Duna bella!

Where does one even start :). It has definitely been quite the busy month! But I'm probably saying that because we've just come back from an amazing half a week in Budapest :D. What a fun getaway, and much needed!

So, every year towards the end of autumn I think, we must book a holiday of some sort for October or November. Break up the dreary early winter months where the darkness creeps, then rushes on. Because without that break, it feels like a hard old slog to get all the way to Christmas. Anyhow, this year we actually did it!

It was the first time for either of us in Hungary, so we didn't necessarily know what to expect, however, having seen the city in films and tv and such, we did know there was a lot to like, particularly as we do rather like just ambling along enjoying interesting buildings, food and the occasional foray into a museum or two :). Well, Budapest delivered on all fronts!

We had pretty nice weather for the most part. It was noticeably warmer than in Norway, and more importantly, with more hours of morning light! On the flip side, with the massive Danube (locally known as the Duna) flowing through the middle though, there was definitely a lot of wind.

Having acquired a handy city pass that provided unlimited access to public transport as well as free entry to many of the main attractions, we had no trouble getting out of the weather when things did get a bit too fresh :).

One thing that struck me soon was how much variety there seemed to be in the buildings, and oh yes, so much re-building, even in the historic castle district. As we spent more time looking around though, it became clear that at least one of the reasons was the number of times the city (or cities rather) have been demolished and rebuilt, for one reason or another.

Another thing that started dawning on me as we spent some time in some of the museums and galleries was that the history of Buda and Pest don't necessarily reflect the history of Hungary as we know it today. Bind in the middle of Europe has certainly taken its toll!

All in all though, it was lovely to be able to meander around for as long as we wanted. Stop when we wanted. Enjoy some great food (the famous Hungarian goulash soup of course, but special mention to the awesome street-stall-sourced chimney cake :D). And in the process get to know a little bit about a part of the world we were not really that familiar with. An excellent holiday was had :). 

As a bonus, all the travelling worked out more perfectly than any trip in recent memory :P.

Now that we've been back for a couple of days though, it's time to get used to the cold. Luckily, the proper freeze has stayed away at least long enough for me to get the tires switched today :). But it had been a somewhat unseasonably warm early half of the month. Not quite record highs, but not far off. I guess we'll have to see how the rest of the winter pans out. Although now that the car's properly shod, I can hardly wait for the snow to arrive :P.

In an unrelated attempt to make the early part of winter more enjoyable, finally started running on a regular basis! It's only been a month, and short distances, but by the latest run I was no longer struggling to just keep a steady pace to the end :). Let's hope we can keep that up.

On the books front there's been actually almost more that I can immediately remember! Abaddon's Gate feels like a very long time ago :). The most clear sense I have of it though was one of slight disappointment :/. Or maybe disappointment isn't quite the right word... mild discomfort maybe?

The scope of the story definitely takes a huge step outwards. Boldly going where no human has ever gone before and all that. One of the things I'd been rather enjoying in the previous books though, was the comfortable interplay between the four core characters. But there seemed to almost be focus pulled away to others. Which did happen in the second book, but not to the extent where Holden and co seemed to almost be side lined.

(Btw, I might be disappointed, but after three books, this feels like a series that is going to keep it's almost soap opera style main characters alive for the long haul. I feel somewhat justified in thinking that because they went through the trouble of writing out origin stories for the TV series tie-in ◔_◔.)

Nevertheless, it was still overall a fun read. But somehow I didn't feel like committing to more Expanse just then. There was also the book club book to read, and this time it was my recommendation! Although I honestly didn't know what to expect. I'd picked the books by the somewhat vague criteria that they needed to be fantasy, reasonably recent, like within the last couple of years, and not part of a series. I also decided to restrict myself to stuff available in the local library :).

The result, once the voting happened, was Blood Over Bright Haven. And I'm not quite sure what to think of it :|. I suppose it doesn't help that, as I said, I didn't know what to expect. I'd never read anything by the author before, and Goodreads blurbs only tell you so much.

To break it down a bit, I think there were aspects of the writing that I really enjoyed. Particularly the ability to articulate emotions. I mean, the beauty of the horrors of blight, I found breath taking! There's also very obviously a clear-eyed approach to violence and exploitation. But at the end of the day the ending's not really an ending, is it? Oddly enough, I found myself thinking of Rang De Basanti as I finished reading the book. Hmm. I wonder how the discussion will go...

Then, not just to sort of get some mental distance from both The Expanse and Tiran, I decided to act on a thought I'd had some months ago. Wondering how Asimov would read now. Happily, I have all the Robots and Foundation series books sitting on the book shelf behind me, so I just picked up The Caves of Steel as we packed lightly for Budapest.

You can kinda tell that this was written three quarters of a century ago :|. In some ways I'm finding it charming, but in other ways it's really odd! I think my abiding feeling of the Foundation universe is rather heavily influenced by Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation and Foundation and Earth. In one way the beginning and the end of the Foundation arc, they are also the last books written. And I have a feeling that the last time I read the series, I read them in publication order.

The sense I was left with was that of a story years in the making. A story-teller closing the grand circle, something of the weight of history telling in the process. However, tCoS reads like a young story! Brimming with nervous energy, or so it feels to me. I'm curious to see how the feeling evolves with the books written across more than five decades.

The other thing I'm noticing, which is more of a remembering than a surprise really, is how political Asimov's plots are! Definitely looking forward to more. The question, as always, is which order to read them all in :).

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.

--

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 :).

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, Coexist 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.