Dragon Tattoo - Book Review

I usually like to talk about Multiple Sclerosis in this blog. Well my reading schedule is part of myself prescribed treatment. I am a firm believer in reading books over articles and online, the cognitive exercise of having to remember where you left off the day before has just gotta be good. Today I am not here to recommend a book I am going to tell you which one not to read.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

I will summarize below, but first I have to say this is one of the better books I have read this year. This book has all the elements – Mystery, Deep Character construction, exotic locale etc. If the publisher had not made me so damn mad I would highly recommend this book. Here is where it all went wrong-About ¾ of the way through I realized that advertising made its way into my book. This is not an ad like you see on TV or read in a magazine, this is an insidious product placement ad. The author instead of saying laptop computer refers to an ibook (Apple product). Well you say the author was just being thorough and trying to paint a more robust scene. I thought so too until the end of the book, when they refer to a computer that had been hacked of course it was a windows machine. That is when it dawned on me that specifically naming these computers was not germane to the story but was in fact a product placement ad. I am a business man and am certainly not opposed to advertising. When I watch TV for free I expect to see ads that is my payment for this form of entertainment. However, when I buy a book there is no expectation of advertisement. My one bad review is certainly not going to hurt the author or publisher but I will never again by a book written by Steig Larsson or published by Alfred A Knopf.

Summary- Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan

Buy a Shirt,Help an Artist,Find a Cure.
Artists that have Multiple Sclerosis have contributed their time to createto t-shirts like the one below
go to MS T-Shirts and help find the cure

Some notes from the Jenn Shelton -

My artwork became very important to me after I became diagnosed with MS in 2007. I used to have a career path in Finance, but now concentrate on making abstracts using acrylics as my medium. This painting was done on an oval canvas shortly after my diagnosis. It expresses the various sensory symptoms and what we sometimes have to deal with. The orange represents the desire to find a cure and is used by the NMSS.