I hate Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series.

Wow. That felt good to say.

Stieg Larrson is to writing what Dan Brown is to writing. And before you get defensive and start saying things like “Well, The Da Vinci Code is actually very cleverly written”, stop. It isn’t.

To put my opinion of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo into perspective: I read it recently while in the chianti wine region of Tuscany. My daily itinerary consisted of nothing but sitting next to the pool, drinking cocktails and soaking up the sun. Reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo very nearly ruined that entire experience for me.

I’ve never been considered a literary connoisseur (evidenced by the fact that I write for the internet) but even I know that if a book’s first 300 pages basically consist of a man sitting in a cottage and reading old documents, it’s not very compelling.

Add that to the fact that Larrson doesn’t appear to understand even the most basic tenets of modern capitalism. If, for example, a woman walks into a tattoo parlour and requests a tattoo, there isn’t a tattoo artist in the world that would say “You already have a lot of tattoos. Are you sure you want another one?” Everybody knows a tattoo artist never says no.

No matter how bad an idea it is

All of which is my long-winded way of saying that, by the way, there’s another, unpublished  Stieg Larrson book but thankfully, due to family squabbles over Larrson’s estate, we’ll never get to read it.