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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


Yagathai

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American coffee is like coffee-flavored tea, Gabriele! :)

That sounds like the post-WW2 Bliemchengaffee. :) It's the Saxonian dialect variant of Blümchenkaffee (little flower coffee). Some sets of china from the Meissen manufactory (in Saxonia,thus the dialect) had a little flower design on the inner bottom of the cups, and the coffee was so weak - it was hard to get at the time - that you could see that flower. It's still a joke about weak coffee.

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From the book to the Swedish one.

Put it in a spoiler box for people who don't want to get spoiled please (i don't mind knowing how a book ends before i read it, but most people do =|)

Can't help you there as I have only read the book and seen the American movie. I could tell you the difference in the ending there, it is mostly inconsequential, but I am too lazy to figure out/remember how to spoiler right now.

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I'm not sure how well it got across, but AFAIK it's at least partially deliberately skeevy: It's supposed to be ambigious whether or not he's a good guy or just another of the "Men who hate women."

I didn't see Blonqvist as skeevy at all because Lisbeth was the aggressor. He did nothing wrong, especially given the idea that open marriages/relationships, of a sort, are more common in Sweden.

I saw the author himself as skeevy.

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I didn't see Blonqvist as skeevy at all because Lisbeth was the aggressor. He did nothing wrong, especially given the idea that open marriages/relationships, of a sort, are more common in Sweden.

I saw the author himself as skeevy.

I think you are confusing Sweden with... France?

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  • 1 month later...

I dont know what crowd Larsson hung with but I assure you, his open relationship is as alien to most swedes as it probably is to you.

It's as alien to french as it is to you too. What kind of an assumption is that ?

I read the first book and saw the swedish movie and both were pretty cookie-cutter thrillers in their respective categories, definitely not what I was expecting from all the hype. It's got all the elements of cheap thrillers : the completely opposite duo of main characters, the serial killer with religious obsession, the main character with a horrifyingly tragic past, the twist-after-twist ending, the completely gratuitous porn/violence and of course, the drawn out Villain Monologue at the end. If only those tired tropes were a- or subverted, but nope they are all played super straight and it all comes off as quite unimaginative.

Plot aside, the book is a borefest of epic proportions. The actual plot doesn't start til at least halfway through, there are pages and pages of completely useless descriptions (like a very technical description of the computer Blomkvist buys, seriously why the fuck should we care he got 2GB of RAM?) and the characters are irritating.

I'm not sure I would classify Lisbeth as a mary-sue because she's got her great deal of hardships and she isn't universally adored and stuff but she sure as hell is one of the most annoyingly "edgy" characters ever created.

From what I've read about the other two books, it only gets worse.

The Fincher movie looked boring.

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It's as alien to french as it is to you too. What kind of an assumption is that ?

I read the first book and saw the swedish movie and both were pretty cookie-cutter thrillers in their respective categories, definitely not what I was expecting from all the hype. It's got all the elements of cheap thrillers : the completely opposite duo of main characters, the serial killer with religious obsession, the main character with a horrifyingly tragic past, the twist-after-twist ending, the completely gratuitous porn/violence and of course, the drawn out Villain Monologue at the end. If only those tired tropes were a- or subverted, but nope they are all played super straight and it all comes off as quite unimaginative.

Plot aside, the book is a borefest of epic proportions. The actual plot doesn't start til at least halfway through, there are pages and pages of completely useless descriptions (like a very technical description of the computer Blomkvist buys, seriously why the fuck should we care he got 2GB of RAM?) and the characters are irritating.

I'm not sure I would classify Lisbeth as a mary-sue because she's got her great deal of hardships and she isn't universally adored and stuff but she sure as hell is one of the most annoyingly "edgy" characters ever created.

From what I've read about the other two books, it only gets worse.

The Fincher movie looked boring.

So eh, if you are or I were to meet Lisbeth how do you think it would go down?

Hilarious parody below.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/07/05/100705sh_shouts_ephron

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  • 3 weeks later...

I put off reading these until last year, but they were on special offer so I gave in and bought all 3 and quite enjoyed them, I think they are over rated yes, but I did quite enjoy them for what they were, and while I did enjoy Lisbeth as a strong character her abilities did boarder on the absurd at times(like taking out 2 big bikers etc).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm just watching this movie, having neither read the book nor seen the first movie. I'm absolutely loving it.

ETA: As for Lisbeth's pursuit of Mikael, I interpreted her interest in him to be due to the fact that he was fairly inept and non-threatening, therefore allowing her to be the aggressor in the relationship. I will definitely read the book to see how different it is from the film (as it no doubt is.)

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I watched the Swedish version. Somehow we watched dubbed in English AND with English subtitles. Sometimes what they said was not the same as what was subtitled. I thought the movie was faithful to the book. I liked the first book the best and then thought they went downhill.

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  • 2 months later...

Say what you want about the writing, but I liked the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander. She was different than most female protagonists. She was impulsive, flawed, she wasn't traditionally pretty, but she was profoundly intelligent and focused on what she did and was good at it. My only real complaint about the series was her love for Mikael Blomkvist seemed rushed and out of place. My theory is she confused his friendship and acceptance of who she was a true love. I liked the second one, but I found the ending to be unreal and the third book, the first part could have been condensed. It seemed to drag on.

Another complaint was Larsson wants to depict misogyny in its subtle forms, but he fails to let the reader see it subtly. The misogynists take the form of Nazis, rapists, murderers, serial killers, and sociopaths. His series is well formed and structured, but his story telling skills are a bit lacking. That does not mean I did not enjoy the series as it was.

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... And even her anti-social maladjustment felt like a geek wankfest: a poster girl for basement-dwellers who resent their lack of social skills. And Bloomqvist was an even bigger Gary Stu than Lisbeth was a Mary Sue.

Which I like. Then it's totally ruined by her going for Blomqvist.

I don't know. I read the book and I liked it alright, but Blomqvist bugged the hell out of me. The hacking stuff didn't really impact me at all.

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