The Millennium Trilogy

I posted the trailer to the American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo a few weeks ago, noting that it had intrigued me enough to want to read the books, and Petty put in a good word for both the books and the Swedish films. On that recommendation I bought a copy of the first book and took it with me on holiday, and have continued reading it since I got back. I really enjoyed it (although I found Larsson's writing style to be rather pedestrian in places, though not consistently) and I thought the characters and story were extremely well imagined. I bought the second book today and have the third, as well as a box set of the three movies, en route from Amazon at the moment. I also convinced Baingil to try reading the first book!

I've already seen a few spoilers (though mostly from the first book), so please mark any spoilers for The Girl Who Played With Fire or beyond (or any notable spoilers from the whole series, in case anyone else is interested in reading them) with the [ SPOILER ] tag. How it works is:

Code:

[SPOILER=This is a spoiler for Citizen Kane]It was his sled.[/SPOILER]

This is a spoiler for Citizen Kane:

Also, I couldn't help but notice quite a few similarities between Millennium and The Lord of the Rings. It's probably coincidence, brought on by my knowledge of LOTR trivia, but I thought it was neat to find the similarities as I noticed them.

1. Neither J.R.R. Tolkien or Stieg Larsson were professional novelists. Tolkien was a professor and Larsson was a journalist.
   
2. Neither series was intended to be a trilogy. Tolkien wrote LOTR as one book and his publisher split it into three, whereas Larsson had intended to write up to 10 but died before he could complete them.
   
3. Neither book has the most elegant prose in the world, in my opinion (though I prefer Tolkien's).
   
4. Both LOTR and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo have quite a bit that happens after the "climax" of the story (the destruction of the Ring and the solving of the main mystery, respectively).

That's all I've noticed so far. Anyway, feel free to discuss anything else about the Millennium Trilogy that you feel like.

I read The Girl Who Played With Fire in about three days and I liked it even more than the first book. I started The Giel Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest as soon as I was done (thankfully it had arrived from Amazon by then) and am racing through it in turn. Afterwardds I'm going to give the three movies a try!

(But now I'm going to logoff and let my phone save its battery, really. )

Eldorion wrote:I read The Girl Who Played With Fire in about three days and I liked it even more than the first book.

I heard she burnt her fingers.   

Well that's a blast from the past. For what it's worth, I wasn't too impressed by the three Swedish movies based on the trilogy. I actually preferred David Fincher's remake/second adaptation, though it doesn't look like he's going to adapt the next two books. The film did decent but not especially good at the box office.

Eldorian wrote:Neither book has the most elegant prose in the world, in my opinion (though I prefer Tolkien's).

Huh? I think Tolkien's prose style is so magnificent I often find it hard to read other authors right after him. In the places where it may seem stilted as he goes into epic language, you can compare it to the hobbit chat to find he can indeed write very natural language. Then go back to the epic prose with the understanding that it's deliberate, and after you get it in your ear it's very biblical/Shakespearian (Shakespeare worked on the King James Bible), but better.

It's not quite fair to judge his prose by the Silmarillion, which was never really intended for publication.

Is there an author whose prose style you consider better than Tolkien's? (don't say Hemingway   ) I'd be sincerely curious to know.

I'm not really interested in getting into a debate over a comment I made almost two and a half years ago since I don't recall exactly what was going through my mind at the time and my opinions on numerous topics have changed in various ways since then.

You're no fun.