Giant Post Day

Well I'm back! Did you miss me blogworld? Actually I got back from San Francisco a few days ago but I have kind of been putting off writing my next review. But before I get to why I am filled with such trepidation with writing this review, I want to share a very special book nerd adventure that occurred while I was in San Francisco!

I visited the City Lights Bookstore! Woooo! That's great Augusta but what's the big deal? Well the City Lights Bookstore is one of the most famous bookstores in all of America. While not only being one of the last successful, privately-owned bookstores in the country, City Lights also has a rich and famous history. City Lights has always been a "stick to the man" kind of book store if you will pardon the School of Rock reference. Specializing in stirring up political change, City Lights took their beliefs to a whole new level when the store published a book called Howl. Now, in 1956 Howl was considered obscene, and the government arrested the author and publishers for spreading obscenity due to the book's depictions of homosexuality. But City Lights would not back down. Aided by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), City Lights fought the arrests and said that the refusal to distribute this book violated their First Amendment rights. It went all the way to the Supreme Court and City Lights and Howl won. This lead to an explosion of new, ground breaking literature that hadn't been published before and made City Lights a literary legend. So seeing the bookstore was a really cool moment for me and I actually made my profile picture me outside City Lights. So that is my San Francisco nerdtastic adventure.

Now on to why I have been putting off writing this review. It was because of the book I am going to review today The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. The truth is, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the book and I was unsure of what to write in the blog. But without further ado, here we go.

Characters: Mikael Blomkvist: finacial writer/convicted for libel of banking tycoon Wennerstrom/hired by Henrik Vanger to find out the truth about Harriet Vanger
Lisbeth Salander: private investigator for Milton Security/is an expert computer hacker and excellent at getting information from anywhere/aids Blomkvist in his search for Harriet Vanger
Henrik Vanger: hires Blomkvist to find out what has happened to his niece Harriet Vanger who disappeared over forty years ago/ex CEO of Vanger Corporations/hates most of his family
Hans-Erik Wennerstrom: man who sues Blomkvist for libel/is attempting to destroy the Millenium, Blomkvist's old magazine/part of a crime circle that stretches over several continents

The Plot: Henrik Vanger has been plagued by the mystery of his favorite niece's disappearance for almost forty years. With no new leads for decades, the case has completely dried up and Henrik is aware that his time is limited. But the mystery still haunts him today. So in one last attempt to discover the truth about Harriet Vanger, he hires recently convicted of libel and soon to go to jail writer Mikael Blomkvist. Out of a job and out of options, Blomkvist reluctantly accepts and is thrown into a case decades old. The problem? The only suspects are Henrik's insane family who are all either dead or in their older years. Some don't even remember Harriet that clearly. In need of help, Blomkvist turns to Lisbeth Salander, a girl who can dig up information on just about anybody. With her aid, the two discover a mystery bigger than either one of them expected and learn that Harriet Vanger wasn't just a rich heiress with no problems in the world.

What I liked: The title. It was catchy.

What I didn't like: This is a forewarning to all of the people who like this book who are reading my blog. I am sorry but I just couldn't stand it. Apology in advance. So now to the meat of the novel. This may take a while. First off, the whole premise of the novel. Ruined writer has to solve decades cold murder to regain his honor and solve a decades old wrong. Not terrifically original but enticing enough. But then the novel starts. This may have been the most boring book I have ever read. It was certainly the most boring mystery novel I have ever read. So much of the novel was spent on Blomkvist and his fall from honor as a financial writer. I had multiple problems with this. First, Larsson stressed again and again how he was the only writer with "real detective instincts" who really looked at the big CEOs. Not realistic. Plus, Blomkvist was such a pompous, self-centered character who looked at every woman as some sort of object of his desires. Great mix for a main character. And anyway, this book is a MYSTERY NOVEL. Not a drawn out saga about a writer regaining his inner writing skills. So then we finally eighty pages in get to the real mystery. And we meet the overly messed up Vanger family. There were no characters besides Henrik Vanger that you could actually like. The family had rapists, murderers, Nazi supporters and crazy mothers. I could go into more detail but I really don't want to. So anyway I hated all of them making Blmokvist's dialogue with the family painful to read. But it's not like I was in too much pain because the next a hundred and fifty pages were about Blomkvist going on little adventures about the town and his gross, creepy relationships with all the women in the town. Don't get me started on him and Erika Berger (she's married for crying out loud) and with him and Lisbeth Salander (age difference-please!) So we finally, FINALLY get to some mystery details and it's so short and simple I kind of feel depressed while I'm reading it. Someone turns out to be part of a serial family of killers and rapists and its so disturbing I find it hard to believe. Larsson (SPOILERS AHEAD) wrote about how Harriet was raped and tortured by her father and brother. Disgusting and revolting. But she never mentioned it to anyone not even her beloved uncle. Also, no one knew in the entire family. I found that hard to believe no one figured it out; the family knew everyone else's business and every little detail but no one knew anything about Harriet. And Harriet was really alive the whole time to top off the ridiculousness. Want to know why? Because Larsson couldn't figure out how to kill her off. He had weaved a situation so impossible he had to cop out by making her be alive the whole time. And when the murderer was finally close to being apprehended, Larsson had him killed in a car accident because he didn't know how to deal with the fallout from the reality of the Harriet situation. Lastly, Lisbeth Salander. She made me mad as well. She gets assaulted by her new guardian multiple times and she "gets even" with him by tattooing and torturing him. Ridiculous. And personally I wasn't overly impressed by her skills. She can hack a computer. Wow. But the worst part? All the female characters in the story were a letdown. I couldn't cheer for any of them because they just let men abuse them time and time again and didn't want to take control of their lives. And the one woman that did (Salander) was so psychotic in her plan for revenge that I couldn't cheer for her either. So the cast of characters consisted of weak females and abusive males. Terrific literary material.

Overall: 2 out of 10. After all the great things I had heard about this book I tried so hard to over look all of its deficiencies. But the more I read the more the reader in me realized that this is not a good book and I can't see how people couldn't realize that. I am starting to realize that being a New York Times Bestseller doesn't exactly mean that it is a great novel.