To the sounds of festive fireworks

This year, I am happy to say, we are enjoying the latter part of New Year's Eve chilling at home, typing up the obligatory end of year post in bed :D. A far cry then from last year, when, having posted the corresponding post from the flight back, we proceeded to spend a good five hours or so trying to get back home from the airport, thanks partly to a lack of foresight on our part but mainly due to an almost complete shut down of public transportation from Oslo airport! We duly booked a much earlier flight this time around :D.

The last ten days or so were spent in the UK, enjoying lovely food and company. Not doing very much beyond cooking, eating, singing, playing games, swapping stories and gifts by the roaring fire, (poking said fire and enjoying being mesmerised by flames thereof was also a big part of it all) and the occasional walk or visit. All in all a very chilled out end to the year.

And unlike last year, I felt like I really really needed this one! In a somewhat extreme case of barely making it to the finish line, my head was just so not into work for the last week before Christmas :). Luckily work was somewhat chilled out, including the awesome in-the-office Christmas party :) so it wasn't too bad!

This year has been one of learning and adjusting. New job, new colleagues, new pretty much everything really, where employment is concerned. A very different type of company working in a very different type of industry. (I will hereon avoid the phrase "very different" for the rest of this post if I can :D.) I have to admit that it hasn't all been plain sailing, but all in all, it has been a very rewarding experience!

There has also been some travelling! Although waiting for that travelling just to travel trip, rather than family visits or weddings etc. Awesome fun though those were :). Maybe that's something to think about for the new year :). For one thing, there won't be a wedding in the immediate family for the first time in three years! :D

Thanks mainly to the new and elongated commute, there has also been quite a lot of reading :). And what amazing stuff the Malazan Book of the Fallen turned out to be! Seriously, not recap of my 2019 could be considered complete without a few words about Erikson's masterpiece! What a series! Without doubt something I look forward to re-reading in the not too distant future.

In fact, I think one reason I'm having a hard time getting as much into the Novels of the Malazan Empire is that Esselmont suffers by comparison to Erikson. And this is of course unfair. But when reading about the same world, sometimes the same places and characters even, it is very difficult not to compare.

Having said that, I did rather enjoy Stonewielder. Possibly because it is further away from any of the Book of the Fallen both geographically and in terms of character and plot lines than the previous two. Unfortunately that doesn't work for Orb, Sceptre, Throne which I am now reading :). Being set in the very town that large parts of Gardens of the Moon and Toll the Hounds is set in! 

But yes, the more I read if him, the more familiar I get with Esselmont's style, and though I still miss Erikson, I can at least get into the stories a lot more :). In fact, I'm about halfway through the series already! I suppose it'll be good to get the book club started again, and read some different books for a change, eventually :D. One of the many things to look forward to in the new year.

A new decade too in fact! All those 2020 visions people had. I wonder how many of them are feeling the year has rather crept up on them! Is it really going to be that different than any other new year? I guess that's sort of in the same vein as saying how different is 1st of January from any other day. The significance is what we give it, in many ways. Regardless, I hope the coming year is one of joyful occasions and happy coincidences :). 

I wrote of optimism at the end of last year, personally this has been mostly true through 2019! So maybe that's what's best to wish for, optimism with which to meet the days that are before us. Happy New Year!

Reflections and precipitation

Having rather enjoyed the Sandman interlude, I have to say I am less that completely enamoured by Ian Esselmont's contributions to the Malazan universe :). I mean, yes, it's nice to be able to get more back-story on characters from the Book of the Fallen. It is also very cool to be able to learn more about the Crimson Guard and also get more of a feel for the continent of Quon Tali. But yes, having finished Night of Knives and now Return of the Crimson Guard, I'm pretty happy that I did not interrupt my reading of the Book of the Fallen for this :).

Anyhow, let's not make this blog a book review only space! I realise that I haven't mentioned anything of the awesome trip to the Fram museum last month, or the short but awesome trip to the Netherlands! It turns out that the CEO of the company I now work for is into Nordic explorers in a big way! The end result was that she took the whole company (which, unlike my previous employer, consists of a number of people small enough to fit comfortably on the top deck of an old Norwegian exploration vessel turned museum) out for a very special dinner!

The Fram Museum is arguably one of the most exciting in all of Norway, yet I had never been there! So it was doubly exciting to have the museum director come along to walk us through some of the history of two of Norway's most famous explorers, Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen! From that, to the most excellent three-course dinner on the deck of the Fram, to the guided tour of the lower decks of the vessel itself, it was truly an evening to remember!

The trip to the Netherlands was in a way the opposite, a bit of a getaway from Norway :). More precisely, the prevalent weather, which had been particularly dark, cold and wet. We were away for a long weekend and the weather was amazing! A proper autumn with sunshine and colours on the trees. Not to mention a significantly warmer ambient temperature :D.

We managed to explore a bit, enjoyed some good meals as well as the usual visits to the farmers' market to get cheese and caught up with family. There was also an added bonus when Vinod (who seems to have given up on his privately hosted blog :|) mentioned that he was flying in to Amsterdam a few hours before we were scheduled to fly out! A wholly unexpected and entertaining afternoon of catching up ensued :).

Since then the weather's been the main cause for excitement. First there was the huge dump of snow early in November, which seemed to have collectively caught out the whole of south-eastern Norway. Chaos on the roads, thousands of cars without winter tires causing hundreds of accidents and so on. A lot of people lost their driver's licenses apparently! Good thing I take the train to and from work :D.

Then, annoyingly, things warmed up, and all the white disappeared into slush. But now the snow's back again. The general consensus of the meteorologists seems to be that even this will not last. But hey, compared to the first couple of winters I saw when I moved full time, this is awesome! There's snow! Even if short-lived :). Any amount of respite from the unremitting darkness is more than welcome if you ask me!

In many ways this has been a very cool year! I think. New work, colleagues, technology, ideas, methods. Things I have learned, things I've realised I know and can share! Malazans and Formula 1. Public transport and thinking about carbon. There's still a whole month to go of course! Let's hope there's more light than dark :).

Musings of Endless Dream

I still think it's the best character name ever :). I refer, of course, to Dream of the Endless. Although I suppose all in all that is the more general name, with The Sandman and Morpheus being the names more specifically used to refer to His Darkness. Although now I'm not so sure about The Sandman... Let's just say that in my mind The Sandman dresses in black, and we'll leave it at that.

When, back in 2017, I finally bought the box set of The Sandman, I started off with the expected rush, ploughing through the first five books in no time. Then, somehow, I imagine partly because I like that book just a little less than the others, but also circumstances (aka a fair bit of hectic international travel where I wasn't willing to carry the books around), I stopped part way through Fables and Reflections. It was only once I finished with Ready Player One and then Odd and the Frost Giants and still didn't have the Malazan Empire novels in hand that I thought this would be the perfect time to rectify this great wrong! (I mean, what kind of a person lets copies of The Sandman sit around at home unread?!)

So for the last three weeks I've been back in the world of Dream. And the Endless. I feel this is a story I could immerse myself in again and again and again. Some of the individual stories, as on the first time of reading, I found less interesting than others. The majority though, I was mesmerised by. But it is the overall arc of the story that I find most irresistible and the thing that draws me in each time.

While I remembered the overall shape of some of the stories, most of the details had not survived the five year gap between the last reading and this one. Which was most excellent :). Rediscovering the little details, stories within stories. Characters I'd thought long lost in some earlier issue resurfacing. Sometimes as central to the present part of the story, but more often merely in passing.

Layers upon layers upon layers. Mist, myth, dream and the thinnest wisps of reality. Or maybe more of reality than one might be willing to readily admit.

The ending was, as before, an emotional roller coaster... What can you say. Dream is Endless. But none can, ultimately, resist change.

I had, when starting to read the hard copies two years ago, thought it would be a great idea to start with Overture, then read the ten collections, Endless Nights and finally, Overture again. But somehow, having finished with Endless Nights yesterday, I figured I'd just stop. For now :).

And thus it is that this morning on the train I had with me Night of Knives. It's only been what? A month and a bit? Since I last set foot (so to speak) onto the Malazan world. But in some ways it felt far away. Weird, I thought :). But there was a definite sense of comforting familiarity welcoming me back. I, for one, would not have expected Edgewalker to be the first familiar character to show up :D.

PS. I should maybe mention here that, in the end, I thought I'd designate Ready Player One a better book than film (minus the yucky Art3mis - Parzival interlude between gate 1 and key 2). I also thought Odd and the Frost Giants was typically Gaiman, and by this I mean brilliant, thoughtful and thought provoking.

Lengthening shadows and changing colours

It's been an oddly two-paced sort of month. The weather has definitely taken a turn for the cold and wet. The days have gotten shorter (although not so short as to make me miss Indian weather just yet), the nights darker. Overall then, definitely into supplementary Vitamin D neighbourhood.

On the other hand, there has been the occasional break in the clouds, fantastic bright sunny days, blue skies mirroring blue water. And while the whole 'I shall strive to be active this summer' thing never really happened (I mean I strove, valiantly and largely in my day-dreams, just not in the real world :P), we nevertheless managed to enjoy some of the nice weather.

Given the weather though, (yes, that's the excuse I'm going to stick to) TV has been very much a go to chill-out option :D. Rediscovering the joy of such series as White Collar and Life on Mars, while at the same time following Maria's continuing starring turn on the Norwegian Sewing Bee (NRK Symesterskapet)!

Since finishing with the Malazans (for now), I've decided to work through the not particularly short stack of unread books already sitting on my bookshelves. Minus the three and a half unread books from Song of Ice and Fire because, well, I don't trust GRRM to finish what he's started, and would really hate to go into the series not knowing if there will ever be an end in proper (i.e. book) form.

First was the second part of Stephen Fry's Mythos trilogy - Heroes. And much like the first part, I liked it, but that was about all one could say. In some ways though, the books together make more sense than individually, in my head. Looking at the Greek myths spanning the arc of 'history', so to speak, is way more interesting for me than just reading them as stories. I do hope he releases the last part as a book in the not distant future.

And finally we come to Ready Player One. This is one of that rare breed of book where I saw the film, liked it quite a lot, and more or less because of that decided to get the book! Yup, dangers galore of the heightened expectations killing the reading experience. Not so far, I must say. I mean there are bits of it I like more than others. (That attempted pseudo-romantic interlude was particularly pathetic I thought, unless there turns out to be some relevant plot point that it contributes to later on. Although I'm not holding my breath.) The best thing was that pretty much into the first couple of chapters I'd figured this was a rather different story compared to the film. Which is better? Well, I've got a few more pages before I decide for sure :).

Man! What a trip!

It's taken me a whisker under a year to finish reading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. And in the aftermath there is a distinct sense of wildly swirling thoughts and feelings. And loss. Loss? Maybe loss is a strong and not wholly appropriate word. But something like it. For one thing, I sorely miss being immersed in this world almost daily for such a long time! On the one hand there's all the different bits that keep floating up to the forefront of my recollections from all the books. On the other, there are the unanswered questions. Oh so many questions!!

As I may or may not have posted last year when I started reading the series, I first came by the Malazan books about six or seven years ago. I had Kindle copies of them but for one reason or another never really managed to get started. Maybe it was the size of the endeavour, maybe it was the fact that I'd never really bothered to try and find out much about the series. But then, last summer, given the abundance of time and the lack of proper fantasy reading in the recent past, I decided to give it a go.

I started off with my Kindle copies, getting through all of Gardens of the Moon and almost halfway through Deadhouse Gates before being thoroughly and delightedly surprised by the gift of the first five books in paperback for my birthday! Fan that I am of book-books, I decided to start over :D. 

As I said, I'm having severe Malazan withdrawal at the moment :). Which somehow led me to this article on Tor. (Yeah, I was a bit taken aback at the number of people really really into this series :D. I mean, I get it, it's awesome! But yeah, there are some things the internet is good for.) Reading through the series wrap up from the hosts, especially that from AR, it was a relief almost, to see some of my feelings so clearly reflected! In turn, I guess, it's helped me channel all the aforementioned wildly swirling thoughts and feelings into something approaching a coherent set of opinions... maybe.

This is definitely the first time I've read a series with this sort of an overlapping story line. And while it can be confusing and maybe even frustrating to start with, for me it added greatly to the enjoyment of working things out for myself. The same can be said about the amount of hand holding (or rather, lack thereof) when it comes to a variety of concepts starting with world-building and on to plot and character development. Erikson obviously has created a world with its many details well thought through. But he isn't scared of letting the reader work things out for themselves! And this is a feeling that I found very hard to not totally love once I'd gotten used to it :).

There's also the way points of view are used. It took me a little while to work this out, but the characters' points of view are just that, their points of view. They do not constitute 'absolute truth'. Which on the one hand gives the reader, on occasion, a bunch of apparently contradictory information, but on the other hand, it allows one to really try and figure out what 'really happened' while at the same time providing unmatched access to each character. I mean, it's how we see the world that in some ways makes/shows who we are. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of stuff that I've experienced with this series that I haven't before, and I feel grateful for that.

And then there were the characters themselves! Should I really go into it all? It could turn into a very long and invariably rambling post. Not that it hasn't already :). But let's put it this way, it is nearly impossible for me to settle on favourite characters. There are just so many outstanding ones I could empathise with at various points in the series. So many amazing scenes. Heartbreaking, heartwarming, terrifying, soul-destroying, joyful... Whatever you could say about these books, they could definitely never be characterised as boring :).

So what next then? From the start, I wasn't really sure how many of the different series set in the Malazan world I would want to commit myself to, so I ignored the Novels of the Malazan Empire and stuck to Steven Erikson's work. But now, given the sheer pull of the characters with their tales left unfinished in the Book of the Fallen, I feel I must before long begin with Ian Esselmont's books. Different author, same world. But will it be the same world? I suppose I'll just have to find out!