I wanted to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, because my parents both read it and I recently saw the movie, which I recommend everyone to see as long as you have the stomach.  It is one of the craziest movies I have seen, and from past experiences, the book is always better than the movie.  The beggining 80 pages of the book is pretty boring since it is all about financial situations and it brings up many names and many cities in Sweden (where the story takes place) so you can't really even pronounce half of the cities and names in your head.  I know I wouldn't have been able to get past the first part if I didn't see the movie, so that is why I think you should see the movie before you read the book because it will help you understand all the confusion in the beginning.

Once you get past the beginnning, it starts into the murder mystery that the story is about.  The two main characters, Mikael and Lisbeth, live separate lives which the book clearly illustrates by switching off between the two stories of the two characters every once in a while.  As you read on the different stories of Lisbeth and Mikael are closer together and I am now in anticipation of when they finally get together to work on the case. 

The only thing wrong with the book is that there are a lot of disturbing parts to it.  It might have been even more disturbing to watch in the movie rather than just reading it on paper, but I haven't gotten to those parts yet so I will keep you posted on how tolerable it is in the book.