Xpresso Reads

To be honest, I was reluctant to read this because of the hype. I know it sounds weird, but often when a book has been so hyped up I read it and am disappointed. But it wasn't the case with this book. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is an intelligent and fabulously written story. Stieg is a great writer that creates a story and puts you in the middle of it. He doesn't rush through it though ; he makes it detailed (but not exaggeratingly so like LOTR), and he takes the time to make the characters elaborate, imperfect, and believable so you really feel like they're real. Some people may find it slow, especially the first half - I mean how many sandwiches do Swedes eat? - but I thought the pacing was perfect. It's not all go go go. You have good "breather" parts where the pace is laid back. I found those leisurely parts helped you get caught up in the story and invested in the characters. So you get to really see the events unfold. Nevertheless, he has a talent of getting your nerves revved up by jumping from one scene to the other which develops that "must continue to read" feeling. The book was originally called "Men who hate women" and was changed to a catchier title when it was translated to English. So a fair warning that this book is not for the faint of heart. It's a very mature book. It has violence, murder, fraud, money laundering, but also humor and just pure awesomeness (especially when Salander (Dragon tattoo) gets pissed), but somehow, even with all that shit in one book, Stieg made it work without it being overwhelming or overly explicit.My one complaint about this book is that it's so huge that you can't read it comfortably. The font could have been just 1 or 2 points smaller and they would have saved a couple hundred pages. So all in all, the story is very intriguing. The mystery itself was not a shocker when solved, for me anyways, but the story is entertaining from beginning to end and very much worth the read. Now I'm going to be watching the movie soon, to which I heard from some that it was better than the book (yeah, right).