The Girl With the Overwhelming Cynicism

I tried to go into Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with an open mind, and not judge it based on the fact that everyone who reads it thinks it’s the best novel ever. I had read the first 30 pages or so in Barnes & Noble over the summer, and had already lost interest in it, but upon giving it a second chance I found it a little easier to read.

After finishing the first 100 pages, I can’t help but draw comparisons between this novel and another bestseller people couldn’t stop talking about for a year or two– The Da Vinci Code. Like Dan Brown’s novel, Steig’s tends to rely on a lot of twists and turns to maintain readers’ attention. In both books, readers are required to learn a lot of details early on in order to get anything out of those twists in the rest of the novel, though. I find it interesting that books like these are such best sellers, due to the attention span of the average American reader (which is, of course, really short). It brings up a lot of interesting questions about the “popular genre” identification and what makes a book popular in the first place.

Another reason I am hesitant to really commit to this book is the use of stock characters. There have been wronged creative do-gooders, sketchy businessmen, badass hot chick crime fighters, and mysterious octogenarian millionaires in more books, movies and TV shows than I can count. I struggled not to roll my eyes upon reading the main characters’ descriptions, just because I felt like I had met them before. And not in an “oh that’s so relatable way” but in a “Have I read this book before?” way.

I’m going to attempt to put away my cynicism for the next part of the book, and look at it in an objective manner so next time I might actually write an intellectual entry on the novel. For the time being though, I just needed to rant a bit.