred if I confess I like John Harvey’s books better than Mankell’s?

And finally – Ali is winding us up for the debut of the second volume in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy with an interview with Larsson’s bereaved father, who bought his son a typewriter for his thirteenth birthday, but then had to send him to the basement to use it because it was too noisy.

Carnival of the Criminal Minds, No. 27

After visiting the southern hemisphere, courtesy of Karen’s blog, it’s time to head north, to the part of the world where death-defying young female acrobats serve saffron rolls while singing and wearing lit candles on their heads – yes, it’s time to celebrate the Carnival in Scandinavia. (But kids – don’t try this at home. Your hair may catch fire.)

The rollercoaster economy has many of us wondering where the book business is going, (though some of us are more intrigued by what kind of plot Arnaldur Indridason will concoct out of the banking mess in Iceland). Many commentators were mulling over the significance of Google’s settlement in November, though how helpful their registry for orphaned books will be for crime fiction fans is unknown; the university libraries being digitized don’t tend to collect as much popular fiction as many of us would like. The puzzling news that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has halted acquisitions (sort of, maybe, unless they change their minds) sparked some commentary, including the head-scratcher that nobody told Otto Penzler, who apparently gets to keep blithely buying books. Unfortunately, that does not include the next Declan Burke title. Fans are certain that crime will pay for another publisher, and HMH will be kicking itself in the arse for being so myopic.

But meanwhile . . . many bloggers are doing their bit for the industry with a “buy books for Christmas” meme.  And while many bloggers are standing ready to recommend current books, some old favorites are being systematically and lovingly rediscovered every Friday thanks to Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Books project, avidly adopted by The Rap Sheet and others.

Spinning the coin a bit differently, Toni McGee Causey writes about why it’s important to tell stories in these difficult times.

The glorious thing is that the world is full of stories, and through crime fiction that we can discover the world in all its seamy, sordid glory.  Scandinavia is producing an astonishing output of fine crime fiction, celebrated at this blog. Norm (alias Uriah) is a bit peeved at the moment by the way British television reviewers are covering the release of BBC’s version of Wallander. Not only do they come up with headlines like “Inspector Morose” but they assign reviews to people who cheerfully confess “I must be honest, I hadn’t been optimistic about the prospect of a Swedish detective. My only knowledge of the country came from watching Bjorn Borg playing tennis at Wimbledon, and reading about Ulrika Jonsson’s latest baby/divorce/lover.” Given the collective knowledge base of the crime fiction blogging community, this insouciant ignorance is  . . . well, grounds for justifiable homicide?

Over at my place, Adrian Hyland kindly agreed to answer a flock of questions from students in a first term seminar course on international crime fiction. We had just read his marvelous book, Diamond Dove, retitled Moonlight Downs in the US. If you want to understand the Aboriginal perspective, through the extraordinary voice of a mixed-race heroine, give it a read. And for a slightly more risque interview, see what madman Stuart McBride tossed Adrian’s way over at Shots.

Peter Rozovsky’s Detectives Beyond Borders is a constant source of intelligent recommendations and commentary on the world of crime fiction. Admitted into evidence, Exhibit A: guest blogger Mike Nichol of Crime Beat South Africa who offers a marvelous capsule history of crime fiction in SA – including the impact Deon Meyer has had on the genre.

Despite the vibrancy of thriller and crime fiction elsewhere, not much has happened in SA crime fiction over the last five decades. Until recently that is. This isn’t exactly surprising as the cops have been more or less an invading army in the eyes of most of the citizenry since forever. Certainly, come the apartheid state in the late 1940s no self-respecting writer was going to set up with a cop as the main protagonist of a series. It was akin to sleeping with the enemy. . . . The 1990s, however, were to see a number of changes, not least the change in the country to a democracy with the 1994 general election that ended the apartheid state. Overnight, well, almost overnight, the cops became the good guys and our literature started taking on a different perspective. But it takes some time for a country to mature and give itself permission to write and read escapist books, especially as we’d been used to writing and reading as an act of protest. . . .

Interestingly, the first wave of new crime fiction focused primarily on what Nichol calls “crimes of deviancy” – serial killers and other departures from the norm were the subjects of choice for both English and Afrikaans writers, because they could be escapist.

Perhaps in this there was a desire to steer away from the political issues dominating a nation in transition, although this attitude is changing. Social and political concerns are back on the agenda, and the bad guys are now as likely to be politicians, business moguls, and figures of authority as perverts, drug dealers, serial killers and gangsters.

So, it seems these writers are giving murder “back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse” as Chandler so famously suggested in “The Simple Art of Murder.” As I’ve just finished reading an advanced copy of Roger Smith’s Mixed Blood and am halfway through Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak, I can serve as a witness – this stuff is good!

We’ll close with a gift from Ali Karim, who was moved in a fit of enthusiasm for Steig Larsson, to put into words “The Importance of Crime and Thriller Fiction.” I hope he’ll forgive me for quoting it at length.

Camus stated that “A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.” This line put some perspective into my thoughts, especially as Larsson’s journalism work was slanted toward revealing the evils of Neo-Nazism, as well the levels of brutality inflicted upon the most vulnerable in society, such as women, dispossessed, the marginalized, minorities and the underprivileged. Some of Larsson’s thoughts naturally found themselves into his novels as the line from Camus indicated. When looking at human beings we find that when we’re good, we can be truly remarkable, but when we’re bad, we can be horrifically evil. . . .

I guess I spend a lot of time contemplating life, death and society, from the mirror that is crime / thriller fiction; that’s why existential work strikes such a resonance in my psyche. I guess I am always looking for meaning, or purpose in the sheer randomness [or absurdity] of our existence. Every so often a line, a paragraph or perhaps a whole book has such insight. I consider as human beings, we are deeply flawed as I previous mentioned. Therefore crime / thriller fiction is a perfect art form to view [and reflect] the human condition; as crime novels link the good and bad within us all. The best fiction novels of crime offer the reader to take his/her own side of the moral compass. There are some novels that really help you understand the sheer comedy and tragedy of our existence. . . .

I guess I read so much; write so much; and observe life, trying to find out more about myself and the world that surrounds me. Every so often I discover something from the viewpoint of another person that makes me challenge my own thinking, and makes me look at the world in a different way. Larsson does that for me. He challenges me, and makes me see things from the prism of his mind, not mine. . . .

So what else could one ask for from one’s entertainment? And to add to my pretentious mood this morning I will quote Albert Camus again –

“After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”

That is why I spend so much time reading, and why I consider a life without books as meaningless, and why I get anxiety if not surrounded by books, and why crime thrillers reveal more about life than any other genre – In my very humble opinion [and I qualify that statement by making it clear that I do read widely, not just crime], in crime fiction I find all of life’s rich tapestry.

Thanks, Ali, for your enthusiasm and for your willingness to put it into words.

Next up – the Carnival will set up its tents at The Rap Sheet in a couple of weeks for a return visit. Meanwhile, you can find the carnival archives here.

photos courtesy of vovchechko & brewbooks