While New Wife was off doing girl-shopping the other day, I decided that instead of hanging around the department store looking bored (a.k.a. the Husband Exile), I’d go over to a nearby bookstore and browse some second-hand books because I’ve run out of fiction to read.
I have written several times before how much I enjoyed the wonderful Stieg Larsson “Millenium” TV series — The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest — and I’ve watched the series several times.
Anyway, I decided to read Larsson’s original novels, just to see for myself how bad they are — yes, he’s a filthy socialist but then again #Swedish so that’s not entirely surprising — and I discovered something quite rare: the TV series is actually better than the novel series, but not by much.
What the TV show of Dragon Tattoo did was to cut out, for example, the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and her boss, as well as Mikke Blomkvist’s affair with one of the murder suspects — both of which were quite extraneous to the plot.
More importantly, the sexual encounters between Blomkvist and Salander, which were numerous in the novel, were pared back to a only a couple in the TV episode — making their relationship much more fragile as a result.
I’ve only read the first novel so far (Dragon Tattoo) because I didn’t want to buy all three in case they sucked terribly and I would be stuck with two unread books. But now that I’ve read that one, I think I’ll go back and get the other two because once I’d learned to ignore the rampant socialism, I rather liked Larsson’s writing style.
If you’re really stuck for some reading material (as I was), you could do a lot worse.
Better still, though: buy the Extended Cut DVD version of the TV series*.
And do not repeat NOT buy the non-Swedish version with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, because Noomi Rapace (Salander) and Michael Nyqvist (Blomqvist) are both beyond-words brilliant while the other two aren’t. We won’t even talk about the stunning Swede MILF Lena Endre…
*Be warned that the current version of Millennium available through Netfux has been severely edited, and it’s terrible: whole scenes have been deleted and even some characters erased, making the show almost incomprehensible, not to say less enjoyable. (Netflix delenda est)
I’d also warn against “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” which is a 2018 movie-knockoff starring Claire Foy. I watched, or at least started it, because Foy was so good in The Crown, plus I think she is a delectable little hottie. In any event, the aforementioned show is really, really horrible. Even Ms. Foy’s cute butt in a leather jumpsuit cannot sustain any interest in the thing.
Anything with “The Girl In…” in the title, but not one of the first three (Dragon, Fire, Hornet) is extended fiction commissioned by the publishers.
Stieg Larsson died just before his Millennium oeuvre was published, so the leeches decided to make some cash off the gullible public, trading off his work.
Of course it’s detestable; but on the other hand, Larsson having been such a complete socialist who bought into the “property is theft” trope his entire life, I don’t feel THAT badly about it.
Shouldn’t it be Netflix delendum est?
Depends on what gender you assign to Netflix. I find myself curiously torn between male and female…
I was thinking of it as an it.
Some suggestions for futher reading:
The Archers Tale…Bernard Cornwell
Dirty White Boys….Stephen Hunter
Under a Graveyard Sky…john Ringo
Widely different subjects but i hope something appeals to you..