Books 2009 (again)
In which I abandon all pretence of reviewing all the books I read, and just pick some interesting ones to talk about.
46) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
audiobook read by Simon Vance
49) The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Steig Larsson
audiobook read by Simon Vance
The funny thing about joining audible.com is that it is the one place I am most likely to hear about the latest fashionable books and trendy reads, literary or non-literary. So, if I’m going to get the latest hot books, they will almost always be in audiobook format.
Which is okay! I’ve now figured out how to judge the narrator before I buy, so that I don’t have to suffer through the worst and dullest offerings any more, and given how little spare time I seem to have, combining reading with other activities, like cooking or housework or cycling to work, is a great thing.
All this is just to explain why I didn’t get near Stieg Larsson’s books until last month, and then listened to both back to back.
For people who have been living even further under a stone than I have, Stieg Larsson was a Swedish activist, journalist, SF fan, and writer who died tragically young in 2004, and whose three novels have been published posthumously to massive acclaim. They are currently being adapted for TV in Sweden, and the first has been released as a film.
Dragon Tattoo is indeed a great book. Simon Vance reads wonderfully, distinguishing the characters without caricaturing them, and to my amateur ear with a good Swedish accent when required. I was completely hooked; the story developed at a satisfying pace, the PoV characters of Blomqvist and Salander were interesting and sympathetic without being inhumanly perfect. I did not see the ending coming, although (avoiding spoilers) I had my suspicions of the alibi. I liked how the real ending was not with the resolution of the whodunnit but with the resolution of Blomqvist and Salander’s relationship, and I liked how neither of these resolutions (nor the third resolution which I can’t mention without spoilers) was too happy or perfect.
I bought Played With Fire even before I finished the first one. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment. Vance’s reading continued excellent, and it started well, catching up with Blomqvist and with Salander, following Lisbeth’s adventures in the Caribbean. But then it started to come apart and to lose my interest. One problem was that there were too many PoV characters to make an easy listen with only one narrator. I often found that I had to scroll back a couple of minutes to the start of a section to remind myself of whose eyes we were seeing out of, and then sometimes I had to think carefully to remind myself of who that character actually was.
But it goes beyond the audio format. The lines were drawn too broadly, with the good guys being too good, the bad guys having no redeemable feature, and the ease with which you could tell one from the other: if they supported Salander or not. Considering that she is supposed to be an asocial near-autistic, I found it unlikely that so many people would like her. One of the plus points of Dragon Tattoo for me was that Erika Berger, definitely one of the good guys, didn’t really like Salander - this is reality, perfectly kind and pleasant people, people you would be great friends with if you knew them, don’t like people with personality disorders.
Except that actually, Salander stopped showing any signs of her anti-social disorders when she got back to Sweden. She was polite to people. She was considerate. When she didn’t manage to foresee all the consequences of her actions, she chided herself for being inconsiderate, for crying out loud! Okay, one theme is that she has been badly misjudged, I accept that, but I still contend that the Salander of Dragon Tattoo is not the same person as the Salander of Played With Fire.
And then there’s the ending. The resolution of the plot I actually thought was pretty satisfying - some of the more outlandish elements made perfect sense, and the background to Salander’s life was logical, shocking and rang true. But. The resolution of the action, that was verging on the ridiculous. I’ll avoid spoilers, and just say : oh come on.
46) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
audiobook read by Simon Vance
49) The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Steig Larsson
audiobook read by Simon Vance
The funny thing about joining audible.com is that it is the one place I am most likely to hear about the latest fashionable books and trendy reads, literary or non-literary. So, if I’m going to get the latest hot books, they will almost always be in audiobook format.
Which is okay! I’ve now figured out how to judge the narrator before I buy, so that I don’t have to suffer through the worst and dullest offerings any more, and given how little spare time I seem to have, combining reading with other activities, like cooking or housework or cycling to work, is a great thing.
All this is just to explain why I didn’t get near Stieg Larsson’s books until last month, and then listened to both back to back.
For people who have been living even further under a stone than I have, Stieg Larsson was a Swedish activist, journalist, SF fan, and writer who died tragically young in 2004, and whose three novels have been published posthumously to massive acclaim. They are currently being adapted for TV in Sweden, and the first has been released as a film.
Dragon Tattoo is indeed a great book. Simon Vance reads wonderfully, distinguishing the characters without caricaturing them, and to my amateur ear with a good Swedish accent when required. I was completely hooked; the story developed at a satisfying pace, the PoV characters of Blomqvist and Salander were interesting and sympathetic without being inhumanly perfect. I did not see the ending coming, although (avoiding spoilers) I had my suspicions of the alibi. I liked how the real ending was not with the resolution of the whodunnit but with the resolution of Blomqvist and Salander’s relationship, and I liked how neither of these resolutions (nor the third resolution which I can’t mention without spoilers) was too happy or perfect.
I bought Played With Fire even before I finished the first one. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment. Vance’s reading continued excellent, and it started well, catching up with Blomqvist and with Salander, following Lisbeth’s adventures in the Caribbean. But then it started to come apart and to lose my interest. One problem was that there were too many PoV characters to make an easy listen with only one narrator. I often found that I had to scroll back a couple of minutes to the start of a section to remind myself of whose eyes we were seeing out of, and then sometimes I had to think carefully to remind myself of who that character actually was.
But it goes beyond the audio format. The lines were drawn too broadly, with the good guys being too good, the bad guys having no redeemable feature, and the ease with which you could tell one from the other: if they supported Salander or not. Considering that she is supposed to be an asocial near-autistic, I found it unlikely that so many people would like her. One of the plus points of Dragon Tattoo for me was that Erika Berger, definitely one of the good guys, didn’t really like Salander - this is reality, perfectly kind and pleasant people, people you would be great friends with if you knew them, don’t like people with personality disorders.
Except that actually, Salander stopped showing any signs of her anti-social disorders when she got back to Sweden. She was polite to people. She was considerate. When she didn’t manage to foresee all the consequences of her actions, she chided herself for being inconsiderate, for crying out loud! Okay, one theme is that she has been badly misjudged, I accept that, but I still contend that the Salander of Dragon Tattoo is not the same person as the Salander of Played With Fire.
And then there’s the ending. The resolution of the plot I actually thought was pretty satisfying - some of the more outlandish elements made perfect sense, and the background to Salander’s life was logical, shocking and rang true. But. The resolution of the action, that was verging on the ridiculous. I’ll avoid spoilers, and just say : oh come on.