Summer Reads

Summer vacation is a wonderful time to spend discovering new places, doing a little exercise and resting from it with some entertaining book in my hands. And this is pretty much how I spent it this year.

I began this year with a few novels written in my mother tongue, usually this means I can read more, faster and effortlessly. Not this time though. After the third book, that - ironically - I had found somewhat violent, I decided to switch gears and try something different: a crime fiction novel.

“The Bat” is the first of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series. I picked the book on impulse, without knowing anything about it or its author. Harry Hole is a somewhat unorthodox and alcoholic police officer that, of course, resolves the crime and makes the murderer pay for it.

Jo Nesbo is an Scandinavian author. One reason I picked his book is that I made a mental association between him and another Scandinavian that became extremely popular around 2005 with his Millennium Trilogy (Stieg Larsson). Strangely enough, I enjoyed Lisbeth Salander’s stories very much (so much for non-violence!). A pity Mr. Larsson did not live to enjoy his success.

Mr. Nesbo has lived to enjoy his success though and has continued to work to extend it further. "The Bat" is an entertaining story, plenty of very troubled characters that have to live with themselves every day and do so with different degrees of success. I guess this is definitely an ingredient that helps readers to connect with the book and the characters. Yet, I’m still not sure why the Harry Hole’s series (more than ten novels, I believe) have become as popular as it seems they have: maybe I should pick up another one soon and see what other cases await for Harry to resolve.