The Girl Who Played with Fire

Those of you who read my last blog will remember that I was nearly finished with the second of Stieg Larson's trilogy of books - The Girl Who Played with Fire. Well now I'm done. I have since learned that this trilogy is being referred to as the "Millenium" trilogy.

Let me back up a bit and talk about the background of these books. The first was published in 2004. They've been hugely succesful worldwide and have launched a thousand movies -- or at least 9. The author's story is dramatically tragic in that he died only a few months before the first book was published. So, basically he didn't get to enjoy even a second of the phenomenal success. I'm very pissed off at God on Stieg's behalf.

As I mentioned in my half-assed blog, the book is about Lisbeth Salander, a 4'11" 90-pound girl with a penchant for Billy's Pan Pizza and being badass. She's taken more than her share of beatdowns from life. One of her predators says that she just looked like a victim, so he felt he had to prey on her. There's something that I really don't like about the author putting that in there. Anyway, she's a bit nutty and her social skills make Rainman look outgoing and easy to talk to. But she's a bloody genius at almost everything and has a strong sense of right and wrong.

The first book is kind of self-contained. It introduces you to Lisbeth and her friend (as much as she's capable of having friends), Mikael Blomkvist. Blomkvist is an idealistic reporter who works for the magazine Millenium. In the first novel they meet and together work on solving a really interesting mystery about a young girl who disappeared 32 years earlier. I won't go into the plot of the first book too much, but it's important to note that during their investigation they discover a truly twisted family - like Texas Chainsaw Massacre family twisted - only in Sweden and with a lot more money.

The second book is all about Lisbeth. The first book left you with many questions about pieces of her past that were merely alluded to. The second book answers most, if not all, of those questions. She refers to a time in her life when she was 12 years old and "All the Evil" happened. You find out what "All The Evil" was in the second book. By the way, I think I need to start using that phrase more in my everyday life to vagulely refer to the unspeakable hardships I've had to endure. Example:

My wrist used to be straight. Then, "All The Evil" happened and now I'm hideously deformed.

Our government used to be semi-tolerable until "All The Evil" happened in the 2000 Election and He Who Must Not Be Named became President (slipped in some Harry Potter there too - bonus!)

My career seemed to be on track and then All The Evil happened with the economy and I haven't had a pay raise since.

Anyway, in GWPWF Lisbeth is enjoying new-found wealth that she acquired in the first book. She suddenly has like a quarter of a billion kronor. This is the equivalent of about $40 million US. It's a clumsy conversion rate -- something like .14 cents = 1 kronor so I never really know how much money she has. But even though a kronor isn't what it used to be, hundreds of a millions of them do add up and Lisbeth is living the good life. I also really like the word kronor and think we should start using it to refer to money in general. For example, "I'm working overtime, hoping to pick up some extra kronor this weekend." or "I made mad kronor bartending at the Vault last night" (shout out to Janell!)

The book starts out kind of fun with Lisbeth spending her kronor on a crazy fly apartment and furnishing it with a spending spree at IKEA. She has also spent the last year travelling around the world which would also be awesome. Little do we know that Lisbeth's carefree days are about to come to an end -- cue dramatic music.

Here's the problem with these books. They have a lot of improbable coincidences. I mean, I know Sweden isn't a huge country but the odds that Salandar and Blomkvist keep getting mixed up with the same people through independent means seem kind of long. Sweden has a pretty low number of violent crimes each year, and most of them seem to be perpetrated on Lisbeth. Blomkvist is the luckiest journalist alive, getting scoops of the century in his lap every couple of months. That kind of thing.

Nonetheless Stieg did his best to make the convenient associations seem believable and it didn't interfere with my enjoyment too much.

So in GWPWF Lisbeth is the subject of a nation-wide manhunt for committing a crime that you're reasonably certian she didn't commit. The worst part about this book is that there are about 150 pages where Lisbeth just disappears and you're forced to get to know a whole new group of characters who you aren't interested in and follow them as they try to piece together who Lisbeth is from the few clues they can find. One of the cops is the stereotyical sexist, aggressive pig who literally can't get one sentence out without first dunking it in hostile bigotry. That's one thing that I don't forgive -- the one-dimensional character. No Stieg, I can't forgive you that.

There's one character in this book who's really interesting. He's a "giant" - they call him that several times -- who can't feel pain. He has Homer Simpson disease. So you can beat the living hell out of him and he won't back down. His own punches are like Drago's in Rocky IV - enough to kill a person with one blow (R.I.P. Apollo.) His weapon of choice is a chainsaw. Anyway, they paint a pretty vivid picture of the guy and I don't mind telling you after reading about him for several pages a girl can sure get spooked by the motion sensor light in the alley outside her garage/house inexplicably coming on at 1:30 in the morning.

The main difference between this book and GWTDT is that the story doesn't really end and immediately carries into book 3. You could read Book 1 and be done, but Book 3 is definiely required reading if you're going to pick up Book 2.

Some Thoughts:

-- I liked GWTDT better than GWPWF. The story was tighter, more clever, and more realistic.

-- GWPWF finds Lisbeth discovering yet another horrible Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque dysfunctional family. The little lady has zero luck.

-- I think Stieg started to fall in love with Lisbeth a bit in GWPWF. She's becoming a superhero instead of just a very interesting person. She's just too awesome -- wicked smart, an amazing fighter, always, always one step ahead of the dozens of people who are after her, uncompromisingly moral...it starts to feel like he's having an A Few Good Men moment with his main character.

-- Blomkvist is also a little too perfect. I think Stieg maybe wanted to be Blomkvist -- cool, smart, open-minded, brave, and good with the ladies

Lest you think I'm being a hater, I did like this book. I burned through it pretty quickly and have already taken a chunk out of the third one. I recommend the whole series, just felt it was my duty to pick on a dead man's greatest work...that's all...

The Books I've Been Reading, or A Very Half-Assed Post

The road to blog hell is paved with good intentions. Long story short: Books read - 5+, Books blogged - shamefully 0. I had intended to blog each of them, painting rich tapestries with my vivid observations. But that didn't happen, so you'll have to settle for this:

1. Lucky Girls

This was a collection of short stories that I feel like I read an eternity ago because I can barely remember any of them. Each story has to do with an American girl who is either living in another country (most often the Middle East) or in some way associated with another country. They all also have to do with a romance of some sort -- but respectable, literary romance, not smut romance (which we'll get to later on in the post.) The one I most remember was about a high school girl who was living in India and had an Indian tutor who was super smart. They talked about that one story where all Earthlings live on Venus or something and it only rains once every seven years and the girl is the only one who remembers rain because she came to Venus later or something...anyway the one day it rains the evil children lock her in a closet and she misses it. Now that I think about it it's pretty half-assed of the author to base her short story on another person's short story...but I can respect that.

2. The Spook's Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch
This is a series of YA books that Jamie and I read together before bed and they all rule. This was one of those super skinny books that are comprised of the little story nuggets the author didn't fit into the actual novels that they throw at readers as crumbs until the next real book comes out. It was delicious.

3. Quivers: A Life

I love Robin Quivers (Howard Stern's sidekick.) I read the book because in the basically bi-weekly "Howard's Life in Review" shows they put on the air when Howard is on vacation they talk about how crazy it was when this book came out - how shocking to everyone on the show. I found her to be much more of a lunatic than I would have guessed. She's a ball of fury through most of the book - she was really mean to Howard. I was shocked. But her life is definitely fascinating. She's intelligent and interesting. She's also unapologetically selfish which is refreshing because I am too and it's nice to have a wealthy, successful role model. If you're a fan of Howard Stern, I'd say it's a must-read, and if you're not you'll probably still be diverted by it.

4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Ugh. In Citizen Kane, Kane says "If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man." I can't help but think of that line when I reflect on JSaMN. If it hadn't been 900 fucking pages, it might have been a really great book. It was one of those asshole books that has a truly compelling story, but self-indulgently goes off on 200 page tangents about side plots and ancillary characters that are bizoring. So you stick with it because you really want to know how the main plot is going to get resolved and you lose chunks of your life that you'll never get back wading through excruciatingly detailed descriptions of things that just don't matter. I suspect that's what my blog readers feel every time they get an update from me. At least I'm considerate enough to space them about 6 months apart.

Anyway, because I wouldn't subject anyone to the unabridged version of JSaMN I'm going to summarize the plot here.

The story takes place in England during the Napoleanic wars. The premise is that magic used to be very commonplace in England in the previous two centuries, but over the years it has fallen away until all that people do is study magic -- they don't practice it. The study of magical theory is a very gentlemanly passtime and typically only rich people with no jobs do it.

So this one character who is basically unimportant but about whom you learn quite a bit, is at a meeting of gentlemanly magic scholars and asks why there are no practical magicians left in England. This starts a debate and ends up in someone saying that there's a guy in York or something who is supposed to have the best magical library in the country and why don't they go see him. Well, the library guy is Mr. Norrell.

Mr. Norrell's character is really interesting. The author was amazing at character development. Norrell's an actual practical magician and he is utterly intent on hoarding all the magical knowledge in England. He quietly dupes all of the practical magicians into agreeing to give up magical study and buys up all the books in the whole country, refusing to grant access to anyone else. You totally dislike him, he's got an incredibly weak and petty character. Yet, he's a three-dimensional person and somehow, sometimes you see the good side of him, like you do with people in real life who suck.

He wants to bring magic back to England so he asks the English government if he can assist them in the war against Napoleon. They take no interest in him because they don't really believe in magic anymore until he brings back one of the Ministers' wife from the dead. However, in order to bring her back he has to invoke the help of a Faery (Faeries in the book are not tinkerbellish, more satanish. But really more like the Ned Flanders Satan in the Treehouse of Horror than the biblical Satan.) Because of the resurrection, Norrell becomes an overnight success and is very famous throughout the country for bringing magic back. He is commissoned to help the English Army and does cool things like make fake navy fleets out of rain to fool the French, etc.

So then along comes Jonathan Strange who has so much natural talent that he's become fairly adept at practicing magic himself even without instruction or books. He's a pretty charming guy and much more likeable than Norrell even though he's kind of self-involved and neglectful of his lovely wife. He is at first targeted by Mr. Norrell as a mortal enemy, but eventually Norrell meets Strange and is so intrigued by his magical ability that he ends up taking him in as his student. He still won't let Strange read most of his books and sometimes deliberately misleads him in his studies, but he's more or less cool to him.

Meanwhile the lady who Norrell brought back from the dead -- Lady Pole -- is living an absolute nightmare because the Faery owns half of her life. So in the evenings he brings her to some alternate universe and she attends balls with the same guests every single night and she is only half alive and very, very unhappy. He also sucked Lady Pole's black servant into the alternate universe. It's kind of funny because the Faery put a spell on Pole and the servant so that if they try to tell anyone about the Faery's curse, they can't do it. Instead, they start going off in detail about some strange subject, like Julius Caesar, or plants. The Faery - LOVES - the black servant and is trying to make him the King of England. It's kind of funny how much he adores the black servant, who really hates and is afraid of the Faery. The Faery has total magical ability and can pretty much do anything he wants in the human world. He's often pretty whimsical in his actions -- he's always giving the black servant priceless treasures, like ancient golden scepters and a crown (wants him to be King) but he can also be unspeakably cruel in the most casual way. The Ned Flanders as Satan comparison is apt.

So Strange ends up going to Spain to help fight Napoleon and he hones his magical ability by doing kind of cool things to help the army. For example, if the French Army is getting close, he'll just move the road that they're travelling on to America, or make it lead in a completely different direction. It talks about how angry Spain was getting because he was completely changing their geography.

After about 700 pages the plot finally progresses and Strange's wife is captured by the Faery. By this time Strange and Norrell have parted ways because Strange no longer needs Norrell and disagrees with him on a lot of magical philosophy. Another kind of funny thing that happens is that Strange writes a book refuting a lot of the things that Norrell has said. But Norrell puts a spell on all of the books so that whenever anyone tries to read them the pages go blank. He's such a dick.

In order to free his wife, Strange needs to join forces with Norrell, which he does. Though they are able to free Lady Pole, the servant and Strange's wife, the magic that they use to do it casts Strange into a kind of eternal nighttime, where wherever he goes it becomes very dark, and he is left to wander the world alone in search of a cure for the curse. Doesn't seem fair since Norrell's the one who caused all the problems, but such is life.

So, if the plot doesn't sound that compelling, I have to say it's really the intense character development that is what makes you care. You are really interested in Norrell and Strange, as well as some of the minor characters, like Lady Pole, Norrell's servant and Strange's wife.

VERY UN-FUN FACT: This book was written with a really odd quirk. It has footnotes -- hundreds of them...like it's a history book. So, at least once a page you'll be directed to a footnote with a completley unrelated tidbit about whatever it is you're reading. For example the story will talk about something Norrell says about a certain book. Then there'll be a paragraph or two in a footnote at the bottom of the page with all sorts of information about the spell, the author of the book that the spell was in, etc. Sometimes they were several pages long. It was totally distracting and annoying and I got to the point where I just ignored them.

That is all about JSaMN

5. Random Harlequin Presents novels

I don't have a lot to say about these. I was at a used book store and I got nostalgic over a cart of old Harlequin novels that cost only $2 for 5. I grabbed 5 and read a few of them. I think I read 3. They were so awful. They were all written in the early 80's -- and get this strange coincidence: Two of the novels' heroines were raising children that weren't their own. But everyone thought the kids were theirs and were super mean and jugemental about them having an illegitimate child. Two of the totally different books, out of 3 , had this plot line. w.t.f? Also, the books were terribly, laughably sexist. The guys were totally unappealing...especially the cover pics. The ideal image of a man has definitely changed since 1982. If I get some motivation, I'll scan some of the pics in.

6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Yes, I'm jumping on the GWTDT bandwagon. For those who don't know, this series of books was written by a Swedish author and take place in Sweden. I love the bizarre little Swedish things that don't make sense to me. For example, they all seem to do their full-on grocery shopping at 7-11. The main character - Lisbeth - eats something called "Billy's Pan Pizzas" by the gross and I feel like I'm supposed to know what that is. They talk about "American gangster movies" a lot. They make a couple of references to a Swedish leader who was assassinated about 15 years ago in real life and they had to add a little asterisk for all of the globally ignorant American readers telling what the hell they're talking about. No one owns a car, they just rent one when they need it. Nearly every man is violent towards women. Cute little local things like that...

The story is interesting, moves along really quickly. You like Lisbeth and her buddy, Blomkvist. My one reservation is about the graphic violence towards women. I read a critical article about it in Entertainment Weekly about how the very feminist male author is clearly trying to condemn the violence, yet there is a gratuitousness to it that seems exploitative. That bothers me a little, but I do get a lot of satisfaction from watching the poor, wronged Lisbeth get her sick and decidedly adequate revenge on the evil Swedish predators...I especially like her tattoo and butt plug revenge (makes you want to read it, doesn't it?)

It's a long book, about 700 pages, and that's about the length of the other two books. I've got about 100 pages left of book two, so stay tuned.

You may have noticed that none of these books are on my librarian list - the reason for this blog. Sue me. I've got Alice in Wonderland coming up and then Cold Sassy Tree will be next. I will try to be more focused in my task!!!

LoLo Out