Of course, the title presumes that everyone likes the middle of a series or a trilogy as much as I do. But don’t you? No? What got me thinking about this was that I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Girl Who Played With Fire
The Bloggerhood of the Traveling Book Blog Tour begins
Graphic by 00dozo
Welcome to the Bloggerhood of the Traveling Book Blog Tour, which will be happening all this week Monday through Friday and maybe even Saturday. We (Unfinished Person AND Unfinished Rambler) and four other bloggers are going to be discussing the second part of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire. How this started was we sent the book to Quirky of Quirkyloon, then she sent it to Boom Boom Larew of How To Become A Cat Lady…Without The Cats, then Boom Boom sent it to Nonamedufus and then Nonamedufus sent it to 00dozo of When I Reach. All of this was chronicled by Nonamedufus in his epic “The Bloggerhood of The Traveling Book” post/song parody sung to the tune of Gilligan’s Island. And then, and then I thought it might be a neat idea for all of us to discuss the book on a blog tour, which is where we are now. The order will go from Monday through Friday in the order the book was sent. In other words, Quirky will be next and so on and so forth.
Originally, both of us, Unfinished Person and Unfinished Rambler, suggested we use a series of questions from Random House to help get us started in our discussion, but then it was decided that we each would go our own way. However, since we are doing this on the fly and without much preparation, we are still going to do it with the questions to kickstart the discussion.
I will first have Unfinished Rambler answer the questions and then Unfinished Person to provide counterpoint.
1. Discuss the prologue. What did you think was going on? At what point did you fully understand it?
UR: I had no idea what the hell the prologue was about and I still don’t.
UP: From the start, I thought it was one person, but then later I realized that’s not who it was at all. Now that I think about it, I finally get who it was who was doing the torturing.
2.Discuss gender politics as they affect the plot: the treatment of Salander, Erika Berger, Miriam Wu, and Sonja Modig and the trafficking of Eastern European women. What do you think Larsson was trying to say about the role of women in society?
UR: I don’t think Stieg Larsson really was a man based on his views expressed in the book. I think he was a typical…if there can be such a thing…Swedish protofeminist…one of the worst kind.
UP: I do think that Larsson has a pretty high view of women, in that they should be strong and independent like the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, and the other primary female characters, Erika Berger and Miriam Wu, in the novel. Personally, I like my women strong — and, no, not like my coffee, black. 
3. When newspaper articles begin to appear featuring interviews with long-ago acquaintances of Salander, did it change your perception of her character? Discuss the nature of truth in these instances: Is it possible both sides were remembering accurately?
UR: No, I still thought she was a bitch. Yes, it is possible both sides were remembering that she was a bitch quite accurately.
UP: No, it didn’t really make me change my perception of her because, to a degree, she was all of those things described: bisexual, psychotic, criminal. However, the reasons why she was that way were never explored in the articles.
4. In what ways is Salander like her father and half brother? In what ways is she different?
UR: She’s sadomasochistic just like they are.
UP: Salander is like her father and half brother in that she is very single-minded, in relentlessly pursuing one thing, for years. However, she has something they don’t seem to possess: a heart.
5. If Stieg Larsson were still alive, what one question would you most like to ask him?
UR: What kind of drugs were you on when you wrote this pile of horse manure? 
UP: Herr Larsson, what kind of drugs were you on when you wrote this brilliantly-conceived page-turner? Where do I get them? Are they only available in Sweden? Damn. I wish I had some of them.
Er, yeah, in case you missed it, both UP and UR enjoyed this book and highly recommend it if you enjoy a brilliantly-conceived page-turner. If you don’t, well, then your loss, loser. 
Tune in tomorrow for Part II of The Bloggerhood of the Traveling Book Blog Tour as it continues at Quirkyloon.
Posted in Books, Mind, Unfinished rambling
Tagged Books, Girl Who Played With Fire, Millennium Trilogy, Stieg Larsson
Narrowing the gap between the number of books read and movies watched this year
The gap between the number of books I’ve read this year, 60, and the number of movies I’ve watched this year, 63, is narrowing. However, just when I think I’m about to even up things, along comes a movie that I just have to see, and not helping is Netflix Instant Queue where movies like this are available:
On the flip side, though, what is helping is books adapted into movies. Recently I read The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey and then compared and contrasted the two movies (1974 and 2009) with the book and each other. My wife and I also watched the movie Winter’s Bone and then read the book of the same name by Daniel Woodrell from which the movie was adapted. On Monday night, I watched The Girl Who Played With Fire, which of course is the second in the Millenium trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson and also will be the subject of a Bloggerhood of the Traveling Book Blog Tour at the end of this month, featuring mwah (and Unfinished Rambler) and a handful of other bloggers.
Lest you think, though, that everything I watch is literary, let me dispel that notion right now with this trailer, with which I will leave you (even in German, you still get the gist):
Don’t laugh, but my wife and I thought it was pretty good, for what it was: basically a video game movie.
Note: Some movies I watch with my wife; others like Mongol I watch by myself.
Posted in Books, Midweek Review, Mind, Movies
Tagged Books, Daniel Woodrell, Girl Who Played With Fire, Movies, Stieg Larsson, Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Winter's Bone
Are “page-turners” always “pulp fiction”?
Image by cinderellasg via Flickr
Image by mandyseyfang via Flickr
Recently I read two books I rated 5 stars (or, in other words, “must-reads”): The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 
Both of them, in my mind, were page-turners in that I could not put them down and had to keep turning the pages to see what happened next, as in The Coasters’ song “And Then Along Came Jones.” And then? And then?
Image via Wikipedia
And then the concept of page-turners got me thinking about other page-turners I’ve read. Most of them, I can count on one hand, with the most prominent one being The Stand by Stephen King. I don’t know if I read it in one night, but I doubt it took me more than a couple of days. While I still don’t think King is the greatest writer in the world, I do think he possibly is its greatest storyteller. As I’ve mentioned here on this blog previously, when I read a King novel, I imagine I’m sitting by a campfire and hearing a person weave a tale for me. Suddenly, before I know it, I’m hooked.
Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of a classic book (by classic, I mean, at least 25 years old and most usually more than 100 years old) that I couldn’t put down once I started reading it, which got me to ask the question in the title of this post: Are “page-turners” always “pulp fiction”? So I put it to you, dear reader, are they? Can you name one or more classic books and by “classic,” using the definition I’ve given above, that you couldn’t put down after picking it/them up?
Posted in Books, Midweek Review, Mind
Tagged Books, Girl Who Played With Fire, Hunger Games, Midweek Review, page-turner, pulp fiction, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Suzanne Collins
