We’re in the dog days of the year, and they feel a little like last year – Covid still around and causing concern and our government being venal, dishonest and incompetent. There are much bigger things happening internationally, particularly regarding Ukraine, but those are for another day.
I had a decent walk earlier, while it was still light, around the circuit that I want to cultivate as a 5-6K running route next year. It was more of a stroll for the most part, and I stopped for a while to watch redwings and bullfinches at work on rowan berries. I was pondering diet and exercise: I seem to have reached the point where my weight loss has paused, which is to say the point at which I need to be more determined with diet, especially portion sizes at supper time. For the last three days my lunch has been miso soup with a couple of mushrooms and some spring onion chopped in, and that’s all well and good, but not if supper is carb-heavy.
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Back in October, I made a passing mention of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series. I picked up the original books from eBay. There were 4 novels, since conveniently anthologised into two volumes. I think I’m giving up on them, part way through the third novel. I appreciate the fecundity of the imagination on show, and the density of Wolfe’s language, but I’m finding the narrative itself has become tedious and I’m ceasing to care what happens to the protagonist. I’ve put it aside for now, and turned to M John Harrison’s collection of short stories and writings You Should Come With Me Now. I bought this collection when it came out, but it’s languished in my to-be-read pile ever since. Partly this was because I seem to be one of the few people who didn’t like Harrison’s much-lauded The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again and was put off. The main reason I didn;t like the latter was because, unusually for Harrison, I could see him writing and felt unnecessarily manipulated.
Happily, the collection of short pieces is much more to my taste, and a reminder to me of why I like Harrison, and why I ought to make more effort to seek to emulate him in my own work. His Lords of Misrule in the Viriconium sequence is a story I approach with awe every time I read it. Each time I think: how did he do that? And, immediately afterwards, what the hell was that about?
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It strange how you don’t think about a song for years – decades, even – and then it comes to mind and you can’t get it out of your head. This is my current earworm, Donovan: To Try For The Sun.
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