Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series

I don't often read novels, but when I do it's usually the ones that the movies I like are based on. I consume my fiction mainly through movies and television shows, and this applies perfectly to the Millennium series. I'm just not as into fiction books as these two:

Post by The Film Stage.

The original Swedish film adaptations found their way on my To Watch list in 2009, and I thought they were terrific. When it was announced that David Fincher would direct the English adaptation, I was rightly stoked. Fincher is easily one of my favourite directors. It wasn't until after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) was released that I finally picked up the novels. They've been sitting on my shelf ever since.

For whatever reason, I've chosen to start reading the series this week. I'm just about through with the first novel in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor, which literally means "Men Who Hate Women." I think that's a way cooler title, but I guess it's a little less inviting than what it was ultimately changed to for the English market.

It's been a while since I've read any novels (the last was Cormac McCarthy's Child of God a few months ago), so I guess the time was right to take a break from my steady diet of non-fiction. Other novel-reading-after-movie selections include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In, and Christopher Priest's The Prestige. I got the jump on Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film adaption of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and read that one a year or so ago. 

Off the top of my head, one of the only non-film-adapted novels I've read somewhat recently is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It's a great little novel, and last I checked it was optioned by John C. Reilly for the film adaptation. There's also Pynchon's Bleeding Edge and Lindqvist's Handling The Undead. And there was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I read long before there was even news of a screen adaptation. (See also: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.) I've been following the non-existent progress on that one for years until it was finally produced as a television series which is set to air next year. I'm super excited about that one.

There aren't many other novels on my radar, except for maybe David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. Non-fiction is really my thing these days, and has been ever since I devoured so much Michael Crichton and Stephen King in my early teen years. Tolkien came a little later. But dang if I ain't lucky I grew up in the days before Harry Potter and all these other "YA" blockbuster series. Yeesh. I will never understand why adults read YA stuff, either. They should be embarrassed. But I suppose it's better than reading nothing at all...