In the years that I've been in Norway, May traditionally has been the month when post winter life properly reveals itself. It's almost as if all of nature waits till the 17th of May (the Norwegian national day) and then explodes in all its bountiful glory, as if adding to the festiveness! (Alternatively, feeling that it would be most disrespectful to jump the gun, so to speak.)
I know this is not actually true, as since late March or April all those I know with pollen allergies start suffering, but since I'm (thankfully, so far) immune to this issue, for me the outburst of green on anything growing and the increasingly riotous accumulation of colourful flowers on every hedge, grassy bank, wooded area, indeed even bursting up through paved parts of most neighbourhoods, that's what really signifies that spring has arrived and summer is but a few short weeks away :).
This time around, most of that did happen, but with an unusual and rather unwanted accompaniment of much rain :|. So much so that we hardly went out for most of the month, except for the occasional short wander around the neighbourhood in between showers and blustery downpours of hail. (Including a walk up the street to greet the crown prince and his family on their national day trip around :D.) In the last week or so though, the temperatures have finally headed upwards to heady heights of mid-twenties and the skies are generally clear.
In the meantime, I've been reading :). Even more so than usual as May is also a month of public holidays in Norway. Now, in any sort of normal year, that would mean planning long weekends away, cycling trips, roadtrips... Instead I managed to finish off the second Bauchelain and Korbal Broach book, rapidly finished up the book club book (more on that later) and then launched into further explorations of the Malazan world. This time, in the form of the Path to Ascendancy trilogy. One down, almost halfway through the second one already!!
I have to say, so far, I am enjoying this series much more than ICE's Malazan Empire series. I guess looking at the reviews of Dancer's Lament on Goodreads, I'm not the only one :). In fact I more or less agree with several of the reasons reviewers post as to why they enjoyed this more than the previous ICE books. If I were to summarize my personal feelings, I suppose part of it is very much that this time I'm approaching the world anew, so to speak, not having immersed myself in it for the previous year or so in the Book of the Fallen.
Another part would be that Esselmont seems quite happy to be writing his own series here, not trying (or so it felt like anyway while I was reading the last series) to match the feel of Erikson's writing. The third thing that helps is that these books seem very easy to read: quick progression of plot, light banter mixed in with the intrigue. As a bonus, seeing how I did read both the Book of the Fallen and the Malazan Empire before starting on this series, the number of Easter eggs and subtle (and not so subtle) references to characters and events in those series is most enjoyable :). Either way, I'm definitely happy to find out more about the early life of a lot of the more mythologised characters in the two main series!
A quick word on the second collected tales though, that was almost a bit too weird for me! Shocking I know, but whether it was because of all the other stuff going on while I was reading it (pandemic situation around my parents amongst other things), or something else, I didn't really enjoy those three novellas nearly as much as the first three. Good writing though!
Finally, The Spy and the Traitor. So, as I may have mentioned several times on this blog, I'm not really the non-fiction type. But the rotating suggestion policy in the book club means you get to try things out which you might not otherwise. This was one of those occasions when I greatly enjoyed the experience! Based on events during the Cold War, it has all the characteristics of a particularly gripping thriller. With the added positive of references to real-world occurrences in Norway even! I would go so far as to say that this was a much better political thriller than that other book we read for last month! Truth is indeed often stranger than fiction :).
Now that the weather seems to be on the up, cycling is back on the menu! We'll have to see if we manage to hit the heights of last year, but in a way, comparison is not really necessary. In some sense the sunny days make me feel like I want to be on school summer holidays. Enjoy the sun and read lots of books. Maybe for a change I should exercise the generally accepted policy here in Norway of taking three weeks off in the summer! Hmmm.
