Like it or not, this year seems to be turning into a great snow winter :). I mean, I love it, but I'm increasingly surrounded by people who wish the snow was well and truly gone and spring on it's way already :D.
Having said that, it's not been all plain sailing, what with periods of dramatic thaw that's left roads icy, roofs leaking.. All sorts of drama. Following an unlikely, and frankly quite unfortunate, sequence of events I'm not going to go into, this meant that I ended up getting to shine my pick-axe and axe wielding skills over a weekend. Which I thought was great fun!
Reminds me of that bit from About a Boy where Hugh Grant's character feels somewhat guilty about the fact that he's excited about being able to drive fast behind the ambulance on dead-duck-day... Aside to an aside, did you realize that film's now twenty years old?!! Crikey.
Anyhow, speaking of snow, there's also been some more cross-country skiing :). Although the last time I went out the snow was so heavy and wet that it almost not quite worth it :P. Still, snow is snow, and I'm happy for as long as it lasts. Definitely adds happiness to my life :).
Some weekends ago we also went on a little trip with some friends, and a lot of new acquaintances, to a cabin in the middle of nowhere about a couple of hours' drive away. To be honest, it wasn't that in the middle of nowhere, but the fact that we drove there late on a Friday evening definitely reinforced the feeling of remoteness. It felt a lot nicer driving back on the Sunday afternoon :). In between there was quite a bit of fun! We also ended up spending what felt like most of a day on or near a large frozen lake. That was very cold!
In between all that and the continuing crazy busy work situation, I had quite a variety of books to keep me happy :). First of all Bone. I mean, what a tremendously funny, touching, thought provoking, but ultimately just nice thing! I got the whole series in one volume as a Christmas present and I just loved it to bits! Definitely something I'll read again. Especially whenever I'm feeling a bit down and generally bummed at the world :).
I only even heard about it because of Gaiman's A View from the Cheap Seats. So that was another hit. Not quite the same sort of experience was had reading The Einstein Intersection. Which I acquired for the exact same reason as Bone. I'm not sure what it was, maybe I just didn't pay enough attention to details. Maybe I'm just not as familiar with all of the many cultural references. Either way, I was just generally confused to be honest. There was definitely the feeling that I was leaving a lot unexplored, but at the same time I was very happy to move on.
Between those two, I chanced upon the first couple of volumes of two different graphic novel series. Saga was kinda interesting. In an oddball, pretty out there, but entertaining nonetheless sort of way. Ex Machina was more so. More interesting, more out there, more entertaining :). To be completely honest, I was just browsing around in the library, minding my own business, when I spotted them on some recommended shelves. Read them, returned them, didn't think too much about them.
Then I read the book club book for the month, The Last Girl to Die. OMG! Like, come on! Who writes stuff like that? Actually, more importantly, who reads stuff like that?! And Goodreads is full of raving reviews! Seriously? It was probably one of the worst books I've read in a long time!
Or rather, it was the book I genuinely disliked the most in a long time. The difference may be subtle, but significant I suppose. Mainly because it's not a badly written book. Just painful reading! It's dark and miserable, but told in an almost light tone that I found seriously disconcerting! I guess for people who don't want to or like to get particularly into the books they read this may just be like a fast paced thriller? But I basically just about got through it as quickly as I could and moved on.
Straight to The Einstein Intersection, but even that was a massive relief! I'd actually kinda gotten used to the fact that often book-club books that I'm uncertain about turn out really interesting or at least thought provoking, and it's just a function of exploring different perspectives. But this one (still talking about Last Girl..) was just plain miserable. A case of the a book really living down to the off-putting blurb.
Anyway, so having spent ten days or so reading a couple of not particularly enjoyable books, my thoughts returned to Brian K Vaughan (the brains behind both Saga and Ex Machina). I eventually ended up acquiring the rest of the latter series, partly out of curiosity, partly just to go back to weirdness I can get into, so that's what's occupying me on my commute at the moment.
In the midst of all that though, on a rather gloomy Saturday, we went to the library where I spent a very enjoyable few hours digging around the forewords, introductions, prefaces, post scripts and such like of The Children of Húrin, The Silmarillion and Beren and Lúthien. There was a distinct feeling of sort of finding my way back into the world that first ignited my excitement and love for fantasy literature. (I suppose strictly speaking, I'd read fantasy before, but this was on a completely different level :).)
I suppose what was really interesting for me was how personal it all was. Christopher Tolkien gives us such a beautiful view into the inner world of the creator of Middle Earth. Even though I've read The Silmarillion a few times, it had never spoken to me in the same way the letter from JRR to Milton Waldman in 1951 did. Naturally :). I was particularly intrigued by how JRR returned time and again to the same tales and would explore expand or just re-write them in different ways at different times.
All in all, I was left with a profound need to get back to Middle Earth. Maybe after my foray into Vaughan's alternative NYC :).
