“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little of you has lost a friend.”
How true is that? For me, it’s incredibly true but it’s more than just the losing of a friend. I feel as if I’m losing a little park of myself. When I plunge into a book, I devote my whole self into it and I take in what intrigues me the most about it. It becomes part of my everyday reality. I often catch myself wondering how the stress of yesterdays events will be handled only to notice a second later that those events happened in a book. It is solved by reading more and getting the answer. Reading becomes a second life that I get to live doing things and experiencing things that I “can only read about in books” but it also gives me the opportunity to be a different person. Whether it’s first person or third person, I tend to attribute my favorite traits from the protagonist, and even antagonist, to my own being in real life. Showing strength to overcome challenges, knowing the right words and actions, being confident in decisions and not backing down, having better control over emotions and thus better control over life; these things are pinned on an imaginary “soul board” where I remind myself to try harder every morning or casually when I’m driving around town. Books don’t just offer an escape for me, they offer examples of how to be a better version of myself. Or at least, the better version in my eyes. So when I say I’m reading a book, I’m actually saying “I’m living a book” which is why I’ll write my thoughts about what I’ve finished reading. Not always, but sometimes. Which is now where I will explain why I fell in love with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played With Fire”, and “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest”.
First off, a little about the author: Stieg Larsson was born a writer and drafted his first novel when he was twelve, receiving a typewriter for his thirteenth birthday where he would spend most of his time in the cellar writing to not disturb his family. He was a leftist his whole life and served two years in the Swedish army despite that fact and eventually trained female guerrillas in East Africa how to use grenades. After his military service, “he began researching right wing extremism, specifically the lingering pockets of neo-Nazism, racism and sexism he found in Sweden and the world at large.”- biography.com. Larsson spent some of his professional career as the editor of a magazine against these extremisms called Expo, which helped his writing of the Millennium trilogy through experience. It’s said he was a man of poor health and died of a heart attack in 2004 before his novels reached the recognition they now have.
Having read “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” around 2008, I was immediately struck with the detailed research of the book. Looking back I thought to myself, “I haven’t any idea what this guy is talking about or why I should be able to follow Swedish economics,” yet I kept reading anyway. I remember getting to the crime aspect of the book and being swept away, but after ten years I had forgotten ninety percent of the story. With the newest additions to the Millennium series, written by David Lagercrantz, I was pushed to reread the original three; well, I pushed myself, at least. I will admit that I did not truly grasp the depth and beauty of Larsson’s writing when I read my first time around ten years ago. The second time I read the book I started with determination to not get lost in his research and found it was easy; maybe because I read it once before or I’ve developed into a better reader, I’m not sure. Although the story is fiction, he writes it like a journalist is reporting on factual events; it’s this style of writing that draws you in so keenly and makes you question what you know about your own country. I was also struck by the fluidity of his writing when keeping up with three different stories that make up one complete story. To adhere to people’s short attention span, he recounts the events of a period of time in each chapter and fills you in on each side as it happens. It’s absolutely brilliant. I would finish a section discussing the police’s investigation only to jump into what Salander was now doing but I always craved more information of the other stories. Larsson put such depth into each of his characters that I quickly attached to them all; I felt I knew them individually and had my own opinions of their personalities just from the pages of the book. They grow and develop and stay stubborn and become vulnerable and it captivates you in a way that you spread your friend group to encompass these characters; even if it’s not real, it feels right.
The plot in these original three books are…intense to say the least. Larsson takes you down a compelling murder mystery while trying to get a handle on Salander’s personal life, while also describing the falling of Blomkvist’s career and how the solution will come about; and this is only the first book. But it is this book that sets the relationship’s foundation between Blomkvist and Salander. Their relationship goes far beyond the standard “romantic book” story. So far, in fact, that I can’t even label it a romantic story, but a relationship where lives intertwine so fiercely they cannot escape each other despite efforts made. This is proven through the rest of the series. If I thought I remembered hardly anything of the first book then reading the second and third was like going at them from the very beginning. I cannot say with any certainty whether I read the rest of the series in 2008; but I can say that I devoured these books with a fervency for more. The story is so compelling and attention grasping that I spent days reading them without being able to focus on anything else. I wanted to know more at all times and couldn’t wait until i found what happened next; how Blomkvist was going to see something nobody else had, how Salander was going to hack, punch, head-butt, trick, and brutally force her way out of her situation, or how the police were going to muck things up for everybody while trying their best to do what’s right. It felt like a speeding motorcycle ride in winter with snow stabbing your exposed skin while your brain went over all the details in an obsessive manner. I became infatuated with the way Blomkvist and Salander worked and solved the mystery before them and how they overcame the ridiculous challenges that come from this kind of story.
These books, Larsson’s writing, is what gave me the push to start writing more seriously; I enjoyed them that much that I wanted to keep what I gained from reading by posting and writing more and more. I remember putting down the third book with such a crazed feeling in me that I walked the length of the pool for twenty minutes just going over the details over and over in my head. Incapable of letting my new friends go off and be in another story. But that’s exactly what they did.
Lagercrantz’s two novels that continue the Millennium series, “The Girl In The Spiders Web” and “The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye” are good and wonderful to have if you are like me and craved more. But, and I say this with a heavy heart, it just isn’t the same. As many people might expect since it’s not Larsson writing them. I definitely suggest reading these books, of course go and read them! They are pleasant reads with thrilling plots featuring all the favorite characters and introducing some more that were merely mentioned in the original three. In my opinion, however, they are predictable, don’t have the same detailed passion Larsson had, and it’s obvious someone is writing a story using another author’s characters. Salander and Blomkvist don’t operate in the same fashion as they did from Larsson’s mouth; there’s just something missing which I feel Lagercrantz recognized and did a good job working into the story. He did a great job given the high standard that Larsson set with these characters.
I debated whether or not to use a rating system of my own because it felt a little pretentious especially without credibility, but it will at least help me in the future to pick which books I liked most which I would want to read again. Plus, why not? It’s fun to toss around vanity and add value to your words. That being said, I’ll rate things out of ten, and since I’m quite obsessed with coffee, I’ll do it out of ten…cups of coffee.
The Millennium Series (as a whole): 9.2/10 cups of coffee
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: 10 cups of coffee
The Girl Who Played with Fire: 10 cups of coffee
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest: 10 cups of coffee
The Girl in the Spider’s Web: 8 cups of coffee
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: 8 cups of coffee