Sunday, October 03, 2010

a page-turner, i concede

today, while sitting in a catholic church in a small town outside of cape town, i finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  and what did i think?  meh.  good, entertaining, captivating at points.  but not well written and i am not sure if this is due to the author's writing skills or lacklustre translation from swedish to english, but errors like 'disinformation' instead of 'misinformation,' improper hyphenation, and the use of the word 'had' in duplication in a sentence drove me batty.

some might not be bothered by the writing style and it might interest you to read about the perversions of society, but i needed to finish it to find out the conclusion to the story and less because i really cared about the resolution or the characters involved.

like i said, the story was a page-turner indeed, but i felt it lacked depth and i still don't feel as though i really know the main characters after 800 pages.  which, to be perfectly honest, might be enough for me to pick up the second in the series as i am slightly intrigued.

pick it up, it won't be tough to finish if you have a little time on your hands, but don't expect it to live up to the hype (remember The Da Vinci Code...?)

2 comments:

kristen said...

I had no expectations when I read it. The person I borrowed it from said "it might take a bit to get into it, but it is fun to read after that" and she was right.
You get to know the characters decently better in the second book. I haven't read the third one yet- don't want to spend the big bucks on the hardcover. Which is sort of how I felt about the others- I thought they were fun to read, definite "page turners", I liked the stories, but wouldn't spend "hard cover" money on them :)

S said...

These books made my flights between Kansas City and Seattle go fast. But I agree with you: not well written and not worthy of the hype.