You don’t
always come across books unexpectedly. There is a lot of hype, excitement and
every person you know has read or heard of it. You often come across people
holding it in their hands, reading it so that the tip of their noses are
brushing across those white pages or flipping through the book fervently their
eyes following the text word to word. One can draw two simple conclusions:
1)
It’s
crap
2)
It’s
the best book man has ever set their hands/eyes on
The Girl with
the Dragon Tattoo
Harriet Vanger has been
missing for over 40 years. Mikael
Blomkvist, a journalist for a magazine called, Millennium is employed to solve
this mystery by Harriet’s Uncle who believes that she is still alive. Blomkvist
along with the help of Lisbeth Salander, a computer genius and an anti-social
24 year old with various piercing and tattoos try solving the mystery which
leads them in depth of Swedish corruption.
The Girl Who Played
with Fire
Mikael Blomkvist is exposing a new
article in his magazine, Millennium which connects corruption in Sweden
The Girl Who Kicked
the Hornet’s Nest
Lisbeth Salander is in a Swedish city hospital
with a bullet in her head. After
recovering she has to prove her innocence of triple murder in front of the
District Court with evidence as well as destroy the man who had come to kill
her.
Life had
give me so many signs for reading this book that Paulo Cohelo would call it an Omen and yet I had left this book just
hanging for the longest time. Believe me, this book was on TV, radio, blogs,
Youtube, libraries, goodreads, second hand book markets, twitter, normal book
stores and it was even selling for $65 (paper-back version) in Dubai
International Airport . It was EVERYWHERE. I had to read it sooner or later so
I picked it up last year from our school library. Every single bit of it was worth
it (which sucks because I could have bought it off a cheap second hand book
sore and could actually own and put it in my small library!). Regrets aside,
this was truly a marvelous book and as the People
put it on, “Believe the hype . . . It’s gripping stuff.”
The first book, as many people say takes time to sink
in. It was the same for me; the first 45 pages of the book was slow but after
one of the main character Lisbeth Salander was introduced, the story took a
U-Turn. Salander is one of the most original characters I have ever seen. She
is a genius hacker, photographic memory, has suffered a lot, knows how to
fight, covered in tattoos, wants to be left alone and is completely
anti-social. Completely eccentric right? To add one more quality she has been
abused her entire life. Originally, the title of the first book was "Men
Who Hate Women." which I think fits in more perfectly with the theme of
the book. In the entire trilogy, their are parts there are descriptive parts in
which women are being abused by men. I think the fact that shocked me the most,
was “Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden Sweden
For those of you who don’t
really know the first book, has been made into two movies:
Swedish Version:
Hats off to Larsson’s
amazing Trilogy!
