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February 2012: This book is when you realize that the Millennium trilogy is really all about Lisbeth Salander. It takes up all the threads woven into place in Dragon Tattoo and starts to make a tapestry of them: Lisbeth's mysterious back-story, what'...moreFebruary 2012: This book is when you realize that the Millennium trilogy is really all about Lisbeth Salander. It takes up all the threads woven into place in Dragon Tattoo and starts to make a tapestry of them: Lisbeth's mysterious back-story, what's she's done with the fortune she stole from Hans Erik Wennerström, the continued consequences of her guardian Bjurman raping her (and the revenge that is currently represented by the tattoo on his stomach), and the reappearance of her former guardian, Holger Palmgren -- not to mention her relationship with Mikael Blomkvist. The book is structured around solving the murders of two people who were working on an exposé on sex trafficking for Millennium, and due to unforeseen circumstances, it's Lisbeth the police are hunting for the murder. The police, Blomkvist and Millennium, and Lisbeth's old employer, Dragan Armansky, are all trying to solve the murders at the same time, and they all have different reasons for doing so. What they really end up investigating is Lisbeth's life, and they find secrets there that even she didn't know.
Also fulfilled from Dragon Tattoo is Dragan Armansky's premonition that Lisbeth would be the perfect victim, which sounds kind of offensive at first, but after having read this book, I see what he means. She is Other in almost every way imaginable, and thus she is the perfect bogeyman, the perfect scapegoat. The media in the novel plays on Sweden's (and our very human) cultural obsession with social deviance; it's the kind of simplistic scapegoating that always assumes that different equals evil. She is presumed to be the murderer based on the preconceived notions of men who don't even know her. Without directly stating it, Larsson is indicting the infrastructure of the criminal justice system and the men who run it -- they let their prejudices about mental illness, sexuality, gender (the assumption that Lisbeth is a prostitute, just because she likes sex) influence the way they investigate these murders. And of course he sticks some men in there who just hate women, because they feel threatened by them.
The one criticism I have isn't really a criticism, as it doesn't hamper my enjoyment of the story. The book is structured so that the reader may be left in doubt as to whether Salander committed the murders, but it's almost a waste of time. There is never a moment's doubt about Salander's innocence. We've come to know and trust her over the course of a book and a half, and we know that she would never murder two innocent people, especially people who have devoted a significant portion of their lives to exposing the men who make a living -- or gain sexual pleasure -- from exploiting and harming women.
Structurally, The Girl Who Played With Fire is also notable for the distinct lack of interaction -- save for in its last two pages -- of its two leads. Blomkvist and Salander spend the whole book apart, as Salander isn't sure how to deal with her feelings for him, or with the hurt pride that comes with them. One of the things I like most about their relationship is how stupid Lisbeth feels for loving Blomkvist. She has no capacity for understanding her own feelings, or the feelings of others, and can't fathom that Blomkvist might really care for her, even if it's not in the way she wishes. She expects the worst of people, and for just a second there she let herself believe Blomkvist was different, so it was all the more painful for her when she realized she'd let him in where he could hurt her the most. It makes me sad. (Incidentally, I think that Rooney Mara did an impeccable job conveying that tender and guarded emotionality in Fincher's film, something that I felt was lacking in Noomi Rapace's version of Lisbeth, and that's probably why I prefer the Fincher film over the Swedish original.)
Lastly, I just want to take a minute to talk about the unbelievable badassery of Lisbeth digging herself out of her own grave. I just love her so much.
February 2010: This book totally ruined my weekend (by not letting me stop reading it). More thoughts up HERE.(less)
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Review coming soon.
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February 2012: This is my second time through the Millennium trilogy, so I'm going to try and keep this review short and to the point.
Everybody and their mother knows the story by now, or at least they should. Mikael Blomkvist, disgraced journalist...moreFebruary 2012: This is my second time through the Millennium trilogy, so I'm going to try and keep this review short and to the point.
Everybody and their mother knows the story by now, or at least they should. Mikael Blomkvist, disgraced journalist, is hired by one of the richest men in Sweden to find out what happened to his sixteen year old niece, Harriet Vanger, who was murdered over forty years before. Lisbeth Salander, a socially introverted, genius hacker, collides with Blomkvist, and the two form an unlikely partnership. I first read the books back in February 2010, and since then I've seen both film adaptations (Swedish and American) multiple times. I am so familiar with the story by now that I've internalized it. I am completely unable to be objective -- as if I ever was able in the first place -- Salander and Blomkvist are real people as far as I'm concerned, and I think it's a damn shame we won't ever get to hear any more from them past book three.
For those of you who haven’t heard plot details — where have you been? — I’m not going to say any more about the plot because part of the joy the first time is the discovery of all the twists and turns. What I am going to say is that even though Larsson’s writing may not be stellar*, his imagination more than makes up for it. Lisbeth Salander is one of my favorite characters in literature, ever, and the ways in which he makes use of her to say his peace about the rights of the dispossessed — specifically the rights of women in male-dominated cultures, and the marginalization of the mentally ill and those that are perceived to be sexually or socially deviant — ultimately elevates the trilogy beyond mere thriller/mystery status. It’s the reason I can sit here and read it (or watch it) multiple times and still the story will have lost none of its power, despite the fact that I already know all the answers to whatever mysteries it contains.
*For instance, lots of people become annoyed when he starts describing in detail meals characters eat, or actions they take that are seemingly irrelevant. I happen to find this quirk of his endearing, and all of those "irrelevant" details are a part of what I love about his books.
Part of what fascinates me about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as a first novel in a series is that Larsson kind of sneaks up on you with the point of it. You could very easily read the book and then assume that sequels will follow the pattern set up by the first one, and would focus on Salander and Blomkvist as a team who will solve mysteries like it in the future. Instead, Larsson mainly uses the story of the Vangers as an extended "meet-cute" for Salander and Blomkist, and to set up Salander as the protagonist. Her story is the real center of the trilogy. This book is as much about setting up the next two books as it's about itself. Larsson wasn't interested in creating a series of grocery-store mysteries. He was interested in delving into the nitty gritty of Salander's life, and all the meaty stuff comes directly from it. She is the mystery and the challenge, not some murderer du jour.
The last thing I want to say is that it puzzles me when people express their disdain for this series by saying it's misogynist. I have to wonder just exactly what kind of reading comprehension those people were taught in school, because these books are the very opposite of misogynist. Just because a story features misogyny as a theme, and characters who act in misogynistic or sexist ways, does not mean that story is espousing those misogynistic viewpoints. I can definitely understand people who simply object to the level of violence and dark sexuality that the book contains, but as far as I'm concerned, all that violence has a very salient point at the end of it.
And now I've gone and lied to you about this being a short review. Whatever, I'm going to go make an omelet.
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February 2010: Wow, this was awesome. On top of having a plot that's a weird mash-up between violent crime (think Law & Order: SVU), corrupt family saga, Raymond Chandler-esque mysteries (The Big Sleep comes immediately to mind), and high-tech thriller (ala Neal Stephenson and William Gibson), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has two of the most well-rounded, interesting, and original characters I've ever read in a thriller. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are flawed but likable, and the secrets they uncover are disgusting, riveting, and scary. It is large book that reads very quickly.
The title of the book in the original Swedish translates roughly as Men Who Hate Women, but the English title is just as apt. It's a pity that Stieg Larsson died before being able to complete more than three manuscripts out of a planned ten. Wikipedia tells me that an unfinished fourth manuscript exists, along with synopses for the fifth and sixth, so it sucks that he's dead (not only for him, because he's not alive anymore), but because I WANT TO READ THEM.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone. (Except maybe my mother.)(less)
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
by
Stieg Larsson
recommended for:
everyone except my mother
read in February, 2012
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February 2012: Second review coming soon.
June 2010: Although The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is not as tightly structured or frightening as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or The Girl Who Played With Fire, it is nevertheless un-put-down-able (n...moreFebruary 2012: Second review coming soon.
June 2010: Although The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is not as tightly structured or frightening as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or The Girl Who Played With Fire, it is nevertheless un-put-down-able (not a word).
But I think it's slightly unfair to compare Hornet's Nest to the others for three reasons: 1) Where Dragon Tattoo and Fire were essentially thriller/mysteries, Hornet's Nest is more of an espionage legal thriller. There isn't really a mystery at all, unless you count the question of how Lisbeth Salander could possibly be able to get herself out of the mess she's in as a mystery, that is; 2) If we look at all three books, the first two are essentially set-up (#1 sets up the Blomkvist/Salander meet-cute or whatever so that we will care in #2 when everything goes to Hell for both of them, and the #3 is the conclusion to both of those stories). Conclusions are different by nature and should be judged accordingly; and finally, 3) Stieg Larsson is dead. There's no beating around the bush on that one, and I'm not using it as some sort of get out of jail free card, like oh, cut him some slack coz he dead, or whatever, but the fact remains that he dropped stone cold dead and never told anyone what he wanted done with his manuscripts. They were published post-humously, and who knows what went on with the editing (or didn't go on). From what I understand (and I'm certainly no expert), most writers and editors go through a lengthy process together weeding out the bad or unnecessary and beefing up the good. Larsson never had that chance, and Hornet's Nest being the third and last, logically he spent the least amount of time with it.
With that in mind, I've enjoyed getting lost in this trilogy. It's the kind of writing that makes you forget you're even reading and that forces you to stay up to ungodly hours. And, once again, Larsson managed to deliver an extremely powerful message on behalf of women everywhere, which is basically, don't fuck with us, you two-balled bastards. These books are the whole package. And who knows when I'll find *that* again?(less)
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I loved this book. It was magical. Everyone should read it right this minute.
Is that not enough of a review? Fine. Ready Player One takes place in the year 2045, as the humanity pressed into an over-crowded Earth takes refuge in an immersive virtua...moreI loved this book. It was magical. Everyone should read it right this minute.
Is that not enough of a review? Fine. Ready Player One takes place in the year 2045, as the humanity pressed into an over-crowded Earth takes refuge in an immersive virtual reality program called OASIS, invented by reclusive genius billionaire James Halliday. But when Halliday dies, he leaves behind him a massive Easter Egg hunt through the many worlds of OASIS and through the many facets of late 20th century pop culture that he loved most -- the person to be the first to find the ultimate clue will inherit Halliday's entire techno-empire. Enter our young hero, chubby and poor Wade Watts, whose dead father gave him an alliterative name like Peter Parker or Clark Kent so that one day he too might be a superhero. Wade is a gunter, or full-time egg hunter, and he's made it his life's mission to find Halliday's hidden treasure.
You guys, I loved this book so much I wanted to start it again immediately after I finished it.*
*Actually, what I did do was request the audiobook from the library, because it's narrated by Wil Wheaton, who is himself a minor character in the novel. (I mean, WHAT.) So there's a good chance -- and by "good" I mean 100% -- that I will be listening to that audiobook shortly.
This book contains in its 384 pages everything I love about stories. Great characters, ridiculous worldbuilding (details out the wazoo), clean, entertaining prose, and passionate imagination put to good use. If a writer is talented enough, there is no limit to what he or she can conjure up in the mind of a reader, and Ready Player One takes full advantage. While Wade is on his quest, we're right there with him . . . reading this book was more like having the experience than reading about it and that's one of the many reasons I couldn't put it down. But what's really genius about this book is that Cline has managed to find a way to combine the pure imagination and wish fulfillment of fantasy and sci-fi with the stark reality and disappointment of the real world. Wade and his friends (and enemies) use the OASIS in much the same way that we as readers are using Cline's book. The two worlds comment on each other in this beautiful dance of nerdy joy: games and stories are ways for us to shape and re-experience the world around us, to experience the things it is impossible for us to experience in our limited lifetimes, but games and stories can't hold your hand.
I've heard a lot of people express the opinion that if you weren't born in the right time-frame, you wouldn't understand any of the references, and thus wouldn't enjoy the book as much. I call bullshit on that one. I am just a little bit too young for most of the references in this book, but I still enjoyed the shit out of it. It works even if you don't know the references, because Cline lays everything out in such a way that the plot is never affected negatively if you don't "get" a reference. Instead of being alienated by the references I didn't know**, I found myself becoming more and more curious about them. So the way I look at it, if you know the references, Ready Player One is a nostalgic joyride, but if you don't, it's a magical journey of pop culture discovery. Both feelings are intoxicating.
**I do feel the need to point out that I was familiar with nearly everything Cline wrote about, so my nerd-cred is firmly intact.
As with all books I really love, I feel that I'm having a hard time expressing exactly why, so again I say to you: just read the damn book. Because it's flipping awesome.(less)
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"No, it's not weird. Sometimes when people say something is awful that makes me want to read it even more."
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Something I'm really tired of is authors abusing the first person point of view. And when I say I'm tired of it what I really mean is that IT MAKES ME LIVID. But I'm letting my anger get ahead of me.
Crossed is the second book in Ally Condie's Matched...moreSomething I'm really tired of is authors abusing the first person point of view. And when I say I'm tired of it what I really mean is that IT MAKES ME LIVID. But I'm letting my anger get ahead of me.
Crossed is the second book in Ally Condie's Matched trilogy, the first volume of which (also called Matched) was published last year at the peak of Hunger Games fever to some mild fanfare. I picked it up because EW gave it a B-, and because I had just devoured The Hunger Games and was looking for something to fill void the in my soul, a sentiment shared by many, I think, and certainly predicted by Condie's publishers. Matched was just the first in a long series of YA dystopian love stories to be published post-Hunger Games. I've read most them, and none are as good as the original flavor. Anyway, so a little background.
Matched introduced us to Cassia Reyes, who lives in a dystopian future America called The Society that controls every moment of its citizens' lives, from birth to death, as a way of supposedly staving off crime, disease, and suffering. There are only 100 books, 100 pieces of music, 100 movies, etc. in The Society. No one knows how to write, and no one creates anything. Everyone dies at age 80 in a formal ceremony attended by their families. Citizens are given aptitude tests and placed in jobs, and even marriages (called "matches") are arranged. Cassia's story is the center of Matched because when she received her Match -- her best friend Xander -- she accidentally saw another face, too: a mysterious boy called Ky. So Cassia starts asking questions, and pretty soon she's questioning everything around her. She falls in love with Ky, but Ky is an Aberration -- a person who has lost the rights and privileges of being a Citizen. It all snowballs from there.
Crossed picks up where Matched left off, with Cassia in the Outer Provinces searching for Ky, and the mysterious rebellion known as The Rising. In Matched, we only got Cassia's POV, but in Crossed, we get Ky's as well. While she's searching for him, Ky is busy escaping from his government mandated death sentence with a couple of new buddies. All four of them run around what I assume to be the Utah desert for the entire book, trying to keep out of The Society's hands and find the Farmers (what the society calls Anomalies, people who choose not to live in The Society) or The Rising (former Citizens who want to destroy The Society from every direction possible).
Matched was a frustrating read for me because it took what could have been a good premise and made it go BLAH. I had vague hopes that Crossed would continue doing the things I enjoyed from Matched, and fix the things that needed fixing, but sadly those hopes were crushed* upon reading this book. From the opening sentence of Cassia's bland narration, to the half-assed last chapter, I wanted to throw the book across the room. My experience of reading it can probably be considered close to masochism.
*I'd like to take the time to predict what Condie will title the third and last book in her trilogy. Crushed is a good candidate, I think. Also: Smashed, Burned, Wasted, Dumped (heh -- that would be a fun one) . . . any other ideas? Oh. P.S. - What the eff does 'Crossed' even mean? I read the whole book and still have no idea.
One of my biggest frustrations with the last book was Cassia's emptiness as a narrator. Despite my frustration, I excused a lot of it because I believed it to have been done on purpose to convey the emptiness of Cassia's identity in The Society, but it turns out I was giving the book too much credit -- seems that it's actually Condie's problem as an author. Ky and Cassia, who spend the novel alternating POVs, are INDISTINGUISHABLE from each other as narrators. I'm not even exaggerating here. If you open up a page at random and read a couple sentences, unless there are context clues embedded in it (like referring to the other person), you LITERALLY cannot tell the two of them apart. They both speak in the same vague, airy voice, saying things without actually saying them in that way that bad poets do. Condie seems to feel that vague poetic imagery is a good substitute for actual concrete description (and for actual plot and character development, but that's another issue entirely). Neither character has a voice of their own, instead they spend the novel borrowing Condie's overly poetic say-nothing tone. This is a huge problem because Ky wasn't raised in The Society -- he should have a voice, especially ESPECIALLY since "having a voice" is a major underlying theme in the series. Irony!
There are other serious problems with Crossed as well. While I appreciated the gesture of having Ky as a second narrator, the alternating POVs were jarring. The constant back and forth was unsettling -- maybe this wouldn't have been an issue if the chapters would have been longer, but I never felt comfortable in the setting or the events of the story. Like, one of the main things writers have to accomplish is grounding you in their fictional world as a real place, and the alternating POVs on top of Condie's non-substantial description made it feel like nothing in this book was real, like I was unglued as a reader from the text. Condie also has a tendency to over-rely on other people's words. If I had to read that Tennyson poem one more time . . . and I LIKE that poem. This would be nothing more than an annoying affectation if Condie's characters had solid voices, or her story was interesting enough to distract from it, but they don't, and it wasn't. It ended up feeling like she was using other people's words because she couldn't think of any of her own.
Some books can push past weak writing with strong story, but this book has neither. The entire scope of the story feels recycled: the dystopian world with absurd rules, the secret rebellion, the doomed romance . . . I've seen it before, and I've seen it better. I feel no connection to Condie's world, because she's the master of telling, not showing. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is a fiction writing mantra. Showing connects readers emotionally to the events of the story, and for the most part, telling makes the reader nothing but an observer. She puts bland, ethereal, poetic imagery in place of actual imagery or dialogue or hard description, and her characters are always talking about how much they love each other, but we never see it. And on top of all that, I felt like half the book was filler, that nothing really happened, and the stuff that did happen was robbed of almost all of its narrative tension. For example, the moment when Ky and Cassia reunite falls completely flat because Condie doesn't work up to it, and she doesn't know how to structure her story to make the most of moments like it. The whole thing feels like a feather Condie released into the wind.**
**This has nothing to do with anything I've just said, but does anyone else feel like the cover is completely awful and on the nose? Why is she sitting like that? What the frak is she wearing? Very disappointing, as the cover for the first one was kind of gorgeous.
There were also some things that bugged me on a conceptual level. The vagueness of the name 'The Society' makes me want to poke rusty nails through my eyeballs. I spent half my life as an English teacher steering my students away from blaming the nameless, faceless collective of "Society" for all the wrongs in the world when they wrote their papers. To say that "Society" is racist or that "Society" is sexist or that "Society" doesn't like when people are different is childish. Grouping so many vast belief systems, cultural practices, and mores into one large faceless entity like that completely ignores the vast complexities at work in any given social situation, and it assumes that all people in any given society of people are more similar in those respects than they are different. It's simplistic, and every time that word pops up on the page, a little piece of my soul dies. I also wanted to quickly mention what I'm going to call the disturbing trend of the "I . . . I . . . I . . ., " which is how I began this extremely long and over-indulgent rant of a review, if you'll recall. It feels like YA books these days can't get published unless they're written in first person, but first person is so easy to fuck up, you guys. It's so easy for the author to let that I take over, to assume that when your narrator says "I" that also means he or she also has a personality. That's clearly what's happened here, and I see it a lot in YA books. I'm over here busting on Ally Condie, but she's not the only one. I can't tell you what a relief it was reading Ready Player One after reading this book. If you want to know how to do first person POV, go read that book (you should go read it anyway because it's bloody fantastic). Wade Watts has a voice. He comes alive on the page. Ky and Cassia are just blank I's, waiting to be filled in, by what, I'm not sure.
Honestly, you guys, I could keep going, but it would probably start feeling like I was kicking somebody when they're already down. Was there anything I liked about this book? I kind of liked the ending, but I'm not sure if that's because something interesting finally happened, or if I was just happy it was over.**
**Will I be reading book three anyway? Yuuuup. Masochist, remember?
Look, I don't know why I'm getting so worked up over this book. It's just a book, I know that, but I feel like it has personally offended me somehow. Like, if it were a person, it would have spouted off some teen emo poetry while sitting on my head and farting. Wait, no, because farting would be giving it too much credit. Farting is funny. Crossed is not your funny friend who sits on your head and farts (in case you're wondering, this has happened to me). Crossed is the friend who tries too hard -- and it tries really, really hard -- but does not succeed. Mostly I just feel kind of bad now that I've reached the end of this review -- but I had all of these feelings, and I needed to spew them out somewhere. That's what the internet is for, right? Spewing. I think I'm right about this, but I might have do some checking around. I'll get back to you.(less)
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"That's true. I am really good at that."
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"The trailer is so good. I accidentally cried while watching it in the theater this weekend."
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