Books.

This is the week where we can rejoice the second New Years celebration in less than two months. One month ago, it was the first week in 2011. Again on this coming Thursday we can celebrate yet another New Year Party, and we will be the in first week of the year of the Rabbit. This means that this day will be the last day in the year of the Tiger, which is my sign on its way out.

There should be some decisive events happening to you when your year is up, and in these last days, I guess I’ll be wondering what has happened to me this past year. Just as a little comparison to what happened last time at the year of the Tiger, 12 years ago. It was 1998. That year I turned 36, left Denmark and went to Spain to study for a semester. And I never again came back to live in Denmark. In Spain I found a reason to go to Dresden, and so on it goes.
So obviously I was very excited one year ago when we were about too enter the year of the Tiger, because I was wondering what on earth could happen to me this “Tiger” year? If nothing serious will take place the next two days, I think I can conclude that this has been an astonishing eventless “Tiger Year” for the Tiger himself.

One thing I know that has been happening a lot in the past year is that I have read quite a lot of books. Without exaggeration I think that the amount of books I’d chewed myself through in the Tiger year, by far outnumbers the amount of books I’ve read the last 12 years, if not even beyond that.
The trigger for this was Stieg Larson and the dragon tattoo girl trilogy, and as I’d finished those I felt like some kind of vacuum and a kind of abstinence for the thrill of a good night time story. As Stieg Larson died even before these books came out and turned into bestsellers, left him out of the loop for a continuous bed table supply of entertainment.

I read some other books, and yes, they were OK, but not in the same complete addictive way. My brother wrote to me in an e-mail that in Skandinavia, there were other very skillful writers like Hening Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Håkan Nesser etc.
In the summer holiday I’d brought a brick of a book by Ian Rankin, but the long light summer nights in northern Europe and my addiction for a good story, didn’t leave that one last long enough for the whole extent of our trip, so when we arrived in Aberdeen in Scotland, it didn’t take long before I found myself wandering the book shops there, exploring the bookshelfs on my hunt for the next story fix. I ended up in the section with the letter “N” Two names there infiltrated my mind. They were next to each other on the shelf. Jo Nesbø from Norway and Håkan Nesser from Sweden. After reading the summary on the backside I made my decision. A Swedish writer yet again: Håkan Nesser. Two books went into my bag, and later in the house of Catrionas sister, when Catriona was playing with her niece and left me to occupy my own time, I snuggled up somewhere and fell into his universe of murder and betrayal.

Håkan Nesser is a good writer, but yet didn’t quite get up there where Stieg Larson had left me. After finishing the first of the two books –“The Minds Eye”- I knew that I had to go on the hunt again. At the time we’d arrived in Denmark, so I went to a Bookshop in Horsens to have a look. This time I went straight for the Norwegian writer; Jo Nesbø. There were a whole lot of his books, so I just picked one out, turned it around to read on the back. Something about a police officer hiding in Hong Kong after some devastating experiences in a former case back in Oslo, but someone gets send out to lure him back as even more devastating events had happened and they needed his skills once again.
Sounded good and familiar because of the Hong Kong connection, and of course as I were in Denmark, it was in Danish. Also a good thing for me, taken in consideration that I do not very often find books, here where I live, in my first language.

After returning back home after the holiday, I swallowed the about 700 pages in about a weeks time, and got hooked again. This time not because of an anorectic girl with a dragon tattoo, this time it was a huge Norwegian police detective, who has as much trouble living his own life, as he has with the murders he is set out to catch. I was hooked again, and knew that there was more of the same stuff out there, but could I find it in the bookshops here in Hong Kong? Jo Nesbø and his series about the troubled policeman; “Harry Hole” is now a bestselling author world wide, and I found his books in English in Aberdeen, so why not here in Hong Kong.

I found some the first time I went to one of the big bookstores here. Two of the titles were there; I bought them and felt happy. The two titles I found was number 3 and 5 in the series, and the first one –the one I bought in Denmark- is the 7th and the last one so far. The problem is that there is a kind of continuity in the books and there are always some cross-references to previous events, and so I some times feel a bit left out, as there has been something happening before, what I don’t know about.

Now I have gone into the habit of always checking the major bookstores when I’m around. On that way I’ve found another couple, first it was number 6, and in Laos this Christmas I found number 4 in a secondhand bookshop, and the funny thing was that it was in Danish. I read it before we even came back.
Then here at the beginning of January, when I was out showing Albrecht around in Central, I just wanted to check a tiny bookstore, and there found book number two. This will be my fix for the holiday and when that is finished, I only need to find the first one, and then I’m through the merits of Harry Hole. As the first one I read was the last one, it is only logical that the last one I read, has to be the first one.
Check Jo Nesbø and Harry Hole out here.