The time has come, my brittle friends, to talk of other things. Possibly. Or to take a break from talking of things. I’ve been writing this blog for a year now and have lately found less and less time and enthusiasm to keep it up. I used to be delighted about the prospect of updating but have recently felt somehow obliged to do it. I’m often very tired and not exactly brimming with ideas either at the moment. So I guess there won’t be regular weekly updates in the near future. The leisure of these past winter months has given way to working full-time again, getting up on an unmentionably unearthly hour (i.e. very early indeed) and sacrificing my limited amount of daily energy on the Altar Of Dayjob instead of spending it tapping away on a keyboard and trying to come up with witty things to write about, after first having slept as late in the morning as I happened to feel like.

I shouldn’t complain. Too much free time tends to drive me up the wall too, as it occasionally did during my extended and mandatory winter holiday. So I’m reasonably content now, with enough work to keep me busy (and it’s the kind of work I actually get paid for, in actual money) but also enough work to keep me from reading and writing and researching obscure useless things as much as I’d like to. So, while waiting for some new thoughts to form I’ll look back on what I did during the past year.

I started this blog because I wanted to keep track of the books I read and of the wines I tasted (and mostly found not to my taste). The Sinisthra forum had dried up and it was getting tedious to keep posting there all the nonsense that passed through my head, especially since no one else bothered to post there anymore. The Pressure Valve-section at Sinisthra.com, where I used to feel sorry about myself as eloquently as I could, had also dried up because the particular fountain inside me where it stemmed from had dried up. And since the pages were about the band Sinisthra, and not about Me, I felt uncomfortable to talk so openly about my personal things anyway.

I’ve commented about some 20 books and 100 wines in this blog. I need to read more because 20 books in 12 months isn’t very much in my opinion. It seems I buy a lot more books than I find time to actually read, and this bothers me a bit. I didn’t drink the 100 bottles of wine alone, they were mostly shared with The Loved One so the quantity doesn’t bother me. I was properly drunk perhaps 3 or 4 times last year (”properly” meaning ”inebriation followed by hangover”) so my alcohol consumption is very moderate. I’m also only moderately interested in reviewing every single bottle I uncork at the moment. Most of the wines are always very forgettable and lacking of any kind of distinct character. I’ve found several white wines I liked very much, numerous cavas and maybe even a couple of decent red wines.

I don’t listen to music that much and when I do it’s mostly music I’m already familiar with. This is a sure sign of middle-age mentality creeping up on me (”When I was young we used to have quality music!”) but I can’t be bothered about that. I never was a heavy duty music fan anyway so my future comments about the albums I enjoy will most likely be as sparse as they have been up to now. I still enjoy being a part of a band though, and playing music. This will not change in the near future.

I’ve frequently fumed about Sinisthra not getting anywhere. I might fume about this in the future too, although now the band is finally reaching the anxiously awaited stage where we have a finished album in our hands, at long bloody last. I’ve also fumed about numerous other things, none of which I’m able to recall at the moment, and will probably continue to fume about them in my future postings as well. It’s been a good year and I’m glad I documented bits of it here. I’m sure the text will start flowing again once I get over this springtime slackness of body and mind.
"There there. He only said he might take a little break from writing this blog. He didn't say he'll never update it again."

RECENT BOOKS OF CHOICE:
”The Replay” by Ken Grimwood, recommended and handed on to me by my friend mr. Leinonen (who, I’m positive, will update his blog any day now). He occasionally gives me a book to read, usually a dauntingly thick one, falsely expecting me to possess as good a grasp on English and as long an attention span as he does, often resulting in me watching the book lying dormant on the bookshelf for a few months, in all its’ 500-page-or-more-glory, before returning it to him, with muttered explanations of not having enough time to get indulged in something of that scale. ”The Scar” by China Mieville I managed to read, superficially, and the small parts I was able to comprehend of its’ enormity, I enjoyed, but many an epos has remained untouched.

Not this one, though. The cover looked enticing, the blurb intriguing and the reasonable amount of pages invited me in, so I went and am happy I did. This is a lovely book, a timetravel story of sorts, but basically a love story, with characters who felt real and had enough depth in them to make me feel either sad or happy, depending on what they went through. Even the ending of the book was decent enough, although the pasted-on and useless epilogue gave it an unneeded cosmic flavour.

Here’s a link to some editorial reviews on Amazon.com, allowing me to focus on other things instead of trying to explain a plot in my ineffective and uninformative manner. But I recommend this beautifully written and touching book to anyone who enjoys reading a good book. People who like to obtain their reading enjoyment from bad books might want to look elsewhere.