Stieg Larson 2008
translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland
This first of the Millenium Trilogy is a highly intriguing book about Lisbeth Salander. She is 24 years old, mysterious, baffling, seemingly impenetrable and ultimately admirable brilliant computer hacker who is the unlikely help to Michael Blomkvist, a journalist investigating the disappearance of Harriet Vanger.
"Armansky's star researcher was a pale, anorexic young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows. She had a wasp tattoo about an inch long on her neck, a tattooed loop around the biceps of her arm and another around her left ankle...a dragon tattoo on her left shoulder blade."
"He had taken her for stupid, maybe even retarded. He had not expected that a girl who had cut so many classes in school that she did not graduate could write a report so grammatically correct...he quite simply could not comprehend how she could have acquired such facts."
"Blomkvist did not think very highly of Beckman, and he had never understood Berger's love for him. But he was glad that he accepted that she could love two men at the same time."
"In the world of financial reporting, however, the normal journalistic mandate to undertake critical investigations and objectively report findings to the readers appears not to apply. Instead the most successful rogue is applauded."
"At lunchtime Salander booted up her iBook and opened Eudora to write an email. She typed:"Have you got time?" She signed it Wasp and sent it to the address
""That was the first. I got it in 1958." He pointed to the next one. "1959." Buttercup. "1960." Daisy. "It became a tradition. She would make the frame sometime during the summer and save it until my birthday."
"People always have secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are."
"She was not afraid of Bjurman--Salander was rarely afraid of anyone or anything."
"Palmgren declared that he would be happy to take on the job of serving as Froken Salander's guardian--but on one condition: "that Froken Salander must be willing to trust me and accept me as her guardian.""
"Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the officer who's left with the investigation."
"Salander never forgets an injustice, and by nature she was anything but forgiving."
"She got down from the bed, cocked her head to one side, and regarded her handiwork with a critical eye. Her artistic talents were limited. The letters looked at best impressionistic. She had used red and blue ink. The message was written in caps over five lines that covered..."
"I call them Salander's Principles. One of them is that a bastard is always a bastard, and if I can hurt a bastard by digging up shit about him, then he deserves it."
"To her own surprise she replied, "I'm probably the best in Sweden. There may be two or three others at about my level.""
Personal Note: Read and loved this book in London, June 2009
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