Dragon Tattoo Girl

So during the Thanksgiving Break, my sister and I were talking about the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She said that she'd seen the movie and I said that I was interested in reading the book...of course...before I saw the movie, but that I do want to see the movie. Right about that time, she "magically" pulled out of the console of her awesome Toyota 4-Runner a copy of the book! LOL! She told me that she'd started reading it, but she was sure I would finish it before she even had a chance to get back to it, so she let me bring it back with me to read.

And it has sat on the back of my toilet ever since....where I pick it up and stare at the cover, flip through the pages, and read a paragraph here and a paragraph there, but not actually READ the book.

I have learned that the book has THE MOST BORING OPENING ON THE PLANET. It opens with the main character finishing his trial for having slandered some big wig in a company and then it goes in to the back story of how he got himself into trouble in the first place. It's a bunch of business/economic jargon that goes WAYYY over my head. At first, I thought it was because the story is a translation from the original Swedish it was written in that was causing my boredom and confusion, but with every boring paragraph I read, I see that it's because it's FINANCIAL, business STUFF that's boring the pure-T snot out of me.

But wait....in my random paragraph readings, I have also learned that the book gets into saadism, that there's a high percentage of women who are attacked/raped in Sweden, and that an incredibly high number of these women never report the attack.

All of which DOES sound interesting. I know. I'm a true psycho-sicko. My husband teases me that I must be a closet serial killer since I'm so fascinated with the subject. Regardless of my beliefs/faith, I can't help but be drawn to sick and twisted stories, especially ones that are based on realistic situations.

But, apparently, I have to get through the crap to get to the interesting. If an author is going to start IN MEDIAS RES, at least start with the REAL interesting part!!!!!

I have decided that regardless of how boring the beginning of the book is that I'm going to read this book all the way through. It's been highly critically acclaimed and has been on the best seller list long enough that I need to know about it....from a literary standpoint, anyway. What kind of literature teacher would I be if I can't even force myself to read a book that a large number of "intelligent" people in the world think is a masterpiece?!?!