Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for June, 2010
Book 18: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Jun 21st
Title: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Author: Stieg Larsson
Genre: Fiction (Crime/Mystery)
Pages: 608
Summary
Caught in a libel lawsuit, journalist Mikael Blomkvist is forced to take some time away from his magazine. At the beginning of his forced vacation he’s contacted by Henrik Vanger, a wealthy retired industrialist. The reason? The decades old disappearance of a young girl named Harriet, his great-niece. Charged with finding out what happened to her, Mikael is lead on a chase through the past, following a cold trail. Along the way he meets an unlikely partner, Lisbeth Salander, aka…the girl with the dragon tattoo.
Notes
I should preface this by stating this book does contain content dealing with sexually explicit issues if that sort of thing bugs you. Definitely a book for mature readers.
I found this book to be extremely enjoyable and engrossing (like the nice quote on the cover mentions). It’s very dense, packed with information and all sorts of Swedish names and places which I was largely unfamiliar with at first (I’m not really an expert on Sweden) so the beginning of the book was a bit slow. However, once the character introductions were out of the way things really evened out and the book gained momentum. I kept reading just to see what would happen next.
There were a couple things that bugged me though. First of all (minor spoilers ahead here. Nothing too big though), computer hacking was involved in the storyline and…well…it was more like the movie version of computer hacking than something that could actually happen. Considering I’m aware of how computer’s function, there were several “Oh come on! You can’t do that!” moments. The author also has a habit of describing in great detail the specifics of everybody’s computer hardware, which seemed a bit over detailed to me.
The second thing was the translation. Not that this can really be helped or anything, but at points the prose seemed to be fairly bland which made me wonder if this was how it read in the native Swedish version or if something got lost in the translation. It wasn’t something that carried through the entire book or anything. Just certain sections and made me wonder how it read in Swedish.
Next Book
I’m continuing onward with this trilogy, so my next book is The Girl Who Played With Fire to be followed by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Then I’ll probably jump back to the next book of the Wheel of Time series.
Book 17: The Poisonwood Bible
Jun 10th
Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 576
Summary
The story of what happens when a Baptist preacher uproots his family of his wife and four daughters of various ages from their lives in the deep south to a small village in the Congo. The bulk of the story revolves around Nathan Price’s attempts to spread the Word to the people of the village and how things don’t work out quite as anyone expected. Told through the eyes of the four children and their mother.
Notes
Wow. What an amazing book. This was another one that was recommended to me by Wassy as a book she read in school that she really enjoyed. I had never read it so I ended up borrowing it from her and digging in.
Basically, it sucked me in and never let go. There’s so much I want to say about this right now, but too much that would be spoilers if anybody hasn’t read it so I’ll refrain from ruining anything.
I will say that Kingslover has a tremendous gift for words. The story is largely told from 4 separate points of view (4 girls ranging from and each narrator has a distinct voice and interpretation of events which is written in such a way that you can pretty much pick out who’s narrating just by the way it’s written.
And the climax of the book? Despite knowing that what happens is going to happen from the beginning of the book…when it actually does happen it’s extremely powerful. Probably one of the absolute best pieces of writing I have ever read.
I’m typically a fast reader but I was compelled to slow down for this one and take in every word. It’s not a book to just speed through, but I wouldn’t call it a difficult read. There’s a lot of subtext to the story that’s worth picking up.
Highly, highly recommended.
Next Book
Man, I’m starting to collect quite a pile of stuff I want to read. My next book is going to be The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I also want to read World War Z by Max Brooks at some point. And then there’s the Wheel of Time series still. Plus the 6 or 7 samples I’ve collected on my Kindle to remind me of books to check out.
Book 16: The Fires of Heaven
Jun 1st
Title: The Fires of Heaven
Author: Robert Jordan
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
Pages: 992
Summary
The adventures of Rand and friends continues in the fifth book of the wheel of time. Still, no spoilers so not really giving the story away.
Notes (Spoilers)
This is going to be a short notes section because pretty much everything I said about book four holds true here.
The story remains interesting, but it’s drown in a sea of Robert Jordan cliches. Women saying how wool-brained men are. Men saying how they don’t understand women. One particular character, Nynaeve, companing through the entire book that the dress she was wearing was way too revealing. ENOUGH ALREADY. WE GET IT!!!
At least she didn’t have a braid to tug in this one. Although this book also contains one of my favorite scenes where Nynaeve gets yelled at for basically acting like a stubborn ass all the time. It’s a dressing down that sorely has been needed for the past 4 books.
But as annoying as the characters are getting and the cliches running left and right, the story is still really good. You just have to wade through a lot of crap and over-description to actually get at it.
Next Book
I’m taking another break from the Wheel of Time with a book recommended by Wassy, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover. I’m about 100 pages in and I’ve been totally sucked in so far. After that I’ll be reading, as I mentioned before, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
New Arts!
Jun 1st
I mentioned this on Facebook, but I wanted to mention it here as well. Wassy is working up a brand new bit of character artwork for my City of Heroes character, Frost.
Check it out:
The final piece is going to be digitally colored but she decided to work up a detailed pencil piece for the heck of it, so I get bonus artwork. The basic premise is that as a part of as story arc, her evil counterpart (which is an alternate dimension version of her) has begun a plot to control her mind and bring her down to evil. This piece is going to show the transition, where she’s fighting the good guys but still realizing that she’s not truly in control of her own actions.
It’s very cool watching her skills grow so quickly. I’ve got a piece of this character that she’s done at pretty much every stage of her growth as an artist. It makes for an interesting timeline.
There’s going to be some other elements added digitally to cement the idea, but I think she nailed the emotional context with just the pencils. Everything else is going to be sweet, sweet icing. I’m really looking forward to seeing what she does with the colors, as her skills have greatly improved in that area too since her last digitally colored piece (Quite a while ago)
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