Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Preface To 'Girl With': That Dragon Tattoo Book

No, I've never read it.  I saw the trilogy of Swedish movies, & maybe the American version of the first movie, but I can't remember a thing about it, except I thought Noomi Rapace was completely beautiful.

But look, here's an interesting thing about that book.  The three that were written by their creator, Stieg Larsson, were all finished before his death, at age fifty, of a heart attack.  That's crazy.  I mean, think of his poor editor - how do you make requests for changes of a dead guy?

The other thing is this: there are more in the series, written by other people.  I guess when something is popular, that's what happens.  It shouldn't surprise me - I'm a huge fan of comics (some might say nerd) & of course a million people have written & drawn Superman since Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster created his first adventures.  How weird would it be to have ownership be such that only their stories were allowed?  Or what about songs - what if only the original artists could sing their songs?  Musicians who make money off of covers (like Bob Dylan) wouldn't get that precious green, nor the exposure of more-popular artists presenting their songs to a bigger audience.

I don't really remember much about the films except for bits & pieces.  So it would be lost on me to read any sequels.  Unless they have some kind of "previously on..." section in the books.  Books don't do that.  Television shows & some comic books do that.  Not highly acclaimed suspense novels.  Which is a shame.  We could all use a "previously on..."

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