Leve kongen!

This week the leaves have started changing colours around here. So summer has officially moved on and autumn has arrived :). As it does each year. And yet there's something sombre about it. Maybe this time around the passing of His Majesty King Harald V of Norway has put a different spin on things.

One has to make only a cursory acquaintance of Norwegian media from the last week or so to gather than Norwegians themselves have widely varying opinions on the role of the monarchy in modern Norwegian society. Yet almost no one would deny that Harald was their king. That he was a good king. That he was the whole nations grandfather.

Having grown up in a republic, he was the only king I'd ever known as (politically speaking) my king. I feel that King Harald was a particularly comforting king for those with roots beyond Norway. He seemed keen to be seen by his country, and to serve. He had a broad and inclusive view of what it is to be Norwegian.

I have been wondering, in this day and age, what does it really mean to be a king, let alone a good king? Given the examples I have seen, I think it is an important institution of national identity and unity, but only if the person who is king can transcend the paradox of being at once something apart, someone who can be put on a pedestal, yet at the same time be one of us. It's something King Harald and Queen Sonja seem to have done with great success.

I wish King Håkon VIII all the best.

Speaking of that other very Norwegian thing - the weather's been predictably unpredictable. Going from mid 20s and really warm to wet, gloomy, windy and cold then back again at the drop of a hat! It feels almost a relief to think consistently colder weather might be on its way, at least we'd know what to wear! At the moment what you freeze in in the morning could very well make you overheat in the afternoon.

We have managed to enjoy a few outings though, walks along bits of the coast, the odd concert in the castle. But mostly it's been quiet times.

I've been reading a bunch. Once I'd worked through my feelings about the rather unexpected and frankly odd ending to the Foundation series readthrough, I read the book club book of the month. The Guest List. I was happy to find that my broadly negative view on the book wasn't an outlier at the meeting last week. .ᴖ.

I've heard of the "summer beach holiday read" or the "quick and uncomplicated crime thriller", and both of those descriptions could be used for this book, but like, what's the point? The story starts off interestingly enough. The characters start off intriguing. But the further I read, and the closer we got to the end, the more everything started turning into tropes and stereotypes.

Spoiler alert! Basically, a very short summary of the plot would be: All the characters are awful, with the occasional redeeming feature. And doesn't really matter if it makes sense or not (or however obtuse the logic), they probably want to kill Will. The sad thing is, there was such a good set up to make this into one of those "ships passing in the night" sort of scenarios with interesting characters with different origins and destinations that just happen to all briefly cross paths on one bizarrely opulent and weirdly over the top wedding on an imaginary island somewhere off a dark, cold and moody coast.

Anyhow. Luckily, just as I was getting to the end of that painful experience, my long awaited library copy of the latest Murderbot appeared! To properly get into it, I decided to re-read Network Effect and System Collapse as a lead up to Platform Decay. What an absolute blast! :) I mean, at this point I think it would be really hard for me to not like a book in that series.

The characters continue to develop in what feels like an organic and genuinely believable way. There are very fun new characters. And we get to explore more of this sprawling universe with it's strange and wonderful history, culture, geography, (does that term apply if we are talking about space stations, planetary tori/toruses and such like?) society and politics in all its glorious variety!

I was having so much fun that I decided to grab the first five books and read them again for good measure :). By the way, discovered this in the copy of Platform Decay - Network Effect is finally no longer being described as a "standalone novel". I mean, as soon as System Collapse came out that was just wrong. But almost more exciting, the order of Murderbot Diaries entries now has Fugitive Telemetry before Network Effect and not after, i.e. in the proper chronological order and not publication order! Yes! Thank you!

So now that's done, and I'm trying to coax myself to get on with what should be the last book club book I read for a while. (Well, after Platform Decay I actually started reading In the Lives of Puppets but then decided to retreat to Murderbot for a bit longer.) Basically, lately I've been feeling like I'm spending too much time reading stuff I don't necessarily want to and it's stopping me from reading what I actually want.

And for a while now, what I actually want is to re-read the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Yeah, last time that took me most of a year with no distractions, so... I'm not sure yet if I want to include the ICE series (plural) and if I do, if I would bother reading them in the so called "ultimate order" or just do one series after another. Questions, questions.

Mostly though, I want to really get to Erikson's The Tales of Witness series and feels remiss to not refresh my memory on the rest :). And maybe, seeing how Walk in Shadow seems to be closer to publishing than ever, one might even start on The Kharkanas Trilogy! Much excitement :).

The enemy within?

Do you ever have that feeling where everything was going so well, and then out of nowhere, seemingly, it wasn't. Of course, putting it like that it feels obvious that it happens to everyone in all sorts of situations. Or maybe that's just me :).

Anyhow, finally finished my many month journey through Asimov's Foundation universe, spanning the Robot, Galactic Empire and Foundation series. For the most part it was fantastic! It had been over fifteen years since my last read through, and there was so much I enjoyed. And of course a lot that I discovered this time around that felt new.

But then there was the end of Foundation and Earth.

The thing is, I don't didn't remember at all what I thought of it last time around. So I went and looked it up. Turns out in one way it was a familiar feeling, I didn't recall any of the end from the read prior. Doesn't seem like I was left with the same sort of feeling of being let down though.

Is it another one of those things where you feel differently about similar things at different times because you're a different person in some ways? Lived experiences do change us don't they? I mean, that's one of the benefits of life I think, the opportunity to evolve.

So what is it that's left me somewhat, shall we say, disgruntled? Without going into specifics, I think the first thing to consider is how the ending of Foundation and Earth seems to clearly set up some sort of new direction. A new source of crises to the galaxy from beyond the boundaries hitherto explored.

I have always wondered a bit why Asimov decided, having given humanity the ability to blithely bypass the challenges of faster than light travel, to confine them to a single galaxy. But for the most part that's been part of the story, galactic empire and all that. It's only at the very end that he looks beyond, and that feels quite jarring. Particularly as he looks beyond with a distinct sense of belligerence and disquiet.

I think that's the problem I'm having. For the majority of the books, accounting for the time when particular stories were written, there is a sense of looking forward with positivity. A sense that despite everything, a positive outcome is worth fighting for, because it is possible to bring about.

Through most of the last book though, there's a sense of foreboding. The decision has been made, now we are engaging in some monumental amount of navel gazing to justify our actions. And what a crap justification we are left with in the end!

OK, it's not actually possible to leave this entirely spoiler free, so be warned. I think another thing (or maybe this is the main thing) that really annoyed me was having come so neatly full circle with Daneel's lunar hideaway, why is he turned into such a cardboard cutout of a character?!

It feels genuinely bizarre to me that Asimov in fact wrote what I consider the absolutely most enjoyable books of the entire lot - The Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation - pretty much around Foundation and Earth, just before, or just after. How could those others have turned out so differently?

Maybe the mistake really is mine. Maybe the best way to read these books are really in the order they were published. Although, given that I did read it in in-universe (or should I say in-galaxy) chronological order, I did get to read all my favourite ones all together. So there is that :).

Looking at life through a window

And just like that the month is almost over. In a way I guess it's not a surprise, another month flying by, but it's usually not quite the same in the summer holidays. July is almost over, and I'm finding myself thinking, did I make the most of the quiet(er) time? But then what is "making the most of" anyway :).

We had a pretty chill time, enjoyed the weather when we could. Relaxed. And generally managed to take life a little bit slower. Which was rather nice. Somehow though I feel a slight bit of apprehension thinking about the coming weeks. Everyone returning from their holidays, full of beans, wanting to get things done. Blah.

Well, the properly interesting bit for me in the last few weeks was the week with temperatures upwards of 30°C! For almost half a week, we felt what it's like to not actually be just a little bit on the cold side all the time :D. I had great fun! I mean, 32°C is still a good 4 degrees colder than body temperature, so it's not like it's properly uncomfortable or anything. 

I guess it says something about my travel habits that it felt genuinely novel :). Not everyone else around was enjoying things quite as much :P. But then it was, as I said, barely half a week. Then things went back more or less to the normal mid to low twenties.

I did end up watching a few football matches. I think the Norwegian team did very well, all things considered. Could have gone even further if a few things had fallen a bit differently, but hey, that's sport. There's a family in the neighbourhood who must be Spanish, and their flags are still up! :D Bit sad to see Messi's potentially last World Cup match end in ugly scenes though.

On the books front, a bit more headspace meant I could take my time with my reading more than in recent months. Foundation's Edge had somewhat more unknowns than the original trilogy, and since then Foundation and Earth even more! The thing I find myself thinking, having read all the way through from the Robot books to here in the last nine months or so, is how Asimov seems to have been having second thoughts about his earlier works :).

We get further and further away from the Seldon Plan and the Foundations. And I sort of remember where we are heading and who we meet, (particularly, given that Prelude.. and Forward.. were written soon after these two books means it's quite easy to see how things were being tied together) but it's hard not to wonder if Asimov really saw the world (or galaxy) quite differently in the '80s than he saw it in the '50s. Almost impossible not to really, I suppose.

What would it really have been like? Going from the immediate aftermath of the two great wars with a certain weariness but also a sense or relief and optimism, thorough the paranoid schizophrenia of the Cold War and finally the fall of the Berlin wall and the renewed sense of hope and optimism of that time. Which makes me wonder what people who last saw the world around the turn of the millennium would think of where we find ourselves a quarter century later... who can say.

I'm only about halfway through Foundation and Earth though, so there's a couple of hundred or so more pages to enjoy :). In the middle I also read this month's book club book, Flowers for Algernon. Great writing. The main reason I say that is because at no point is it particularly unobvious as to what sort of an end the protagonist is headed towards. And yet, once I got there with Charlie, I could not help but be quite emotional.

It's also clearly much more of an exploration of the anatomy of relationships rather than any sort of deep dive into the science of psychology or neurochemistry. Which I very much liked. The use of diary entries, or rather the "progress reports" was particularly powerful in conveying all sorts of things, from the state of Charlie's intelligence, his emotional development or state of mind, but equally the feelings and thoughts of those around him.

I also rather enjoyed the fact that it didn't feel like the author needed to tie up all the threads in a neat bow or anything. Once I learnt that Flowers for Algernon had started life as a short story and then been expanded upon, I wondered what the original was like. Maybe a more abbreviated version would carry the emotional message across even more powerfully?

Hopefully it'll make for an interesting discussion next week. And hopefully we'll manage to get out on our bikes before the weather turns too chilly. Either way, there's quite a bit more of the summer to enjoy really.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream

Summer is finally upon us :). Well, seeing how this is the end of June, that's not surprising, but what is surprising is that we've actually seen a nice amount of rain as well. Makes for the first properly green summer for a few years!

Happily, there have been enough periods of nice weather, particularly on the weekends to allow the cycling to continue. In fact, it's been on the edge of too warm on occasion, but nothing like what the rest of Europe is going through.

We did experience a bit of the proper warm weather on a short trip to the UK. 38°C isn't anything to be scoffed at. But honestly, the air was still pretty cool, so as soon as you got out of the sun, things were pretty manageable. I guess depends a lot on what you're used to :).

It was great to see the newest nephew! Which was mainly why we were there. But there turned out to be an opportunity to also go watch a live cricket match! The Women's T20 World Cup match between South Africa and The Netherlands. (Yes, you probably didn't even know that there was another world cup on! :D).

Given the small ground it was great to catch the action from pretty close! Close enough to be able to easily tell if the batter had made good contact by the sound off the bat! :) It was quite warm, but a really fun afternoon.

Now the summer holidays are beginning to roll in, which means Norway sort of empties out a bit. As usual, we're staying put, and hoping that the weather will stay nice and we'll get to keep enjoying it :).

And keep reading :). It has actually been quite nice to just settle back into the Foundation series. The travels were a good opportunity to complete the re-read of the original trilogy and then I started on Foundation's Edge. 

Given the gap of fifteen or so years since I last read them, there was a lot that I didn't remember. The broad strokes were there, but the details were great fun to discover again. I've also read a lot of varying science/speculative fiction in the mean time, which gives a different perspective. Some of the writing, particularly the older books, definitely shows its age. But the underlying themes continue to be thought provoking as ever...

Then there's the other world cup. The one that's hardly possible to miss seeing how Norway has qualified for the first time in nearly three decades :). Well, we'll see how long the fun lasts!

Oh for the love of lilacs!

This month seems to have gone by quite fast in a way. Yet, looking back, April feels like a very long way away! Funny how time moves, fast yet slow, or the other way around... Sometimes it even hides! Like the trip to Bergen I'd almost forgotten actually happened in May!

It was a long weekend, and circumstances conspired to find me on the cross country train passing the higher reaches of central Norway still shrouded in snow. It was a little surreal seeing that much snow given how early it all disappeared from around us. But then again, this is the part of Norway where people go to ski in the summer, so :).

Bergen itself was a mix of sunshine and not, but counter to reputation, it didn't actually rain on us at any point :D. Much of the weekend was spent taking relaxed walks around the centre and sometimes a bit farther afield. Eventually though it was time to take another train back. 

Unlike the train over, and despite the lengthening days, a fair bit of the return trip was spent in the dark. With me pondering how much difference a few hours can make, turning spectacular valleys and hillsides into blurs in shades of grey and black.

May being what it is in Norway, it was pretty much weekend after weekend of happenings. After Bergen, it was time for this year's Holmenkollstafetten! More or less as expected a couple of people had to drop out somewhat late in the game, but we still had the most runners since we started participating with Kezzler, and not that it matters too much, also the best time! :D

It's always fun watching Oslo transform into a bustling, almost unrecognizable version of itself for this event every year :). It had a bit of extra help this year with the Norwegian equivalent of the FA Cup being held the same evening! There was a bit of rain in the air, but all in all, a fun day (and we didn't actually get wet, which is always a plus :D).

Then the weekend after was the Norwegian National Day! We did what we usually do these days, watching the local school band and parade. Then did what we don't usually have to do, hide from the rain at various friends. This didn't stop us from enjoying the obligatory 17th of May barbeque though :).

So yeah, there's been a fair bit going on. But through it all the regular running is ongoing, and now that the temperatures have taken an upward turn, cycling has started again! This time I'm trying to take it easy and ramp up slowly. Recovery seems to take longer and longer as the years go by, so overdoing it does have rather more significant consequences :/.

And that's more or less it actually. Weirdly enough, haven't really managed to get much reading done. Not necessarily because I've been oh so busy or whatever. It's just that I've had a really hard time getting myself to pick up the book club book.

Babel is not a bad read or anything. A little full of itself maybe. Some of the author's underlying messaging bleeding through a bit too overtly some times. But somehow after getting through about a quarter or so I just can't be bothered. All in all I think I'm just not in the mood for it to be honest :/. And a half read Asimov doesn't seem like the most exciting alternative either.

Mainly I'm waiting for Platform Decay to land. I've managed to get the library to order a copy, but I guess it'll take as long as it takes. Hopefully not too long. In the mean time, hopefully I'll keep myself occupied with more hours outdoors, smelling the lilacs that have come out just about everywhere around here :).