It's been a rather weird January. And winter, by extension. There was, before Christmas, a reasonable amount of snow on the ground. But since the new year, nothing. Not only has there been no snow, it has been unseasonably warm, meaning whatever snow there was, slowly but surely disappeared.
And that of course means no cross-country skiing :(. Well, it all may still change! Out of nowhere there's now a bit of snow, but who knows how long that will last. Regardless, the snow activity duck should come to an end soon enough with a long weekend of downhill planned for Hemsedal next week! It's been quite a while since I've been to Hemsedal, preferring Trysil and Hafjell the last few winters. Hopefully it's fun. Well, hopefully, the cold that has been kinda killing my week would leave me alone before we head for the mountains :).
It's felt like a pretty busy start to the year in some ways. Catching up with friends who've decided to drop by. Others we'd just not met up with for a few months. As usual, rhythms of life, kids, schedules can often wreak havoc on the best laid plans of "keeping in touch". Heh, so what's new? :)
I'm beginning to finally grow into the Malazan Empire Novels. I mean, I'm already into the last quarter of book five of six, so it's pretty much now or never really :D. But yes, I've either finally forgotten the Erikson style enough to appreciate ICE. And there's now enough new characters in this series that were either absent from The Book of the Fallen or were only mentioned in passing, to have its distinctive series narrative.
In some ways though, I feel that these books are even less interconnected that Erikson's series. Not that that's a bad thing necessarily. One thing's for certain though, now that I'm almost done with this series (well, it'll be at least another month or so.. but compared to what I've already spent :P), it's time to get back to the book club! It's officially begun already in fact. Bigger than before. It'll be interesting reading a more random selection of genres and authors. Till I tire of that and crave a proper series again :D.
