The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

⚖The case for it

Salander is why anybody talks about this book: a hacker who refuses the victim role and is “the strong, silent, unforgiving type,” whom readers describe as “made of awesome.” She and Blomkvist run a reversed dynamic, she guarded and self-sufficient and he the trusting one, which readers find fresher than the usual arrangement. Once her digging meets his archive work the case becomes “a logical, captivating mystery where everything clicks into place,” built out of old photographs and cold family records. The Swedish specifics carry it. The original title translates as Men Who Hate Women, which names the subject better.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The first hundred to two hundred pages are financial-journalism backstory and a libel case, and the book “started slowly. Like cold molasses slow,” with “too much economic talk” before anything begins. Then it “goes on interminably about the history of the Vanger family,” dumping a cast readers keep wanting a family tree to track. Computer models and meals and furnishings get inventoried in detail that moves nothing: “clunky, slow and bogged down with jargon and pointless detail.” The extended assault sequence is called gratuitous even by admirers, and some skip the pages outright.

— the honest librarian

11h

honest hours

16

sittings