I'd never have thought I'd be genuinely happy that it's finally started raining in the summer here in Norway! Usually it just rains anyway, and I spend more time wishing for nice sunny days. It's been a very dry spring and early summer though, so when the rain finally came a week or two ago, it was very welcome. Not least so that the danger of forest fires abated a bit. Crazy how things have evolved just in the last few years.
In some ways the rain came at a bit of a bad time, just as I was finally recovering fully from the after effects of the North Sea cycle trip :P. In the meantime we'd been rather enjoying the sunny days with walks whenever we could. Since then though, I've even been running a couple of times! It doesn't sound like a big deal, but sure feels like it. Let's see how long I can keep at it.
Now that we've slowly started cycling again, it feel a bit strange that the coastal trip was only a month and a half ago! Feels like a lifetime away somehow... I suppose there's been a bit of other travel in the meantime. I finally managed to visit Stockholm in nice weather for a change! Even made time to explore a little bit of the city!
The impression from my previous visits were only further strengthened, that this is by far the biggest of the Nordic capitals, with a very distinct feel from Oslo or Helsinki. (I really should go back to Copenhagen and actually spend some time walking around one of these days.) I was left wondering if I'd have felt the differences as keenly ten years ago before I'd settled into life in Norway.
There was also the whirlwind weekend trip to the UK to see my then less than month old niece!! Very excited about being an uncle! Less excited about how thoroughly upside down a child turns life for the adults in the immediate vicinity :D.
As for the rest of the time, I've been reading. Quite a lot again actually! I suppose being back to the more direct narrative of The Silmarillion made a difference. But then I delved into a couple of series that rather sucked me in, for very different reasons.
But first some impressions on Tolkien again. It's been a long time since I read The Silmarillion the last time, but it's probably been even longer since I've last read The Lord of the Rings. So I found it a bit odd that remembered so much less of the details. I'd gathered a fair bit of background on some of the stretches of the "history" from Unfinished Tales, but there was so much depth that I'd just completely forgotten. Or maybe never really fully got into on previous readings.
Is it an age thing? Or just that I'm a different person in many ways I suppose. Or maybe it's just that over time I've just become more interested in the world behind the story than I perhaps was a couple of decades ago :). I've actually started reading The Hobbit recently, and am quite enjoying the very different flavour from the previous two books :).
In between, first there were the first three books of the Thursday Murder Club series! The first one was a unanimous choice for the book club, and what a fun read it was! Probably one of the most outright fun and enjoyable reads I've had in ages! I've of course only really seen Richard Osman on Pointless. Which I've generally found pretty pointless most of the time. But what an awesome sense of humour he hides behind that rather restrained factual exterior :).
I think one of the things I really enjoyed was that the humour was threaded within a beautifully layered narrative. The characters seemed likeable, mostly. They definitely felt real. And it was very different from your run of the mill spy-murder-mystery-thriller-emotionally-mature-comedy. Well, maybe there's no such thing. It probably helped that I'm now more familiar with the British sense of humour that I was some years ago :).
Anyway, naturally, I had to read the next two instalments :). They were generally fun, but didn't feel nearly as fun as the first one, sadly. But I suppose that may well be because the first one had the novelty of being the first one :). Tautological, I know, but I hope you know what I mean...
Then at some point in the last month, on one of the now regular trips to the library, I decided to pick up and read the first volume of Monstress. As with these things, I decided not to go all in at once. But I had been rather struck by the distinctive style of the art and the story-telling. Part gothic horror, part steampunk, very feminist, and I mean that in the most positive way, there was a wild beauty to the whole thing.
So once I was done with the Thursday Murder Club and the latest book club book didn't seem forthcoming from Adlibris, (Yes, sadly had to resort to actually buying a book as not a single public/school/university library in the whole country seems to have a copy of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.) I decided to get the remaining four volumes of Monstress from the library.
I have to admit, between the fourth and fifth volumes I got a bit lost. Maybe it was the rushed reading during commutes, maybe my attention was not fully there. Either way, it was with something of a shock that I realized that there are in fact more than five volumes :|. How did I miss that?!
So now I'm kinda stuck waiting for not only the next two volumes to arrive from other libraries, but for the (currently) latest volume to be published later this year, and then for one of the libraries to acquire it :|. There's also of course the latest volume of the TMC that's supposed to come out later this year, but I'm less impatient about that. Osman is much easier to read with gaps I feel :).
In the meantime it's onwards with The Hobbit and hoping for the Ice Cube to arrive so I can read it before the book club meeting next Tuesday. Yeah, doesn't seem very likely :P.
In the parallel universe outside of novels, graphic and otherwise, the annual summer hibernation is imminent. The world is getting quieter, people are beginning to disappear. Schools are shut, public transport cut and everywhere the signs of hatches being battened down for the great summer vanishing act.
After ten years, I still find it genuinely bizarre :). I mean, I get it. The schools are off, the kids have to be entertained without access to any childcare and it's the best time to head off all together for a nice family holiday. But why leave? It's some of the best weeks of the year to be in Norway. Of course, not everyone leaves Norway altogether, many people just head off to their cabins and such, so there's that.
Anyhow, so then there was the annual work summer party before people disappear, and this year it was a beach barbecue. I'm not entirely sure why, but I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to cycle the thirty odd kilometres to work in the morning (for the first time since I started working in Oslo), to then cycle another twenty k to the beach after work, and finally the last fifteen back home afterwards, including a 140m climb up from sea level :|.
Turned out quite fun actually! Except maybe the final climb, that wasn't much fun. The cycle into work in the relatively early morning cool breeze was particularly awesome! It was kinda cool to see the sheer numbers of people cycling into Oslo to work. Even though I imagine this is significantly lower traffic than it would be outside of holiday period. I might even do that a few more times before the summer holidays are over and the throngs return :P.
I am quite looking forward to a somewhat quieter month at work. Well, at least I'm hoping for one.
