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Author Topic: QC Forum Book Group - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Discussion Thread  (Read 14951 times)

Lines

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I made a separate thread so people who have finished the book can talk about it. There is spoiler potential, be warned.

Discuss!
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Inlander

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Thanks! I was thinking of doing this myself. (I'll add more useful comment after I've had a shower and breakfast.)
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JD

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After reading the second book, I gotta say Lisbeth makes way more sense as a character.
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Inlander

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As has been noted in the other thread, the original Swedish title translates into English as Men Who Hate Women. This is, obviously, a radically different title from the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and this along with the statistics about abuse of women that accompany each new section of the book make pretty clear the intention Larsson had in mind when he was writing it: to use the thriller genre to highlight a genuine social ill in Sweden. I'm curious to know, though, to what degree do you think he succeeded? Do you feel better informed about Swedish society after reading the book than you did beforehand? Or do you just feel entertained? And to what degree (if any) do you think the building of an entertainment (which the book primarily is, I think) around horrific violence against women, even if that violence is condemned at every turn, work against Larsson's (as opposed to the book's) intention?
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Inlander

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Okay, maybe that's a bit too heavy to start with. So how about this: the book has sold millions of copies world-wide, has almost single-handedly ensured that people have stopped talking about Dan Brown, has been praised by the critics from hill to dale - but what did you actually think of it? Did you think it lived up to the hype? Surpassed it? Fell short?

Personally I thought it was an interesting story with pretensions to being something greater, conveyed by prose that was functional at best and downright awkward at worst (probably not helped by what seems like a fairly uninspired and at times clunky translation into English). Having said that I am half-way through reading the second book now so I'm enjoying the characters and their stories well enough. It's a page turner but I don't know if it's much more than that.
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Lines

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I enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought the characters were really interesting, the plot was engaging, and at some point I would like to read the other books. However, it was rather disturbing, but well done because it wasn't too graphic. There was enough information there about the rapes and murders for the reader to understand and get a picture of what was happening without the author describing so much that the reader gets too disgusted to continue.

Really, I think Men Who Hate Women pretty much nails what this book about. It was almost a little overpowering how much misogyny there is in this book and just how unapologetic those men are about it. Also, in the book, other than Salander's guardian, it was condensed to one family, which made it even worse, in my opinion. But I don't know if this book would have hit it off so well over here if they'd kept the original title. I honestly had no idea what this book was about when you guys decided on it and, well, it was kind of a slap to the face once I got to chapter 11.

I'm still kind of letting the ending sink in, so I'll post some more later.
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KharBevNor

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I am trying to hack my way through this book, but I'm having trouble getting my teeth in. The prose is dreadful. Seems like it hasn't really been edited much and the translation is odd.
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Yeah, it's pretty clear that this book suffers from a severe lack of editing. There are some sections where I think the translator has inserted extra information, such as the bit near the beginning when he explains that Gamla Stan is the oldest part of Stockholm - this surely wouldn't have been in the original Swedish version, everyone in Sweden knows precisely what Gamla Stan is (hell, I think it actually means "Old Town"). But there are some sections where Larsson has obviously just written extremely average prose, which was genuinely surprising for me giving the amount of praise the book has received. I'd like to think that an editor would have gone over the manuscript with him had he lived (he died before the books were published), but given the state of the publishing industry these days I'm not so sure.
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Barmymoo

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It wasn't until I was a good way through the book that it occurred to me that the incongruous stilted explanations of things that would presumably be blatantly clear in the original Swedish may have been added by an over-zealous translator. I was interested in Jens' opinion, as presumably the Norwegian would be closer to the Swedish and potentially the weird scientific explanations would be missing.

When I've got a little more time I'll reference some of the worst offenders; it'd be interesting to know if they exist in all translations or just the English.

Aside from that, I enjoyed it in the way that I enjoy most books, but it certainly wasn't brilliant. The fact that Larsson seems to be intending to condemn violent misogyny and then at times seems to take pleasure in it (personally I felt that there was an excess of sex, particularly involving Lisbeth) just didn't add up to me. And looking back, the beginning seems like a totally different book - it had the potential to go somewhere fresh and it just didn't make it.
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Lines

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Yeah, the beginning and the last few chapters almost don't fit the rest of the book at all. I understand that Blomkvist was a financial investigative reporter, but the middle just seems so out of place with the beginning and end. I'm beginning to think that if they'd replaced all the Vanger stuff (which was useless for his story about Wennerström) with a different way to get Blomkvist and Salander together to unearth all the crap about Wennerström it could have just as interesting and not so crazy.

As for sex, I think the excess mostly came from Blomkvist. He had a thing with Berger, then this out of the blue thing with Cecilia, and then Salander came along and they had their thing. But really, it came from them both. It was excessive, but it wasn't really elaborated upon too much, so it didn't bother me that much.
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Barmymoo

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Well yes, definitely Blomkvist seemed to have a lot of sex but I think my problem with him sleeping with Salander was that it just seemed unrealistic. He had a relationship with Berger, which was at least believable, then Cecilia seduced him - par for the course in this kind of book I think, since it set up the reader to expect Cecilia to be the villain. But why did he sleep with Lisbeth? What is Larsson's obsession with Salander's sexuality?
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JD

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I thought Blomkvist frequent sexings was rather mary sue-ish for a while.
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KharBevNor

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Yeah, having read further, and researched Larsson, I don't think it's absurd to suggest that Blomkvist is something of a self-insert. That's fairly common in thrillers and crime fiction though.
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[22:25] Dovey: i don't get sigquoted much
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Lines

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(side mention - does anyone else think it's a little bit odd that a prolific hacker would use an apple laptop? I don't know a lot about hacking, but I've always been under the impression that part of the appeal is that they're easy to use, which is a non-issue if you are in your country's illegal hacker elite, surely?)

I was wondering about that, considering the computer they were describing was a Powerbook, I think it was before they got the intel chip (but maybe not). But hacking with a Mac wouldn't be as bad as hacking into a Mac. But as a Mac user, it's not just the simplicity of it, it's also the speed and quality of it. Yes, Macs are notorious for weird crashes, but with PCs, I've had hacks and viruses, whereas I've never had either on a Mac. So maybe that was it or Larsson wanted to pick a well known and rather flashy computer for Salander.
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BlahBlah

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It was definitely a page-turner. I read it in one evening, I just couldn't put it down.

I agree with everything said in this thread, the only other thing I found a bit odd was how stereotypical Lisbeth was, with the whole punky-hacker chick image. Isn't there a very similar character in CSI as well? And, yeah, using a mac to do all your hacking is kinda strange. I'd also take issue with the novel's definition of hacker but that's a completely different topic and isn't important.
« Last Edit: 17 Apr 2010, 04:41 by BlahBlah »
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Barmymoo

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Yes, I was reminded of CSI as well, but I think Lisbeth was less believable - she seemed to be a mix of about four different stereotypical character types: the goth chick, the super-sleuth hacker, the sexually liberated woman and a bizarre fake-mentally-ill state ward.

Actually I think that was my biggest problem. Why the arbitrary inclusion of a psuedo-psychological problem? It didn't add anything to the storyline. It wasn't believable. It didn't even do anything to further the "feminist" message Larsson seemed to have been after, considering how much punchier the main storyline's finale was. It was just weird.

On the upside, I was pretty much gripped and stayed up all night finishing it in one day. So he did something right I guess!
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Lines

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I think the goth chick people are referring to is Abby from NCIS, but I do believe that that is actually the actress's style and is used on the show because of it.

And I thought the mental illness thing was something assigned to her by the state, not something she actually wanted to be. She was using it as a cover for the government to leave her alone. I'm guessing it's explained in one of the other two books, as it has to do with her past which was only touched upon in this one. But yeah, it didn't add much to the story line at all.
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JD

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Lisbeth is completely explained in the second one. She makes so much more sense as a character because of her childhood.
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Lines

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The movie of this is at one of the local theaters, so I think I may see that this weekend. I'm curious as to how it'll be different from the book. Maybe it'll have some of the more awkward/annoying parts removed?
« Last Edit: 22 Apr 2010, 17:04 by Linds »
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Inlander

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Yeah, I went and saw the film on a Friday night a while ago because everyone knows that Friday night is crime night, and it was a perfectly acceptable way to pass a couple of hours. It's to cinema as the book is to literature.
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Inlander

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So we pretty much suck at book discussions, huh.
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JD

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I think that the problem is the book doesn't foster much discussion. It is a thriller, after all.
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Alex C

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Could be worse. You could have had me spamming this bitch like I spammed the twilight thread.
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Inlander

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But culturally there's so much interesting stuff surrounding this book to talk about! Why do you think it's become such a phenomenon, not just in terms of sales but in terms of critical approval? Do you think crime fiction has become "the new literature", dealing with issues fundamental to contemporary society in a way that literary fiction seems to have shied away from recently? Or do you think that's all just a load of critical self-congratulation and hogwash? I mean Star Wars is a very silly and flimsy film but it's also a genuine cultural phenomenon and I don't think anyone would say that there's nothing really worth discussing about it so I don't see why we can't find something more intersting to say about this book than "Like/didn't like".
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Barmymoo

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Well that's really the problem. It may be dealing with issues fundamental to contemporary society but there isn't really much mileage to be had out of a discussion about sado-masochistic misogyny. Anyone who is in favour of it isn't likely to declare it publicly.

I think the reason it's such a popular book is because it doesn't require thought. Everything is basically spelled out for you, with little explanatory notes the minute something might be unknown or confusing, and the ending is neatly tied up in a predictable way. It's an entertaining read but it doesn't spark off any very profound thoughts.
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Inlander

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I don't know about in Norway, but I have not read a single negative review of Stieg Larsson's books, nor heard a bad word said about it; in fact, all the critics who talk about it seem to praise it to the high heavens. Whereas the Da Vinci Code is pretty much universally regarded as an appallingly written page-turner, the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seems to have genuinely impressed literary critics.

The same thing can be seen in review of books by the likes of George Pelecanos and Ian Rankin: crime fiction seems to be near-universally regarded these days as the torch-bearer of the contemporary novel. I'd go as far as to say that, in literary circles, praising the crime genre is the cool thing to do. Now I don't read a lot of crime fiction - almost none, in fact - so I can't say how justified this attitude is, but I do think it's notable, and Stieg Larsson is the latest demonstration of it.

Which begs the question: has critical writing really slipped that far? Or are critics just so blinkered by the "crime is the new Literature" thing that they don't even notice the glaring deficiencies in Larsson's writing? Or perhaps a crime writer isn't held to the same standard, and all they have to do is put in a few statistics about violence against women (for instance) to get themselves compared to the great social commentary novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas the exact same thing would be decried as laziness in a non-genre work.
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JD

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I don't know about in Norway, but I have not read a single negative review of Stieg Larsson's books, nor heard a bad word said about it; in fact, all the critics who talk about it seem to praise it to the high heavens. Whereas the Da Vinci Code is pretty much universally regarded as an appallingly written page-turner, the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seems to have genuinely impressed literary critics.

Maybe it's because the author is dead.
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Inlander

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I definitely think that if he hadn't died the book would at least have been better edited. Or edited at all.
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Lines

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The only explanation I can come up with that Code was more negatively criticized than Girl, other than Larsson is dead, is that Code was full of ideas that some people thought were true and most thought was bullshit. Girl has some ideas in it that may, sadly, actually happen in real life. Both were on the same level when it came to prose, though mostly because of the lack of editing Larsson's I guess, but it wasn't complete religious nonsense. That's the only other reason I can come up with for one getting being negatively criticized and the other being praised. Really I think they're on the same level. I don't think a dead author cares if you don't like his book.

But I agree with Jens. This was a page turner and that's really about it, so I'm ready for the next book.
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Yeah, I could have talked more if we had chosen an interesting book. This is like performing literary criticism on a Ken Follett book

Hey man, The Pillars of the Earth rocks! I'd say it's all meritorious and shit.
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And for the love of God, if you're going to vote on a book and force the rest of us to read it without partaking in the discussion of it afterward, please, make it a good book.

In my defense, I didn't know whether the book was any good when I put it up for nomination. I suggested it because I wanted to know why there was so much buzz about it.
« Last Edit: 10 May 2010, 08:13 by Zombiedude »
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JD

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Ah

I just feel like I didn't discuss enough.
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Lines

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You didn't say much, but really, there wasn't much to say about this book and I think other people covered it.
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Man, I thought this book was compelling, but the sexual violence turned me off. Like, a lot. I finished it to the end, but I don't think I'll read the other two books. So. Much. Exposition.
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I never finished it, which is about the most damning thing I can say about any book.
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I haven't read any of this thread yet, because I haven't read the book yet. I went to the library to check it out, but there were 110 holds on it, which means I would be getting to my turn around summer 2011, if nobody dropped their hold (unlikely, but I still don't want to wait several months). Is this book worth buying new?
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I've already got both Maus and II. I was asking in here because you guys are the only ones I know that know of it, but I read the synopsis and it piqued my interest. So not worth buying? Is it bad or is it just not good enough to buy? I would see what the other people have said, but I don't want spoilers.
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It's not a flat-out terrible book but don't go in expecting a masterpiece. If you can find it on sale somewhere or second-hand it might be worth getting, if you want a holiday read or a book you can rip through in a few days, but it falls a very long way short of the hype. It's basically just a crime book with fairly half-hearted pretentions towards social commentary.
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Lines

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I found a cheap paperback for $7 and that's what I got. I'd say it's worth the $7, but in a sense that I wish I'd gotten it from Half Price Books and saved a dollar or two. But whatevs. I got The Girl Who Played With Fire and it's on the same level as the first book writing-wise, but it does talk a lot more about Lisbeth.

Or you could just see the movie. My mom still wanted to see it (I gave her the book when I was done), so I went with her, and it's pretty damn similar and it'll take less time to get the gist of the story.
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Emaline

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So we pretty much suck at book discussions, huh.


I have to disagree with this. I didn't read the book, but I saw the film, and this seems to be the only thread on the subject. Before I opened my big mouth, I wanted to read through the thread. I read most of it, and then me and my boyfriend(who I saw the film with) started super discussing it, based on posts made in the thread. So you guys inspired our discussion of it, and also made me slightly reconsider if I should read this book or not.


Basically, I saw the movie, so I missed out on the bad prose, but I just feel like Lisbeth's little side story is the film was out of place with the rest of the film. Like it was added to add more of a shock value to the film. I feel like overall the story is alright. Not special. Like another episode of Law and Order. But then they add Lisbeth. And she is the hot goth/punk hacker girl who also has social hang ups and oh my god that guy rapes her it is so shocking and we need to watch this film because of such. Like, this story is alright, but we really want it to sell, I know we'll add some appalling sex acts! I just feel like if the goal was to draw attention to abused women, the new title and the movie don't do a good job on that. Coming out of the theater we were less inclined to discuss what Lisbeth went though and more inclined to discuss the reasoning behind the killings, the nazi and religious beliefs being used as an excuse for rape and murder.
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Lines

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I saw the movie, too, and I think they did a poor job of inserting her into the story. There is more about her in the book, so it doesn't feel so odd, and the rape makes more sense. (Not that rape ever makes sense.) I mean, it's still shocking, but there's more lead up to it.
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