2. The Girl Who Played with Fire, Steig Larsson

Somebody edited this one! I liked this book much more, for the readability factor if nothing else. The story was much more congruent and I was able to follow it without a lot of filler.

In this second book of the trilogy, the theme appears to be people taking the law into their own hands. There have been several murders and Lisbeth can be linked to all of them in some way or another.

Lisbeth, of course, mistrusts any authority figure, therefore she would never consider the cops to be on her side or any use to her. Mikael, being a journalist, is clearly justified in playing a police officer...wait, nope, he's just a journalist. I don't get it. Also, Dragan Armansky, who owns a security company full of rent-a-cops, also decides that he and his team need to get involved with the police investigation. It makes for an interesting story, but if you sit back and think about it, it seems pretty ridiculous that all of these people feel the need to "take the law into their own hands."

I found myself on Lisbeth's side in this book, more so than last time. She's pretty much front and center in the story, considering the fact that she's the prime suspect in three murders. In the last story I liked Mikael a lot, but his character wasn't developed at all in this story, so I found myself bored with his character doing the exact same thing he did in the last book.

This series is very dark, which I don't have a problem with, but it also feels very unpolished. Like Larsson didn't know who he wanted his characters to be. I will read the third installment (which costs twice as much, thank you very much Amazon.) because I want to stick it out to the bitter end but, Larsson's writing style-at least in his posthumously edited books-is definitely not for me.

Noelle

1. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson

The first book I read in 2011 is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson.

Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist who has been convicted of libel against a very powerful investor. After the trial, he is given an unusual freelance assignment by Henrik Vanger, a billionaire former CEO. Vanger wants him to ghostwrite his autobiography and investigate the murder of his niece-which happened more than 40 years prior.

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be cumbersome. Having pretty much no experience with Swedish culture, I got very caught up in the names of people and places. It's odd to me how they referred to everyone, including women, by their last names. This includes calling everyone in the Vanger family by "Vanger." Confusing much? The author also spent way too much time describing characters who are utterly unimportant to the story. I found myself distracted by the life stories of random police officers, etc who only appeared once in the story.

 The theory presented to me by my brilliant friend Tasha is that this book seems like it was never edited. This is probably because this book was published in 2009, five years after the author's death. Due to the fact that book editing is a give-and-take process, this novel (and presumably the second and third in the series) didn't seem to go through this stage. There is so much filler that looks more like notes & research for the author’s sake than anything else.

The main themes of this book were violence, sex, murder, sex, gender issues, and sex. The main character, Mikael, is sleeping with his business partner Erika, who is married and all parties involved seem to be fine with the arrangement. Lisbeth's guardian (she is a ward of the state as she's been deemed mentally incompetent to care for herself) is sexually abusing her. It took me a while to get used to the idea that in Swedish culture, these casual relationships make sense.

Despite all of my negative comments, I really did enjoy this book. At least enough to start the second one. I'm hoping they get more polished over time in order to keep my attention. 

New Year, New Plan

A thought occurred to me as I was reading Pride & Prejudice this weekend...I don't particularly care for Jane Austen. Her writing style isn't for me, and I'm having a tough time getting into the story. Just as I have every time I've attempted to read any of her books.

So, I've made a decision...I'm still going to read 100 books in 2011, but I'm not going to limit myself to any certain list. I am always open to suggestions, but I'm going to treat myself to more contemporary lit, possibly with a few classics thrown in for good measure.

I'll still review the books here as I finish them, so stay tuned for more.