Am I still open?

Turns out I don't blog in the dark very often. Which is why I don't notice how Blogger (aka Google) seems hell bent on blinding unsuspecting bloggers by refusing to support dark mode in the admin interface :/. I mean, it can't possibly be that hard right? Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In other news, yes, it's getting dark! Because, you know, seasons. Oh yes, autumn is well under way. Although I do have the distinct impression that in previous years the trees have been further along on the colour changing path by this point. But that could just be me misremembering. I could go look at old photos, but I'm feeling lazy. (.ᴖ.)

There's definitely a noticeable amount of green left on trees around here, which apparently is not the case further inland. I guess what remains to be seen is if it all switches colour and disappears in fast forward instead of the nice reds and oranges sticking around for a while. Well, at least there have been some nice crisp sunny days lately. The kind that make one appreciate the warmth of summer that's almost past :).

Surprisingly enough it was actually cooler in England than in Norway at the beginning of the month when I was over there. Nice weather though, and it was definitely good to have a proper relaxing break. A few walks, quite a bit of reading, and generally enjoying a bit of quiet time.

Since we've been back time's been flying again. We did make a point of going into Oslo for the annual autumn culture night. This time we made our way to the Directorate of Cultural Heritage. (Honestly, the Norwegian name sounds way cooler: Riksantikvaren. A lot more chilled out and approachable, no?) Unfortunately, what we thought was an exhibition about Oslo over the last thousand years turned out to actually be a series of lectures about Oslo over the last thousand years. ( •̀ - • )

We did have a very nice chill dinner at a hot pot place though! I particularly enjoyed dropping bits of meat, veg and mushroom into the boiling broth and then trying to figure out which bits went in before which, and so could potentially be fished out sooner :D. And then we headed off to the National Museum like every other year and found yet another section we had not previously explored :).

On the books front it's been a good bit of variety I feel. I managed to finish Leviathan Wakes fairly briskly. For a change I didn't even find myself rushing as I got towards the end! I have to say I did have a bad feeling about both Julie and Miller pretty early on in the book :/. The latter being pretty much my favourite character. (Yes, I've read the end of Caliban's War and just started Abaddon's Gate, but let's leave the spoilers out of this post :).)

Did anyone else find Holden absolutely insufferable at times? I mean, I get that a lot of the time the authors are clearly calling out the overly righteous, goody two shoes act, possibly as a bit of a dig at your typical space opera hero, but still. Overall the story was fast paced and entertaining. As my colleague who had recommended the series to me originally had said though, it's only once I properly got into Caliban's War that the series started to feel really interesting!

Now, I'd ended up borrowing the rather bulky special editions of the first two books from the library, and they came with forewords by the authors. In the one for book two they kinda laid out pretty clearly that when they wrote the first book there wasn't that much clarity on what would come after, but by the time the second one was being written, they knew it would be a nine book series and they could plan accordingly. You can sort of see this. (Or maybe I think this only because of that foreword, who knows?)

Either way, the story telling and world building felt somewhat deeper. As I said last time around, I felt something similar when reading Culture and even The Malazan Book of the Fallen. So maybe it's partly that it takes most authors a bit of time to fully spread their wings in their imaginary universe. And partly that for me it's probably only by the second book that I'm starting grasping more of the scope of the background vibe over the actual story in the foreground. Anyway, by the end of the second book, I knew I would read more :).

But not straight away! The book club book of the month was Guards! Guards! and Terry Pratchett is an old favourite :). So that's what I went with first. It also seemed like the sort of thing that's made to share, so I spent a week or so reading it out loud to the better half, and it was great fun! I don't think I've read a Pratchett in at least five years or so, not counting Good Omens which has a fairly different feel to it, and it was nice to just enjoy the laugh out loud yet carefully layered writing.

Pratchett obviously loves to subvert the usual fantasy tropes, and some of the plot twists were easy to guess, others less so. I was rather surprised where Captain Vimes's character starts off, but overall in a good way. Carrot, of course, is an absolute star :). I don't think I've ever actually read another City Watch book, but as they are such fun books to read aloud and enjoy as a group, I have a feeling I may well have heard bits of some at Christmas or some other family gathering. That's the only reason I can think of that I have some preconception of Vimes :).

Then I got back to The Expanse, only I didn't. I started reading Abaddon's Gate and didn't really get past page one for a couple of days. I guess I needed some sort of an interlude. And the universe provided me the delightfully titled Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy (aka Murderbot 2.5, a short story).

Martha Wells is awesome. And I don't only mean because she's imagined into being Murderbot and ART and the rest of them. Every now and then she writes and then shares DRM-free these little short stories that you can just read online! She also has an amazingly '90s looking web presence and writes supposedly awesome fantasy. Which I now feel I must get onto at some point.

But a year before I ever heard about her, she also went through this. I've been trying to figure out quite why this moved me as much as it did. I guess it's the openness with which such deeply personal trauma is shared. Maybe. Or the fact that from a purely selfish point of view I'm grateful she's still around to keep on writing kick-ass stuff. (Sooo looking forward to Murderbot 8 btw!!! ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾) It also made me miss the possibility of reading more genius creations from Iain M Banks.

So now I'm back to Jim Holden and co, and solidly intrigued by where this is all headed. Watch this space I guess. But only if you want to know what I made of it. If you want to know what actually happens, go read the books :D.

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At some point in the last week or so it dawned on me, I'd totally forgotten that this blog actually turned twenty a couple of months back! Feels a bit surreal somehow. I am somewhat at a loss for words, and instead, reminded of some of the coolest lyrics I've ever heard.

When he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed him. By nine he had deciphered the illusion. Trading magic for fact. No trade-backs... 

So this is what it's like to be an adult. If he only knew now, what he knew then...

I leave you with a post from two decades ago, give or take, when the same song was on my mind, clearly. But the rest of life could not have been more different. On the opposite side of the world and struggling to cope with something that has since become everyday. With a few twists and turns along the way :).