And just like that the month is almost over. In a way I guess it's not a surprise, another month flying by, but it's usually not quite the same in the summer holidays. July is almost over, and I'm finding myself thinking, did I make the most of the quiet(er) time? But then what is "making the most of" anyway :).
We had a pretty chill time, enjoyed the weather when we could. Relaxed. And generally managed to take life a little bit slower. Which was rather nice. Somehow though I feel a slight bit of apprehension thinking about the coming weeks. Everyone returning from their holidays, full of beans, wanting to get things done. Blah.
Well, the properly interesting bit for me in the last few weeks was the week with temperatures upwards of 30°C! For almost half a week, we felt what it's like to not actually be just a little bit on the cold side all the time :D. I had great fun! I mean, 32°C is still a good 4 degrees colder than body temperature, so it's not like it's properly uncomfortable or anything.
I guess it says something about my travel habits that it felt genuinely novel :). Not everyone else around was enjoying things quite as much :P. But then it was, as I said, barely half a week. Then things went back more or less to the normal mid to low twenties.
I did end up watching a few football matches. I think the Norwegian team did very well, all things considered. Could have gone even further if a few things had fallen a bit differently, but hey, that's sport. There's a family in the neighbourhood who must be Spanish, and their flags are still up! :D Bit sad to see Messi's potentially last World Cup match end in ugly scenes though.
On the books front, a bit more headspace meant I could take my time with my reading more than in recent months. Foundation's Edge had somewhat more unknowns than the original trilogy, and since then Foundation and Earth even more! The thing I find myself thinking, having read all the way through from the Robot books to here in the last nine months or so, is how Asimov seems to have been having second thoughts about his earlier works :).
We get further and further away from the Seldon Plan and the Foundations. And I sort of remember where we are heading and who we meet, (particularly, given that Prelude.. and Forward.. were written soon after these two books means it's quite easy to see how things were being tied together) but it's hard not to wonder if Asimov really saw the world (or galaxy) quite differently in the '80s than he saw it in the '50s. Almost impossible not to really, I suppose.
What would it really have been like? Going from the immediate aftermath of the two great wars with a certain weariness but also a sense or relief and optimism, thorough the paranoid schizophrenia of the Cold War and finally the fall of the Berlin wall and the renewed sense of hope and optimism of that time. Which makes me wonder what people who last saw the world around the turn of the millennium would think of where we find ourselves a quarter century later... who can say.
I'm only about halfway through Foundation and Earth though, so there's a couple of hundred or so more pages to enjoy :). In the middle I also read this month's book club book, Flowers for Algernon. Great writing. The main reason I say that is because at no point is it particularly unobvious as to what sort of an end the protagonist is headed towards. And yet, once I got there with Charlie, I could not help but be quite emotional.
It's also clearly much more of an exploration of the anatomy of relationships rather than any sort of deep dive into the science of psychology or neurochemistry. Which I very much liked. The use of diary entries, or rather the "progress reports" was particularly powerful in conveying all sorts of things, from the state of Charlie's intelligence, his emotional development or state of mind, but equally the feelings and thoughts of those around him.
I also rather enjoyed the fact that it didn't feel like the author needed to tie up all the threads in a neat bow or anything. Once I learnt that Flowers for Algernon had started life as a short story and then been expanded upon, I wondered what the original was like. Maybe a more abbreviated version would carry the emotional message across even more powerfully?
Hopefully it'll make for an interesting discussion next week. And hopefully we'll manage to get out on our bikes before the weather turns too chilly. Either way, there's quite a bit more of the summer to enjoy really.
