Well, it must be said, to my defense, that I had all the pictures ready on
January 31st. And then I stared at the computer screen for a while and fazed
out, because it was Sunday, no, actually, because I tend to do that every now
and then.
I also swore this wouldn’t be a post about the weather, and really, I might
as well not mention the weather ever again in written form, since the photos will
be kind of revealing as to what happened in the heavens above any place I found
myself in.
However, I should mention the fact that I managed to stick to one of my new
year’s non-resolutions, and checked out a new coffee place- yes, I am painfully
aware of how essential my non-resolutions are. My Green Cup proved to be a
great choice because, uhm, they have green cups- my mind has been poisoned
enough by Instagram to crave that shade of teal that sneaks on you every now
and then from the shots of someone immortalizing their latte in Shoreditch.
Besides the fundamental excitement of what shade their cups are, the place
is also quite ideal for reading- at least in my case, as I do not insist on
comfy chairs, but I do expect proper light, especially during wintertime, and
My Green Cup has some pretty amazing spotlights- which also allow for great Instagrams of your coffee indeed.
And here I might as well sum up my reading exploits for this month, which
include two books I started a while ago and somehow didn’t get the hang of at
the first try. They were peering at me a bit accusingly from the stack of
unread books by my bed, so I decided it was high time I gave it another go.
The first one was Hannu Rajaniemi’s Causal Angel, which I bought in a
flurry of excitement in a Malmö Sci-Fi store -where I felt just as out of place
as the book’s hero on Mars. I generally don’t consider myself a Sci-Fi fiend,
although I have read and mostly enjoyed the usual Asimovs and Arthur C.Clarkes,
but there’s something utterly mesmerizing in Rajaniemi’s writing- concepts that
would otherwise be totally alien to my not overly scientific mind come alive
and suddenly seem utterly believable and almost tangible. And I must also give
some extra brownie points to someone writing in such spectacular English
without being a native speaker. There’s always hope, it seems, at least for
some of us.
I’m even more distanced from the world of fantasy than from that of Sci-Fi,
but I pick the occasional nugget from there as well, and Neil Gaiman happens to
be that nugget most of the time. I’d previously enjoyed both American Gods and
Neverwhere a great deal, so Anansi Boys spinning off the American Gods universe
and being set mostly in London just tickled me pink- I simply can’t resist someone
being almost as fascinated by useless British trivia as I am.
I had no problems with reading The Infatuations by Javier Marías at the
first go, yet I probably liked it considerably less than either the Causal
Angel or Anansi Boys. Although there are undeniably good things in there, the
man is just trying too hard most of the time, and I was particularly enraged by
his assumptions about how his female hero would feel and act in certain circumstances.
Which brings me to the book I basically started the year with, and, horror of
all horrors, failed to photograph. William Boyd’s Sweet Caress succeeds in having
a believable female lead and is most interesting in the way the author weaves a
story out of actual random shots, which become the oeuvre of his fictional
photographer.
