Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I just read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for one of my book clubs. I debated between giving it 2 or 3 stars. I ended up giving it 2 stars, but I do want to recommend that you read it. It is a pretty good book. It is the first in a series of 3, and I will definitely read the other 2. The author passed away shortly after writing #3 so there will be no more of them. Here is why I gave it two stars instead of three stars:

1. It is set in Sweden with references to places in Europe that I had never heard of. Many names/places in Sweden start with an "H" apparently, as I had a hard time keeping track of people and places initially.

2. To that end, he really has about 5 story lines going on all at once (though some are put on the back-burner for a time) so initially it was hard to keep track of the various people/places/stories going on. It got better after about the second or third "chapter." (He doesn't really use chapters...just time periods.) I'm not sure that a couple of the story lines were even necessary except that I'm guessing they are the set up for the following books.

3. There was some graphic physical/sexual abuse in it. I've read worse, but as I get older I just don't like it. I'm pretty sure he could have toned it down a bit and still got his point across.

So there you have it. Go get it. Read it, and let me know what you think of it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Bought it. Read it. Liked it.
I agree... strange names are hard to keep straight! Agreed that the abuse was rather unnecessarily graphic.
I bought #2 at the same time. I'm off to read that... (This one took less than 24 hours. Of course, I had to ignore the kids, the laundry, and mealtimes to read that much!)