The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

 

Look! It's the cover of the book.

 

Yesterday I didn’t get on the computer (and thus the internet) all day. (A miracle, I know!) It all started on Saturday when we clambered into the car and took a short trip to see my dad and his wife for the day. We had a good time- the kids especially, since they decorated cupcakes and got to sample the sweets as they made them.  While we were there, I happened to see a book that I’ve been wanting to read, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’ by Stieg Larsson. Jumping on the chance, I begged my father to let me take it home and read it, which he reluctantly agreed to since he had actually promised the book to someone else, first. (By the way, thanks, Dad!)

We left late and arrived home exhausted on Saturday and so it was late Sunday afternoon before I could even think of opening the book, but as soon as I began to read, there was no stopping. Now, this is a pattern for me. I love to read and can tune out everything while I do so, not even noticing that someone is standing next to me, trying to get my attention. I also have the bad habit of ignoring not just people and things, but time as well. Reading the Twilight series left me completely worn out since I refused to sleep until I had finished. There were several days that I didn’t get to bed until after 4am.

 

Don't bother me...I am working on something very important.

 

So, onto the book that kept me off of the computer and had me ignoring other responsibilities as well. It is a murder-mystery, with a twist, of course. A financial journalist, Blomkvist, has been framed for libel and accepts the job of writing an autobiography for aging billionaire, Vanger, who also wants Blomkvist to find out what happened to Vanger’s niece forty years earlier. The journalist is helped in his search by Salander, a brilliant young woman whose social ineptness has made her a ward of the state and therefore at risk of being exploited by those who would take advantage of her dependence. Their alliance uncovers not only the answer to a family tragedy, which causes even more trauma than the original event itself, but they find a way to expose the person who framed Blomkvist. (Warning: The secret they reveal along with the abuse that Salander experiences is very graphic and disturbing.)

My favorite part of this novel is how Larsson describes his characters. The main character is introduced and described by another, minor character, and I think that is so cool! The mystery sits on the backburner for about half of the novel while Larsson focuses on the life stories of his hero and heroine, helping to explain their reactions to the revelations they make in the course of the investigation.

It’s probably because I have begun writing again and am currently struggling to write a short story I started about a month ago, but it fascinated me how Larsson put together his narrative. He is getting a lot of attention for a reason- he writes well. It is a real shame that he died before seeing his books published.

While this is not the sort of story I usually enjoy (my favorites are historical novels), this is a very good book. It reads smoothly, the story keeps up pace despite the fact that the novel is quite long. Enjoy, guys!

The Bad Mother’s Handbook, by Kate Long

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Sometimes, you read the book first, and then see the movie. In this case, I saw the movie first (check here for the review). After having read the book, I find a new respect for the movie; it did a … Continue reading →

The word listen contains the same letters as silent

Sometimes, when he is reading a book he really likes, my husband will re-read passages just for the beauty of it. For my part, I often find myself reading too quickly to thoroughly enjoy the artistic quality of any given story; I’m just too interested in what is going to happen next. (Funny. I think most of us live our lives like that…)

But C. has slowly been teaching me to enjoy a story, to see beyond the action to the way in which an author has crafted a sentence, a scene, in sum, the story. My first experience with this was, oddly enough, in German. We picked up ‘Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer’ by Patrick Suskind on a train trip taken during the summer. (I no longer remember where we were headed, just that the weather was perfect, the landscape green, the sky a cloudless blue and we were falling in love.)

The first sentence (at least in German) takes up two pages. Whimsical and lovely, it describes how the author could have flown when he was younger had he not been told he couldn’t.  (An example of this whimsy- here is an excerpt from his learning to ride a bike: I don’t remember how long it took me to master the dark art of riding a bicycle. All I remember is that I learned it by myself, with a mixture of unwillingness and grim resolve, on my mother’s bicycle, on a slightly sloping forest track where no one could see me…And one time, after many failed attempts, surprisingly suddenly really, I cracked it. I could move – in spite of all my theoretical doubts and my powerful scepticism – freely on two wheels: a mystifying and proud sensation.) My German, while good, is not equal to C’s and his guidance helped me to enjoy the beauty of the written prose.

Guidance to enjoy prose; which brings me to another book I recently read and now wish to share with E. ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ by Norton Juster is a lovely story about a boy who does nothing, goes nowhere and is generally unsatisfied. He receives an anonymous gift of a tollbooth through which he drives his toy car and has wonderful adventures in Dictionopolis (the city of words) and Digitopolis (the city of numbers) and learns to take responsibility for his own amusement.

I love the words in this book, the way the author uses them to describe old ideas to make them new again. After E. is finished reading the Narnia series with his father, I will read him this book and relish both his delight and mine as we discover the beauty in the written word. And maybe learn to slow down a bit.

Here is a sampling of quotes from the book:

• It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time.
• Whether or not you find your own way, you’re bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it’s quite rusty.
• There are no wrong roads to anywhere.
• Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
• Why not? That’s a good reason for almost anything – a bit used perhaps, but still quite servicable.
• The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
• There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye.
• If you want sense, you’ll have to make it yourself.
• Many of the things which can never be, often are.
• You know that it’s there, but you just don’t know where – but just because you can never reach it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.
• Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else.
• What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.
• So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.