Pajiba

I'm about 50 pages in and a little bored. I'm going to give it a bit more, but so far it's not particularly gripping.

(called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in America and Men that Hate Women in the original Swedish),

The Swedish title is certainly more interesting. I thought it was a fantasy novel before I started reading.

I was indifferent to this book at first. I read it and basically had a very "eh" reaction. As I thought it about it more after I read it, it began to monumentally piss me off. They had a great story setup and just kind of pissed it away. The obvious choice for an ending, the one you think he couldn't possibly go with because it's just too easy, that's the one the book takes. And as Rusty said, that man gets a lot of ass but I found his character so unlikeable most of the time I was wondering how or why all these women were basically throwing themselves at him. Unless they do some decent character retooling to make him even slightly likeable, I will probably pass on this

Brenton - it gets better. It took me awhile to get into it, but it does pick up.

Now, the part that's confusing me about this whole marketing campaign is that the first book in the series really isn't about Lisbeth. Obviously, it sets her character up, but she's really not the focus. But I guess if you change the title to "Girl something something", the audience expects a girl?

I really dug the first book, really REALLY dug the 2nd book, and had a bit of a struggle getting into the third. The first too is a bit difficult to get into but well worth it.

I'm just glad the movie was made in Sweden or else we could have been stuck with Lisbeth Salander played by Rainbowkiller.

*Shudder*

@ Paddydog, After Larsson's death the rights to the books went to his brother and father, who apparently are kind of dicks, I think they're to blame for all the weird product placement.
I'm glad this is being released in Swedish, instead of being remade.

Hate to spoil the picnic, but this has been optioned for an American remake already; so don't let them hear the Rainbow Killer talk too much.

On the plus side, it's great to hear about a book "captivating millions" and becoming a "literary phenomenon" without inspiring a horde of stupid teenagers to fill the multiplexes. Now we'll get the middle aged/senior citizen crowd who snore and ruffle candy wrappers during the most dramatic moments. Oh yeah baby, pass me those Milk Duds!

As a swede who has seen the movie, I can honestly say it's pretty good, not counting the godawful ending, but still, I recommend it. However, avoid the second film, The Girl Who Played With Fire. It's not nearly as well-made, it was intended for television and it shows. Everything about it, the acting, directing, effects etc is a huge step down in quality. The production company here in Sweden didn't expect the first film to be such a success, so they made the second and third one with lower budgets and planned to air them on tv. Not a wise move, as it turned out. Haven't seen the third yet, though.

I also read the book (as a former resident of Scandinavia, I think I had to--part of my visa), and I have to say that I mostly really enjoyed it. Rusty was the first to mention my only major complaint--that Mikael landed every woman in its pages. I mean, COME ON. There are plenty of smoking hot Swedish men, but the actor cast in the role doesn't look the part to me. Mostly because he appears mortal, and average at best, while Mikael needs to be Sex on Legs to justify the all the lovin' he got.

Never read the book but I saw the movie. I was impressed by Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth, I really liked her character and would have liked to see more about her. But I was EXTREMELY put off by all the violence towards women. Men Who Hate Women (it's the Dutch title, too) is a bit too good a title for it. > Oh, I also liked that Lisbeth was basically built like me - refreshing to see the main female character not prancing around being all ~sexy~. :) *mumbles something about real women sometimes having angles and not curves, too*

All in all an ok thriller but with some seriously iffy bits.

Once you skip the long and unnessecary segments about the ins and outs of financial journalism, and ignore Blomkvist's casting as ladies man, it's not a bad read.
Also: as a counter to Cydeleida's Spoiler Alert...Book 2 gets into the reasons Salander is under guardianship to begin with, and she's not a woman in her right mind. Book 2 is better (less Blomkvist heavy) but not without fault (Salander would NOT get a boob job. Ridiculous.)

Also: What a stupid translation of the title!

Sounds like it's about tattoos, when it really IS about men who hate women!

Which makes me think about the Great Misogyny Debates of Pajiba, which pop up every once in a while: Read the first two books, then you know what hating women is all about!

@cydeleida: I read the first part in Croatian and the second two in English - not to blow our national horn, but the Croatian translation was infinitely better.The problem is that every idiot thinks they can translate into English so the best translations are the ones from more exotic languages like the Nordic ones into exotic ones like Croatian because there's only a handful of experts who know how to do it.
As for the violence - the topic of the book is the hidden misogyny (in the truest sense of the word) that lurks beneath the glossy surface of Swedish society.The whole point of the book is uncovering this hatred and punishing it.
And just to clear something up - Lisbeth is not under guardianship because she's crazy but because of reasons explained in book 3.

This is a funny site - it's obviously filled with many complainers, whiners and people bored with life who love looking at what's wrong. Just human, I know, but funny to read a bunch of them in a row. As an author myself, I'm fascinated by what SL had to say that reached out to so many people (48 mil and counting)