{"id":4240,"date":"2013-02-21T19:11:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T19:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2013-03-11T11:10:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T11:10:29","slug":"the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4240","title":{"rendered":"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had meant to read this for some time as several people I know recommended it. I was happy when it was chosen as this month’s reading group book. But, disappointingly, it’s a thumbs down from me.<\/p>\n

I found roughly the first third quite boring. There are many characters introduced and they all seem very two-dimensional and indistinguishable from one another. The style of the novel reminds me of Dan Brown, but without being quite as sensational and with far less description. I found the solution to the central mystery quite ridiculous. Another aspect I didn’t enjoy was the product placement sprinkled all over the place.<\/p>\n

The only part of this book I really enjoyed was the confrontation between the hero and the villain. That was pretty exciting and would be a fantastic on screen. I haven’t seen either of the films that have been made of the book but I’m sure they could be very good indeed; there’s a reasonably engaging plot once it picks up. However, it falls short as a book because there’s nothing there to make the reader sympathise with any of the characters because he\/she just doesn’t get to know them. There’s more written about what people eat than about what they are really like.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how much of this is down to translation but the style of the writing is very dull and wooden. The book tells you a lot about what happened and what people said but not how they said it or what they felt. Perhaps it’s because SL was a journalist so was used to writing in that style? Whatever the reason, this book just didn’t make its mark on me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had meant to read this for some time as several people I know recommended it. I was happy when it was chosen as this month’s reading group book. But, disappointingly, it’s a thumbs down from me. I found roughly the first third quite boring. There are many characters introduced and they all seem very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4445,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions\/4445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}