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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)

Stieg Larsson,

Reg Keeland (Translator)

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What Members Thought

May 07, 2010 El rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, peer-pressure

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 makes that thing ...more

186 likes · Like · see review

Feb 01, 2010 karen rated it liked it

Shelves: it-is-for-class

we are in low-three land here. but at least i am learning things about sweden! for example: ladies in sweden just kind of shrug off sexual abuse! they are rape-teflon! this i am learning from the facts provided at the beginning of chapters, and from various characters' reactions to events. they just brush themselves off and go back to eating sandwiches. yes, that is another thing i learned: the swedes eat sandwiches. exclusively. if you excise every occurrence of the words "coffee" and "sandwich ...more

152 likes · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2010 Wealhtheow rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: battle-of-wits, didn-t_finish

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 through les ...more

95 likes · Like · see review

Jan 06, 2010 Holly rated it did not like it

Shelves: bleah, mystery-or-thriller

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. If I could give this two and a half stars, I would. I liked the characters, particularly Salander, though it took me a while to warm up to Blomkvist.

But the writing... Jesus god, Mr Larsson, is it really necessary to go into such excruciating yet meaningless detail?

"At 6:00 he took a shower. He boiled some potatoes and had open sandwiches of pickled herring in mustard sauce with chives and egg on a rickety table outside the cottage, facing the bridge. He poured himself a shot of aquavit and dra ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2010 Rachel rated it it was ok

I wonder if the people who gush about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, are the types who skim over boring parts and just read the good stuff. I'm not like that. When I think about how much I like the book, I think of the whole book, all 576 pages, having read and digested every word on every page.

I would have stopped reading around page 80, or page 120, or page 200 (I kept considering it), if it hadn't been for the fact that this was a book selection for my real-life book club. Around page 250 it a I wonder if the people who gush about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, are the types who skim over boring parts and just read the good stuff. I'm not like that. When I think about how much I like the book, I think of the whole book, all 576 pages, having read and digested every word on every page.

I would have stopped reading around page 80, or page 120, or page 200 (I kept considering it), if it hadn't been for the fact that this was a book selection for my real-life book club. Around page 250 it actually starts to get good. I read the final 300-ish pages in about 5 days; it took me 5 weeks to read the previous 250! The ending was rather stupid and over the top, but then again it was also kind of playful, which I do like, so it's kind of a mixed bag.

One thing about the book ... I do like the characters this author dreamed up ... I like the characters of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkist and Erica Berger and Henrik Vanger and even the awful villains in the story. Also, I like the info about the Swedish Nazis, and how Vanger got to meet his wife. BUT: although those were good stories, they were told quite badly .... the author thought it would be great fun to give the reader the feeling of being cooped up with an aged person, listening to all their stories. Also, I didn't like some of the violent sex plots, I'm not sure how much of these details were necessary to the plot? YUCK. But it certainly gives the book an edge, and actually, those parts were better written than some of the others! Who knows, if the author didn't go into such detail with the sadistic sex scenes, maybe this book never would have gotten as popular.

In summary ... there were a lot of problems with this book. I even found about 10 obvious typos as I was reading. BUT ... at least it did provide a fast-paced and engaging story to read in the SECOND HALF. That is not to be down-played. The second half is REALLY GOOD. Exciting, suspenseful, lots of surprises! Nonetheless, I cannot ignore how awful the first 250 pages were. So it's a toss up between 2 and 3 stars on this one.
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Jan 05, 2010 Tory rated it really liked it

I liked the feel of the book, and I really enjoyed the characters that ended up being an integral part of the story. In the beginning, there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary confusion. Alot of secondary characters with names that were similar enough to bug... Henrik, Harold, Harriet, Birger, Berger, and so on. I mean, really? C'mon. But by the middle of the book I was well into the story and didn't want to stop reading. This book really is very, very hard to put down.

There were a couple of tim ...more

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Aug 26, 2010 Lis rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club, 2010-reads

this is a murder mystery with a whole lotta rape, with a little bit of that hackers movie mixed in just for kicks. kind of made me want to live in a cottage on some swedish island. other than that, it was one small step up from watching tv, i guess. it was entertaining in a sense. i didn't find it exactly thrilling, but it passed the time. ...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Jane-Rebecca rated it liked it

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. Painfully slow in parts, painfully written in parts. On the whole it was entertaining and that is all I expected from it.

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