Tag Archives: Millennium Trilogy
Well, we all knew it, of course – indeed, you couldn’t go on a plane, train or bus without having it confirmed – but the novels of Stieg Larsson continued to dominate the book world in 2010.
And with confirmation last year that the adventures of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, already immortalised by Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist in the excellent Swedish film trilogy, are to be remade by Hollywood (with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig cast in the lead roles of Columbia Pictures’ three-picture adaptation of Stieg’s opus), one can only imagine Stieg’s star continuing to rise…
The Bookseller takes up the story…
Stieg Larsson looks on course to be the biggest selling author of last year, according to pre-Christmas sales data from Nielsen BookScan. The figures, for the 50 weeks ending 11th December, leave out the crucial final trading weeks before Christmas.
However, during the course of the 50 weeks, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus) sold 1.16m copies. Second was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, with 995,845 copies sold. Third was The Girl Who Played with Fire, selling 957,063 books.
The retailers’ pick of the autumn titles, Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals (Michael Joseph), placed fourth with sales of 874,546. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (Transworld) was fifth (672,950) copies sold. Despite falling sales in 2010, Stephenie Meyer continued to sell strongly and dominated the bottom half of the top 10. Eclipse sold 511,093 copies, Twilight 483,266 copies, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner 474,796 books and New Moon 471,199 (all Atom). Rounding off the top 10 was perennial Christmas bestseller Guinness World Records. Its 2011 title sold 421,372.
Nielsen sales since records began in 1998 show a top 10 dominated by JK Rowling. The Harry Potter author has seven books in the top 10, with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) her biggest selling title with 3.8m sales and second overall. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was the bestselling book between 1998 and 11th December 2010, with 4.5m copies sold. Brown’s Angels and Demons placed fourth, selling 3.1m. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (Atom) completed the top 10, placed ninth with sales of 2.1m.
THE GIRL WHO TOPPED THE AMAZON CHART
Last week, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest was named the top ‘Customer Favourite’ on amazon.co.uk.
The e-retailer ranked its top 100 Customer Favourites according to customer orders (January to October) for books published for the first time in 2010. View the top 10 below, or see the full 100 here.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, Stieg Larsson (Quercus)- One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder)
- The Help, Kathryn Stockett (Penguin)
- Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)
- The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, Stephenie Meyer (Atom)
- Mum Knows Best: The Hairy Bikers’ Family Cookbook (W&N)
- The Dukan Diet (Hodder)
- Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals (Michael Joseph)
- A Journey, Tony Blair (Hutchinson)
- Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (Atom)
SALANDER CLAUS?
Sorry, that’s the best festive flourish we can muster this morning! In light of this, we asked for possible Christmas taglines from our Twitter followers, to give us inspiration for our Christmas ad campagin. We had many wonderful entries, our favourite entry being ‘tra la la la la la la la Larsson’, yet we thought we’d best stick to a more traditional approach, as Christmas is, after all, a time of tradition.
(It is also a time of giving, so go on, send a Stieg!)
TENSION OVER TRILOGY TWO
Last week, the Guardian ran a very interesting piece concerning a certain Niels Arden Oplev.
Oplev, director of the Swedish film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, vented his anger over the fact Noomi Rapace faces being overlooked as the true face of the Lisbeth Salander:
The only thing that’s annoying to me is that the Sony PR machine is trying to make their Lisbeth Salander the lead Lisbeth Salander … That’s highly unfair because Noomi has captured this part and it should always be all her. That’s her legacy in a way I can’t see anyone competing with.
I hope she gets nominated for an Oscar. I know a lot of Academy members have seen the film and liked it because every time I go to LA I meet so many people who have seen my version of it. Even in Hollywood there seems to be a kind of anger about the remake, like, ‘Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?’ Everybody who loves film will go see the original one.
The Hollywod film is due for release on 21 December 2011. (Read the entire Guardian article here.)
LOVE LARSSON
Earlier this month, our friends at Lovereading.co.uk launched a competition, whereby a lucky fan could win a copy of the Millennium Trilogy boxset. The competition has been a stellar success, so far receiving over 1,000 entries!
The competition ends 30 November, so there’ still time to put your name in the hat for this exclusive prize. To do so, simply go to the bottom of this link page.
The results are in for our Stieg Larsson poster giveaway.
Below are the five lucky winners:
Erin Fitzsimmons
Lora McGinlay
John Bajada
Paul Sheath
Louise Rawlings
Congratulations, you five. The exclusive Quercusian goods are winging their way to you now.
Back through the mists of time in January 2008, when the credit crunch was but a twinkle in a banker’s eye, the first MacLehose Press titles were released into British bookshops.
And it would certainly be fair to say it all began with a bang, because one of the first three books, in its iconic red-dragon jacket, was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the late Stieg Larsson.
Two years later on, and Lisbeth Salander has taken over the world.
This month, MacLehose Press are delighted to announce the publication of the Millennium Trilogy boxset edition. Three stunning cloth-bound volumes, with a revamped text (which incorporates the amendments that readers from all over the world have helped us to gather), maps of Sweden, Stockholm and its surroundings, and Stieg Larsson’s own drawing of Hedeby Island. Also included is a poster of a number of Larsson covers from our publishing counterparts around the world.
Three volumes? Well, no. There’s more. Exclusive to the Boxset, is the Millennium Trilogy Afterword, a slim-but-vital volume comprising four essays and the exchange of e-mails between Stieg Larsson and his Swedish editor, which provide fascinating insights into Larsson’s life and work.
Jonas Sundberg, one of the founders, with Larsson, of Expo Magazine, writes about their time together as crusading anti-extremists. Eva Gedin, his editor at Swedish publisher Norstedts, reveals what it was like to work with Larsson the crime writer, at once disarmingly modest but quietly confident that his trilogy would make a splash. John-Henri Holmberg examines the trilogy against the wider context of Swedish literature and crime writing, and Svante Weyler, formerly publishing director of Norstedts, takes a step back to consider its impact on Sweden’s international standing.
But most intriguing of all is the e-mail exchange between Larsson and his editors at Norstedts, revealing first-hand to readers the warmth and good humour with which he conducted himself.
So there you have it: the Millennium Trilogy Boxset. It looks fantastic, it’s feature-packed, it’s out now, and it’s so popular we’ve already had to reprint! A must for Larsson fanatics, and the perfect Christmas gift. In all good bookshops now…
