The Girl Who Reads Stieg Larsson

The BBL bloggers are pleased to have a guest column written by Nicki from our Children's Department. Nicki is from Sweden originally so we couldn't think of any one better to review these very popular books of Larsson's Millennium Trilogy: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. All are in Fiction under the author's last name at both Main & Avoca. . . unless they're checked out again. In that case, we'll be happy to reserve a copy for you.


Review by Nicki

I will say at the start that I love Stieg Larsson’s books.I’m originally from Sweden, and he really captures the country and its people and some of their habits.The first two books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire) I read in Swedish.When  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest came out, I couldn’t get a copy in Swedish so I read it in English. That one was harder for me to get absorbed in the story, because the translator used British English and I think his translation loses some of the fluency.  I wondered about some of his choices:  there were things he did not translate, like subway.  He used the Swedish word for subway instead of translating it into English.  We don’t have a special word for it, not “The Tube” or any slang name. He also had some of the characters use cuss words and expressions that we don’t have in Sweden and I would stop and wonder what the original Swedish said. That was distracting. In the end I really enjoyed it, because it was an awesome read. Some time I want to read it in Swedish, though.

I love all the intense characters. They’re fun, but they’re also true to people I know. The Swedes are very upfront about things, and these characters are the same way. They don’t go sneaking around but are open about what they are doing, like it or not. I really love Lisbeth Salandar. She dresses like a Goth girl, with tattoos and piercings. People think she’s stupid because she doesn’t communicate. If you ask her a question, she won’t answer unless she wants to.In reality, she communicates very well, but she does it through the internet. She is an expert in computers and hacking. She has an absolutely brilliant mind, except when it comes to interacting with people. She has no borders; she will do exactly what she wants and needs to do.

The other main character is the journalist, Mikael Blomkvist. He is out to get the story, the true story. He is part owner of a newspaper that specifically focuses on corruption in all forms. He is very driven and will go the whole distance to get the story out.To do that, he teams up with Lisabeth and some others.


Larsson knows how things work in Sweden and it shows in these books.He knows police procedure, and the way the society and the system work. I’d read sections and say, “Yes!That’s the way it is!”

You really need to read these books in order to understand some of the characters and how all the events unfold.It would not make a lot of sense unless you knew what had gone before.In the last book, Blomkvist takes on a powerful secret organization, sex criminals and some other criminal associates that appeared in previous books.

I’m only sorry that he died so soon and there won’t be any more books, unless that partly finished fourth one shows up.I heard that he had planned to do several books in the series.