Hello and Happy New Year! I’m back from my vacation and have missed my book updates. What better novel to kick off this post with than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?
Feeling like I was the one person in the world who hadn’t read this best seller, I finally got around to reading it on my cruise. Honestly- I was bored to tears during the first 100 pages of the book. I kept flipping pages (clicking the forward button on my kindle!) until Lisbeth Salander came on to the scene. Once the genius hacker become part of the story, things began to look up and I was hooked.
I love the character of Lisbeth. She’s tough, smart, socially awkward, dresses in leather, has many piercings and is someone I felt myself rooting for throughout the story.
In case you are one of the few who havent read the book, here is a brief synopsis: the book centers around the 40 year old murder of a member of the powerful and wealthy Vanger family. Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist who is living with a scandel of his own, is brought in to investigate and find answers. Lisbeth is hired as his assistant. The Vanger family is full of strange characters with secrets as to what happened to young Harriet Vanger. The setting is cold Sweden which is both dark and chilly, lending a foreboding backdrop to the story.
I liked the book enough to want to read the other two in the series. Today I saw the movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. When I heard David Fincher directed this adaptation, I knew it would be good. I loved The Social Network so I went into this movie with high expectations. Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist was fantastic but it was Rooney Mara who did a phenomenal job as Lisbeth. She carried Lisbeth’s tense, pent up anger yet there was some kind of untouchable emotion just below the surface of the character.
I was happy to see the movie followed the book closely aside from a few plot changes and a tweaking of the ending. Naturally film is a different medium than a novel so its understandable certain scenes were not included. Everything important is in the movie and kudos to the screenwriter who adapted the book.
Here’s a short trailer that shows quite a lot of the movie.
