'Tis the season for miracles.

Well, at any rate for remarkable coincidences. Today I checked out Hyperbole and a Half - a favourite that I haven't gotten around to putting on my bookmark list there on the right, but I will  - and read this post. After that, I wanted to laugh some more, and checked out Ketchupmamman (also needs to go on favourite list, bla blabla) and pretty much straight away stumbled across this post (scroll down for video). Clearly the universe needs me to learn who Kenny Loggins is!

Also, mr Bani borrowed a book at the library called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (but in translation), and I was just flicking through it and my eyes fell on the entry for the Kurosawa film Rashomon, which I recognized was based on the short story In a Grove by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, which I had read on the Aldiko and forgotten to write about. Hello Universe, I am listening. I will however let you read about In a Grove on Wikipedia instead, because it is late and I am tired and it's almost Christmas so busy busy busy. But my opinion can be given - I was very impressed by this short story, especially by how succinct and sparse it was. No unnecessary information, but very vivid and clear. An absolute must-read. I'll re-read it.

Happy Christmas!

Marcia Muller: The Ever-Running Man

I haven't read a Marcia Muller since before I started the blog, which means over five years ago or so (and that, in turn, makes me almost a fecking blogging ancient, people). The library has very few books by her, but I really enjoyed them and had Muller down as quite a find. I remember her heroine Sharon McCone as a detective with a social pathos, working alongside people who tried to improve their communities, like. An outsider, an underdog, a fighter. Well, no more.

Now, she has her own agency with several operatives. She's a boss, who vetoes a new copying machine. She owns a plane, and flies to her sea-side home and her ranch (ok, fair enough, her husband owns the latter). She's, like, all jet-set. Her husband is a partner in a security firm that seems rather mercenary, and in The Ever-Running Man McCone accepts to work for them in an attempt to find the person who for years has been planting bombs in various places that the firm owns. I don't remember McCone as a person who'd work for a shady company like that. I don't remember McCone as being quite so ... Jack Reacher, like. A bit trigger happy, sort of.

And were the first ones so boringly written? I don't remember that at all. It's a bit lame, frankly. I'm so disappointed. My first real Marcia Muller post and I'm not loving it.

Kristian Lundberg: Yarden

Book discussion club book, in Swedish, not translated. To satisfy my vast (oh the wit!) international audience I'll do this in English anyway; it's probably good for the brain that, having to think an extra spin before typing. I did a little job at work this week that involved, well, a fair bit of copy and paste, but also some actual independent writing; I had to put together an answer to a query from a possible business investor about land availability and the like. It was awfully hard, and I had to bring my own laptop to work so I could use the excellent WordFinder dictionaries to do it - the internet did not help me at all when it came to translating terms like detaljplan and fastighetsavstyckning. My point is, that it's good practice to write and translate out of your bilingual comfort zone. True story.