Not quite sure what I want to say this go-round. I hate reviewing favorite books. There’s something about the headspace you get in when you’re reading one. It’s just so passive and full of unthinking pleasure. I just let books happen to me when I’m like that. And I don’t want to talk about it okay! It’s private.
I loved this book back when I first read it, and then again when I re-read it a couple years later, and now I love it again on this third read. Lisbeth Salander is just such a great character, complex and thorny, and very human. The world of finance and murder Larsson brings to life is weirdly fascinating. And it’s got a great mystery/thriller plot mixed in with all the rest of the stuff. Blomkvist, I like, but I would also want to punch him a little if I met him in real life, so there’s some nice cognitive dissonance in there as well. (He’s a kind man with an appealing sense for justice, and he’s very good at what he does, but oh my god he just sees a lady and needs to have sex with her, all the time and I do not understand him in that way at all. Although one of the things I like most in this book is that Lisbeth comes on to him, not the other way around; he’s perfectly content to keep their relationship professional.)
I enjoy the movie adaptations (and one of the comic adaptations; the other is an abomination) but there’s no substitute for Stieg Larsson’s phenomenal gift for cramming gobs of details into his story, and still keeping it interesting. Starting the second book re-read today, which is why I’m finally writing this “review.”