A winter that refuses to say goodbye

It's nearly May! Where is this year going?! Like seriously? :) It's not all bad of course :D. Take the skiing season for example. Since my last blog post we managed to nearly double the distance skied for the season! Mainly because there was some extremely unexpected, but highly appreciated snow at Easter!

Since then the snow all but disappeared, aided in no small part by a beautiful few spring days with nearly 20°C. Then somewhat shockingly new snow appeared. Then that disappeared again, as one would expect at the end of April! And now there's more snow forecasted tomorrow. Seriously, what's going on with the weather? I suppose we all know these are ripples of the effects of climate change gathering pace in the not too far distance...

Sometime during the much needed Easter break though, we decided to book another cycling holiday. Having not done one last year, it felt bold. Well, it feels even more bold now that we finally got the bikes out of storage and went for a short exploratory trip this afternoon :D. Ah well, it'll be fine :P.

I'm getting a bit tired of saying work's been crazy actually. So some incidentals to ponder. The less time I have to sort through the thoughts and feelings in my head, the less nice I am to be around I think. Sure, I feel bad afterwards, but that's usually too late to stop me from snapping at people. Deserved really has nothing to do with it, because caring is a habit. And once one starts losing it, inevitably, undeserved hurt follows. (Of course you could argue any kind of hurt is undeserved, but that's neither here nor there.)

The underground golf was a lot of fun though, it has to be said :).

As usual, I've been taking refuge in books whenever I can. Got through the whole Ex-Machina series in pretty much no time. And overall, I don't think my opinion changed much from what it was after reading the first two last month. However, it was indeed interesting to see a graphic novel take on issues of politics, race, gender in quite such a way and deliver a genuinely gripping story.

While I did want to get on to Middle Earth, I was waiting for this month's book club book to show up at the library, and while I waited, I thought, what would be a good graphic novel to pick up that would tide me over in the interim. It had to be a graphic novel, because my head was in too much of a jumbled space to focus on just written words. I settled on The Sandman: Overture. 

What an absolute masterpiece! I've read it a few times now, and each time there's new things that pop up. As with a lot of Gaiman stories, to be honest. I suppose the writing leaves so much space for the reader to fill it with their own imagination, each time is a new experience. Because, after all, each time I'm a slightly different me, with a different set of circumstances, thoughts, experiences in my immediate past giving me a slightly different perspective.

And then finally The Winter Fortress did arrive, and in many ways it was quite a good book! Both in and of itself, and for me to get back into words-only books given my state of mind :). It's a journalistic work digging through some parts of Norway's history during the second World War. It also follows a handful of Norwegians through the years of war in a very personal way. A lot of the material was collected from diaries and interviews.

I could personally relate to a fair bit of the landscape. A lot of the events from the book took place on the other side of one of mountain ridges I posted photos of last month. Familiarity with the Norwegian weather, landscape and lifestyle does give a particularly interesting perspective on things.

There's also the fact that Norway, while very much in the periphery of the main theatre of war, was deeply affected. But because it was not maybe seen as so thoroughly tormented as say France, and maybe to some extent because of the speed with which the country was invaded to start with, there is a deep reluctance on the part of those that saw those years first hand, to share their experiences.

There are many layers to the story of course. But overall I think a good balance is struck in keeping a lot of it very personal. I for one appreciated the author's choice to keep much of the focus on the people caught up in the churn of events bigger than themselves, and doing what they could.

So that brings me up to the present more or less. I finally started reading Unfinished Tales. And I continue to be fascinated, as much by the depth of JRR Tolkien's creation, as by the care with which Christopher Tolkien unfurls the mythology and presents it as a world to explore and experience. Given the latter's tendency to reference The Silmarillion, especially in the stories of the First Age, I ended up getting that book out too and reading them more or less side by side as appropriate :).

It's fun for a change to be able to sink into a story/world/universe/myth/legend without actually needing to know the "what happens next". I already know. I'm now wandering the many meandering paths of "what else is there to discover". Makes for a more relaxed pace of reading. 

Which of course, is a much appreciated change of pace at least in one part of my life at the moment, while other bits continue to run headlong into an uncertain future.

PS. Watched Everything Everywhere All at Once. Was amazed, mesmerized, confused, shocked and generally amused :D.

PPS. Watched A Man Called Otto. Was moved.

Keep calm and carry on

So, another new year, more snow, cross-country skiing and wondering at exactly what point in life did I gain this mostly seamless understanding of which and how many layers to put on to survive a given level of cold...

On the other hand, this year seems to have started at absolutely break-neck speed. Leaving me a little breathless already. It's surprising in a way that for the first time I can remember we are barely through January and it already feels like 2023's been going on for a while. Not sure that's a good sign :(.

Either way, to focus on one of the better things about life at the moment, the snow!! It did end up snowing a bunch, a couple of times this month, leading to a reasonably good amount of cross-country skiing so far. Although the fresh snow has stayed away for a bit over a week and the temperature flitting between positive and negative values on a daily basis has left things rather hard and icy. Maybe there will some more of the good stuff before too long :).

There's been a little bit of travelling too! Back to Stockholm for work, and this time I got the chance to actually look around a little bit! It felt quite different from the other Nordic capitals I've being to. Oslo, Helsinki, Reykjavik and even Copenhagen to some extent feel decidedly small and laid back in comparison! I suppose what I'd really like is to be able to go back in the spring, or maybe summer. I keep getting told winter doesn't really show the city's best side :).

There was also a very brief but fun weekend trip back to the UK for a belated celebration. Pleasantly, the entire travel situation worked beautifully and without a hitch. Except of course some amount of panic getting to Oslo airport on Friday evening as the train services decided to descend into chaos. We managed to get to the gate pretty well in time in the end, only to have to wait because the flight was delayed. Reason? The flight crew, who were coming in from Oslo got delayed because of the same train issues :D.

In general though, I feel life has been somewhat busier than I'd like it to be. Mostly, if not entirely, because of work. I mean, I realize it's always better to be busy at work rather than have nothing to do, but still. I think I appreciate having a bit of headspace to be able to reflect on things. Plan, consider, evaluate. At the moment all I seem to have space for is plunging headlong through an unending and seemingly insurmountable list of things to get done. But this too shall pass, and in the meantime, I'm trying to keep calm and carry on :).

Naturally, reading has been happening a bit less. Even missed the monthly book club meeting for the first time in years. When I have had the time though, The Hydrogen Sonata has been providing me with a welcome escape. I'm about half way through and things are warming up :). Sadly, I'm reading this with the nearly constant thought in the back of my head that this is the last one.

I have been wondering if/when I'm going to go looking for the rest of the stuff by Banks. I'm not sure. I think I'm quite happy that a lot of the astute if cynical views he has (had?) on life are presented in the mostly benevolent and benign context if the Culture. Not sure I want to go delving into it all without that comforting blanket.

In another attempt to bring some light-hearted balance to life, we've started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, and loving it! I've been aware of it for a long time, but never thought to make an effort. The first season was un-dubbed, and great fun to watch, but turns out the next two are only available on our chosen streaming service with Norwegian audio. It's no great impediment, we even get most of the jokes, but given that some of the characters are dubbed with somewhat strong west coast accents/dialects, it's a little more effort :). I guess there's a way to go before we feel as comfortable in Norwegian as we do in English...

I almost forgot! I did actually also finish reading the book club book for this month! And it was one of my suggestions! But one I had picked more or less at random from the fantasy racks at the library. So it was with some curiosity that I started The Starless Sea. It was certainly worth the time :). Weird and wonderful is probably an apt way of describing it. The author certainly seems to have an amazing imagination.

While the story itself was interesting, and the world it was set in extremely diverse and intriguing, I'm not sure what to make of the individual characters. With the possible exception of Madam Love and Kat, I wouldn't say I ever really warmed to any of the rest of them. They felt more like placeholders for the story and the author's tools rather than actual people.

(While trying to remember some character names, I also stumbled across this! :D. So, I don't agree with the overall view that the book was unreadable and a waste of time. However, I do very much love the way she describes the book. Felt accurate. And extremely funny :).)

Right. So.... There's actually a lot to look forward to in the next month! Visitors, downhill! (Downhill! Snowboarding!) And finally that trip back to India. But in the mean time, keeping calm and carrying on.

Spice, dreams and fragments in blue

Another month seems to have disappeared at light speed. This time, the most significant thing for me personally was finally catching Covid-19 :(. Got to experience most of the milder symptoms for a couple of days. But thankfully beyond a bit of residual tiredness that has been about it since.

Before that though, there was the very nice Easter week with lovely weather and visitors! As usual for much of the week Norway more or less shut down, so we spent a lot of time outdoors. The ice cover that has since completely disappeared from the lakes was still very much in evidence. But flowers and green leaves were starting to make their way through.

Now, usually I hold the view that the plant life here waits for the National Day (17th May) before exploding forth, but this year spring seems to have come early! There's noticeable amounts of green more or less everywhere you look and the crocuses have come and gone, to be replaced by a variety of colourful flowers everywhere. The one downside I suppose is that it's been rather dry. Maybe there'll be some welcome rain soon.

Speaking of dry, finally got around to Dune! And what an experience that was :). But first I did finish Rejoice. To be honest, the latter half of the book didn't do much to change my initial impression. Which is not that I disliked it exactly... It just left much to be desired as a sci-fi book.

I suppose lately we've read enough books at book club that are of the thought-provoking and sometimes philosophical nature, so this one fits right in with that. I had just hoped that there would be more character. As in character building, interesting protagonists, interplay of individuals and relationships. All that things that made The Book of the Fallen such a treat. I guess this was just a totally different book.

The feeling remains that this was more or less a vehicle for Erikson to just get his opinions on politics, the environment, morality to some extent and a variety of other topics across. I mean, don't get me wrong, the premise of the story itself is kinda interesting. But there's not that much story going on, and whatever there is, is just smothered in the rest of it.

Moving on to Dune, then, was positively mesmerizing! (I have to mention here, that I'm already a third of the way into the second book, Dune Messiah, and that may somewhat colour my opinion of the first book. I will, however, try to recapture the actual feeling of awe and amazement that accompanied my reading Dune itself!)

It's been interesting how the rather diverse books I've been reading lately nonetheless have threads connecting them. There was the pure exploration of space and its impact on the human being that tied in the Weir books to The Remembrance... series. Then the more social and cultural themes that connected Remembrance... to Rejoice. And finally themes of ecological balance, interdependence and in some cases chaos that thread together Rejoice and Dune. Or maybe it's just that in reading one after the next my mind builds these connections.

Frank Herbert, however, takes the reader on a very interesting journey in the way the story unfolds. There's almost a sense of detached wonder as the perspectives shift swiftly from one character to another. I've never read anything quite like this before. You get to feel like you're in each character's head as the story unfolds, and yet Herbert manages to keep secrets, surprises, twists if the plot!

I will, I think, forever wonder if the book would have been a very different experience had I not seen the film before. (This being the new 2021 film.) I suppose the answer must be yes, but I'll never know quite what sort of a different experience it might have been. For anyone reading this who still has a choice, my unequivocal advice would be to read the book first :).

It's not that the film isn't good. It's just that the way the story unfolds in the book is so unique, there's no way any film can really do justice to it. Having seen the visual treatment in the film though, and knowing some of the facts, that colours how you read the book. To be sure, things in the film don't happen quite like they do in the book, so there's plenty of room for discovery.

The same thing is true of the way very early in the book (and this happens in Dune Messiah as well), the reader is pretty much given a blueprint of how the story is going to unfold. Luckily, that does not stop things from being interesting still! After all, there's things none of the characters know :).

I feel as though Dune is a book I will happily re-read. There seem to be aspects of the world, the characters, the story itself that I haven't yet fully grasped. There is more to explore, savour. Can't say I can say the same about Dune Messiah. But I think I'll actually finish it before I say more about that :).

We're now moving into the part of the year where traditionally travel dominates the agenda. After a couple of years of everything being turned on its head, some level of normalcy seems to be creeping back. A few long overdue visits are planned. We shall see how it all goes down.

And all the while we continue to pray for Ukraine.