Today I caved to the hype, and checked out a Stieg Larsson - my first, actually. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Multiple friends, family, acquaintances, libraries, and publications have told me that TGWtDT is a book worth reading, but I have just not been able to muster up the urge to WANT to read it. Why? Why, you ask?
(Why yes, I AM blatantly setting this up for a list! How DID you guess???)
WHY I CAN'T SEEM TO READ TGWTDT:
1) It's enormous,
2) the actual main character is a middle-aged man, not someone I easily identify with,
3) the way people say it treats women (not so good), and finally,
4) it's been publicly lauded as fantastic and multiple people have recommended it to me.
For some reason, while I enjoy recommending books, I rarely enjoy books recommended to me. Especially books like TGWtDT, what with it being pasted all over Time, Newsweek, Macleans, Entertainment Weekly, bookstores, libraries, etc. for the last couple of years.
In short, overexposed.
When a book has been as talked about and praised and recommended as TGWtDT, I just find that it never really lives up to my expectations - much like The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. While I acknowledge that both books are good, incredibly good, even, I can't seem appreciate them as much as a book I find on my own. This may tap into my block with Jane Austen books, and is definitely something I would like to one day vanquish as Buffy did so many of the undead.
But New Years is a long time away, so I suppose I will just have to tuck my LitGuilt 2.0 away until December - when I can obsess over it with PURPOSE.
Sincerely,
RR
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