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Jan 04, 2011

Beth F. rated it:

Swedish people are nuts! I realize that’s a bit of a broad generalization and it sounds a bit rude, but I don’t care. Because more often than not, I’m nuts too.

I was born and raised in Minnesota, and if you know our state history, you’re already aware that we were predominantly settled and populated by Swedish (and Norwegian) immigrants. So not only are many Minnesota residents of Scandinavian descent, myself included, a lot of our quirky mannerisms and even our accents are common More...

31 comments like (191 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2012

Madeline rated it:

After having leaped onto the bandwagon with the rest of everyone, I feel a certain amount of pretentious indie pride saying that I wasn't as awed by this book as everyone else apparently was. Which is not to say that the book wasn't enjoyable and exciting; it just didn't knock my socks off whilst simultaneously blowing my mind and rocking my world. (that sounds like either some great song lyrics or a very complicated sexual maneuver. Let's go with the first option.)

So, the good stuff More...

27 comments like (71 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2012

El rated it:

He slapped her hard. Salander opened her eyes wide, but before she could react, he grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her on to the bed. The violence caught her by surprise. When she tried to turn over, he pressed her down on the bed and straddled her.

That's just to give you a little taste of what one is dealing with by picking up this book. If you can handle that and the previous x amount of paragraphs and the following x amount of paragraphs, you're golden. If that sort of More...

52 comments like (54 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2011

Kelli rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

30 comments like (98 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2008

Bernadette rated it:

I had low expectations of this book.

For a start there’s the hype. Due to past disappointments I am wary of multi-stickered, superlatively praised books.

Then there’s the fact it’s dauntingly huge. You can’t curl up in bed with it, or slip it in your bag to read on the go or hide it behind a folder during a dull meeting.

Finally when I skimmed the first few pages I saw talk of dodgy business dealings by an industrialist. There is no single subject guaranteed to More...

45 comments like (278 people liked it)

Jan 09, 2012

Sandybanks rated it:

When I think of Swedish industry, I think of IKEA, Volvo and Erricson. After reading this novel, I also think of the Vangers, whose secrets are darker than just the usual corporate sin of fake accounting, money laundering or embezzlement. Mikael Blomkvist is a muckracking financial journalist who has just been convicted of libelling an industrialist, whom he had accused of corruption. In his nadir professionally, he accepts an unusual assignment from Henrik Vanger, the 82-year old patriarch and More...

40 comments like (20 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2010

Tatiana rated it:

The original Swedish title of this book is "Men Who Hate Women." If you ask me, it suits this story much better than catchier but less relevant "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," because it is in fact about men doing all kinds of horrid things to women. So here is the first warning to you, if you don't handle violence against women and children well, skip this novel.

It's hard to give a short synopsis of the book. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" starts More...

42 comments like (108 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2008

La Petite Américaine rated it:

**Dude, I just watched the Swedish film "När mörkret faller" (When Darkness Falls), a crappy movie about violence in Stockholm. But it made me think back to this book, which constantly refers to stats about violence against women in Sweden. Something is seriously up in Sweden. Gives me the creeps even more than Swtizerland.**

Wow. 500+ pages and entertaining right up to the last sentence? Lingers in the mind long after the book is finished? Geez. I didn't think it could be d More...

27 comments like (69 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2011

notgettingenough rated it:

PS: I hadn't realised until I finished reading the legal arguments being prepared for Assange that his defence is now headed by no less than Geoffrey Robertson. If you ask me, that should be enough to make grown-up countries quake in their boots.

12/1 update:

Those following the Swedish attempt to extradite Assange should take a look at this:

http://www.fsilaw.com/~/media/Files/Assa...

It is the 35 page skeleton argument just lodged by his lawyers in the More...

27 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2010

Brad rated it:

I've heard and read many complaints about Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

1. It's misogynistic.
2. It's packed with cliché.
3. It's too convoluted.
4. It's too disturbing.
5. Lisbeth wasn't autistic enough or was foolishly autistic.
6. There were too many red herrings, and the damn Nazi red herring didn't have the usual payoff.
7. Too/Two many plots.
8. Too hard on Leviticus.

I will answer these in a moment, but first More...

43 comments like (243 people liked it)

Dec 07, 2011

Zeek rated it:

Hard to grade this one- where as most of it was totally amazing, there is the beginning and the end that pulls it down for me because really, the best part of the story is when the protags were chasing down a killer- which only happens in the middle of the story, oddly enough. (The beginning and ending is almost another story all together!)

Bestselling The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo begins with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist being hung out to dry for a piece he wrote that More...

15 comments like (20 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2010

Tony rated it:

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9 comments like (86 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2011

Joyzi rated it:

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Pictures, Images and Photos

***Movie Update: I just saw the movie today and I have to say that it was so much better than the book! The pacing was great, the actress who played Lisbeth Salander nailed the role and all the Financial Journalism nonsense was obliterated. Even the Blomkvist-Cecilia love affair was not seen. The movie has awesome camera shots and it was a very good adaptation of the book. Even made the book amazing in my eyes. Now I'm really confused why I don't think that the book was awesome when More...

66 comments like (18 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2011

Ivanna rated it:

I really don't understand the critical orgasms over this book. Amazon pushed it on me for weeks, and the minute I stepped into Borders an employee ran over and recommended it. Thinking, this really better be the best book I've ever read, I took it up to the checkstand, where the register guy asked: "Did one of our employees recommend this?" Um, yeah. And Amazon, too. So of course I asked him why.

"Oh," he replied, "we've been told to recommend it this week More...

31 comments like (90 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2009

Shannon rated it:

In 1966 sixteen-year-old Harriet Vanger, daughter of the CEO of the large family-run Vanger Corporation, goes missing from her family's island community and is never seen again. Not even a body is found, and her great uncle, Henrik Vanger, has explored every possible lead to discover what happened to his one and only favourite family member.

Over the last forty years her disappearance has become Henrik's obsession, and he's positive someone in the family murdered her - but they never More...

14 comments like (62 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2010

Wealhtheow rated it:

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is charged with libel and decides to take some time off from his magazine. Instead, he works to find what happened to Harriet Vanger, the young niece of a wealthy CEO. Meanwhile, punky hacker Lisbeth Salander has her own investigations, which presumably eventually have something to do with Blomkvist and the Vanger family. I don't know, because I couldn't bear to finish this. It usually takes me about a day to read a book. It took me an entire month to slog throug More...

4 comments like (44 people liked it)

Dec 26, 2011

Addie rated it:

Upon finishing the novel, I find the original Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women, infinitely more fitting.

This book took a little while to hook me, but I think that is a failure on my part as a reader rather than a failure on Stieg Larsson's part as a writer. I was trying to read too fast, and I wasn't taking the time to really let the material sink in. All the financial journalism jargon at the beginning caused this, as that subject is one that goes completely over my head...it's jus More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 26, 2008

Sarita rated it:

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37 comments like (166 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2008

Kristy rated it:

I HATED this book. I don't understand all of the good reviews that are coming in on it. I hated the characters, the plot was thin - ugh. I can't believe I read the whole thing.

15 comments like (114 people liked it)

Oct 13, 2011

Lisa Kay rated it:

Leptospermum rubinette ~ Desert Snow

Audio Review Note: While well narrated by Simon Vance, even he couldn’t save the first part; however, he was very entertaining for the rest and does a good job differentiating the voices.

★★★★✩ I have made several aborted attempts to read this international bestseller without success, so finally, when it became Book of the Month in one of my GoodReads groups, I decided to listen to it on audio. Ha! I still ended up referring t More...

12 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2011

Moira rated it:

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3 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2010

Manny rated it:

One of the best thrillers I've ever read. Great story, great characters, very intelligent and thoughtful. Writing is nothing special but it doesn't need to be.

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I finally saw the movie a couple of days ago, and I'm a bit conflicted. On the plus side, it conveys the feel of the book very well, and several of the main characters are excellently realized. I particularly liked Lisbeth, who was just perfect. But they have taken some eno More...

23 comments like (28 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2009

Georg rated it:

There are coincidences that make you think for days even if you are not susceptible to conspiracy theories or any other metaphysical nonsense. There are two authors who in the last time impressed me more than any other author for a long time. The first one, Stieg Larsson, was born 15 August 1954 and died 9 November 2004. The other one, Roberto Bolaño, lived from 4 April 1953 to 15 July 2003. So they both lived for some months more than 50 years only (18349 or 18340 days, respectively). Both were More...

1 comment like (20 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2011

Osho rated it:

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4 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2009

Kemper rated it:

I’ve been hearing a lot about how good the Swedish mystery writers are, and if this book is any indication, I’m moving to Stockholm and learning the language because I want to get close to the source.

I’m usually wary when the hype around a book reaches huge proportions and this novel has been a worldwide phenomenon even before I started seeing it all over the bookstores here in America. But this is one example of when the furor is justified.

There are two main character More...

29 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2010

Allison (The Allure of Books) rated it:

Stieg Larsson was so passionate about the things he wrote about, his entire belief system is laid out for the world to see. What a shame he isn't here to see the success of his "magnum opus." It makes me really sad to think about.

This is quite a book. It demands a lot of its readers. You have to be able to deal with some financial talk, and you have to be patient. The story is not a powerhouse thrilling story that catapults you through the pages. Instead, it puts down count More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2011

Hayes rated it:

This was so good and provocative on so many different levels.

I really liked Salander as a character. She is disturbed and disturbing and that is the fascination. The book hints at her past (which will surely come out in book 2) and I can guess at some of it based on her dealings with the men in her life. She is incredibly vulnerable, but certainly not defenseless. I like best the part when she realizes that she has misjudged something about a person's psychological make up, realizes More...

18 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 27, 2010

SuzieR rated it:

Although I enjoyed this book, for me it didn't live up to all the hype. I found some of the financial/business jargon a bit confusing and boring and feel the story could've done without that whole subplot. The mystery of the Vanger family was intriguing and kept me wanting to know more ... but once that was solved I lost interest again and skimmed the last few pages. However, I found Lisbeth Salander to be a very interesting character, and I think I will definitely read the next instalment whe More...

4 comments like (17 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2009

Lori rated it:

I liked this book alot even tho there were some problems where the plot fell apart a bit. The characters were likable and enjoyable even tho they were not of the deepest quality. A fun read - a bit of a thriller and mystery but character driven. Plus a great look inside Sweden, I do love to visit other countries. I'll be interested in his other 2 books from the manuscripts he handed in before his death. A shame he died relatively young.

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2012

Midnight_Kiss rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

8 comments like (4 people liked it)