Last year seemed to be super busy and reading a book that took too much concentration seemed to be more than I could handle. So…I just now read “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.” This year I plan to be a much more faithful reader and have actually challenged myself to read 20 books this year, though secretly I’m hoping I read more than that!
I first attempted to read this book back in May/June but man, those first 30 pages were just too much. So I put it down thinking I’d come back to it when I had a good chunk of time to devote to it. Next thing I knew the movie would be out in a matter of weeks and I still hadn’t read it. I don’t know about you but I hate to see a movie before reading the book. And I definitely recommend reading this book before seeing the movie. So many details are left out of the movie.
My sister gave me a great piece of advice that I will pass on here. If you haven’t read “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” yet, keep a piece of paper handy and write down the characters names and a couple words about them to help you know who they are. Since the author is Swedish and the book was originally written in Swedish the names can be quite confusing; there never seem to be enough vowels in there.
I did that this time and for some reason once I started reading I could NOT stop! It was addicting, yet at the same time reading it at night freaked me out a bit. Yes this book has some gruesome parts that are hard to read. But overall this book is very well written in my opinion. After finishing this book I truly felt like I knew the characters. Larsson did a fabulous job of making you really feel like you felt what the characters were feeling.
Despite this book being really popular and hearing about it all the time, I loved that this book was by a Swedish author and the story takes place in Sweden. My dad’s mom was 100% Swedish; both of her parents immigrated here. Of all the different nationalities I have in my family, Swedish the most predominate, most of my grandparents were “mutts” (for lack of a better word).
I haven’t yet read books 2 and 3 but am looking forward to it. It’s too bad for Stieg Larsson that he did not live to see the success of his novels. Though I wonder, would they have gained such notoriety if he hadn’t passed away?
Yesterday I went and saw the movie, and I thought it was one of the best adaptations that I had seen. Yes there were things that were omitted and yes they changed some rather significant parts; but overall I definitely recommend the movie, after you’ve read the book!
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