Lohetätoveeringuga tüdruk

That is the name of the book I just read.
A damn fine book, if you are asking my opinion, what else could have held my attention for 500 pages in one day?



So basically at first I was thinking of writing what I think of the book here, but I realised that honestly, I'm no critic and I'm also not very good at describing such books, so I'll just use the help of wikipedia.

I'll just bring out the important stuff, if you are interested then you can find more information here (english) and here (estonian)

The author of the book is Stieg Larsson, who was a Swedish journalist and writer, best known for the Millenium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest) Larsson wrote about three quarters of a fourth novel before his sudden death in November 2004, wich was, incidentally a heart attack, a topic which he touched, at least in his first book, several times.

The genre of the book is a Crime/Mystery novel, quite an interesting one at that.

It was pulicated in 2005, translated to Estonian in 2009, if anyone happens to care.

Basically the primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory whose social skills are rather poor. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist, a celebrity in his own right, and has a history not totally dissimilar to Larsson's own.
The book is written in a format that is rather confusing at first. Namely it jumps from one characters point of view to another while they are in different cities and dealing with diffeent problems, in the middle of the book they finally unite and things get slightly less confusing.
Personally, I didn't find it too problematic to keep track.

I tried to make some short summary out of wikipedias 4-paragraphs long essay so sorry if something seems odd or out of order:

A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. Facing jail time and professional disgrace, Blomkvist steps down from his position on the Board of Millennium in order to protect what reputation remains to the magazine.

While Blomkvist considers the bleak prospect of jail-time and time away from the Magazine he helped to create, he is offered an unlikely freelance assignment by Henrik Vanger, the elderly former CEO of Vanger Enterprises. Blomkvist visits Vanger on his estate on the tiny island of Hedeby, several hours from Stockholm. The old man draws Blomkvist in by promising not only financial reward for the assignment, but also promises that at the end of the contracted year, he will furnish Blomkvist with solid evidence that Wennerström is truly the scoundrel Blomkvist suspects him to be. On this basis, Blomkvist agrees to spend a year writing the Vanger family history as a cover for the real assignment which is to solve a "cold case"—the disappearance of Vanger's great niece Harriet some 40 years earlier, when she was sixteen. Blomkvist soon becomes acquainted with the members of the extended Vanger family who are variously mad, uninterested, concerned, hostile, or aloof. Blomkvist is resigned to being unlikely to solve the riddle of Harriet's murder given that the police were unable to do so, but he fulfills his contractual obligations by immersing himself in the case. Despite following endless dead leads, eventually a series of serendipitous new lines of evidence arise.

Then he is introduced to Lisbeth, a very talented computer hacker and the rest you are going to have to read for yourself.

The novel is focusing on violence and crimes against women, there are a couple of pretty graphic scenes of violece in the book and quite a few brutal murders. Also there is violence against pets and animals. Like a very brutal murder and dismemberment of a cat. So if you are a bit faint-hearted, don't read the end of chapter 21. Just saying.

Three movies have also been made.

And just for the record, here are the book titles in Estonian:
Lohetätoveeringuga tüdruk
Tüdruk, kes mängis tulega
Purustatud õhuloss.

That's it for today, Kelly over and out.
--Kelly

Okay so Blogger is being a bitch again (actually I'm starting to think the problem is my computer not blogger since I didn't have these problems at Kajas) pictures may arrive tomorrow. No promises.