The Cephalopod Coffeehouse: The Girl Who Played with Fire

"Salander heard a sound and saw a movement out of the corner of her eye just as she was putting the key in the door of the Honda. He was approaching at an angle behind her, and she spun around two seconds before he reached her." (The Girl Who Played with Fire, Page 193)

Welcome everyone to this month's round of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse. Make sure to make the rounds and see what everyone has been reading over the past month.

A couple of weeks ago I finished up the second book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, The Girl Who Played with Fire. I was going to review the third book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, over at The Random Book Review, but I haven't quite finished it. It's kind of been a busy week for me but, hey, I'm still reading!

This is the part where I make the assumption that everyone under the sun has heard of Stieg Larsson and his Swedish Millennium series, but considering that not everyone enjoys the same genres, I won't make that assumption. When reading Larsson's background, it's really not surprising he chose topics such as misogyny, sex trafficking, and corrupt political systems to use in his books. Here's a little bit about Larsson's background according to this website:

Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) was a Swedish writer and journalist. Prior to his sudden death of a heart attack in November 2004 he finished three detective novels in his trilogy "The Millennium-series" which were published posthumously...Altogether his trilogy has sold more than 20 million copies in 41 countries, and he was the second bestselling author in the world in 2008. Before his career as a writer, Stieg Larsson was mostly known for his struggle against racism and right-wing extremism.

He liked extreme storylines, to say the least. There is supposedly a fourth book hidden inside Larsson's computer, but much controversy surrounds who should own the rights to Larsson's estate: his father and brother or his life partner Eva Gabrielsson. Feel free to visit the website I listed if you're interested in checking out the controversy.

Stieg Larsson

About the book:

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, two people are brutally murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander's innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Slander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.

If you've read the first book in the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, then you know that The Girl Who Played with Fire picks up roughly a year or so after the first novel. After Salander and Blomkvist's harrowing ordeal in the previous book, Salander has skipped the country with her loot and has spent time abroad. We find her in Grenada at the beginning of the story, doing what she does best: saving a young woman from certain death at the hands of her husband. This element is important because as the story unfolds we see that Salander's past, which is riddled with abuse, will come back and rear its ugly head.

Where in The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo Salander and Blomkvist spend a large portion of the book together, in the sequel, they only come in close contact with one another at the end of the book. I struggled with that a little bit, because I was expecting more one on one work between the two of them. The third book is shaping up to be much of the same, but I've yet to finish it (I have about a third of the book left), so I don't know if there will be any resolution to their relationship. I'm hoping so (but please don't tell me how it ends)!

Overall, I enjoy the hacking capabilities of Salander. I'm very fascinated with every nuance of the hacking world Larsson creates. I have no idea if what he's saying is true about how hacking works, but at least it makes for an interesting read. I do struggle with Larsson's portrayal of women in his books. None of them seem like the type of woman a man would want to settle down with and raise a family. Berger, Blomkvist's longtime love interest, is tough as nails in the publishing world. She knows what she wants, goes and gets it, and stops for a little hanky-panky if the need arises. Which seems to be quite a bit with her and it usually borders on kinky. For whatever reason, Larsson feels the need to divulge all the ends and outs of the female characters' sex lives, but he doesn't go too much into the mens' unless they're the ones doing the sex trafficking. Salander is a very damaged individual and more of who she is comes out in the second novel. When Blomkvist learns the truth about her rape, I feel it's disappointing how he rationalizes his physical relationship with Salander. She had come to him not long after her rape, so that meant it was okay. Sorry, but that's just sad. What the girl really needs is someone willing to listen to her, but Larsson builds her into an individual full of mistrust and the need for isolation that all I ever feel for her is pity.

The hard-looking Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish films.

If you've not read the book, know this:  the story feels dated. Larsson drops so many brand names, especially with computer technology, that it loses some of that here-and-now feel. Grant it, the book does deliberately state that it's 2004, but time can be tricky when it comes to contemporary thrillers. Readers are constantly wanting to feel the technology and brands of today. Palm pilots may have been cool in 2004, but I don't know anyone still using them now. The book also tends to become a tedious read. There are some pretty long passages of information dumps and over explanation of the basic facts that at times the storyline gets swallowed up. As a whole, though, Larsson weaves a great story concerning Salander's background. Which, is why I had to read the third book.

Have you read any of Stieg Larsson's books? If so, what's your opinion?

Make sure to check out the rest of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse reviews:

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

Immigration in the U.S. is complicated. This is a fact. And, from what I've read in Vincent J. Cannato's non-fiction account of Ellis Island's history, it's always been complicated.

Welcome to December's round of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse! I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season! If you're not busy socializing with family, watching football, or taking in the season's festivities, then might I interest you in a discussion on U.S. immigration? Sounds fun, doesn't it?

This past month I dove into a non-fiction account of Ellis Island -- American Passage: The History of Ellis Island -- that little island in New York Harbor that initially threw its doors open to foreigners from all over Europe. Your first question might be why I felt the need to delve into such an extensive history on immigration, and I'll clear the confusion up right away. I'm researching a new book I plan on writing come the new year and the majority of it takes place on Ellis Island around the turn of the twentieth century-- a time when hundreds of thousands of immigrants were spilling into the United States. I found it all so very fascinating!

Vincent J. Cannato's book takes the reader on a journey that right away makes one see exactly where the growing pains of immigration began. His book is primarily about straightforward facts when it came to laws and regulations concerning immigrants and how to handle the rising tide. This is what Cannato says about it in his Introduction:

"Americans need a history that does not glorify the place in some kind of gauzy, self-congratulatory nostalgia, nor mindlessly condemn what occurred there as the vicious bigotry of ugly nativists. Instead, this book seeks to understand what happened at Ellis Island and why it happened."

And that's exactly what I was looking for when I cracked this book open. Cannato details the history of Ellis Island from it's early days as Gibbet Island, an execution ground for pirates (I know!), through the tumultuous and insanely busy days at the turn of the century, to its waning days as a detention center for Communist sympathizers in the 1950s. Ellis Island was officially closed as an immigration/detention center in 1954. By then, most buildings on the island had been shuttered and the main building had fallen into disrepair with some of the detainees commenting that the place was "a disgusting place," "a prison," met with "bitter disappointment," and "dirty, dingy, and grey with age."

In its heyday, Ellis Island (but initially Castle Garden before Ellis Island's main building was built) was the main immigration station in the United States, handling and processing some 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1924. No immigrant could fully say he/she had entered the U.S. until they passed through those final doors and took the ferry into New York City. In many ways, Ellis Island also became a lightening rod for controversy. With the rise of eugenics, many stalwart Americans opposed the idea of letting just anyone into the country, especially the dirty, unwanted foreigners from over seas. On the flipside, immigrant societies and newspapers ripped Ellis Island's administration apart on many occasions, saying that not enough was being done to keep immigrants safe and free from deportation.

"The Stranger at Our Gate"
A popular depiction of immigrants first
published by the magazine Our Day
 in 1896.

With the 1891 Immigration Act the list of "undesirables" not to be admitted rose. It included "idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become public charges, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists." As horrifying as it may sound to include immigrants in these categories, this is exactly what they did during the majority of early immigration. The idea was to sift the incoming immigrants and this was the best plan the government could come up with.

I think at times we tend to think of immigration pains as in the here and now. The truth is that the U.S.'s immigration predicament started long before now. Theodore Roosevelt had a lot on his plate at one time and, unfortunately, the passing of the immigration buck just went from president to president, hoping that in some way a solution would finally be found. We still grapple with that indecisiveness today.

Cannato does a thorough job with the historical aspects of Ellis Island, and I was happy to find such a well thought-out source. I will say that there were a few times I was put off by the way Cannato produced his facts. It was obvious he was interjecting his opinion at times. For instance, in an interview given by Vera, Countess of Cathcart in 1926, when detained for adultery (yes, that did happen under the moral turpitude clause) after her love interest the Earl of Craven fled to Canada when issued an arrest warrant for the same charge, said the following: "I am not a coward and have not run away, like the Earl of Craven. He has proved himself a coward in many ways." After this, Cannato puts into parentheses: "This was a man who had lost a leg in combat as a young officer during World War I." (Page 262) Um...is Cannato saying that when a man loses a leg in war he is no longer a coward? Or that if the man gives the authorities the slip for an arrest warrant that him losing his leg cancels out his present cowardly actions? I'm not sure, but I came across little tidbits like this from time to time. In all, though, I'd say I enjoyed reading Cannato's dissection of such a complicated piece of American history.

So, there you have it. A little breakdown on the U.S.'s history of immigration through Ellis Island. A few years ago I had the privilege to visit what is now the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. The main building has been overhauled and is fascinating to visit. What I loved most is the Registry Room where once upon a time incoming immigrants were asked a variety of questions before given or denied entry. It's large, nicely reconstructed and quiet. It's good to just sit there and maybe see if you can hear a conversation or two among the voices of the past.

Ellis Island in 1905.

Ellis Island today.

Make sure to check out other reviews in this month's Cephalopod Coffeehouse.

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse: Gone Girl

In a world where everything dark is in and chick lit is out, Gone Girl fits right in. This is one of those books that grabs you by the collar, shakes you up a bit and won’t let go until you raise your head 489 pages later and utter a “what the hell just happened?” to whoever might be standing (or sleeping) next to you. The odd thing is within the constraint of its genre (film noir, mystery) it offers some interesting insights about marriage and gender expectations.

The story is told by two narrators: husband Nick and wife Amy. Nick wakes up on his fifth anniversary with bitter thoughts about his wife. Due to their mutual layoffs, Amy—a once-successful-New Yorker with famous writer parents and a book series inspired by her (Amazing Amy)—has been dragged out of her milieu and transplanted in a small mid-western town to assume the role of perfect housewife. Amy, apparently, is not happy about the move and doesn't seem as Amazing as Nick once thought. The encounter between the two of them this particular morning promises to be explosive, but instead of a collision between these two forces, we’re taken to another scene—a few hours later—in the bar Nick now co-owns with his twin sister. After a disturbing phone call, Nick returns home to find that his wife is missing and the house has been broken into. The police comes in and questions Nick, but there is no trace of Amy.

The next chapter goes into one of Amy’s diary entries—five years prior—when she first met Nick and gives us an insight of what those earlier days were like.

In alternating chapters between the two narrators in two different timelines, we get a sense of who they are. Well, at least we think we do. Pretty soon, Amy’s disappearance turns into a media frenzy. Nick keeps saying the wrong things, gets caught in a few lies and can’t explain what he did the day of Amy’s disappearance between breakfast time and the bar. Even worse, he can't figure out the clues his wife left him on their anniversary's Treasure Hunt. Before he knows it, he becomes the number one suspect in her disappearance.

So far, it seems like a pretty standard Lifetime movie, right?

Wrong.

This novel is so cleverly written that halfway through the book it takes a twist that challenges everything you thought and believed. That, and the fact that Flynn’s style is so engaging and unique (particularly when it comes to Amy’s voice). Someone called it a nice blend between literary and commercial. I have to agree with this assessment. While the plot moves quickly, there are reflections about gender relationships and marriage that I believe many readers may feel identified with. Having said this, there were situations that seemed too convenient for one of the characters, plus I wasn’t fully satisfied with the ending—though I would say that it was original and unexpected.

Despite its qualities (voice, character complexity, interesting plot) this novel is not for everybody. Like the cover suggests, the book is somewhat sinister, the characters extremely flawed and not very likable, and some may even consider it contrived. But there is something about the premise—that famous hook—that makes you keep reading until the big question is answered. I recommend this book to those readers who love suspense, plot twists and murky characters.

If you've read this book, care to share your thoughts with me?

Check out these other reviews:

1.	The Armchair Squid	2.	Subliminal Coffee
3.	The Beveled Edge	4.	Blue Sky Gazing
5.	Hungry Enough To Eat Six!	6.	Servitor Ludi
7.	V's Reads	8.	Julie Flanders
9.	Trisha @ WORD STUFF	10.	Rebecca @ The Dusty Cellar
11.	Scouring Monk	12.	The Writing Sisterhood
13.	The Random Book Review	14.	Wikes! Hikes on the Long Trail
15.	Ed & Reub	16.	M.J. Fifield
17.	StrangePegs -- Fortunately, the Milk	18.	StrangePegs -- "My Killbot Buddy"
19.	Katie O'Sullivan	20.	Gladiator's Pen
21.	Em Dashes and Ice Cream	22.	StrangePegs -- Fahrenheit 451
23.	Words Incorporated	24.	http://sallys-scribbles.blogspot.co.uk
25.	Spirit Called	26.	Denise Covey