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 can 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 :).

Bright shadows and a cold sun

It's been an oddly mild winter so far. I mean, it's dark and miserable, but until fairly recently, it's stayed above freezing. And even after did freeze for a bit, the temperatures seem to be headed up to high single digits (°C that is). Weird. What it also means of course, is that there's no snow to ease the general darkness and misery. Oh well.

November seems to have come and gone without me really noticing. It hasn't helped that I feel like I've been tired or ill or both for a lot of it. Despite my best intentions of not letting life pass by and just wishing for some point in the future when it'll all be alright, I feel like I may have done exactly that. Hoping for the Christmas break that's less than a fortnight away now.

I have to say though, having sunlight coming straight into the flat for about as long as it's up at this time of the year is a massive blessing! And by a quirk of geometry the low sun is perfectly posed above the next door hill, but below the edge of the balcony above, meaning I get a nice direct dose of it whenever I'm working from home :). (Assuming the world isn't all engulfed in fog or low clouds of course, but hey, it's best to look for the positives!)

On the book front, it's oddly somewhat like last year. I find myself not really making as much of a headway through Milk Teeth as I'd hoped. The writing continues to be very good. But I think the subject matter tends towards the heavy. And given the general state of my mind, I find myself shying away from it. But what better weather than to be at home and reading right? So I decided to park MT and explore further afield.

Volume eight of the Monstress series has been out for a bit, so I got that out of the library. Also got volume seven, just to get a bit of the immediate background :). They were both fun enough reads. I noticed various bits in Devourer (vol. 7) that I didn't remember. Although whether that was because I'd not noticed the first time around or just forgotten, I do not know.

Inferno (vol. 8) was entertaining enough, set as it is almost entirely in a different world. I feel though, that reading these one (or two) at a time with long gaps in between doesn't get me as excited about the story or the characters as the first proper run through the first six volumes. And now I see volume nine is out (although unavailable through the library). Maybe I should look up how many volumes are planned, and just wait till they're all out :).

Since then though, I've gotten rather sucked into the weird and wonderful The Library at Mount Char. Recommended to be by a colleague off the back of how much I enjoyed The Murderbot Diaries, I'm already about a third of the way in! It is definitely weird though! Ultraviolent isn't maybe the best way to describe it, but is certainly one aspect. The plot starts off intriguing, and then gets somewhat layered and convoluted, but now I'm beginning to think the twists are beginning to make sense?! I guess we shall see.

Ah! Almost forgot! Have I mentioned Lucifer? It's what's brought some level of fun to the dreary evenings lately! Based (loosely, if at all) on the Sandman offshoot graphic novel series, the TV series does seem to have just the right amount of fun to lighten these times :).

As for rest of life, hopefully the next couple of weeks will bring more bright spots than dreary ones, and then I am very definitely looking forward to the work Christmas party which would herald the beginning of my end of year break :). Until then.

Of the colours of autumn that came, then went

It feels like the end of summer was just a few days ago. And yet autumn's practically come and gone. I mean, the leaves are mostly mulch by now. And yet, it's not gone below zero at all. Time is flowing in fits and starts. It pauses, takes a breath and then just dashes forward a few weeks.

It's crazy to think that the "mini-cruise" to Denmark was actually the beginning of this month! Feels like absolutely ages ago! So basically running the Holmenkollen relay in May gave us all free vouchers for Oslo-Copenhagen return trips on one of the ferries, so we thought, why not :). A first in about six or so years.

It was quite fun being on a ship again, mainly because it was all fun and no work :). As we sailed down (and eventually back up) the Oslofjord, it was really nice watching the land on either side sailing by. Noticing details of the landscape, some of it ridiculously familiar, others new.

The six or so hours in Copenhagen were also really fun! We just mainly walked around. Enjoyed some of the coastline, the castle, some churches, some parks. Lunch at a really nice little cafe with a very short, but nice menu :). Getting up close to a heron! (Until the dog came by that is.)

Strictly speaking I suppose the trip was mostly still September, I just posted my previous post before we left I guess. And since then the world feels like a bit of a blur. The autumn colours did show up in earnest. Although briefly. Then it got kinda wet and extremely windy, so they disappeared. The days started getting shorter, the mornings darker. Then the hour changed, and things briefly got brighter...

In between I ended up adding another new country to the visited list. Switzerland. Another work trip. This time to Zurich. We did manage enough time for a guided walking tour around the centre of the city, which managed to mainly whet my appetite for a more thorough exploration at some point in the future!

Zurich felt like a fantastically old city, but in a way where it's all still very much alive and vibrant! There seemed to always be a lot going on! We even got a brief view of the Swiss countryside through a train trip halfway across the country into the French part. Briefly the seasonal clock seemed to have been turned back, with the colours and leaves very much back in evidence.

Unfortunately I returned with a fairly annoying cold. Fevers are never really fun. Particularly when you can tell your thoughts are bordering on the delirious. But you're just aware enough to notice, not enough to stop...

I think it's fair to say cycling is over for the year :/. It was definitely fun while it lasted, even though the most cycling I did was to and from work :).

It's been relatively quiet on the book front. I finished reading Srinath's book. And it certainly was an eye opener. I don't know that there's a lot more to add from my post last month, except I guess to add that I learnt much about my country of birth that I had already known, but had somehow lost, or forgotten. some things that I'd never known. But it was all wrapped in a comforting sense of familiarity that made even the bizarre approachable.

When I moved on to Starry Messenger, it was quite a shock. I'm not sure if it was mostly the writing style, the switch in subject, or just the fact that after a month of reading books written in familiar rhythms, this was altogether more foreign, and the adjustment required was significant. 

I think over all I was left with a positive impression of the book. The beginning and end felt a bit too rushed and breathless. Almost as if Tyson was trying way too hard to make his point. With the rest of it he seemed to calm down a bit more, which made reading more pleasant :).

It was a pretty quick read, and since next month's book club book arrived from the library a lot sooner than expected, I thought I might as well read Free sooner rather than later. To be perfectly honest, I knew very little about Albania or its history other than the existence of Enver Hoxha (and how to pronounce his name thanks to a particularly memorable section of Inside Man).

To say it was illuminating would be an understatement. Honestly, I'm still coming to terms with it, having finished it earlier this week. The writing is fascinating. I found the difference in tone between the first part, prior to the collapse of the socialist "Party" and the second part that came after the curtains were parted, so to speak, stark and particularly poignant given that it marked the before and after of a sort of loss of innocence. A "growing up" of sorts.

In the midst of the almost hyper lucid portrayal of a country and generation in flux and upheaval, it's almost easy to overlook the personal upheavals of the four generations of the author's family. I guess to some extent that does provide a vivid canvas on which she paints the broader story.

I have to say though, two in a row was enough non-fiction for me. So I've picked up the final book of the written-by-friends trio. Amrita Mahale's Milk Teeth. I'm just getting into it, barely a few pages in, but I'm enjoying the atmosphere so far :).

I realized earlier this week that I've got some extra days off that I'd been hoping would turn into a week or so off during the autumn. But said holiday didn't materialize. I guess I'm too tired to even really think about planning anything. So I'm just going to be lazy and take a longer end of year break instead. The trouble is, that's still a month and a half away.

Yeah, total dejá vu :/. End of year, running out of energy trying to stay afloat. Too tired to actually plan a break. Well, you'd think by now I'd have figured this out, but clearly, you'd be wrong :D.

Memories of memories, old and new

It's definitely autumn now. In fact, onto the distinctly wintry side of autumn even. There are still the occasional sunny days, but the sun has taken on that light-only-no-real-heat sort of persona :/. This is usually the time of the year where I begin to find life a bit difficult. The rapidly shortening hours of daylight has most to do with it I think. Vitamin D tablets can only do so much to be honest.

So it was nice to have more visitors! The parents-in-law stayed over for a week and a half and we had a pretty fun time together! It feels a bit surreal that it was just over a year ago that we found this place, and now both sets of parents and several siblings etc. have come and spent some time with us here :). Extra space has definite upsides.

We made the most of the sunnier days to go walking in the vicinity and also made a couple of forays into Oslo! We took the opportunity to have a look around some places we hadn't in the past, despite meaning to, and some we had! The new Munch museum and the National museum were, I think, the highlights!

When the new Much museum appeared on the Oslo waterfront some years ago, the way the eventual prize winning "lambda" design translated from renders on marketing material to the real thing left more or less everyone rather miffed :|. I definitely was on the miffed side of the general public opinion spectrum. But seeing how we had a compelling reason to explore the art within (namely my mother-in-law), it seemed a good time to ignore the outward appearance and venture in.

It's actually a pretty awesome experience! It's possible to gain a progressively elevated view of the city as one climbs up the twelve floors, providing a unique perspective. The buildings and roads very familiar from ground level take on a rather different, and grander, character. And then of course there are the many many galleries :).

I'm not exactly an art person. I mean, I like spending the occasional day or a few hours in galleries every now and then, but I'm not sure I have strong opinions beyond things I like more or less. Munch seemed to leave a particularly strong impression. Was it because I was accompanied by people who understood more of what was going on? 

Who knows, either way, I was struck by the particular way in which the artist's thoughts seemed to come through in the paintings. Particularly the way in which a completely still scene could convey so much movement, physical and otherwise! It was a fun evening.

Then there was the annual Oslo culture evening which we had been to this time last year. We decided to limit the walking, and focus on the Parliament - National theatre - town hall area. There were open air bands, brief forays into student photography exhibitions, a look around the Nobel Peace centre and finally a chunk of the evening at the National museum. The last being the only thing we repeated from last year :).

Otherwise, I feel like it's been a quiet month. Went cycling once, but this last week it's started getting properly cold in the mornings. Not quite freezing yet, but definitely frost territory, and it's still only September! Just about :).

This month's book club book was of my choosing, and instead of focusing on fantasy or sci-fi, I went with authors I have some personal connection to. Ended up reading Hema Sukumar's Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments again :). I feel like, having known the story (and remembered most of the significant plot points) let me enjoy the atmospherics of the writing even more :).

It was, as with the first time, a very nostalgic read for me to be honest! A sense of familiarity in different ways. But equally, an odd sense of looking in from the outside, which form me came across particularly in the characters of Jason and Laxmi. And I suppose Karthik to a limited extent. 

It's an interesting half-in half-out existence, that of growing up in a country in the midst of significant social and technological change, and then spending the rest of one's life figuring out how to fit into another culture, set of social norms and expectations. Also, weather. Weather's actually kind of a pretty big part of life, which isn't often obvious till one moves somewhere with very different weather :).

I also started reading one of my other suggestions that didn't get picked, Srinath's If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai. So, confession time, this book came out over a decade ago! And I actually was in touch with Srinath at the time, albeit sporadically. I distinctly remember creating the Goodreads page for the book :D. (Yes, they were simpler times, any logged in user could create or even in many cases update the details of a book. Now you have to go through a whole moderation process. Which is a good thing, I think :).)

But then I never read it. Until now. Is it the passage of time, and the greater distance? Not sure, but I'm really really enjoying reading this. Occasionally I find myself even reading it in Srinath's voice in my head, imagining his facial expressions at particularly hilarious or ironic moments :). I'm a bit over halfway through, and looking forward to the rest of it.

Looking out to the thin slice of the Oslofjord that we can see, I feel an odd sense of layered reality. This particular view, with it's treed hills folding into blue-grey water, punctuated by pointed evergreens in the foreground and with the hills in the distance fading to blue, is actually really new, but already feels so familiar. Beneath it though (or beyond, it's hard to find words to capture the feeling), I see the waving trees in the middle distance outside the living room windows of the flat in Asansol. Somewhere in-between there are the ever-changing expanses of water seen from the various decks of the various ships.

Maybe I'm working on assimilating all the different normals of the last fortyish years, and these books are bringing back oh so many memories. Or maybe I'm just feeling the end of summer blues :).

A summer of fjord and flowers

And just like that, summer's over :). I mean, September's upon us, and the Norwegians are very particular about their seasons lasting three months each. Which never actually matches up with reality, but so what :D. Anyway, I'm not actually in Norway at to moment, back in the UK! Just this last week though, and about to head back home.

But let's rewind a bit to the beginning of the month. So, important things first, I did manage to keep all the plants alive!! To be honest, the rain every second or third day helped no end :). But generally looking for new flowers and enjoying watching new leaves was a fun part of each day.

The weather was actually very helpful, because in between the rain and thunderstorms there were beautiful days of sunshine, which I tried to make the most of. The cycling once a week to Oslo continued, and I even managed a couple of additional trips around.

Although company seemed hard to come by, and the one time I did manage to find a friend to go cycling with, their bike decided to misbehave and it ended up being a bit of a stop-pump-go sort of thing for half the ride. The other half was fun though! :)

The one time the weather did not cooperate was the day of the office summer party :/. Lots of rain and wind, and we were headed off to a restaurant on one of the islands at the top of the Oslofjord :D. Well, it was entertaining, to put it mildly. And all that for cold shrimp :P. (For the uninitiated, this is a highly sought after thing for Norwegians, cold boiled shrimp, the more recently caught the better, on bread with a bit of butter, mayonnaise and lime. The height of Norwegian summer. Supposedly :P.)

In between all that, I've been happily reading my way through The Invisible Library! Finished The Untold Story (book 8) just before heading over to the UK. With mostly happy feelings. As with these sort of series though, the story towards the end got more and more hectic almost. Too may threads to tie up, too much jeopardy. Which leaves one almost with a sort of a breathless feeling at the end.

All in all though, I was very happy with the series. Light, but entertaining. You could see that the author really enjoys books, and writing. And I really enjoyed seeing this coming through in the writing, in the library in jokes and Irene's side tracks under particular duress :).

As far as the characters go, I think Irene was the clearly outstanding one, but that's not really surprising because for the vast majority of the time hers is the perspective you get. I have to say, Cogman's take on dragons was a particularly different one from what I've read in the past, and I did rather enjoy!

Since then I decided to take up the book club book for this month, Killers of the Flower Moon. Another non-fiction offering, this time covering a particularly sordid part of American history involving oil and Osage. Well, we'll see what others have made of it next week when we meet for book club!

So then we come to the point of the year where I'm usually happy to have had the nice summer, even though it's waning. It'll probably be a bit of a shock heading back to Norway after a week here, seeing how the sunlight really starts disappearing fast around this time and a week makes a big difference. But hopefully autumn will be nice, hopefully not too wet at at least somewhat colourful :).