Journal Entry for Friday, Apr 6th

The Millennium-series by Stieg Larsson* Today I finished reading the final book of Stieg Larsson’s detective trilogy about Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”. As the result of his sudden death in 2004 at the age of 50 from a heart attack, this and the previous two books, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire”, were all published posthumously. As of today they have sold more than 25 million copies, and he was the second bestselling author in the world in 2008. We really enjoyed Ronney Mara in her role as Lisbeth Salander in David Finchers American movie version of "The girl with the dragon tattoo" and can’t wait for her to do the next two movies. Last month we watched the Swedish version of “The girl who played with fire” and have just ordered the Swedish movie version of the last book that I just finished from Netflix. In the Swedish movies based on the Millennium trilogy, Lisbeth Salander is played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. Even though she is quite good, I think we liked Ronney Mara better. I thought the first book started a little slow, however, once it "got going" I couldn't put it down. Within minutes of finishing it I downloaded the next one, "The Girl Who Played With Fire'. This one was better than the first one. The last book was equally as good. The only thing I found difficult was trying to pronounce, remember and keep straight all of the Swedish names of the characters, streets and locations.  I  thoroughly enjoyed all three of these books and highly recommend them to anyone who hasn’t read them. * Footnote - Stieg left no written will, and according to Swedish law, Stieg's full estate was inherited by his father and brother. This sparked a dispute between them and Stieg's life-long companion Eva Gabrielsson, who was left with nothing. The situation has been complicated by the fact that Eva controls the script for the 4th book in the Millennium series.