{"id":3335,"date":"2010-08-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo\/"},"modified":"2010-08-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-20T18:00:00","slug":"the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Girl_with_the_Dragon_Tattoo\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 3px 10px; display: inline\" title=\"click for wikipedia article\" alt=\"click for wikipedia article\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/b\/bc\/Thegirlwiththedragontattoo.jpg\/200px-Thegirlwiththedragontattoo.jpg\" \/><\/a>I\u2019m amazed so many people have read this book. I think more people reacted to seeing it on my table than any other book in a long time.<\/p>\n<p>It was too long for me. And, too slow. The first hundred pages crept by like The Wall Street Journal. I\u2019m assuming the author intended for me to guess the \u201cbig secret\u201d the moment I read about it in the Preface. No doubt, he used that as a hook (readers will stick around to make sure they\u2019re right). There were, indeed, other surprises. The frequent mentions of other mystery writers went from cute, to predictable, and back to cute again. The multitude of people \u2013 first, middle, last, and pet names &#8211; and town names, often jammed into one sentence, taxed my interest. Yeah, I know it\u2019s set in Sweden. (Mind you, I majored in German Language and Literature. I\u2019ve read a lot of unusual names \u2013 in German, yet.) Speaking of translation: There were several times I stopped in amazement, wondering what was really meant. I\u2019m well-read enough to handle <em>gaol<\/em>, and to figure out the translator meant <em>arranged<\/em> when he wrote <em>organized<\/em>. Maybe it\u2019s all perfect British English. I haven\u2019t a clue what <em>dogsbody<\/em> means, even in context. But I was susceptible to distractions because, again, the book is too long. Still, the very end was quite moving.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the two major characters are well-done. Since one of them a journalist, like the author, he may not have been much of a stretch, though I wonder if Larsson had so much sex. Still, Lisbeth Salander is a very original character.<\/p>\n<p>And kudos to Stieg Larsson for drawing such attention to violence against women, not only in terms of several aspects of the plot, but even in the pages between sections. And the original title: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Girl_with_the_Dragon_Tattoo\">Men Who Hate Women<\/a>. Larsson does not glamorize this violence and he documents it well-enough to make me quite uncomfortable. I gather he is building towards even larger issues involving violence against women and children. Not sure I can stomach more, especially at a slow pace. I\u2019m undecided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m amazed so many people have read this book. I think more people reacted to seeing it on my table than any other book in a long time. It was too long for me. And, too slow. The first hundred pages crept by like The Wall Street Journal. I\u2019m assuming the author intended for me &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}