It's been a pretty nice July this year! Mostly dry and warm, except for the last week that is. And seeing how most of Norway (including most of my colleagues) has gone on holiday, things have generally been nice and quiet :).
One of the things we managed to do a fair bit of was go cycling! Mostly revisiting the usual routes, but also on occasion discovering some new ones. We've also booked the cycling holiday for next month, so it was good to build up towards that. Nothing as crazy as last year's week-long trip though :D. Relatively chilled out though the trip is, there is some threat of rain, so here's hoping the weather holds out.
After months and months of not being very social, there have also been a few barbeques, making good use of the nice weather to be able to congregate outdoors. There are all the obvious differences from pre-covid times of course, the general tendency to keep physical distance, making sure the group isn't too large, and also keeping the overall number of people interacted with limited. None of which seems to be too difficult for me...
On the book front, this has been another amazing month!! I realized why my general memory of American Gods is one of dark brooding. Of the three parts (Shadows, My Ainsel and The Moment of the Storm) it is the first that is the most quirky and relatively light hearted. Once Shadow arrives at Lakeside, things start getting altogether more serious and by the time he leaves, things are really coming to a head. So it's no wonder really that the quirky funny bits are something of a distant memory by the time on washes up on the shores at the end :). What an amazing read though! And as I find usual with Gaiman, many things appear in a new and different light with each re-read.
Stardust was just as entertaining as I'd remembered, even if many of the plot twists I discovered anew :). Comparing the book with the film, I always find the ending so much more satisfying in the book. To be honest, with most (if not all) of the differences between the book and the film, I favour how the book goes. There is much more of a sense of depth to the book and a feeling that they tried to turn the film into some sort of children's affair, oversimplifying some bits and adding unnecessary drama in others.
Having thus far re-read Gaiman novels I had previously read multiple times, I came across my copy of Anansi Boys and realized I'd only ever ready it once, almost nine years ago. I couldn't quite figure out why I'd given it a miss during my '15-'16 Gaiman re-reads, so thought I'd go with that next. If anything, I remembered even less of the story than in the other books. The experience was highly entertaining! It felt quite different from either American Gods or Neverwhere, which were the stories it felt closest to in some ways.
Having read practically all the other Gaiman novels in one go, it felt bad not to finish it with The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Somehow I feel a little apprehensive of this book. Maybe that's still the after effects of my first read. There was however, a greater level of equanimity with which I finished this latest re-read. There were fewer nightmares. And an entire section of storyline that apparently I'd imagined into the book, or transposed over from something else I'd read, that never actually happens! Overall, I feel I've come to terms with the shape of this story more that I had before... whatever that might mean :).
So finally, just to end on a proper high, I decided to re-read The Graveyard Book. And I loved it :). It's just so beautifully crafted! Every character, the coincidences that aren't, meetings and partings... It left me feeling light and hopeful :). A casual reader might take this to mean that the book is some sort of happy light pop-fantasy, and I would remind them, this is Gaiman we are speaking of :).
Then, after seven books and two and half thousand odd pages, I figured this was enough of a rush of Gaiman to my head. For now :).
As I may have mentioned, it's been raining. A lot. And I think somehow my headlong plunge into books is coming to an end for now. (The two may or may not be related. Probably not.) It's not like I'm going to stop reading or anything, but I guess that feeling of spending every possible moment buried in books has abated somewhat :). It's been fun though, while it's lasted!
