Of memories, musk ox and an early start to summer

April has practically flown by, and there's a lot to write about! There was the highly anticipated Easter road trip, some interesting reading and number twenty! But through it all, the odd sense of displacement. On the one hand, I kept feeling like this must be May already, the weather being as warm as it is. On the other hand, it feels like there hardly was an April, so it can't possibly be May already!

I guess it's not a total surprise, this early start to summer, but while last year the snow at least lasted into April, this time around it's been gone almost mid March! I mean, is there actually anyone still left actually believing that anthropogenic climate change is not a thing? Oh well. 

But it did mean that the Easter trip to middle Norway with some visiting friends went a bit differently that it might have done! Given that one of said friends was a lot happier to not have to deal with too much snow, this actually worked out quite well in the end :).

So the plan had actually been theirs to start with, spend a week in Norway, focus on exploring the mountains and fjords, scenery over urban experiences. Which was perfect seeing how they'd also picked Easter week, when most of Norway pretty much shuts down :). 

The trip ended up being a visit and stay at Åndalsnes, a place we'd been to nearly eleven (eleven!!) years ago, and then a stop on the outskirts of the Dovrefjell national park on the way back. It ended up being a really nice relaxed holiday, just what we all needed :).

My memories of the last trip to Åndalsnes are rather heavily dominated by the Romsdalseggen hike, but also the beauty of the landscape. What we had not done last time was spend any sort of time in the town itself! Something we remedied thoroughly this time around :). It's a really pretty little town, nestled at the head of a fjord and surrounded by towering mountain peaks on all sides. Given the holiday week, it was quiet, but with enough going on to keep us entertained :).

We did do a bit of hiking, however there had never been any thought of repeating the whole hike to the top. We spent a bit of time exploring the paths near the bottom, and then decided to use the new installation since our last visit, the gondola to the edge of the ridge!! A lazy but quite spectacular way to enjoy the views! There was even a nice restaurant at the top! We did spend some time actually hiking the ridge, and yes, the views were just as dramatic as I remembered :).

One of the days we decided to head over to Ålesund, get a bit of the city experience, but also explore more of the fjord landscape that can be so breath taking in that part of the country! Having been there no a separate trip about seven years ago, it was fun to see how much of the navigation could be done without help of GPS :). The answer turned out to be mostly, but not quite entirely :D.

One big source of anticipation throughout the trip was our planned musk ox safari! Seeing how we were going to be passing Dovrefjell, and the only place in Norway (and indeed one of the few anywhere in the world) where one can see mux oxen in the wild, it seemed like an opportunity too good to pass on. There was, as I say, much anticipation, particularly from one of our visitors :).

I am happy to report, that not only did we get to see some of the magnificent beasts, it was a wonderful day to be out! We didn't even have to venture too far to get to the point where a heard of more than twenty were happily grazing, play-fighting and generally lounging about. Our guide proved to be quite the character as well, full of entertaining, and occasionally weird and wonderful anecdotes and pieces of information :).

All in all, the trip, as I said was a success. We even managed a quick pitstop at Lillehammer on the way down south to the much tamer landscape. To be honest, even the landscape in the area hear around the Oslofjord is pretty spectacular if one were to compare it to other parts of the world, but the majesty of the landscape is just on a completely different level once one ventures a bit further north :).

During the holiday and otherwise during this month, I also explored Abeth! Book of the Ancestor proved to be great fun! Partly because, I imagine, this being the second Mark Lawrence trilogy I read, I did go in a bit better prepared :). For one thing, once I'd noticed the sometimes disconcerting changes of pace and shifts in the passage of time, I decided to take my time, and not rush headlong through the three books :).

There are definitely some great lines in this series :). Here's one that lends itself very easily to being quoted:

It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.

I mean, seriously?!! :D. Yes, totally badass. Having said that, it's not all about action, as usual. There's as I said, a lot of variety to the pace. Once you get used to it though, I feel it's easy enough to navigate. There's a very different tone to this series compared to The Red Queen's War. There's isn't the same level of grimness, although it still is pretty grim, and neither is there the layer of almost forced mirth.

The ending did feel a tad predictable, in that the hero/heroine unlocks power of ancient advanced sci-fi tech buried on planet stuck in a medieval fantasy social structure while battling personal evils and a society on the brink because aforementioned sci-fi tech is failing. Also, unlocking of power happens in a way unlike that anticipated by everyone... You get the idea. Still, very much worth the read :).

Now I'm finally trying to make my way through the book club book of the month, the appropriately named A Short History of the World According to Sheep! I have to say, after the entertaining and frankly wild ride of the short history of Nona Grey's life, this is a hard one to get properly into :P. I'm about halfway through (which is good, because book club is in less than a week, so maybe actually not so good, but anyway) and so far it mainly feels like a long string of entertaining but rather random facts about sheep. Or things related to sheep. Sometimes rather tangentially.

Anyhow, the other big one, number twenty!! At the start of the season, there was no other word to describe how I felt other than cautiously optimistic, meaning, top four finish and hopefully deep runs in the cups. Then in January, it was suddenly this surreal situation of being on top of everything! At which point the inevitable thing is to remember that LFC is the club with the record of number of seasons where they've topped the table at Christmas/New Year and not won.

Then of course we're in the middle of March and the cup losses meant that there was a proper sense of loss. I was speaking to a fellow Liverpool FC supporter the other week, how at the start of the season, being top of the league in April would have felt like the best thing ever! And yet there was a sense of what might have been. Last week though, and I think the game in particular, blew all that away, and it was just pure joy :).

Who knows what'll happen next season, but as a sports fan, you've got to enjoy these moments :). YNWA

From snow to slush and beyond

It feels sort of fitting that I spoke about snowboarding last month, with my lasting memory from that trip being of the fresh, soft powder snow on the last day. And now, a month later, I'll talk about snowboarding again, except this time, it was on slush :).

So like last year, work organized an afternoon of downhill (or uphill if you wanted to hike) activity at the local ski centre in Oslo. It was the same time of year as last time too, except, this March has been unseasonably warm. In fact it almost feels like summer's arrived early! The end result? A fun, but rather wet afternoon on my snowboard :).

Otherwise, it's been a month of surprisingly warm sunshine interspersed with cold wind. There was the rather late snow once most of the older snow and ice had disappear, the thing that normally happens at the end of April or in early May. It disappeared just as quickly as the late snow usually does.. In a way I guess the winter was disappointing. But on the other hand, sunshine is always welcome :).

Haven't managed to get out on the bikes yet, although they have been sorted out, so now it's more of a case of using them. I keep thinking I should go out running in the mean time. Holmenkollstafetten is coming up in about a month, and getting a team together has begun. Will I show up any more prepared than last year? I guess time will tell!

On the reading front, I wasn't particularly thrilled by the choice this month, plus (in?)conveniently the copy I'd ordered from the library still hasn't arrived after more than a month of waiting, so I turned to the unread section of my bookshelf, and found a book that had not been picked for book club some years ago, but a friend had thought it would be something I'd like!

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore did turn out something I sort of liked, more than most murder mystery thrillers anyway :). I rather liked the style of writing, oddly floaty and atmospheric. And there were parts of the plot that held rather a lot of promise. As with a lot of these things though, the overall feeling I was left with was somewhat meh. But a positive meh, if there's such a thing :D.

Now I've gotten my hands on The Book of the Ancestor trilogy, and am nearing the end of Red Sister (aka book one). It's good fun! In fact, I think I'm enjoying it rather more than I did the last book of the previous trilogy. One thing that has not changed is the rapid, and often sudden, variations of pace! The style of writing also seems somewhat different, but then again, it's a rather different sort of story :).

What stays the same is the sci-fi fantasy blend which rather fascinates me :). I am trying, and will continue to try to read these books at a somewhat slower pace to try and not tie myself in knots like I did the last time. Let's see how that goes!

Leaving wakes of powder snow clouds

Looking outside today, it feels strange to think that less than three weeks ago we were slaloming through soft fresh powder snow! Yes, it was at a ski resort, but barely a couple of hours away, and even around here there was enough snow to happily go cross country skiing. Now, on the other hand, after a week or more of positive temperatures and not a little amount of rain, the world looks rather different...

It's not like all the snow's gone, but there's a lot of bare surfaces around. Definitely no cross country skiing, and we've even escaped the melting and refreezing ice on the footpaths. Which is certainly a positive :). Somehow though, if this was to be it, and we were heading into an early spring, it wouldn't be all bad.

A big part of that is probably the amazing few days at Norefjell! For most of the time it was quite cold, but beautifully sunny! To the extent that while the night time temperatures would drop below -15°C, once the sun had warmed things up by midday, it would climb up nearly to 0°!

The conditions were gorgeous for some relaxed snowboarding. Not least because we seemed to have picked a week when very few other people had decided to visit those particular slopes! With an under two year old in tow who had only very limited prior exposure to skiing, or indeed snow, we mostly took turns heading out to the slopes. But there were definitely fun times had with all of us just sledding down short declines :).

Sadly I ended up ill at the end of the week, so when the gorgeous weather followed us back to Asker, accompanied by the perfect amounts of snow for cross country, I didn't really get to make any use of it :(. At least we'd done some trips earlier, because by the time I felt fine enough to venture out, things had changed. Such is life though.

The other good thing this month has been the reading! Once I'd manage to get through Cod I started with Prince of Fools, the first book of Mark Lawrence's The Red Queen's War trilogy. Pretty quickly I found myself warming to the irreverent, fast talking, swindling, broke prince :).

As it happens in such situations, I proceeded to dive headlong through the whole series! (With a brief diversion into The Future, but we'll come back to that later.) Which I'm not sure was the best thing to have done to be honest :/. (The rapid pace of reading, not the detour.) 

The trilogy covers a period of time that is nominally about a year. But because of the nature of the tale and the effect it has on the main protagonist, it may have been better to give it a bit of time. Get used to the changes as they happened. Well, that's all retrospective wisdom. But the end result is that while I really enjoyed the first book a lot, the subsequent two, The Liar's Key and The Wheel of Osheim, never seemed to hit the same heights. 

For one thing, the stories are told in varying cadences, there's the baseline of the nominal adventurer on a journey where things happen, then there are flashbacks told by fellow travellers, then there are magic induced dream sequences which may or may not be memories, and finally, the adventurer's own memories resurfacing at unwanted moments possibly as dreams? I wasn't totally certain of that last one. But the general feeling I was left with was a bit stop-start.

The premise itself I found to be really enjoyable, and novel, I must add. Unlike the usual fantasy that seems to generally be set in the past, compared to sci-fi which is generally set in the future, where past and future are obviously relative to the author's time, the world of the broken empire seems to be set squarely in the future, in fact, it's set in a sort of post sci-fi apocalypse future, which makes this almost sci-fi in a fantasy skin? Not that genres matter too much, because in this case the result was excellent :). 

I particularly enjoyed the random bits of past surfacing in this future. (Spoiler alert) like the grenade that's the cardinal's holy stone and the defunct smart phone that's his holy tablet, dead relics of a forgotten past. Well, not quite so dead in some cases as it turns out. There's also builder's stone (concrete), builder's suns (fission bombs), plasteek armies (mannequins), silver steel (steel) that never corrodes and so on.

I think I generally enjoyed the stumbling, haphazard run that was the plot. I certainly liked the stretches where Jalan and Snorri were together. On his own, Jalan tended to be a bit too much. In the end I was mostly left with a feeling of having rushed through too much too quickly and finding it hard to digest it all. Would it have been better if I'd read slower? Who knows :). 

I do think I'd like to read more from Lawrence. Not sure the next thing is going to be Broken Empire though, given how bloody and dark that one's expected to be. Maybe Book of the Ancestor would be better, we shall see.

Coming back to the other book I read this month, The Future was certainly an interesting experience, and for very different reasons than The Red Queen's War. It's a bit of a weird book in some ways, and I felt the best way to read it was to think of it as a satirist's take on the current state of the world. So, not so much a plot driven or even character driven book, but an idea driven book.

Once (if) one accepts that oversimplification of the techno-commerce empires and their influence on the rest of the world, it's not too hard to follow the lines of thinking being presented. The whole philosophy around the fox and rabbit was a bit overdone, but does raise some interesting questions around the pros and cons of controlling our environment to increasing degrees. The good thing I suppose is that I never felt the author tried to push the fox or the rabbit as the "right" approach.

As with some of these sorts of books though, if the author is not willing to just leave the reader with a lot of unanswered questions to ponder, the endgame gets a bit messy. There were clearly holes in the timeline, some things happened, but then they couldn't have happened. It's that thing of twists in the narrative only working when going forward, if one stops to track back and check if this still fits with everything else we've been told, then things stop making sense.

The weird thing with this book I think is that I definitely remember having an overwhelmingly positive emotional response to it at the point when I'd just finished reading it, late one night, because I was so gripped by the narrative. But the next morning, and each time I've thought about it since, I remember less and less the reasons I liked it and find more things that don't quite add up :|. I guess that maybe says more about me than the book though?

So now I've decided to take a bit of a break from rapid reading and started slowly working my way through a thriller I'd been given some years ago, but never really gotten around to :).

PS. Switching phones seems to have come along in leaps and bounds even compared to four years ago! Especially if one sticks to the same sort of phone. I find myself wondering more about how to make things a bit different rather than having it just how it was! Battery life's a lot better though, unsurprisingly :D.

Bright blue interludes between grey and white

As someone described it earlier this week, this January has felt like a super sleepy month. Grey, wet, and a feeling that it's moving really slowly. At the same time, it's already nearly over :). Yeah, so what's new, right? :D But there have definitely been some fun bits in between!

The snow for instance. As expected, we returned to some fairly nice amounts of snow, but more followed soon after! Which meant we going get going with the cross-country skiing! A couple of trips later though, the temperatures rose unseasonably and it turned to rain instead of snow :/. One lives in hope however, as the winter is long.

night-time, daytime!

In many ways this is already a pretty nice time of the year, because the lengthening of the day is already becoming noticeable. I think for me personally, the earlier dawning of light as I'm heading to work and the light staying longer as I'm heading back from work feels like quite a big deal. On top of that, despite the rain, most of the world around us is still covered in snow, so happy days.

and again!

Except the bits when enough of the snow melts and then refreezes overnight as ice, so I find myself slip-sliding down the hill on my way to the train in the morning semi-dark :|. Oh well, I guess you can't have it all :).

I think part of why I find myself in quite a good mood today is that a break is coming up! Next week we have family visiting, and while the time we spend here may well not yield much cross country skiing, the plan is to then head off to the mountains for half a week of downhill! Which I'm looking forward to a lot! Hopefully everything we've been getting as rain has been falling as snow there :D.

On the books front, despite my concerns, I did manage to finish The Game in time to be able to return it without too much delay! However, the ending really didn't sit well with me! I mean, I was really getting into the story towards the end there! Fast paced, tumbling through one twist after another. But the way things got resolved (or not!) in the end felt like a major let down.

Turns out I was not the only one! There was quite a long and spirited discussion around the book at our book club meeting, and turned out that one of our number had already read all three books in the trilogy. The general feeling however, was that he had potentially wasted his time, and no one else was going to bother, myself included :). I suppose that's part of the fun of the book club though, being able to share opinions and find out how others reacted to the same story.

Before getting into this month's book though, I thought a bit of a break from book club books was in order. I'd offered Altered Carbon as one of my options in the past, but it had never been picked. The blurb seemed interesting though, so I decided to give it a go. What an excellent choice!! :) I practically devoured it in a week!

I think I really liked how the characters came across. Yes, Takeshi isn't the most likeable chap, but there's a definite pull to how his story plays out. There was a really good mix of action and contemplation. The Hendrix was particularly fun and reminded my a little bit of some of the space ship AIs from the Culture series :).

Would I read the rest of the trilogy though? Seeing how I'd have to order them from other libraries, maybe, but I'm in no rush.

In the mean time I've been first plodding, then rushing, and finally dragging my feet through Cod. I mean, it's alright I guess, but I'm really not that into non-fiction. And while the whole ecology and conservation angle blended in with the broad arc of historical consequences does play well together, somehow, I find it difficult to feel too enthusiastic about it.

I'm almost done though, so while waiting for the next book to arrive, I'm contemplating a dive into one of Mark Lawrence's completed trilogies while waiting for the last book of The Library Trilogy to appear :). The author comes highly recommended, and I've heard absolutely nothing of him previously! But hey, recently, that's worked very well for me, so why not try :).

As for the rest, there's the sort of semi planning of potential trips for Easter and early June. Road trips no less. In Norway though. It's nice to have things to look forward to, and even more fun when that involves seeing friends. In the mean time, here's hoping for more snow!

So here we are again :). You, my (mostly) imaginary reader, and me, attempting yet again the exercise in futility that is trying to sum up the year that has been, in some sort of sensible way, within the confines of a single blog post :). But hey, that's never stopped me in the past, so why bother now :D.

Another end of year post from the UK, a bit of an extended Christmas break this time. Partly because I was left with extra days off because of bad planning (or serendipitous oversight, depending on how one looks at it), and partly because of the way the days of the week matched up with the days off. We've been here exactly two weeks now, and don't head home till the end of this week :).

Apart from the complete and much needed break from work that this has allowed, it's also been particularly good timing with respect to a partial hip replacement situation that came up :/. Fortunately that has meant maybe even more time spent with family that may otherwise have been possible.

As for the rest of December, it actually snowed!! Not huge amounts, but enough to make it feel like proper winter. It would appear that as I type this more snow has arrived back home, so who knows, maybe it'll be cross-country season when we get back!

Speaking of, last season wasn't really much of a cross-country skiing one for us. And for a change, this was not for lack of amazing conditions! It was just that this time last year we were trying really hard to get the new flat ready to move into! Feels like an absolute age ago now :). Not only did the move go like a dream (with a lot of help from some friends), we've had quite a lot of our close family visit since then, from India and the UK, which has felt really fun!

I guess travel was a bit more limited this time around, although the train trip to the west coast of Norway with my parents in the summer was a highlight. Do I wish for more travel in the coming year though? Not really. Maybe a bit more adventurous cycling might be fun, but if not, I'll be happy if we can just keep up the rhythm of cycling to and from work once or twice a week in the summer :).

When it comes to reading, it feels like an oddly off and on year. I think I've spent a lot of my spare time on NFS No Limits instead... which, I guess has been a lot of fun. But do I miss spending more time reading? Not sure. I mean, I did manage to get totally mesmerized by two completely different types of fantasy in The Murderbot Diaries and The Invisible Library. The book club books, as usual, were a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe a few too many non fiction choices this year, oh well.

Speaking of book club books, I'm currently sort of meandering my way through The Game. It's the first book of a trilogy originally written in Swedish. I was having a hard time locating a copy in English, so decided to go for the copy in Norwegian from our local library. Hmm. Possibly a mistake. I think when I do get into it, I really enjoy reading the book. But the language is definitely more complex and dialect-wise heavy. Definitely a step up from anything I've read in Norwegian before. So maybe I should have given myself some more time, really :/. I have been enjoying it so far, but there's a very real chance that I'll end up not being able to finish a book for the first time, not because I gave up, but because I'd run out of time!!

Before that though, I had no issues racing through The Library at Mount Char in no time! With the possible exception of the logic behind the title, there were absolutely no let downs! The plot twists, while sometimes almost literally outlandish, always kept me engaged. The characters were interesting enough, but mostly it was the world mechanics and the plot that kept me glued to it.

So there we have it. A year where the beginning feels so far away as to almost defy belief, yet one that has simultaneously run by way too fast for me to really catch my breath. I can hear the fireworks going now :). As we drove the rental car back from helping babysit our niece (yup, right-hand-drive for the first time in a while, was good to keep the habit alive I guess) we did notice some going off pretty early on in the evening, but feels like things are now properly picking up around here. The other thing I can hear is the wind howling :).

So, fireworks and storms. Interesting way to start a new year I guess? Who knows. I'll hope to keep a more even keel than maybe I've been able to this last year. Continue to be grateful for the amazing blessings I can count. Beyond that, I guess it's just a case of strapping in for the ride :).