It seems I swing pendulously from reading quite voraciously to reading nothing but blogs and magazines. I am either in a complete literary dry spell or conversely I am thinking about ways to carve out extra seconds from my day to read my latest novel.
At the moment, I am entangled in the later phase---all I want to do is sit in my favorite comfy chair and read...and read...and read.
What book has pulled me in this time? The Girl Who Played with Fire. A caveat: this book is not polite nor calm nor well-behaved. It is dark and twisted and at times, explicitly difficult to read. Let's just say, the ladies at your grandma's church wouldn't choose this as their latest book club selection. But, if you can make your way through the grit and gloom, you will be surely hooked.
This is the second book in a trilogy. Having watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on film, the first story of the series, I was ready to pick up where the film had abruptly left me. You have probably seen these three books, as they've all been at the top of the bestsellers list for months, on the central displays at Borders or Barnes and Noble. For reasons I now understand, America seems taken by these books as well.
So, what's the hook? What makes these books different than your average page-turner? The series was written by a Swedish journalist named Stieg Larsson who died not long after finishing the texts. Filled with cumbersome Swedish names and unfamiliar geographic references, at first, you may feel you're reading an autobiography of my personal favorite Muppet: the Swedish Chef. But child's play, this is not.
The three stories all circle complexly around two central figures: a serious middle-aged man at the apex of his investigative journalism career and a female computer hacker with a turbulently checkered past and a thoroughly tattooed body. This you may think does not sounds like a duet that immediately captures your imagination (or like something Pink Frenchie might read). But, the story that Larsson intricately weaves together through third person narration holds his readers hostage throughout the novel.
What have you read lately that makes you want to hide under your covers and stay up all night to read by the glow of a flashlight? What books have pulled you in?
Of the three Stieg Larson's books, I enjoyed
ReplyDeleteThe Girl Who Played With Fire the most. I hope that Larson's family and his "girlfriend" can come to some agreement so that his fans can read his final book.