Sunday, August 14, 2011

The Girl Who Played with Fire AND The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest By Stieg Larsson

I have spent every free minute in the last few days reading these two books.  I have stayed up WAY too late and read while cooking supper and drying my hair. (Just for the record, I did not read and cook dinner and dry my hair all at the same time.)  These books are the second and third book in the trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  I read and reviewed the first book here and after reading The Book Thief I thought I would go back and finish this short series.

It too me a long time to get into the second book....like 250 pages long time.  I almost abandoned it, especially when Joe asked me if I got hit by a bus tomorrow would there have been other books I wish I would have read, but I felt guilty because I had purchased both of the books for my Nook and hate to waste money.  I pushed on through and I am glad I did.  

I learned something about my preferences as a reader when reading these two books.  I am a reader that is driven by characters, which is something I knew.  If the character's story is driving the book I am much more apt to enjoy it.  What I found out while reading these books is that I also need dialogue.  Without it, the chances of me getting bored with a book are pretty high.

Larsson has woven an intricate story with a lot of characters.  One of my friends mentioned she almost decided to take notes just to keep everyone straight and I completely see why.  Because he has so many characters he wrote a lot of background for most of the characters...for me, it was way too much background.  I will be honest that I started to skim some of the pages that I could tell were just background.  It just wasn't that interesting to me.  But when the dialogue was driving the story, I couldn't get through it fast enough.

Before anyone gets the impression that I didn't like the books, I guess I should say that I did like them.  I gave them both a solid 3 stars on www.goodreads.com.  

As for what's next in my reading world, I am not sure.  I have quite a bit to choose from....decisions, decisions.  

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