I don't read much nowadays. It's hard to get books in my father tongue. Books in English makes me fall asleep faster than you can tranq a horse with a dart gun.
But I used to read a lot in Swedish. LOTR, I've read in all three languages btw. Sweden has lots of good history-fantasy authors. There's this one author I really like, Jan Guillou, he's written stories like the Knight Templar Arn Magnusson, Carl Hamilton (Sweden's version of James Bond, except he's more like Sam Fisher).
The Knight Templar was a 3 book story, much like LOTR, and depicted the middle east quite beautifully. It was very similar to Kingdom of Heaven.
Another book I like was "Röde Orm" or the "Red Serpent". It's about a Viking, Orm, or as everyone call him Red because of his hair colour. His adventures begins in sweden, goes into denmark, england, spain, into the byzentine empire, etc etc. Very nice read.
Then there's the book "Ondskan" or Evil in English written by Jan Guillou. About fighting in boarding school. Very very nice read.
-Taison out
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I got two fists.. Don't make me use my head as well!