The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
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Anyone finding it hard to get through?
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Xan
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Apr 24, 2012 09:40PM

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I think that you make a good point, Dale. Some of the narrative of the books is overly drawn out and concentrates too much on the size of rooms and the furniture within it, some of the background story is too intricate and of little value in the overall scheme of things, and most people have said that a lot of the thrust was lost in translation and that they really needed a good editor.
Still, I enjoyed the books despite the hype and enjoyed the Swedish extended versions of the three films.
The media, for the most part, and particularly critics are a rather hypocritical sycophantic bunch that like to 'jump on bandwagons' to pretend that they are 'hip', 'up to speed' with current trends or try to set trends of their own to justify their existence.
Larsson wrote three pretty good books dealing with violence towards women that were made into three good movies and they are his legacy.
There won't be any more, so we can only speculate as to what he may have ultimately planned for the future.
They are 'love it' or 'hate it' novels...
However, when the music industry is dependant on the likes of Simon Cowell and his cronies, X Factor and Britain/America Has Got Talent, I fear that the future is very bleak.
New literary and musical talent are stifled in the morass of mediochrity and celebrity pap.




This was exactly how I got through the difficulty of reading these. I have loved them, but couldn't read them, but listening I don't feel that I have lost anything in the book and the reader is very good.

I thought it had a nice cover, I liked the size of the type, the feel of the pages and the blurb on the inside flap sounded good.
That said, I think it's a timing thing. I read all kinds of fiction books, but find I do so because different portions of my brain? personality? emotions? mentality? like to be "fed" at different times.
This book and I met at the perfect time. I found the first one hundred pages difficult, but apparently needed the mental challenge as I was able to "let go" and let the author guide me into the story rather than try to "catergorize" it.
I learned more about publishing and secret police than I ever thought I would want to know. But the book was impossible to put down, incredibly fascinating, my brain was "hungary" for the difference it brought me. I had to know more about the characters.
Gritty yes, dry or uninteresting definitely not.
My best advice relax and go on the journey the writer is taking you, try not to think about where you think he might be taking you, try not to compare it to any tale you think it might be like... open yourself to learning things that you never thought would interest you... and suddenly the book will be magic.
I think the first 100 pages feeds your mentality or intellect, then the book feeds your emotions and so on and so on.
: ) It's worth the trip.




I can read about anything but I did find the first 200 pages of this book extremely dull. I just finished and it did get better but I am debating on whether to even read the other 2 books.


I never finished it. I could not find anything to enjoy about it. I cannot understand all the hype about these books. It was SO sexist - but apart from that, just plain BORING. One paragraph all about what kind of computer she bought... Good Lord!!!




I just started the second book. It has a LOT of mathmatics in it. But it is much more enthralling than the first one. I'm sure Stieg's death did contribute to the media hype. I've read that there is a fourth book also but because of his death it probably won't be published. His girlfriend wants to finish it but the rights were left to his father.


Don't let that scare you off a great book.


Don't let that scare you off a great book."
Well, like the comment below, I struggled through the first one and barely finished it, so I am not going to go for the second one. Sorry!



How did the Da Vinci Code sold more copies than the bible?.... PR
Although I thing the series are great, the violence is a bit too much at times. The Swedes love their violence.

Dale, Andrew McCoy and I wrote a whole book, Stieg Larsson Man, Myth & Mistress, on the subject. Keith Brooke, the writer, publisher and teacher of creative writing headlined his review: "Excellent guide to how publishing does and doesn't work", see http://www.amazon.com/STIEG-LARSSON-M...


As to why some books become best sellers and others don't, legacy publishers have been trying to figure that out for for years. It seems their main school of thought is that lightening will strike twice in the same place. That's why, now, we are getting so many pale Larsson look alikes and Da Vinci Code knockoffs.
On Peter Rozovsky's blog he mentions a review he did for the Philly Inquirer of another Swedish crime writer, Lars Kepler, another member of the Stieg Larsonnism school of Nordic Crime Writing.
Here's an excerpt from Peter's blog post:
My review of The Nightmare by Lars Kepler in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer posits the existence of a school of Nordic crime writing called Stieg Larssonism (its practitioners are Larssonists) that
"combines potboiler thrills and righteous anger in a fat, sprawling tosh-filled package, often with 475 or more pages plus a didactic, statistics-filled epilogue in case the reader doesn’t get the point – or in case he or she thinks the point was just to have some fun. That way the reader get dirty thrills but feels morally uplifted at the same time."
You can read the rest of the review here:
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogsp...

And don't forget the sex (in the film I saw, Daniel Craig only got to sleep with one girl, but...)



its so unlikely


I start to read it..
50 first pages and I got dizzy with all (I can't remember) the Sweden names..
read this discussion helps me a lot..
encourage me to finish it..
I'm so curious..
slowly but sure, I'll enjoy the book..



I never was pulled in to the story. It is a different expectation to read for social reasons.




Having two characters with the same name was really confusing, too. Even though they were spelled differently -- Berger and Burger -- I really had to stop and think every time about which character it was. I really did enjoy the book though, and am getting ready to start the second one.

I think, after that, the main character remarks that the man telling the insufferably-pointless-overdetailed story is an excellent storyteller, and I gave up.


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STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress (other topics)The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (other topics)
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