I read a lot, and consider myself to be very well-read. I don't know if it's especially apparent when you meet me - I don't think I have the self-awareness necessary to make that claim - but it's true. I majored in English not because I wanted to write, but because I wanted someone to tell me what to read! But for all the highfalutin Smart-People Books Read In College (And Beyond) - literature! - that I read, I am a sucker for most mass-consumed things. I get so tired of hearing all the hype for a book that I end up having to go read it, just to see for myself.
This is how I end up reading things like the first book in the Twilight series, multiple Dan Brown books and Eat Pray Love (yes, really). To my own credit, a majority of the time spent with these books involved throwing them against a wall, because Dan Brown seems utterly incapable of writing anything vaguely resembling a sentence. Stephanie Meyer and Elizabeth Gilbert can't do anything remotely literary. To put it simply, these books sucked and I want those hours of my life back. I am still legitimately angry that I spent time reading them several years ago.
Whenever I walked within 30 feet of a bookstore or tried to buy a book online, I found myself constantly barraged by how wonderful and great Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy supposedly was. And thus the internal monologue begins: "Shut up already, it can't be that good." This eventually becomes "....well, they keep getting more popular. What if they are really good? Maybe I should look into this" which becomes "OKAY FINE I'LL READ IT. But I'm buying a real book too."
Crime thrillers are definitely not my thing, as I'm sure you can imagine; I've found them to be just so formulaic and predictable. If need be, they can make a nice "light read". Or, you know, a really annoying one.
And so with all of that in mind, I started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, expecting mediocrity. Instead I found out that I could not put it down. This book was so well-written, with an unexpected level of depth. There's a lot more than Uncomfortable Romance Between Characters and Intoxicating Plot Twists Involving Corrupt People! I mean, these factors are certainly there, but you won't care. You will read 300-400 pages in what feels like no time. You will be hooked. It's almost addictive. You finish the first one and immediately start the second one. And by the time you finish the second one you just have to read the third one. There's no stopping you. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, oh my GOD!!
And although the translation is sometimes questionable - Swedish doesn't go into English easily, and a lot of the smaller details can be lost on a non-Swedish reader - the point is very much still there. The feminism driving these books is surprisingly great and very unexpected, too. (Originally the first book was titled Men Who Hate Women, a much better title if you ask me, but I think the translator changed the title so the three books would be consistent).
Please don't misunderstand - they certainly have their flaws. Critically speaking, nothing is perfect. There are definitely philosophical contradictions between two of the main characters which occasionally severely distract from the plot, and there are occasional narrative gaps which muddle things up a bit. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is by far the best out of the three: it exists both within the context of the trilogy and by itself; The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest makes some of the bloated first three hundred pages of The Girl Who Played With Fire totally worth it. It's a necessary concession for later; once the actual plot of Fire gets going, you are hooked all over again.
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