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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


RCee

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Thats an interesting article thanks for the link, don't believe a word of the accusation he couldn't have written them by himself. It's not fair that a so called friend can raise speculation when he can't provide any evidence and Larsson can't fight back!

Edited by cosychair
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For those in the UK: is there a paperback version available across the pond? Amazon UK says it is coming in April but then it says some are available form other sellers. I Am I missing something? Is it trade versus mass? Thanks in advance.

 

So far fabulous series :welcome:

I ordered mine through Abe Books, from a UK store, finally found one quite reasonable.

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i have now read all three of the books and i wasn't dissapointed by any of them, its a shame that Stieg Larsson won't be around to write anymore..

 

do you know who they are thinking of casting in the film, it could ruin it so badly if miscast?

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I admit falling into the trap of all the fuss around that book when the French translation was released, and I also liked the daring mixture economic journalistic style with the building of a thriller in the 1st part of the book. However my interest rapidly faded away as gore and fashionable sexual perversions accumulated. The last part of the book felt like an indigestion of all the necessary ingredients to accomplish a commercial thriller. A shame, as the beginning of the plot was very promising and unusual in many ways. I only read the 1st volume of the series

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Interesting article. I liked the names the books had in Swedish. The Castle in the Air That Blew Up? That must be a strange direct translation surely?

 

A funny claim the guy was making that because Larsson couldn't write well in the 80s he couldn't possibly write well now. Because of course after a couple of decades of doing something you wouldn't get any better :roll:

 

I enjoyed all three of the books but like I mentioned in another thread the only thing that got on my nerves was the unecessary details. Telling us every item that a character has bought as if there was any point at all. If it was just one character he did it for maybe it could have been to show how specific they were in what they want? I don't know. Just got on my wick.

 

Plus Larsson seemed to really love to show how liberal he was all the time. Obviously there's nothing wrong with being liberal but he just kept on. It's like boasting about how much money you give anonymously to charity.

 

I noticed that too, I loved the books and greatly saddened that there will be no more but I did get irritated that he presented his political ideology at THE ONLY acceptable way to think/act. I agreed with a lot of his views but I really can't stand being preached too.

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I'm busy reading this at the moment and am about 1/3rd of the way through. It took me several chapters to figure out the Roman numerals were the month part of a date shown at the top of each chapter (yes, sometimes I really am that dense!).

 

I'm not sure if I'm actually enjoying it. I'm not hating it, but nothing much seems to be happening and it's unfolding very, very slowly. I'm not really identifying with any of the characters and one of them (the "guardian" lawyer who has taken over from the original one) has actually disgusted, sickened and all together p*ssed me of (with his questioning of Lisbeth's sexual activities - she's a grown woman, for Gods' sake! It's none of his damned busness! Why does she still need a "guardian" at that age anyway? It's just stupid!).

 

Actually, there's quite a lot that is annoying me (one of the major ones being the one I just mentioned).

 

None of the characters seem to me to be particularly "real" and they all feel like charicatures - the rebel computer genius; the journo with integrity; the evil big business man; the old guy whith a kooky family - and I'm finding I don't actually like or sympathise with any of them.

 

I really am beginning to wonder what all the hype is about (I have really come to the book knowing nothing about it excpet that a lot of people are banging on about it and the sequels - honestly, nothing more than the title!), and wondering whether or not it's worth my continuing with it. To be perfectly honest, I think if I do continue with it, it may well only be because I've already invested a fair bit of time in getting this far with it and could see myself getting very angry for having wasted the time if I don't finish it. Then again, if it doesn't pick up, I'll have wasted even more time.

 

What to do? What to do? What to do?

 

OK, I'll give it maybe another couple of chapters, but if it doesn't pick up very bloody quickly, I'm ditching it.

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No, that's not a spoiler. And I pretty much figured I was supposed to feel that way, but I thought that perhaps it's pushed a little too far (I mean, really, quizzing a grown woman on her sexual practices is just a bit much if you ask me and the whole thing could have been done in a whole different way, perhaps to better effect).

 

I'm off to read in bed for a little while, but this will be the last I read of this book unless something drastic happens before I put it down to go to sleep. :roll:

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I think there are a small few of us have 8 stars at the moment - you have to make a heck of a lot of posts to get them though. :roll:

 

I'm yet to hit much of the mystery, so I'm hoping something will happen tonight otherwise it's for the chop. :lol:

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Kell, I do hope you are able to stick with it with a bit longer. It really does get quite exciting and very hard to put down. ;)

 

Noll, have no fear, there are still plenty of us that have loved it!

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They are definitely not worthy of all the hype they received in my opinion, I think they suffered from a bit of a sheep mentality, where it became cool to rave about them.

 

The first book for me did not even start moving until after 100 pages, and I know a few who gave up before then, the depth the beginning goes into was completely unnecessary for me. What relevance to the story does all that detail about Swedish Business law have exactly?

 

The second book was the one I overall enjoyed most out of the three, and I gave up on the 3rd before even getting halfway in. The amount of unnecessary detail just bored me.

 

I listened to the audiobook of the first before I read the physical copy of the book, which I think helped me stay with it because I knew it was going to get better the more I read.

There are moments in each of the books that really grabbed me, but I then found I had to wade through pages of turgid, excruciatingly boring detail to get to the next exciting part.

 

If you are struggling to stay with it but you want to finish the story - give the abriged audiobooks a try.

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I didn't manage to get any reading don ein bed last night as Xan's emerging molar was giving him gyp (and so I got no sleep at all as I was up with him), so the book has been given a reprieve till at least tonight when I'll give it another couple of chapters. I'm almost 200 pages in though, and as it's just over 500 pages long, I'm wondering when the excitement is going to kick in because there really has been none so far!

 

Thanks for the suggestion of the abridged audio book, but I think I'll give that a miss - I'm not a fan of abridgements. I'd rather have the whole story or not at all. I've been that way ever since I discovered the versions of Dracula and Frankenstein that I read as a child were abridgements and I'd missed parts of the story. I was furious! I was about 10 at the time, but it took me years to get back and read the full-length originals, and I enjoyed them far more. I vowed, even at that early age, that I'd never read an abridgement again (I even have the full-length, unabridged version of The Stand by Stephen King and it's become one of my all-time favourite books - LOL!).

Edited by Kell
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I'm not sure if I'm actually enjoying it. I'm not hating it, but nothing much seems to be happening and it's unfolding very, very slowly.

 

Well, I personally think that it was more interesting when things were happening slow, because when they started to move faster, that's where it got worse ! As if he had a quota of flashy things to add to be able to finish the book !

The beginning of the book is actually the best part, the most original,the most unusual. The end is just what we can read in other books.... I gave that book away for about 10p ;)

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See, I'm not finding any of what I've read so far to be all that original. The characters have all been done before (see my previous post about charicatures) and I have had my suspicions about the missing girl from the beginning. I strongly suspect

that she's alive and well and living somewhere else and that it's HER sending the flowers to her uncle on his birthday. I'm finding I don't much care why she left.

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I must say that I found the second and third books to be superior to the first. To begin with Lisbeth [book not in front of me for correct spelling, sorry] is in the next ones FAR more, and that alone makes for more interesting copy. So, hang in there, a great deal of what is in the first is set up for her later on. ;)

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I'm finding the amount of back story and back history given in the middle of what's happening "now" far too irritating. It jars and annoys me. I've now read over 200 pages (of about 530 - so almost half way) and have decided not to bother continuing. There's just too much about this book that's annoying me and not enough happening to keep me interested. Sorry to all those who enjoyed it, but I'm finding it pretty dire. I'll be getting shot of the book pretty quick-smart and I won't be bothering with the sequels.

 

Part of the problem is that I don't actually like any of the characters. Actually, I find them very annoying - especially Lisbeth (who I suspect I'm supposed to like) and Blomkvist (who I'm pretty cretain I'm not supposed to find plodding and pedestrian). As they're the two main characters it's ruining any enjoyment I might have got from the story.

 

I don't even care enough about Harriet to find out if my previous prediction is correct.

 

The end.

 

Ah well.

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In that case, I really do think the book was terrible, because I thought that was pretty obvious from extremely early on and I was hoping it was a red herring. If I can figure out the end by about page 5, then I reckon that's the mark of a book that I'm going to find pretty awful.

 

Thanks for letting me know though.

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I was just wondering, since I've noticed some of the people on here have expressed their wish to see the original Swedish movie, that if people would be interested in a 'movie ring'? Someone would buy the movie and make sure it had English subtitles, and then they could send it around just like a book in a book ring? :ditto:

 

Edit: I can't seem to find any DVD's that would have the English subtitles, sorry :lol: But the rumour has it that the movie could be obtained through more unofficial channels but I would not know anything about that if you know what I mean.

Edited by frankie
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  • 2 months later...

I am just torn on writing anything about this book. Usually I pick to pieces very popular books (like the Da Vinci Code) and I think the only popular book that I really liked is "The Book Thief"

 

Certainly, this book is gripping, but once the main mystery was over I was a bit 'meh'

 

They sure do drink a lot of coffee in Sweden and the main character has the morals of an alley cat. I couldn't work out how he was sentenced and walked out of jail. That doesn't happen where I live. That kept playing on my mind. I loved Lisbeth, though.

 

Worth reading for sure.

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