I’m not a big reader - well, not books. I do follow a collection of blogs and news sites. This morning, though, I ran across a blog post that inspired me to reconsider. Apparently NPR ran a story this morning about author Stieg Larsson, whose first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published posthumously. Here’s what Denise at the Dover Public Library had to say about it:
…Stieg Larsson died in 2004. When Knopf picked up the rights for publishing it in the United States they needed to use some inventive marketing techniques since they had an unknown author who could not do book tours. First they starting giving out advance copies to booksellers, and basically to anyone who asked. They went so far as to take an ad out in the New York Times Book Review telling readers if they wrote asking for a copy they would get one in the mail. They also made use of bloggers. The books were already popular in Europe and so getting the book into the hands of some influential book bloggers was important. When the book was finally published it had glowing blurbs on the back from Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Harlan Coben, and debuted at #4 on the New York Times Best-Seller List.
The reviewers in our catalog have given it mixed reviews (”The first 200 pages of this novel was like watching grass grow….”) but it is currently #17 on the NY Times Best Seller list so I bet there’s something to it.
1 response so far ↓
1 www.tattoobody.org // Nov 14, 2008 at 1:33 am
The dragonfly, with its delicate, fine line depictions and gossamer thin yet opalescent WINGS and body, is a frequent insect subject of tattoo art, symbolic of swift activity according to some Native American groups. To the Chinese, the dragonfly is a symbol of summer but also of instability. To the Japanese, the dragonfly means quite a bit more. In fact, an old name for Japan, Akitsu-shimu, means `Dragonfly Island.” There the dragonfly was good luck, a sign of a good harvest, and used as a symbol for warrior clans and emperors alike.
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