The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

My posting history for the past month has been absymal. I'll chock it up to all of the craziness that decided to settle into my life for now, but enough about that. Back to books.

Truth be told, my reading has severely decreased because of my internships but I've managed to squeeze in some gems here and there. I'm going to keep these next few posts brief, partly because I read the books a bit ago and partly because I simply want to.

Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire, is, for those of you who live under a rock, his follow-up to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

I admittedly had a lot of qualms with Dragon Tattoo, mainly with its rattling on and on about the economic scandal, which I frankly did not care about. A chapter or so would have been enough, but nevertheless I still enjoyed it greatly.

The Girl Who Played With Fire (thankfully) does not delve into economics and rather explores more deeply the fascinating character of Lisbeth Salander. Her background is (almost) fully divulged in the course of a murder investigation.

The parts that I did love about Dragon Tattoo stayed around for Played With Fire, but not in the boring way that Carlos Ruiz Zafon did with The Angel's Game. Lisbeth Salander, Mikael Blomkvist, and all the other main players stuck around for round 2. At the center of the novel was still an expose executed by Millenium magazine and a book counterpart to boot (which a publishing nut like myself has got to love).

Instead of the mystery taking Blomkvist & Co. to the depths of snowy Sweden, this murder investigation takes place in Stockholm itself with only a brief (but powerful) hiatus to the familiar countryside we came to know in the first installment. Also, instead of the mystery centering on one psychopath, it concentrates on the rather large exploitation of human trafficking which does share one thing with original mystery: Eastern European immigrant girls as victims.

But of course, despite any differences, there were still men who hate women and the woman who hates men who hate women. Larsson's chilling look into how the sexes have yet to become equal and how women still have much to overcome is like a blast of frigid cold into our cozy ideas of Sweden as a socialist safe haven for all. (Don't worry, there are plenty of men who love/respect women to ensure that it isn't just a man-bashing mystery.)

While The Girl Who Played With Fire is hardly polemical and not likely to change much in the way of how things are, it still is worth reading not only for the entertainment value of an SVU episode on steroids but also for its (disturbingly) deep questions it raises.

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

As promised, I've finally read The Angel's Game, the sequel/prequel to The Shadow of the Wind. I frankly couldn't stop raving about The Shadow of the Wind, but I don't have too much to say about The Angel's Game.

It's not that I didn't enjoy the book. On the contrary, I enjoyed it nearly as much as The Shadow of the Wind. However, had I not known it was written by Ruiz Zafon also, I might have just written it off as a (very good) imitation.

For the most part, it follows the same general outline of Shadow. A poor young man from Barcelona without a mother stumbles into a literary career through the benevolence of a rich man. This poor young man then falls in love with a beautiful but tragic woman, and such romance creates tension with the rich man. Angst and pain follow with a bittersweet ending and a touch of supernatural.

In The Angel's Game's case, this young man's name is David Martin and he writes bestselling crime novels, though he longs to write a magnus opus far different from his CV. Enter Andreas Corelli, a man (who may or may not be Lucifer) who commissions Martin to write a book creating an entirely new religion complete with a slew of myths. This deal between Martin and Corelli requires past promises to be cut, and people start being mysteriously murdered for that very purpose.

While this dark devil/religion/murder plot unfolds, so does one that is more personal to David. After moving into a decrepit yet beautiful old home, he uncovers a new tantalizing mystery involving the old typewriter that resides in his study as well a mysterious locked room with a false wall. As he begins to investigate, he finds himself pulled into a dark history that leads him right back to the business with Corelli.

And amidst all of this hullaballoo, David faces two female problems: The love of his life, Cristina, marries his benefactor and proceeds to lose her mind, and a pesky but bright aspiring writer named Isabella hires herself to be his assistant.

All in all, these elements add up to be a far more internal drama than the plot-driven Shadow of the Wind. So while I still contend that the two are quite similar, The Angel’s Game holds its own as a more other worldly drama.

For enthusiasts of The Shadow of the Wind, the role of the Sempere & Sons bookshop within The Angel’s Game is enough reason in itself to read, as well as the reappearance of the beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Oh how I long to go there...

Inglourious Basterds

I like a little violence with my hangover. Nothing like it to jolt you out of your self loathing than some good old-fashioned scalping, Tarantino style, in Inglourious Basterds.

He does with violence what fellow Michael Haneke, the Austrian director also known for his penchant for gore, does not. While Haneke makes you squirm and wince at his violence in movies like Funny Games, Tarantino makes you outright laugh at it, which may actually make you squirm just a bit more.

Not only does this violence uphold the Tarantino trademark but so do the overdone and overdramatic characters. In short, they are awesome. But before we go any further, the only thing you must know about the loosely constructed, multi-narrative plot is that it occurs in World War II and follows a few different groups attempting to bring down the führer himself.

Back to the characters... First, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and his band of avenging Jews. I truly want to hate Brad Pitt but he’s just too damn good, even with a ridiculous Tennesee accent.

I would say that Diane Kruger’s German accent for her character, actress Bridget von Hammersmark, was impeccable but of course a quick Wikipedia-ing of her would let you (well, me) know that she is indeed German. So it was nice to see her in her native tongue.

The other female lead is simply stunning. Shoshanna Dreyfus is the sole surviving member of her family who is hellbent on avenging their deaths, much like Lt. Raine's men. Mélanie Laurent, the French actress who plays Shosanna, is quirkily yet mesmorizingly beautiful in her role as femme fatale.

And now for who they are all talking about: Colonel Linda (Christoph Waltz). He’s suave, he’s slimy, he’s slightly gay. Basically everything I’d imagine in a Nazi commander. (Especially after watching all those History channel specials about their superstitions.) Worth his hype.

The only tempered character is the dairy farmer from the opening scene. I'd like to see some more of this Liev Schreiber-esque gentleman, Denis Menochet.

But characters and violence aside, what I found most intriguing about Inglorious Basterds is the liberty that Tarantino took with history. I won’t ruin the ending for all of you, but suffice to say I’d be more than intrigued to see what he would do with a sequel. Or the prequel. Or with the John Brown biopic. It’s making my head spin…