The NEW Stieg Larsson thread!
Ladies and gentlebugs:
I have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was everything I'm not supposed to like: badly written, sometimes cheesy, gratuitously violent, and an international bestseller. Nevertheless, I really quite enjoyed it, and when I try to figure out why, I think I can break it down:
1. The Salander chick is just one big cliche on the surface: punk rocking cyber-terrorist with weird tattoos and mysterious past, lacking in social skills but brilliant at what she does. Yawn; and yet she's given this vulnerable side that you don't often see in such characters. Instead of being a kung-fu pro or something, she's physically vulnerable and has to rely on her mind to get things done; this is unlike most other super-heroine-type characters you find in fiction and movies, who are not only good with their brains but good with their swords.
2. The prose may be "pedestrian", but the book is certainly not trying to be anything other than a story, and the story, I think, is helped by the prose in this case. Larsson could have gone on and on describing the mysterious little town, giving us all the emotional subtleties that come with being a stranger in a strange land, etc, but because he was clearly not interested in that, he just wrote in a very straightforward, sometimes clumsy, manner. It worked for me. There's no aspiration here to create a work of art, and so the focus is all on the plot. This, for me, is far more interesting than some of the Stephen King books I've read, where the attempts to be literary undermine the book instead of helping it.
3. The whole book is incredibly immersive once the reporter dude gets to the little town. The family history is impressively detailed, and while I've read and heard complaints that a lot of it doesn't add anything to the story, I was pretty fascinated by it all. I even ended up laughing whenever Larsson tells us, for the twentieth time, that so-and-so had X kind of sandwich.
Sure, it's strange that the novel has sold I don't know how many dozens of millions of copies worldwide, considering its limitations, but I don't find it surprising that lots of people have enjoyed it. I did.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
OF COURSE YOU LOVED THE SANDWICHES! I remember when I visited Sweden about, I dunno, 5 years ago, the Swedes I stayed with initiated me into the art of combining cheese with jam. I hadn't had that before, but now I do it all the time.
I agree about the guardianship part of the book being interesting; I found it really crazy to read about. I wonder how accurate his info is. He was a reporter, and apparently a pretty important one, so I'm guessing he knew what he was talking about.
The "literary aspirations" that I mentioned, in Stephen King, are hard to define. I thought The Shining, Carrie and Pet Sematary were solid books, but the recent stuff that I've given a shot, especially Lisey's Story, really put me off. It just seemed like he was trying to overcome being seen as a "story writer" and become a literary novelist, which is a silly ambition in itself. I really didn't enjoy Lisey's Story at all.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
Concerning #1: I couldn't agree more. I remember in like the first or second chapter Lisbeth is described as being better with computers than the IT staff at her work. When I read that I groaned. I expected her to be the kung-fu Trinity character, nothing but a big cliche. But her vulnerabilities made her believable. She wasn't anti-social in a 'cool' way, she had Asperger syndrome. One of my close friends has Asperger's and how Lisbeth behaved was hauntingly similar. When I began to realize, through her social behavior, that she had Asperger's, her technical prowess was no longer just plausible, it was probable.
Concerning #2: I didn't like the prose at first but once the book pulled me in a couple chapters in I didn't even notice it. I was too involved in the story to care about the prose.
Concerning #3: I found the family history fascinating. I didn't really notice the sandwiches, but I've never been to Sweden and I didn't realize there was anything significant about it. I just figured they were hungry.
"[B]eing good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two." - Ray Bradbury
I was initially worried about Lizbeth being a cliche, but not for long. She wasn't unrealistically bad-ass.
Besides the sandwiches which were not significant, really, but more another example of what made the book realistic to me, I also liked how casually everyone has sex. Not in a hedonistic way, but in a mature, "not big deal" way. I think it's interesting that the sexual mores are so different there.
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/group/official-cult-book-club/september-09-dis...
Just saying...
Just saying...
Aw, you had to make me feel bad, didn't you? I can delete this one if you want, though now that people have contributed it wouldn't feel right.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
Please don't delete it! And don't feel bad, either! It's not that big of a deal.
Yeah don't delete it. It's just that when there's a book club discussion and nobody participates, then I see a few months later somebody starting a thread or discussing the book somewhere else, I think it's funny.
But yeah - this thread is much more accessible so leave it!
Stieg Larsson sounds like a professional wrestler. Is he?
Oops! 
Nate, no, he wasn't a wrestler, he was a journalist turned novelist that died before seeing the success of his novels.
I've tried to start Dragon twice now, but it lulls me to sleep. Finance malfeasance journalism isn't a great hook to open a novel. My version is European though, and I wonder if the US version is different? Is it a translation, or did he write it in English? And even if he did, could there possibly be a different US edit?
I will finish the book eventually. I'm too busy learning the vicious political history of Barca football at the moment...
You didn't like 'Beat the Reaper' either, Mike. Face it, you have highbrow tastes!
Ah, but I came around on Beat the Reaper. It was enjoyable, and some of the bigger problems I had with it paid off somewhat in the end. So the execution was a bit ham-fisted at times, but it worked out (except the ending was a little too quick).
I wish my brows were higher...one of my favorite series of books involves Pirates and their endless love of Ham.
Good call!
am i really the only person here who found this book to be repetitive and at least 150 pages too heavy?
www.triplebeard.com
http://darkroomreview.blogspot.com
“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
Probably.
Your signature is a little over the top in the way you dislike the book, by the way.
a man's gotta have a cause.
www.triplebeard.com
http://darkroomreview.blogspot.com
“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
Well, I'm happy that you enjoyed it because I enjoyed the hell out out of it. I like to be entertained, and books that set out to do so without any pretensions, that are well written, and that deliver are not all that easy ro find.
I did love Lizbeth because she was a kick-ass heroine without the fake physical powers. I didn't think her history was a cliche at all, it was sobering (and slightly frightening) to read about the legalities of guardianship in Sweden, especially the mental defect part.
I LOVED the sandwiches! Don't say of course you did, Mirka, because snacks and eating habits make a character familiar and real to me. The sandwiches and the coffee really pulled me into the Swedishness of it. I started another Swedish mystery book, and it irritated me that a character was warming a stew, but didn't say what kind! That's a missing detail, and a clumsy one to me.
The book had a lot going on, lots of characters and was kind of convoluted which I appreciated very much as a reader, I do have an attention span!
Which Stephen King books have you read, Phil? Because I do know what you mean by the literary aspirations undermining some of his books, but not till later. I loved several of his earlier books like 'The Stand', 'Firestarter', and especially 'The Dead Zone'. Oh, and the first three 'Gunslinger' books.