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I just downloaded it to my Kindle.

Anyone read it?

I downloaded it after hearing how great it is.

I started reading and, honestly, I havent been able to get into it.

Maybe I'm missing something...

Oh, boo!

I'm going to start tonight...we'll see how it goes.

Read it- hated it- I hope you have a better experience!

I absolutely loved it , couldn't put it down. I had been unable to read throughout the S but that was an easy read . Now started the 2nd book in series The Girl who Played with Fire .

Read it and LOVED it, but it took a while to get into it. Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character, but is not introduced until about 50 pages in. And the first 50+ pages before you meet her are very dry and dull.

Yeah....I didnt get that far. It was VERY dull and dry after the first few pages.

After I re-read Outlander (LOVE that series) I'll try again...

I think it's definitely worth reading. It helps to remember the book was translated into English and not written for American readers to begin with. I doubt the author ever imagined that Americans would read his book.

American readers, especially those who enjoy thrillers and crime novels, are used to far different pacing and editing.

I've read all three of them; I thought they were great but they are kind of dark. Really dark. But I would love to have Lisbeth as a friend. She is a major ass-kicker.

I have read all three and loved them.

It did take me two attempts to get started in Dragon Tatto, but on the second attempt, I persevered past the first 40 pages or so (can;t remember exactly) and then I was hooked.

A shame the author died, I would have liked to have read more by him.

Is it taboo to mention that the movies are incredible? They are very graphic in one seen in particular.

Are these the foregin made movies? There is another version being made isn't there?

Swedish with english subtitles. They are on Netflix.

HI

Read it and LOVED it, but it took a while to get into it. Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character, but is not introduced until about 50 pages in. And the first 50+ pages before you meet her are very dry and dull.

Yes.. This is true. But keep going and you will be hooked!

I have read all three (once I started I couldn't put them down) and seen the movies. The Swedish movies are great. Cannot imagine that Hollywood will be able to come anywhere near them.

The characters in the movies are so much like the book it is amazing.

I am an avid reader of thrillers and would rate them as the best I have read.

I am so disappointed the author died.

Mind you it may have been the karma bus - the bastard had a long term mistress

So hate the man - love his books

BTW Lisbeth is fabulous. For those BWs who would love to get their own back - you will like me become a fan of hers!!!

She gives all the men who have made her life hard just what they deserve!!!

She is my hero.

The trilogy is a must read.

Laura

Mind you it may have been the karma bus - the bastard had a long term mistress.

So hate the man - love his books.

This characterization is really unbelievably misleading and unfair, given the realities of the situation, and I think that the person who wrote this must not have any idea of the real life facts or this never would, or could, have been said.

Stieg Larsson, both as a journalist and as a private citizen, fought for all of his adult life for good causes and against the extreme Swedish right wing (neo-Nazi, the Scandinavian version: racists, etc.)--to the extent that his life was perpetually, every single moment, in genuine danger. He, quite consciously, lived every day in actual threat of being murdered that day.

In Sweden, the laws require that the names and addresses of married couples must be public (I think they're kept in a local municipality or something, available at all times to anyone who wants to see them), published, and constantly displayed at the front doors of their residences. (This is why there is so much made of whose name is on the door in one of the novels, and why Lisbeth Salander has to go to such misleading lengths when she wants to move to a different, full-time residence when her life is in danger. There is no such thing as being able to live anonymously in Sweden.)

Stieg Larsson and his lifetime partner never married because, for them to be married in Sweden, SHE would have instantly become a target of the extremely dangerous forces he was constantly working against.

They were together as a committed couple something like twenty-five years, and were a totally devoted couple...and they didn't get married so that BOTH of them wouldn't be murdered some day because even if HE got murdered, he didn't want HER to get murdered too.

To characterize her as a "mistress" is (in my opinion) unbelievably ugly given the circumstances...and why anyone should hate this man because he was a constant fighter for the good and the honorable in his country, and who fought with everything in his journalistic power against the forces of hate, is also unbelievable.

This characterization of him (and of Eva Gabrielsson, his lifetime partner) has just got to be a situation where the facts weren't known, and the suppositions were made in ignorance of the facts.

This was a really good man, who really loved the woman he shared nearly all of his adult life with.

And much of what is in the novels (which he wrote very late at night, after his day job as a journalist) is what he experienced in his own real life.

He died at age fifty, of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. As happens in Japan (there is a word that has been coined for this in Japanese), he had worked himself to death.

[This message edited by Kjersti at 4:35 AM, October 13th (Thursday)]

Hi Kjersti

I am really sorry.

the person who wrote this must not have any idea of the real life facts

No I didn't.

I read an article some time ago that talked about his wife and his mistress in litigation about who owned his work. I never read another else about him or his life as I was disgusted and disappointed when I read this. Clearly that was a mistake and there was quite a lot of misinformation in this story.

I got the impression that he was married but had a mistress on the side.

I am really very sorry to have offended you.

I had no idea.

I am also very glad you corrected this error.

I must say that I read the books before dday and really loved them but was most disappointed when I read (after dday) that he had a mistress. I found it hard to understand that someone who wrote the stories that he did could live that kind of life. However, from what you have said 'mistress' is clearly not an appropriate term for her.

So once again I am sorry, but I also do not regret posting the comment about the "mistress" (although I do regret the karma comment) as I now know the REAL facts and hopefully others who read here will too.

Thank you

Laura

ETA

Since posting the response above I have looked at some biographies of Larsson and it seems that like his characters he was a really good man. I feel quite embarrassed about my initial statements.

Laura

[This message edited by Laura28 at 5:05 AM, October 13th (Thursday)]

Thanks for all of the insight guys (both on the book and the author)! I only got through the first chapter last night, but I was dead tired and knocked out early. It was a bit dry and dull, but I see you guys mentioned it picks up after that.

I went to the movies this weekend to see Ides of March, and there was a preview for the upcoming movie. That is when my SO told me that it was based on the foreign books and he had seen the movies on Netflix. So I became intrigued.

I'm excited to continue reading!

Hi Laura:

I thought it had to be a mistake, and the article you read doesn't have a monopoly on mistakes about Stieg Larsson and Eva Gabrielsson. An otherwise pretty good article in the New York TIMES here also had some serious mistakes in it, and a couple were whoppers!

But it also had some info that is relevant here, like the fact that Larsson and Gabrielsson met in 1972 and moved in together two years later. They were, as I said, together with each other--as a committed couple--until his death in 2004.

From the New York TIMES article:

Larsson died without leaving a will. Like a great many Swedish couples, he and Gabrielsson never married--she was his sambo, as the Swedes say, his live-in companion-and they had no children. Oddly, Sweden, that model of social liberalism, has no provision for common-law marriage, the way many Americn states do, and so Larsson's father and younger brother, who are not particularly literary, got everything: the rights to his books, the money, even half of the apartment that Larsson and Gabrielsson shared.

I'm glad we got everything straightened out, and although I am sorry you were embarrassed (I have been in a similar situation before; I understand how you must feel ), these posts must cetainly have piqued the curiosity of more than a few readers here on SI!

All is well.

Thank you.

[This message edited by Kjersti at 10:11 AM, October 13th (Thursday)]

(((((group hug!)))))

Because the Stieg Larsson trilogy is written differently than anything I've ever known (or known was possible) before, there are some things that those who haven't yet read these three novels should know (and I wish I had known before I began this trilogy, which I swooped through in what has to be world record time, once I got past that first pretty slow, but really essential, introductory section in the first novel):

1) The three novels, in order, are:

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (first novel in the trilogy, with the back story to everything that happens to everyone later in all three novels)

The Girl Who Played With Fire (the middle novel in the trilogy)

The Girl who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (the final novel in the trilogy)

2) These three novels are one continuous story. (The last novel in the trilogy opens just hours after the middle one ends, with hardly a pause between books two and three.) All three were written as one continuous story (and Larsson wrote the different "companion" or "plot" or "perspective" sections of the trilogy's long story at the same time, so he was writing chapters which went into all three books at the same time).

3) There is considerable discussion of Swedish politics plus various arcane (to non-Swedes) areas of Swedish law (for example: Swedish laws, regulations, and ethics which apply to Swedish journalists). Larsson never expected that his books, written for Swedish readers, would be a worldwide sensation. To Swedes, this is probably really interesting stuff. To us...not so much. If passages get too dense with Swedish laws and ethics, feel free, as a non-Swede and non-Scandinavian, to jump ahead. On the other hand, these sections do explain why certain things happen (and MUST happen) the way they do and did. Take what you feel is right for you from these sections, and skip over the rest.

4) The character of Mikael Blomkvist is Larsson's alter ego. The books seem real because they are. The essentials from these novels were Larsson's real life (and the character of Lisbeth Salander had its origins in a real life employee who once worked for Larsson at a Swedish magazine he published).

[This message edited by Kjersti at 3:46 PM, October 13th (Thursday)]