My second trip out of the country was a long flight to Stockholm, Sweden. It was such a memorable trip for so many reasons. I was a very young 15-year-old then.
Reading Stieg Larsson’s first installment to the Millenium Series added fuel to my desire to visit that country again. Just because, hehe. No, it’s not a touristy story extolling the beauty of the country, but it still had that effect on me.
Photo from this book review.
I bought the book in 2010, again at my favorite used bookshop at the ELJ bldg, ABS-CBN compound. Didn’t get to read it until last week, while we were trapped in the house due to the flooding.
(Instagrammed this photo, asking “Guess what I’m reading?”)
So what is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all about? Perhaps knowing that the translation of the original Swedish title for the novel is Men Who Hate Women will give you a better idea.
It’s main protagonists are Mikael Blomkvist, financial journalist, book writer, and magazine publisher, and social deviant but ace investigator Lisbeth Salander. The Vanger Corporation and the Wennerstrom Affair brought the two together. Quite an unlikely pair, but a good matchup nonetheless.
The story started out a bit slow, I was waiting for Blomkvist and Salander to finally work together and I think it was already more than half the novel before this happened. When it did, boom! Things really started to fall into place.
The things they uncovered – a lot were quite unimaginable, yet you also know deep down in your gut that these things could really be happening. You could either be scared of the world, or you could find it within you to be hopeful. Hopeful that society also has a way of righting itself.
Too bad I don’t yet have a copy of the second book in the series. I would have started on it if I did. Though I told myself not to buy additional books, I know I’m going to break that because I just can’t wait until next year to read book 2, The Girl Who Played with Fire.
*This is my second entry to the 2012 Award Winning Books Reading Challenge. According to the book’s Wikipedia page:
“The novel was released to great acclaim in Sweden and later, on its publication in many other European countries. In the original language, it won Sweden's Glass Key Award in 2006 for best crime novel of the year. It also won the 2008 Boeke Prize, and in 2009 the Galaxy British Book Awards[6] for Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, and the prestigious Anthony Award [7][8] for Best First Novel.
Larsson was posthumously awarded the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for International Author of the Year in 2008.[9]”
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