Thursday, June 24, 2010

Crime fiction for "grown ups"

...studying [the newstands's] selection of reading matter, {Harry] was struck by how few interests he shared with the average Norwegian man. Was this because he no longer had any? Music, yes, but no one had done anything good in the last ten years, not even his old heroes. Films? If he came out of a cinema nowadays without feeling lobotomized he counted himself fortunate. Nothing else. In other words, the only thing he was still interested in was finding people and locking them up. And not even that made his heart beat like before. The spooky thing was ... this state didn't bother him in the slightest. The fact that he had capitulated. It simply felt liberating to be older.  
--Jo Nesbø, Nemesis (2002)

2 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

Nesbo was 42 when he wrote that -- some closet doors are harder to open then others.

The detective's name is pronounced "Huller", or "Herler", by the way, although debates rage.

Here's another pronounciation aid, from yet another blog:

The funny thing is that you say ´ø´ all the time without knowing it. If you pronounce letter/teacher etc the British way, you end off with something pretty close to ´ø´, and if you say early and earnest, you begin with the same ø-sound, just a bit too long. So really, most of your unstressed vowels are øs.

David Chute said...

The html tag for it is "ø" -- which os probably not what it's called in Norway.