Crystalised

It feels like its been a month of two halves. It's possible some of this may have to do with the weather. Apparently it's rained a fair bit less than normal through the summer months this year. Well, that's definitely factually correct, seeing how the local weather station has pretty accurate records for the last few decades. But for the last week or so I think we've been making up for it. Which is not a bad thing of course.

Somewhat independently of that, I started off August feeling quite keen about cycling, but then overdid it a bit :/. Since then the outdoor activities have tailed off rather a lot, and not all of that can be blamed on the weather or even the physical state of my legs. Oh well. I have managed to not be too anti-social at least, which has been nice :).

So here's a tangent apropos of nothing.

There have been long periods of my life where listening to and exploring new music was a constant. But you know, life happens, and slowly I've found myself doing less and less of the exploring. I probably still listen to music, particularly during my commute, most days. Barring some stretches when life has felt like it was getting altogether too much, and a bit of time with no active inputs felt relaxing.

At various points I've wondered if this (the not exploring new music) is a question of prioritizing different things, or just a natural consequence of growing older. By a certain point in life one has landed on a set of preferences and while there may well be new music fitting those preferences, it's easier to just fall back on the known.

For somewhat unrelated reasons, I'd never been on Spotify until quite recently. Yes, to the massive shock of many of my colleagues. I used to actually quite enjoy the look on people's faces when I told them that :D. A bit like when I tell them I've never had Netflix :P. Anyway, I did get on to Spotify, partly because I found out in the spring that Linkin Park were in fact making music again! Which makes me happy, mainly for Mike Shinoda and co.

And while I was there, I came across The XX. Now, for the last decade or so, one of my favourite pieces of music has been one of their instrumental pieces that was used on the soundtrack of Person of Interest. Yeah, blast from the past, right? Indeed. But I somehow never really got around to finding more of their music. Cue Spotify, and now xx, Coexsit and I See You are all I seem to be listening to when I actually want to pay attention to what I'm listening to :).

Ok, so what else has actually been happening? Well, like I said last time around, I've been home alone, so keeping the plants alive has been one thing I can count as a success :). And yes, the rain has helped no end!

Decided to go watch the Liverpool season opener with the local supporters' group. Played out a bit differently than last year, but fortunately with the same result. It felt comforting at some level to have paid my respects to the memory of DJ20 during the game. Sport is an odd thing. As some have said, the most important of the least important things.

On to some other important unimportant things then. I've already posted about Dark Matter. Since then I've been reading more sci-fi. First it was Service Model. I've seen books by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the local library for years, just never got around to picking on up. This one is a stand alone novel. One that I rather enjoyed :). I could honestly say that this is the happiest dystopian novel I've ever read :D.

It felt like a social commentary wrapped in a science fiction setting. Definitely some philosophical ideas to ponder. Reminded me of Asimov in some ways. Actually makes me think I should re-read the Robots and Foundation books. It's been fifteen years since I last read them, so I'm curious how they'd read now.

Despite the broader arcs in the background though, the story of the journey itself, one of self discovery, and the two central characters felt very well characterized. I particularly enjoyed the way that Uncharles remains (wilfully?) unaware of The Wonk's human/machine nature until the end :). The thing I didn't get at all were the chapter titles, until I saw some commentary online..

This didn't really feel like a book about plot though, more about ideas. And in the age of AI, particularly timely. Makes me think I should actually go and read some of his series :). Ah yes, more sci-fi series :D. Speaking of which, after finishing Service Model I decided to proceed with the first book of The Expanse, Leviathan Wakes.

On the one hand, launching into a nine book journey feels a bit daunting, on the other hand, it's felt like a pretty relaxed read so far. Which is not to say the action has been at all relaxing. Just that the pacing of the narrative doesn't feel like it's dragging me along willy-nilly, but at the same time is easy to read :).

I have to admit, a third of the way into the first book, this is no Culture, but hey, it wasn't until I got into the second book that I was really beginning to appreciate the genius of Iain M Banks. So I'm taking not only Leviathan... but also Caliban's War with me on holiday tomorrow :D.

Yup, it's finally holiday time. Heading back to the UK for a week and a half, and this time it's just chill time. Having not had a proper holiday since the beginning of June it feels like I really need the break :). I guess by the time we're back, autumn will be well and truly underway. Well, summer's felt like it's been on the way out for a while anyway.

Dark matters

It's quite unusual these days for me to post at any point other than at the end of the month. Go through a bit of a recap of life during the previous circuit of the moon (well, sort of). Usually this includes some of my thoughts and feelings about books that may have been read during said period. Not this time.

In this post I'll try and restrict myself specifically to the thoughts and feelings evoked by the book I finished reading today. The book club book for this month, Dark Matter. Partly this is because I'll not actually be able to attend the next meeting of the book club and I'd rather like to put my thoughts down, maybe to be shared electronically, maybe not. Partly it's because I do feel rather strongly about the book and there's a few things that might be good to just get out of my system.

So, one indicator of how much I like a book is how deeply involved I get with the characters. Not all of them necessarily, but some. And when I do, it comes as a shock when something horrific happens to them. Particularly if it's seemingly out of nowhere. A memorable occasion of this happening (oh, by the way, spoilers ahead, for Dark Matter and probably other books, so be forewarned) was when Ned Stark gets unceremoniously beheaded half way through book one of A Song of Ice and Fire! This was a couple of decades ago, but I still remember I was so shocked that I stopped reading the book and didn't pick it up again for months, maybe even a year or two. And I feel that on my many subsequent readings of anything GRRM, I have never really let myself get as engaged as that first time.

Of course since then I've become more cynical of authors' motives in general and also read a lot more shall we say violently dramatic literature and considered myself perhaps not as easily shocked. Imagine my surprise therefore when I found myself feeling utterly outraged when Daniela Vargas (she of Jason2's world) gets shot in the head "just to clean things up"!!

Ok, so maybe I should back up a bit.

I'm generally a fan of science fiction. And I'm not particularly fussed how hard the sci in the fi is. But I have to say as someone who did study quantum mechanics in university, I felt this was a reasonable enough attempt at laying out a plausible enough paradigm. In fact working out a pseudo logical way of figuring out how one might traverse a superimposed set of realities was actually pretty cool.

I'm still not sure I'd have called them "worlds" though, but I can see how that helps on one level.

The mansplaining was generally kept at a minimum, but I was still annoyed at how long it took for Jason to figure out that he'd been done dirty by himself and shoved off into an alternate reality. I mean, I suppose it's possible the author was trying to get across just how bizarre the whole situation was... so there's that.

And it was working! The entire episode where Jason gradually accepts the enormity of his situation was really drawing me in, and in my mind Daniela Vargas was pretty central to that. So imagine my shock when she just gets killed, seemingly completely out of the blue!! I mean, yes, I suppose one could argue that this is exactly what the author wanted to convey, but man, I kinda had to disconnect. And I don't think I ever got properly involved in the story from that point on!

I mean, I read it, and at a certain level enjoyed some of the sub plots and minor arcs in alternate worlds and all that. But it felt like hard going from time to time. Particularly annoying when the writing did seem to be rather nice! I think I just kept expecting things to go catastrophically wrong again and again. I mean that Leighton was a piece of work, wasn't he!

It was only when the multi-Jason UberChat stuff started happening that I found myself engaging a bit more. Although even that was a somewhat arms-length sort of engagement. Which, given there was so much cool in this book, feels really unfortunate. 

<aside> Another time I remember getting shocked by a character I really really liked getting deaded completely out of the blue was when River Cartwright seemingly gets shot by his grandpa in Spook Street. Except he doesn't and, whether that was the reason or not, I did find myself managing to get back into the characters properly. (Although it turns out I had to stop reading that time too, and only got back to finishing the book a couple of years later.) I mean, I know he's not the main character in that series and all that, but honestly, who's actually ever rooting for Jackson Lamb?! Although, I didn't really feel nearly as bad when River gets shot, again, at the end of Slough House. But there I think part of me felt maybe he's not actually dead, again? Hmm. Should probably find and read Bad Actors at some point and find out. </aside>

So, in case this isn't apparent, apart from the whole why-did-you-have-to-kill-off-my-favourite-side-character thing, I think I rather enjoyed the book :). I mean, some of the things don't make sense when you try to work backwards I guess, but that's not too surprising in this sort of a story. 

There were some really cool explorations of what makes things similar and what makes them different. I particularly enjoyed the Amanda thoughts around what makes something more real, externally observed things or internally felt things, and how this supposedly helped the mind bring into focus a particular alternate reality. I mean there's obviously lots of holes there based on what worlds Jason does end up in, but still, cool idea.

I have to say the ending felt a bit rushed. I mean, how convenient that JasonADMIN seemed to be one of the decent ones. (Somehow the Jason that lets them through the crowd in my mind was ADMIN. :D). And also, why did Jason2 keep his spare ampoules of magic world walking juice in the car?!! Yeah, makes no sense, except to get the story to the end.

Oh yeah, and no one other than one gun shop owner notices the hundred plus Jasons proliferating in a very concentrated part of Chicago?!

One final thought, which I'd not really considered until I started typing Jason a bunch of times: is the similarity between Jason and JSON a completely random coincidence? Hmm.

Well, it does feel good to have externalized some of that! And now that that's done, I've gone and got myself some options for the next read. Choices, choices...

Space flight and missed flights

July's almost over, so in some ways "summer" is too. Which is obviously objectively not true, but maybe the years in Norway are rubbing off on me gradually :). I did get to enjoy the peace and quiet for at least part of the holiday month! Cleared the decks a bit, sorted out some things that had been waiting to be sorted.

Yet somehow I'm left with the feeling that the crowds are going to come streaming back, the trickle will turn into a flood, and I'm going to end up feeling like there wasn't quite enough of the quiet. Oh well, it's quite possible that no amount of time would have done that anyway :).

Seems like we managed to more or less sidestep the properly warm weather though. The day we were leaving for the UK (more on that later) marked the start of the warmest part of the summer in Norway so far this year, and simultaneously a cooling off in England after a particularly long warm and dry spell. And it started raining again in Norway the day before I came back...

I suppose in a way it's not surprising that July in Norway felt short seeing how I was away for almost half of it :D. The time away was perfectly nice, meeting family, having some quiet days. It was the travel on both ends that ended up rather fraught. It was almost comical how closely the sequence of events on the two flights mirrored each other - trains to the airport worked like a charm, comfortable amble through the airport, boarded more or less on time, the aircraft pushed back from the gate, then boom, technical issues :(.

The difference was of course that while the flight to the UK ended up getting cancelled after we'd been sitting on it for a couple of hours (and we ended up getting rebooked for the next day), on the way back it did take off the same day, albeit an hour and a half later than expected :|. Well, we got to enjoy the rather nice breakfast at the airport hotel at least :P.

But now I'm back, and it's raining. Except, it's actually sunny at the moment, but I'm too tired to properly entertain the idea of going out on the bike. Maybe the forecast for the weekend will turn out wrong and there'll be a stretch of time when I can go for a ride and not get drenched :).

Speaking of water, I genuinely didn't know that octopuses could survive out of it for several minutes at a time! Yes, I've attempted a rather awkward segue from the random happenings segment to the books segment of this post :P. I speak of Remarkably Bright Creatures of course. I still think it was quite a fun read :). But there are buts.

To start with, there were characters whose arcs I enjoyed, and those whose arcs I didn't. There were attempts to create depths, but it felt a little half hearted. But mainly, I wish there was more of the octopus! It almost felt like Marcellus was there to draw us into the story and then quietly disappeared into the background. To be fair, maybe that was the point. But I didn't like that.

For the most part thought, it was an enjoyable read. Even though I did have to coax myself to keep going from time to time :). As often happens though, the closer I got to the end the faster I went along, until almost suddenly, I ran out of story! Not only that, almost before I'd realized it, I found myself most of the way through a short story that had nothing to do with Marcellus, or Sowell Bay. Left me in rather a tangle to be honest! Made it a lot harder to just stop and reflect on how I felt about the book. Oh well. I'll just have to be more careful about booby trapped endings in the future.

Anyway, so after that, I started on The Martian. Yes!! I finally managed to find a copy! But only because a colleague kindly lent my hers. And not because the Norwegian public library system had suddenly uncovered an English language copy of the book that wasn't in fact a DVD. (This is the point where I wish my retro keyboard emoji skills were better so I could make an eye-roll with o's and stuff. As an aside to an aside, I'm weirdly reluctant to use actual emojis.. ¯\\(ツ)/¯.)

Anyhoo, the book!! So I first came across Andy Weir with Project Hail Mary, like three years ago, and quickly followed that up with Artemis, copies of both of which were very conveniently in the local library. It's only a while later that I realized the rather famous Matt Damon starring film was actually based on one if his creations as well!

Somehow though, I've never actually seen the film. Which may be a good thing, as it allowed me to approach the book with no real pre-conceptions. And it was great fun! :) The mostly accurate yet easy to follow science was present and accounted for, as was the almost nervous humour, and his books are always a rapid read! So much so that I actually had to stop myself from reading too quickly so that I'd have enough left the flight back. Which there would have been, had said flight lasted the scheduled length of time ಠ_ಠ.

So now we're back to waiting for a book to arrive at the library. Also, incidentally, back to flying solo for a month. I guess I know a bit of what to expect from last summer, so it's not completely uncharted territory at this point :). Maybe I'll actually get on the bike a bit. We shall see.

Many roads and many faces

Well, June happened fast! And not just in the -the days just went by and I didn't notice- sort of way, more the -wow, a lot happened there, and I've barely managed to keep up- sort of way :). Not that that was a bad thing, just seems to have left me feeling almost a bit dazed.

In some ways this has been a much more "normal" summer month compared to the last several years. Periods of beautiful sunny weather interspersed with cooler days and rain. Which is actually a lot better for how things grow here. I should probably cut the grass, but it seems very happy and it feels bad to just get rid of all the beautiful wild flowers :).

This (the sunny - rainy see-saw weather) was also true when we went up north to Rørvik! The week and a half we spent there in some ways feels scarcely believable now, event though it was only three weeks ago! Norwegian fjords come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but living literally a stone's throw away from such beauty is something I can't imagine ever getting used to :).

There was a lot of time spent catching up with friends we hadn't seen in a long time. And being together over a stretch meant we got to catch up in a way that quick weekend trips and meetings can never really replicate. It was also fun to be able to lend a hand in the preparations for the confirmation which was the nominal reason for our visit :).

Not long after we were back, it was our turn to be hosts :). Chats and walks, again, a nice way to spend time catching up with a visiting friend. Particularly when said friend is about to head off to Japan for an as yet undetermined number of years!

And finally last weekend we volunteered to help at a children's camp for some seventy odd 7-10 year olds! I mean, I'm not exactly in bad shape or anything, but keeping up with that many highly energetic kids just getting started with their summer holidays definitely made me feel old :D.

I guess when you write it down like that it doesn't sound like a lot, but with work alongside bringing its ups and downs, I guess a little bit of peace and quiet wouldn't be the worst thing :). And to be honest, I have been disappearing into books from time to time as a bit of a getaway.

I feel like I have to mention that My Sweet Orange Tree got an absolutely phenomenal reception at the book club! Different people found different aspects of the story as well as the storytelling itself fascinating, but mainly people seemed touched by just the simplicity yet depth in an emotional journey which wasn't weighed down by points being made.

Most of this month though, I spent working my way through Hyperion. Once I'd finished it, I was left wondering, did I like it? But there doesn't appear to be a straightforward answer to that. Did I enjoy reading the book? In parts certainly, although not always. Did I find the writing and storytelling interesting? Also a resounding yes. Did I find the world(s) fascinating? Absolutely. In fact that was probably one of the parts of the book I enjoyed the most, the discreet world building from multiple perspectives.

You sense a but coming don't you? So do I, but as I try to pin down quite what it is about Hyperion that leaves me unsettled, I'm having a hard time. Part of it, and there are likely to be spoilers ahead, may well be what the introduction dropped such a large and annoying spoiler about, that is the pilgrims, such as they are, don't actually reach their destination before the book ends. Although having read it, I can see how this book was more about the various trajectories and how they intersect than about the destination.

While the vastly different narrative styles, settings and characterizations in the six different "stories" were set out masterfully, I was left with a jumbled up sense of overlapping realities that, unlike in say some of Iain M Bank's works, didn't easily add up to a rich whole. Maybe one needs to read some more of the books in the series? Something I definitely find myself not wanting to commit to in the immediate future at least. So yes, an interesting experience.

This month's book club book was one I'd read before, but several years ago now. The last time I read The Bullet that Missed, it was part of a readthrough of all three then-published books of the Thursday Murder Club series. I decided seeing how a copy was available in the local library, it would be fun to read it in Norwegian this time!

I can't quite make up my mind if I found it less funny this time purely because I was actually comparing it to the first or second books, which I remember being very funny, or if my far from complete grasp of Norwegian meant I missed just enough to lose some of the humour. Luckily I didn't have any issues following the actual story :).

Now I've started with Remarkably Bright Creatures and while it's very early days, so far things look promising :). Which is something one might also say for the upcoming month or so. The summer holidays have begun, so the office is beginning to empty somewhat. Often this means I get the extra headspace to move forward with things I've been wanting to do but haven't really found time for. There's of course the risk of ending up doing things others would have done if they weren't on holiday :). Such is life.

Old stories and new

And just like that summer is over! Well, not really, but let me elaborate :). Like I mentioned last time around, the start was excellent, if a bit overenthusiastically early. This actually continued into May, particularly the second and third weekends! This was quite useful, as on the first of those we had the Holmenkollen relay in Oslo, and on the second was the Norwegian national day! Since then though, it's been significantly chillier weather and rain, basically :/.

I have to say, in some ways, I was more apprehensive going into the Holmenkollstafetten weekend this time around. Which is weird, because last year was the first time I was organizing, the first time we'd ever run as a company, and the first time running in seven years. So having managed that with some success, you'd think that the second time around everything would be easier! Well, that's not quite how life works.

Luckily, despite the complete lack of fitness on my part personally, several injuries and other reasons leaving most of last year's runners unable to participate, more last minute drop outs and a general feeling of being down on enthusiasm, probably because of the above reasons... So yeah, despite all of that, it was great fun! And yes, the weather definitely helped! We even managed to get the post run dinner off to a much better start this time, in that, the food actually arrived right on time! :)

I have to admit I did feel the after effects of that run for a while. But then it was time for the 17th of May. We did the usual thing of joining the local parade and watched the band and general excitement in the morning and then joined some friends for a very relaxed barbeque the most of the rest of the day. And yes, midway through the week after, the weather turned.

Which means that between stressing out over running and the weather being horrible for outdoor activities, I still haven't managed to get out on the bike even once this year :/. Oh well, other things have been happening :).

Speaking of which, books! I did in fact manage to finish reading ...Sheep well in time for book club, and a fun occasion it proved to be :). This turned out to definitely be one of those books that grew in my mind through the discussion. Would I have picked a nice good work of fiction over this though? Oh yes.

So as I went back to the library to return ...Sheep, I decided to pick up a couple of books more my speed. One of the relatively new Miles Morales graphic novels, and Hyperion. More on the latter in a bit. I enjoyed With Great Power quite a lot! The style seemed thoughtful yet pacey. I have to admit that had I known this was the second in the series, I might have tried to acquire the first, still, it was no great impediment.

And then I started on Hyperion. So the odd thing is that someone at work had mentioned it within the last month or so, but I'd completely forgotten that when picking the book up. I read the blurb on the back, but didn't notice that this was merely a newer edition of an book first published in 1989 rather than a more recent work altogether. All of which is to say that when I started reading it, it was a bit of a shock to my system more attuned (at least recently) to the Mark Lawrence, Richard K Morgan, Martha Wells end of speculative fiction!

Don't even get me started on the horror show of an introduction. I mean, really?! It spoils part of the ending to start with. Then proceeds to talk down the sequels in a bizarre attempt at talking up the first book (Hyperion). It launches into random philosophical tangents and makes strange leaps into literary history. So basically when the next book club book arrived once I'd gotten about ten pages into the actual book, I just stopped.

My Sweet Orange Tree only really got picked because it was the only fiction offering last time around :). Yup, I'm not the only one getting a bit tired of the deluge of non-fiction. Having read it, it's certainly an apt question to ask, how closely can fiction need to follow real life and still remain fiction? Which is not to say I didn't enjoy reading it :).

As a pretty significant piece of Brazilian literature (or so I'm told), I managed to get the local library to order a copy. And it must be of general interest, because there's already reminders telling me to return it on time as there are others waiting for it! Yay!! OK, slight diversion incoming. I feel libraries are excellent ways of accessing vast amounts of books, music, films, whatever, in a fun and socially responsible way. So if I've asked for a book, and I find that others are also interested in it, I find this extremely gratifying :).

Anyway, back to My Sweet Orange Tree then. Turns out it is autobiographical. But with such beautifully lyrical storytelling with overtones of magical realism, that it really is quite something. Much of the subject matter covering parts of the author's childhood is quite painful. Growing up in a Rio favela in the 1920s, particularly when there's unemployment involved, seems heartrending in many ways. The book never drowns the reader in its obvious sorrow.

I'm curious how others found the book. Particularly because of some comments from fellow book-clubbers in the mean time related to the way the story unfolds, and how much focus there is (or not) on various characters. I found the way of storytelling immensely relatable, enjoyable and familiar. To me, the whole book was about inviting the reader into a particular life experience. Not about guiding them along a particular plot. Given the emotional toll it took on me though, I took my time. For a very short book, it took me a while to finish :).

When I then returned to Hyperion, I think I was in a much better headspace :). Or at least my expectations had been appropriately adjusted. And while I can't put the entirety of that annoying introduction out of my head, most of it has happily faded. 

I'm probably about a quarter of the way through, and rather enjoying the often wild ride! Parts of the storytelling is deeply unsettling I'm finding, but in a way that raises questions about wider societal and cultural norms. Things we take for granted. Space travel has for decades provided authors license to selectively remove, add or adjust aspects of life on earth, with often thought provoking results. This definitely does that!

For the next week and a half or so though, it will be back up in middle Norway! Visiting some friends this time. The question is, should I take something other than Hyperion with me on my travels?