It's nearly May! And finally I get to a point where it's not just a feeling any more that this year has been going on for a while :). Maybe that came out too cryptic, so to recap: Year 2024 starts. At utterly crazy pace. After a week I'm left feeling like this must be more than just one week, surely, surely it's been at least a month since the Christmas break. No dice. Fast forward a few months, and the feeling is finally starting to ease. Microscopically.
So, April then! It's kinda been threatening to turn into an early and bright spring every now and then. There was an amazingly sunny week with temperatures soaring into the mid teens (°C) that made everyone feel all hopeful and what not, and then snow. Like, snow that stuck around for another week or so! Crazy!
Now it feels like summer might actually be around the corner. No great surprises right? 17th of May is almost upon us! And with it the season of short weeks where almost every week has a public holiday. And have I got plans for any of them? Currently, zip. Nada. But maybe that's a good thing.
Big news though!! After five years of trying, pleading, coaxing etc. we finally, finally have an entry into the Holmenkollstafetten with Kezzler this year!!! (What does this odd word signify you ask? Only the world's largest relay race! And something I really enjoyed being part of for five years with my previous employer :).)
To prepare, I've actually been out running. Once :P. It'll be fine, the point is not how fast we run, it's that we participate, together. At least that's what I've been trying to drum into my colleagues :). We'll see. It's not like I'm going into this fully cold though, we did get going with cycling. A few 20km ish rides in the hopeful spring sunshine...
Maybe that's what we'll do during the May holidays. Or read. Which is what I've been doing a fair bit of the last month. After what's felt like a few months off almost. It's not like I hadn't been reading at all, but it was more of a background thing, something to fill in the odd quiet moment.
Then I got wind of The Murderbot Diaries. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I did go ahead and finish reading Fight Club. And to be honest, the thing I enjoyed the most was actually the afterword. It was super interesting to read how Palahniuk experienced the dissonance of what he wanted the book to be and what the story had turned into. I've considered if I'd like to watch the film again at some point soon, mainly to see how it compares. I'm currently undecided.
Was it a powerful statement of a book? Certainly. Did I enjoy reading it? Not really, certainly not large parts of it. Although the narrative style was unique and the perspective does shed light on life in ways that makes one think. Also, how well does it translate thirty years later?
So to get over it, I did what I often do, turned to graphic novels :). This time I dipped into the Earth One world again, with three volumes of Superman: Earth One. Again, quite a cool take on the classic. I feel like Zack Snyder may have taken some inspiration from some of the storylines? Who knows. They were nice enjoyable reads, and got me out of spending too much time digging too far into Durdenverse. (Or was it to stop Durdenverse digging too deep into my mind?...)
So, I've gotten into the habit of talking books, films and such with colleagues over lunch. Actually this is not a new habit. I just feel like we do this more often these days. And this is how I got pointed towards Murderbot. I also discovered that our local library has copies of all seven (yes, seven) books in the series! So I picked up the first three to give it a go. The books are more novellas than full size novels, so really, it wasn't as great an undertaking as it might sound :).
One Saturday. That was it, I absolutely raced through the three books and was left desperately wanting more! It's such a fun series to read! The premise isn't wild, pretty classic sci-fi: augmented human / humanized robot decides it's had enough of just following boring rules and starts actually thinking for itself. Fun ensues :). Well, there's fun and fun, this is kinda more in the space-western genre with liberal doses of commentary on modern society. The great thing is that it never gets preachy.
The problem is that Exit Strategy (aka book 4) is currently in someone else's hands. This is the one downside of libraries, you've gotto share. Which is good, because, you know, over consumption, over production, un-sustainable use of natural resources and energy, end of human race and all that. But given that the reading itch was raging, I had to find some alternatives. Which is where, oddly enough, a library comes in handy :D.
I found Becky Chambers. Specifically one of her non-series offerings: To Be Taught, If Fortunate. It was a lot more cerebral. One has to read a little bit more closely to follow the details. There's more flair, certainly. But the author's opinions seem to be bursting out through the seams of the story :|. Which is a shame, because the world building really is quite exquisite. Although here I mean literally the physical building of planets and moons and such...
To hedge my bets, I'd also acquired some fantasy from the library, the much celebrated Robin Hobb, who I've never read. I thought I'd start with Assassin's Apprentice and take it from there :). Although I have still got half a book to go through before I can lay my hands on it.
This month's book club book is a memoire. That of Miriam Margolyes, This Much is True. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, or if there was anything particular I was expecting, but overall I'm enjoying reading the book. To be honest, I was not that familiar with the author. She seems to go to some lengths to let people know that there will be no filter, and indeed there seems to be none. Which has it's upsides and downsides.
I do find some of the passages quite thought provoking. She shares her reflections candidly, not trying to make sure she comes out in necessarily a good light always. There are some other elements which maybe I didn't strictly need to know, or can fully understand. As a fellow book club member mentioned, there are parts of it you probably only really get if you were familiar with Oxford in the '60s and so on. I am looking forward to the discussion next week :).
So that was rather a lot of book chat, and I'm eager to delve into more new territory in the coming weeks. But I'm mainly rather looking forward to some proper early summer weather. Not necessarily to do much more in than just enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face without the wind freezing it :). One lives in hope.
PS. The parents have their Norwegian visas!! *Massive excitement*
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