The original Swedish title of this book meansMen Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and stomach prefer much milder fare, but I’ll still probably read the second installment, The Girl Who Played with Fire, when it comes out next year.
The girl who has the dragon tattoo is Lisbeth Salander, a girl in her mid-twenties who is a PI and can find out just about everything about anyone. I liked her. A lot. Her character was fascinating and Larsson ends the book in such a way that leaves you wanting to hear more of her story and background.
Mikael Blomqvist is a journalist who has just lost a court case for libel, which then puts his reputation and his magazine Millennium at risk. He decides to temporarily leave the paper in the hands of his partner to save face. Enter Henrik Vanger. Vanger is the former CEO of his family business, the Vanger Corporation. He hires Blomqvist to write a family history of the Vangers as a pretext to dig into the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger. The case has been cold for decades and though Mikael believes he won’t be able to find any new evidence, he accepts. This is where the book really grabbed me and kept me reading until 1 am to learn the outcome.
The book really has three storylines to it, the Harriet Vanger story is in the middle, with Lisbeth Salander’s story on the outside of that, and with Mikael Blomqvist’s story on the very outer edges. Consequently, the climax occurs with quite a few pages still left in the book. So at first it felt like the book should be over, but then after awhile I was able to get into the secondary and tertiary stories as well.
As I stated in the beginning, it really is about men who hate women, so if you read it be prepared for what that involves. I didn’t care for the more graphic scenes in the book, but I do know that not everyone is as sensitive to that as I am. And I do want to find out more about the girl with the dragon tattoo when The Girl Who Played with Fire comes out next year.
After his wife Kath’s death, Glyn is going through all her paperwork and finds a folder with ‘DO NOT OPEN: DESTROY’ on it. Of course he opens it, only to find a picture of his wife holding hands with another man. Glyn then sets out to find out about the details of his wife’s life that he never knew about, and he finds out that he really didn’t know his wife all that well. As he finds out more and more, he needs to enlist Kath’s friends and her sister Elaine to fill in the gaps to the mystery, ‘Who was Kath, really?’
This book is about marriage, friendships, and family relationships. Who takes precedence over whom and why. Who really knows the true soul of a person and why. How does one even go about trying to find out the true self of a loved one? This book really engaged me because of the intertwined, complex relationships of all the characters and how they related to the ‘mystery’ of who Kath really was. Recommended.
Although I haven’t yet read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies, after reading Unaccustomed Earth, I can understand why the committee was so impressed with her writing. Her stories of the Bengali immigrant experience were very well developed, and they had closure to them, something I’ve noticed is often times lacking in modern short stories. All the characters in the book have similar backgrounds — high intelligence and high potential — yet each story was unique. Each character was struggling with his or her own set of issues, most of them due to the individuals’ adjustment, or lack thereof, of living in a culture so different from their own or that of their parents.
Themes explored include family, loyalty, duty, and honor. Relationships encountered were father and daughter, husband and wife, brother and sister, roommate to roommate, and childhood friend to childhood friend. Birth, life, marriage, children, divorce, and death. These few stories covered a wide range of experiences of the Bengali immigrant living in America and illustrated well how being Bengali shaped the characters’ choices.
Highly recommended. I will definitely be reading Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake at a later date.
Bjartur of Summerhouses has one goal: total independence. After being a servant for 18 years, he finally obtains his own land, and while ever seeking the land’s improvements, Bjartur and his extreme self-reliance costs his family dearly. He mistreats his own wife and children, not overtly, but through his unwillingness to accept help of any kind from neighbors. His independence, his dog, and his sheep are of primary and utmost importance. But is it possible to be too independent? What happens to Bjartur when his own children demand independence from him?
Reading a book set in Iceland in January really set the mood for this story. The cold, the coffee, the sheep, and the stubbornness of one man against the world are what I will remember about this book. With themes of materialism, socialism, war, and politics, Independent People by Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness is more than relevant for today.
1934-35 , 482 pp.
Nobel prize-winning author
Rating: 4
I first read Pippi over 30 years ago, and it has always had a special place in my childhood reading memories. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t hold up when read as an adult, at least for me anyway. I still enjoyed it (rated it a 4), and if I had a daughter, I would love for her to read it. I love how it shows Pippi’s independence and the way she’s mature but childish at the same time. I love her interaction with Tommy, Annika, and Mr. Nilsson. But, it just didn’t live up to my childhood memory of it. I adored this book as a youngster and wanted to adore it again. I liked it very much but didn’t love it. Perhaps some books are best left in our childhood.
I read this during the read-a-thon in the late night hours, and it was a perfect fit. I love Lois Lowry. I haven’t found a book yet by her that I didn’t like, and she is the author I’ve read the most of this year.
This is a tale about dream-givers, nightmare-givers, a little boy, his mother, a puppy, and an older female caretaker. It’s difficult to say more without spoilers so I’ll leave it at that. It was a wonderful book.
It’s very hard to describe Messenger without giving away parts of The Giver and Gathering Blue. This is the third book in that trilogy. So I’m not going to say anything about the book, other than I enjoyed it very much but consider it to be the weakest of the three. It was nice to have a sequel that wrapped up (somewhat) the other two titles.
Kira is a girl who has just lost her mother to sickness. She is very distraught as it has been her mother who has protected her from the community. Kira has a bad leg, and everyone in the village with any kind of defect or deformity must leave the protected area and contend with “the beasts” outside of it.
As she goes back to her small house, the women around her make it known that they want her property as a place for their own children and animals. A legal proceeding takes place which decides the matter. Will she have to leave the community and contend with “the beasts”, or will an exception be made?
Recommended highly, but make sure you read The Giver before you read Messenger.
This was an excellent children’s book. I read it in a couple of hours while the rest of my family was at the movie theatre.
Annemarie Johansen and Ellen Rosen live in Copenhagen. They are neighbors and best friends. Ellen and her family are Jewish and World War II is going on; consequently they are in very real danger and Annemarie’s family does everything they can to help them.
I can’t really say much more without giving the whole story line away. This book fascinated me because many of the details are based on factual evidence. Books like these truly make history come alive and make the reader eager to do more research on the subject.
Highly recommended.
Lisa – June 19, 2007
I read this one this week as well. I thought it was good but didn’t love it. I think this is in part because I recently read The Book Thief which overshadows this one. I posted a short review this morning.
Trish – June 19, 2007
I loved loved loved this book as a kid (I think we read it in 4th or 5th grade) and I re-read it again as a YA. I guess I should now read it as an adult!As a side-tid-bit: I learned the word disdain from this book. I can still remember how the babysister disdained her fish shoes. Quite an impression.
I listened to this book on CD with my sons on a short road trip. All three of us enjoyed it very much. Meg Murry is a girl whose parents are both scientists. Consequently her family is a little different than others. She and Charles Wallace, her littlest brother, get made fun of at school because everyone thinks they’re either stupid or not living up to their potential. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Her twin brothers are more normal so they fit in.
Their father works for the government and has been missing for a few years. The search for Mr. Murry, with a little help from Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, takes them on a journey too incredible to imagine. Three sequels follow that each of us plan on reading this year or next.
Lisa – June 18, 2007
This is on one of my lists- Newbery? Decades? I thought I owned a copy but it looks like I’ll be PBS’ing it. I remember it fondly from my childhood.
I just saw your review of Number the Stars. I read it this weekend and don’t want to influence my review by reading yours, but find it cool that someone else read it at the same time.
The original Swedish title of this book means Men Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and stomach prefer much milder fare, but I’ll still probably read the second installment, The Girl Who Played with Fire, when it comes out next year.
After his wife Kath’s death, Glyn is going through all her paperwork and finds a folder with ‘DO NOT OPEN: DESTROY’ on it. Of course he opens it, only to find a picture of his wife holding hands with another man. Glyn then sets out to find out about the details of his wife’s life that he never knew about, and he finds out that he really didn’t know his wife all that well. As he finds out more and more, he needs to enlist Kath’s friends and her sister Elaine to fill in the gaps to the mystery, ‘Who was Kath, really?’
Although I haven’t yet read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies, after reading Unaccustomed Earth, I can understand why the committee was so impressed with her writing. Her stories of the Bengali immigrant experience were very well developed, and they had closure to them, something I’ve noticed is often times lacking in modern short stories. All the characters in the book have similar backgrounds — high intelligence and high potential — yet each story was unique. Each character was struggling with his or her own set of issues, most of them due to the individuals’ adjustment, or lack thereof, of living in a culture so different from their own or that of their parents.
Bjartur of Summerhouses has one goal: total independence. After being a servant for 18 years, he finally obtains his own land, and while ever seeking the land’s improvements, Bjartur and his extreme self-reliance costs his family dearly. He mistreats his own wife and children, not overtly, but through his unwillingness to accept help of any kind from neighbors. His independence, his dog, and his sheep are of primary and utmost importance. But is it possible to be too independent? What happens to Bjartur when his own children demand independence from him?
I first read Pippi over 30 years ago, and it has always had a special place in my childhood reading memories. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t hold up when read as an adult, at least for me anyway. I still enjoyed it (rated it a 4), and if I had a daughter, I would love for her to read it. I love how it shows Pippi’s independence and the way she’s mature but childish at the same time. I love her interaction with Tommy, Annika, and Mr. Nilsson. But, it just didn’t live up to my childhood memory of it. I adored this book as a youngster and wanted to adore it again. I liked it very much but didn’t love it. Perhaps some books are best left in our childhood.
I read this during the read-a-thon in the late night hours, and it was a perfect fit. I love Lois Lowry. I haven’t found a book yet by her that I didn’t like, and she is the author I’ve read the most of this year.
I can still remember how the babysister disdained her fish shoes. Quite an impression.
