The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest — Read 2010.08.20

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest in two days. 

Larson, Stieg.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2009.06.23. ISBN 9780143170105. Book Three of the Millennium Trilogy.


Although TGWKTHN is separated out as book three in the millennium trilogy, it is more accurate that this is the balance of book two, The Girl Who Played with Fire. I was unable to put this down, hence the five stars, despite two or three slight detail failures, some of which others have enunciated in their reviews. Larson gave himself a serious writing challenge by having his action hero bedridden for much of the book, but manages to make it work, hence it getting five stars despite the number of times coffee drinking is enumerated. (Do Swedes drink as much coffee as written?) The manner in which Salander is lured/pushed into becoming a social being is beautifully written, hence five stars, despite a bit of waffling in the characterization of Blomkvist's partner and boss, Berger. The sub-plot of sexual harassment seems to have been hurried, and came across a bit clumsy, but the quality of the courtroom writing was top notch, and I enjoyed the character of Blomkvist's sister, hence five stars.


Reading the three books in six days was a delightful way to enjoy six days of my summer vacation, and so despite it not quite being perfect, it still gets
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.

The Girl Who Played with Fire — Read 2010.08.17

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was so good, that I bought The Girl Who Played with Fire almost as soon as I'd finished it:

Larson, Stieg.
The Girl Who Played with Fire. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2009.06.23. ISBN 9780143170105. Book Two of the Millennium Trilogy. 


And it is equally good. And, like with TGWTDT, TGWPWF fulfills the hyped promise as an excellent crime drama with colourful, underdog anti-heroes. And, even better, Larson also continues to highlight media's failure to protect democracy and the problems of corporatist ownership, this time of the media and the motivational problems of greed-based profits. He develops and comments on the problem of government sponsored internal spying and spy-related agendas when they run counter to the diurnal concerns of the citizenry.


And unless you have an extremely strong ability to put down a story in the middle, I suggest that when you buy TGWPWF, you might just as well buy the hardcover of the last book of the trilogy, because the ending of TGWPWF is amongst the best cliffhanger endings I've had the pleasure to read, and the paperback of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest hasn't been given to the booksellers yet. When I went to reserve it from my local library, I was number 27 in the line, even though the library had eight copies of it in their stacks.


This book is a well deserved ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Read 2010.08.15

Prompted by the little fushigi I had with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I went out and purchased it on Saturday, Aug 14th. Began it in the afternoon, and finished it Sunday morning.

Larson, Stieg.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2009.06.23. ISBN 9780143170099. Book One of the Millennium Trilogy.

I was surprised at how good this book is. I am always skeptical of NY Times', or other bestseller lists, and consequently this is the first I have purchased from such a list in many, many years. (Way to go fushigi!) All the elements of this book as a work of fiction work: complexity of the story and completeness of the details to make it credible; sophistication and humanity of the characters make it engaging; quality of the writing in terms of pacing, clarity, and elegance makes it delectable; relevance to the real world makes it substantive. And okay, it has some great blood and guts and sex scenes, too, but for the most part they lack any feeling of being gratuitous. Finally, the David and Goliath elements always get me rooting for the underdog and TGWTDT has two underdogs that balance and complement each other — the anti-social punk Lisbeth Salander and the socially conscious reporter Mikael Blomkvist.

Besides falling in love with Salander, what surprised me most about the book, and what is likely a significant part of its being more than just a best selling crime fiction novel, is that Larson makes three powerful and real indictments on the global society. The first is that there is still, at a very fundamental psychological level, an anti-female, even misogynist, underbelly. The second is that capitalism has run amok and the corporate foxes are now not just guarding the hen houses but owning them too. And the third is that the corporate media is egregiously failing to safeguard democracy from the consequences of corporate greed business ethics. The book is in not 'preachy,' but more a matter-of-fact but exhilarating exploration of these realities through the experiences of Salander and Blomkvist. As an example of the last two ideas is the big banks' recent ethical and associated financial failures and the inadequacy of the media's reportage before and after the scam was exposed — the Millennium Trilogy was written before the crash happened. As to the second, as a resident of metropolitan Vancouver, I recently watched a police representative apologize for the police's failure to apprehend more quickly a serial killer of about 50 prostitutes over ten or more years because these women were in effect disposable in being unimportant in their and the society's eyes.

Great read. My first binge read in more than fifteen years.

☆☆☆☆☆