Zomg I've been busy!

[blondestwolf]

I wish I had time to post more here... maybe over Thanksgiving vacation I will have the chance to write up what I've been up to... Basically I had a very pleasant trip home to San Francisco two weekends ago, and this last weekend Ross and I went up to Otis to relax at his aunt and uncle's house on Gate Island

Comments

[redstarrobot]

I'm trying to understand the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" phenomenon. The first book was good enough, although I think a lot of the appeal was sticking a William Gibson heroine into a murder novel. But I don't really see what made it a big international phenomenon.

[blondestwolf]

While there are some things I don't love about the books, they are absolute page turners. The suspense builds and I just want to keep reading, and the plot includes enough smaller developments along the way that it's not just reading to find out the ending. The characters besides Salander are also interesting. Sometimes I feel like Larsson includes a wide variety of characters just cuz, but most of the time it works for me. My mother also asserts that there's something about the Scandinavian writing style that's "fresh", and I get what she's saying, in particular in the dialog.

I think it also has a lot of appeal to the general populace. Having the setting be in Sweden is just "exotic" enough. There's enough violence, sex, and attractive characters. The media vs. conspiracy stuff is appealing.

(Also, public service warning, you have to have the second and the third book in your possession before you start reading the second book... It's got a killer cliffhanger that picks up right in the third book!)