This entire book I imagined this conversation happening in the background between Jeanine and some random laboratory lackey:
"Gee, Jeanine, what do we...moreThis entire book I imagined this conversation happening in the background between Jeanine and some random laboratory lackey:
"Gee, Jeanine, what do we want to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, lackey...TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD."
Yeah, it fits. Only maybe it's more like TRY TO CONTROL THE DIVERGENT.
Everyone double-crossing everyone, everyone lying and keeping secrets... it was all so painfully frustrating. It makes me feel like maybe I was meant for Candor because I'm like UGH WHY CAN'T EVERYONE JUST TELL THE TRUTH !$?#&%*@$ /die
I still find Tris annoying. But at least she's annoying because I don't like her rather than being annoying because she's a bad character. And at least I understand the difference.
Tobias is still tall, dark, handsome, and tortured, and I'm still in literary lust with him.
I'm still VERY APPRECIATIVE that there's no love triangle. Seriously. SO MUCH.
Is anyone else's favorite character Uriah? Because, yeah, Team Uriah right here.
Other than these things, I don't know how I feel about it yet. Hmm.(less)
This is one of those YA dystopias that may grow on me over time. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and His Dark Materials just set such a high standard...moreThis is one of those YA dystopias that may grow on me over time. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and His Dark Materials just set such a high standard that it's sometimes difficult for me to get past right away. When I was a couple chapters into it I had to put it down to go to work and once there I asked all my coworkers which faction they would choose (with the overwhelming result of Amity, the peaceful) and so this sparked a lot of good conversations and bonding that I'm really grateful for. I can't decide if I would be Erudite, Candor, or Amity. I do know that the short image of Amity that we get to see with their trucks and their crops and their banjo was enticing to me in the same way that it is enticing to me when I think about life as a hobbit. Safe and warm and home. But then I think about how important information is to me, and I think I am absolutely an Erudite. But then my profound interest in the human condition comes in and I think I am nothing if not Candor. I guess that makes me Divergent.
Veronica Roth has some great ideas in here, but I just felt that the execution was a bit blah. The writing is weak and sounds very forced. Maybe I should cut her some slack because this is her first novel, but should I have to? Everything Is Illuminated was Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel. Looking for Alaska was John Green's first novel. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was JK Rowling's first novel, for Christ's sake, and look where that got her. I don't think it's an excuse.
I do however appreciate deeply that there is no love triangle. Way to take the YA path less traveled, Roth! Good on ya.
I will absolutely read the sequel. If for no other reason than I want to see me some more Tobias! HOT.
Update 5/25/12: Alright. After a reread in preparation for Insurgent I find myself really not being able to ignore how annoying Tris is. She is supposed to be this strong female character, right? Well just because she's aggressive doesn't make her strong. She is always assuming that people think she's weak and lashing out at them to prove otherwise, honestly, like a bitch. Then, when she finds out that she misinterpreted their intentions and was wrong, she's all OH TEEHEE and everyone just forgives her LIKE THAT. Why? Because she's essentially everyone's pet. She hurts them and instead of calling her out on being a hotheaded idiot they just say it's okay, you didn't know what you were doing, you're so cute, here's a muffin. Like a dog.
On page 240 Tris says about herself, and I quote, "I am not the crying type. Nor am I the yelling type." BITCH PLEASE. You have spent half this book crying and yelling.
I prefer my heroines a little more self-aware.
And I know this is very minor and doesn't matter to the plot at all and I'm getting hung up in the details like I always do but Tris gets three tattoos over the course of a few weeks in the Dauntless compound and they heal OVERFUCKINGNIGHT. !*$@&^%;$!(less)
This is the real show. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just an introduction to the wonderfully brilliant and intense character that is Lisbeth Sala...moreThis is the real show. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just an introduction to the wonderfully brilliant and intense character that is Lisbeth Salander.(less)
If only I could go with you! Wendy sighs in the last chapter. How fitting.
This is the first time I've ever read this book cover to cover. I have seen...moreIf only I could go with you! Wendy sighs in the last chapter. How fitting.
This is the first time I've ever read this book cover to cover. I have seen every movie, every play, am familiar with almost every retelling. I've picked up the book off and on since childhood, too A.D.D. to read much more than a paragraph or two so I would put in a version of the movie. The Mary Martin TV version from 1960 has always been my favorite.
Getting through this book was both very simple and very difficult. Reading it as a child it is one story, and reading it as an adult it is another. Realizing that there is a difference between the two is a frightening feeling because to have that realization you must first have to have gone from child to adult. This is something I, much like Peter Pan, swore that I would never do. But I am not Peter, and sadly I have followed in Wendy's footsteps and grown up despite his importance in my life.
The first time I picked this up as an adult I skipped to the end, where Wendy has grown up and Peter is in disbelief. The words made me hyperventilate; I was inconsolable. Peter keeps coming back for Wendy at spring cleaning time, Wendy is attempting to reminisce with him and Peter asks, "Who is Captain Hook?" and "Who is Tinker Bell?" because new adventures have pushed the old ones out of his mind and I just can't handle that. How can you forget Tinker Bell? How can you forget Hook? I cried and coughed and shook myself because he forgets. He forgets because he is just a child and he only thinks of himself.
That night I realized that I loved the Peter Pan interpretation in my head much more than I loved the actual Peter Pan. It is actually a very sad story because Peter chooses youth and games over love and friendship.
Now having read the entire novel I understand the point and I hold it very dear. It is interesting to think about how a third story may come about once I have children.(less)
Upon finishing the novel, I find the original Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women, infinitely more fitting.
This book took a little while to hook me, but...moreUpon finishing the novel, I find the original Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women, infinitely more fitting.
This book took a little while to hook me, but I think that is a failure on my part as a reader rather than a failure on Stieg Larsson's part as a writer. I was trying to read too fast, and I wasn't taking the time to really let the material sink in. All the financial journalism jargon at the beginning caused this, as that subject is one that goes completely over my head...it's just not something I am particularly interested in, never mind that it was in regard to a foreign currency and economy.
I could read about Lisbeth Salander all day long. This stoic, asocial girl captured my interest just the way she has captured so many others'. A fiery ward of the state, she has been tossed around from guardian to guardian for most of her young life. Misdiagnosed as a crazy kid, she has never tried to explain herself otherwise, instead frustrating her doctors and guardians with her silence. Prone to bouts of violence towards those who deserve it, she's an odd vigilante who believes everyone is responsible for their actions. What a twisted role model! I love it. It is mentioned by Blomkvist that she may have Asperger's Syndrome, which explains her brilliant mind and anti-social nature, but I don't remember if it was ever confirmed in the text. Maybe The Girl Who Played with Fire will have more insight into her condition.
And her newly appointed guardian, Advokat Bjurman, was so deliciously evil that I actually squirmed when he entered a scene, which - with me - is an achievement for any villain. He is twisted and heinous, and it's really as simple as that.
I noticed an important parallel between Advokat Bjurman and Mikael Blomkvist as I was looking through the book just now for this review. They both tell Lisbeth that they want to be her friend, and that they need to be able to trust each other. But it is the context in which they say these things to her that sets them apart from one another, and gives so much insight into why and how Lisbeth is so untrusting of others. It is a brilliant literary method by Stieg Larsson.
The detailed descriptions of all the computers in this book were a rare moment of laughter for me, and the labels led me to believe that Mr. Larsson was quite the Apple enthusiast. I know it's not fair to laugh because it was written around 2002, but Lisbeth's powerful machine with "960 MB RAM and a 60 GB hard drive" had me rolling for reasons completely unrelated to the book.
Unlike so many other reviewers, I was very rarely shocked whilst reading this book. I accepted the violent pornographic nature of it because it was part of the story. I had the mystery figured out pretty early on, but I kept trying to convince myself that maybe I was wrong. I wasn't, so I decided to focus on other aspects of the novel, which managed to increase my enjoyment of it.
I tend to have trouble enjoying mystery books, because the endings are so rarely a surprise to me. This is because I generally SUSPECT EVERYONE OF EVERYTHING. Yeah, that clean-cut, dashingly cute guy from work who impresses you with his knowledge of e.e. cummings and champagne? He has sex with little boys and throws their bodies in a ravine. Your sympathetic and popular boss is probably planning ways to kidnap, rape, and torture you or your coworkers, which you now realize is why your office keeps having to hire new file room clerks. Your son or daughter probably cuts the heads' off mice and feeds arsenic to your neighbor's cat. Your best friend? Psychotic killer with daddy issues. This line of thinking is where my brain naturally meanders while reading mysteries, and because of it the "Twists" are very rarely Twists to me.
A good mystery book is one where I don't guess the killer or motive.
A great mystery book is one where I do guess the killer, but it fails to ruin my enjoyment of said book because the rest of the story, characters, and reasoning for such a tragedy are so juicy and good that I don't care.
The latter applies to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.(less)
This is the very first book I read on my new nook! So it took a couple chapters for me to get used to the format and stop thinking, "OMG I'm reading t...moreThis is the very first book I read on my new nook! So it took a couple chapters for me to get used to the format and stop thinking, "OMG I'm reading this on my nook this is so cool!!!!!!1". Because I had picked up many hardback copies of this in the bookstore and browsed through them I knew that there were illustrations and I found myself noticeably bummed when my nook displayed the (what I knew to be full-page-sized) images as little mealy things no larger than 200x200. Also, 75% of this was read in the car, and reading in the car usually gives me headaches and makes me nauseous. So the circumstances were lining up poorly for the enjoyment and retention of this book.
But I was determined!
At first I really didn't see what all the fuss was about. It was good but I didn't think of it as Hugo and Newbery Good. But I knew that the aforementioned circumstances were distracting me from the real juice of the story and I vowed to alleviate that. My enjoyment of the book also jumped 1000% when I began thinking of each chapter as a short story. In no time I found myself getting emotional about the characters that I had previously thought I was uninterested in.
My heart lurched, I literally gasped, and I cried at the end for a lot of reasons (mainly the first line of the last chapter, which was so perfectly perfect that I wanted to shadowbox it up and hang it up next to the diploma).
In the end I am beyond glad that I purchased this, that I got over my reading circumstances, and that it was the first complete novel that I read on my nook! Definite re-read.(less)
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