Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

My library owns 13 copies of this book and we haven't seen more than 1 copy for more than 1 day in the library for over a year now. I expect that when I do start seeing them come in, they may be worse for wear and I'll want to remove many of them from my collection. However, I'll want to keep some of them on tap because when the next movie comes out, I can imagine another run.
I've read the book and I've seen both the Swedish and American versions of the movie. The book was pretty good. I think it is probably the best of the three books with the Girl Who Kicked a Hornets Nest being better than The Girl Who Played with Fire. Larsson's books are pretty hardcore and the rape scene was particularly disturbing. Many of my customers told me it was too much for them and they had to stop reading the book.
What I think is really interesting is to see both versions of the film compared against the book. Both movies are really good. Both movies follow the main plot line of the book but they omit or change details from the book. What you end up with is three engaging stories that are similar but also different.
What I liked about the Swedish version of the movie was the grainy reality of the filming. I really felt cold and bleak. I thought the Swedish actor, Micheal Nyqvist was a better Michael Blomkvist than Daniel Craig. The Swedish version made much more of Blomkvist's name being similar to a famous Swedish detective character--for obvious reasons this would work better with a Swedish audience than an American one. The Swedish version had Blomkvist going to Australia locate Harriet Vanger just as Larrson has Blomkvist do. But the movie glosses over the buying and selling of magazine. It also glosses over the way that Lisbeth feels about Blomkvist.
In the American version I feel that Rooney Mara does a much better job of capturing Lisbeth than Naomi Rapace. Mara made us feel that Lisbeth was on somewhere on the autistic savant spectrum that Larsson portrayed in the book. Rapace, on the other hand, I didn't quite pick that up--she seemed just too bloody normal for the Lisbeth that I got to know in the books. I also like how they handled the metamorphosis scene in the American version, the Swedish version really just alluded to it. It was a fun fast paced part of the book and the American version captured this quite well. With the overall darkness of movie, this respite was welcome and needed. In the American movie completely rewrites where Blomkvist finds Harriet. In my mind this is minor because I view it as a way to streamline the story to make it more manageable for the movie theater. I also liked that the American version really dealt with how delicate Lisbeth really is in her emotional handling of her guardian--the good one--and how she deals with what she sees as Blomkvist callous betrayal of their relationship.
In both of the movies, the rape scene is equally disturbing and much longer than I really wanted it to be.
I almost hate to say this but if I were going to recommend one version over the other, I would recommend the American version as being more true to the Larsson's intentions in storytelling. But I think it is better to see both of them. Both are good stories and they are different enough from each other and each is different enough from the book that I was able find each intriguing in its own right.