1. We aren’t morning persons, and even when we’re up earlyish for work, at this time of the year the sun is up way before we are. Today the sun rises at 04:10 and sets at 23:09 in Bergen.
2. We have a west-north view, and we get spectacular sunsets.

I’m sure there’s lots more sunsets, and quite a few sunrises to see on the blogs of the other participants of Sunday Stills.

So here goes, a few sunsets from the last three weeks:

My niece Gørild took this with my camera on May 31st.

My niece Gørild took this shot too, just 24 minutes after the other one. My contribution has been to crop it and get rid of some lense distortion in Lightroom.

On Monday we had clear blue skies. I took an orchid outside, sprayed some water on the buds and had some macro fun. You can see the sunset through the drop and the actual sun is the bright half-circle at the bottom of the picture.

Another shot from the same session. My friends have said it reminds them of the monster in Alien and the “Eye of Sauron” in Lord of the Rings. Very cozy all…..

Thursday was miserable with lots of rain and I certainly didn’t expect much from the sunset. I’m glad I looked outside at the right moment. The ship looks like it’s being chased southwards on the fjord by the clouds behind it.

Last night I discovered the waxing moon floating along in skies lit in sunset pink. It was taken around 40 minutes after the actual sunset, but on 60,39° N sunset goes on most of the night around midsummer.

Tittel: Heaven
Forfattar: Christoph Marzi

Forlag: Mangschou
Sider: 379
Først publisert: 2009

Sjanger: Fantasy og kjærleik
Terningen landa på: 5

David Pettyfer jobber i en bokhandel i London. En kveld da han skal levere en pakke til en kunde, tar han snarveien over hustakene. Der finner han Heaven, ei ung jente som har fått hjertet sitt skåret ut av kroppen av to menn.

Dette er ei veldig bra ungdomsbok. Den er spennand med mange uventa hendingar. Når forteljinga tek til har delar av himmelen over London vore sakna i mange år, og det er interessant og spennande å vere med og finne ut kvifor og korleis himmelen kan komme tilbake. Alltid kjekt med fantasybøker som overraskar meg.

Eg likar både David og Heaven, dei er begge ressursfulle ungdommer frå uvanlege, men også forskjellige bakgrunnar. Romansen deira er truverdig og ikkje alt for klissete. Det er også ein del andre interessante personar i boka, spesielt skulle eg gjerne treffe igjen bokhandlararen som David jobbar for. Mannen som kutta ut hjarta på folk og som hadde døde menn som selskap var ikkje noko behageleg kjennskap. Snakk om ekkel type. Byen London er også viktig i handlinga, heldigvis.

Boka er faktisk ganske skummel. Trur eg ville synast at ei filmatisering var for skummel, men i bokform taklar eg det greit.

Eg veit ikkje om denne boka er enkeltståande eller meint som byrjinga av ein serie, men det er nokre lause trådar som kan tyde på at iallfall nokre av personane kan dukke opp i ei seinare bok. På tysk har denne boka undertittelen “Stadt der Feen” og eg ser at det no kjem ei ny bok som heiter “Memory: Stadt der Träume“, og eg tippar at dei iallfall har nokre få felles personar. Det kan godt hende eg les den og, iallfall dersom den får like gode omtalar som Heaven.

Omsetjinga er heilt grei, utan å merke seg ut på nokon måte.

For me this turned out to become a mix of new pictures and archive ones. Hope you enjoy them.

The moon over last weeks outdoor concert.

Puffy clouds in the north-east.

A familiar sight in our sky: airliner on approach to Bergen Airport, Flesland.

More puffiness. That dot in the middle never developed into anything to worry about. They usually don’t around here, we’re definitely not anywhere near tornado areas.

Sunsets though, we can do sunsets. The focus is supposed to be sky this week, but I needed to show the fjord too.

Full moon.

Flying through space. New moon with thin cloud veil back in March.

Comet PanSTARRS made its one and only visit ever to our solar system this winter. You can see it a little over half-way up in the sky. It was great fun getting photos of it. My camera and I spend a lot of time freezing outside for a few evenings.

]]> http://bloggbib.net/Tanz/?feed=rss2&p=5511 3 http://bloggbib.net/Tanz/?p=5435 http://bloggbib.net/Tanz/?p=5435#comments Mon, 27 May 2013 10:45:31 +0000 Mostraum http://bloggbib.net/Tanz/?p=5435 Continue reading →]]> Denne boka går som ein bitteliten farsott på norske bokbloggar for tida. Det var ikkje meininga å bli “in”, det berre skjedde. Men for ei søt lita bok å la det skje med!

Tittel: Ho tok av seg blusen og sa ho var bibliotekar
Forfattar: Bjørn Sortland

Forlag: Piggsvin
Sider: 205
Først publisert: 2012

Sjanger: Kjærleik, m/bittelitt krim
Terningen landa på: 5

Ho tok av seg blusen og sa ho var bibliotekar er ein roman om ugifte Ivar. Han er både fundamentalist og ekstremist. Ikkje berre trur han på den absolutte kjærleiken, han trur på ekteskapet også. Kosta kva det kosta vil.

Først tittelen: Den er jo berre så utruleg søt. Samtidig så er eg bibliotekar og rødma litt då eg sette denne på utstillingshylla på biblioteket mitt. (Det hjelpte jo heller ikkje at dama på framsida er ganske så sexy.)

Heile boka er igrunnen ganske så nusseleg (eg prøver no desperat å unngå å bruke “søt” for tredje gong), sjølv dei litt nifse bitane mot slutten. Det er både morsom og litt vemodig å lese om einsame kjærleiks- og ekteskapssjuke Ivar og måten han prøver å nærme seg Sonya på. Når ein er så erfaringsfattig på damefronten som Ivar er, så blir alle inntrykk veldig sterke. Og det er jo heller ikkje slik at Sonya kjem utan ei fortid.

Dette er inga lang bok, faktisk så er den mykje kortare enn talet på sider kan tyde på. Kapitla er korte, på 2-5 sider og boka er krydra med Øyvind Torseter sine herlige små skissar. Den har heller ingen lett forutsigbar historie. Ein trur ein veit kva som vil skje, men det stemmer ofte ikkje.

Gode greier!

My subject is the concert Murmurations with German Phase7 and some local musicians, singers and dancers. It was an outdoor concert at Festplassen in Bergen, arranged by Bergen International Festival. Great show!

Oh, and the stars above the stage in some of the shots aren’t stars, they’re flying stage lights. All of them equipped with four little propellers. Very cool and looked great too.

In Bergen, and along much of the Norwegian south- and west coast you keep seeing old white clapboard houses. Bergen has large neighborhoods dominated by houses like these. The tradition with white painted houses started around 1830. Back then white paint was more expensive than other colors like reds and yellows, so painting your house white was a sign of prosperity. Quite frequently it was only the front of the house that was painted white, one didn’t waste money on the parts that the public couldn’t see.

Looking into the story of white paint this week I also learned that it was Norwegians Peder Farup and Gustav Adolf Jebsen that in 1914 figured out how to commercially produce titanium dioxide whites, a pigment we still use today.

The pictures are both from Sandvikstorget in Bergen, a part of town that is completely dominated by white houses. The Statue is of Madam Felle, who ran a tavern here in the last half of the 1800′s. She’s also famous from a tradition Bergen song called “Kjenner dokker Madam Felle?” The sale of beer is mentioned in it, funnily enough.

The first two are of two different police cars. I think the police department is changing designs on the cars, the white one with red and blue stripes has the old design.

The next photo is an archive shot from March. March and the first half of April was really cold and dry around here. As a result we had a lot of brush fires. The fire just below our house was probably caused by kids playing with fire. Luckily we had no wind so the fire department managed to put it out without much trouble. It was a bit of a show for everyone in the neighbourhood though. Lots of cameras, not only mine.

Anyway… While figuring out what to read instead, and chosing The Garden of Evening Mist from the 2012 shortlist, I also glanced at the 2011 shortlist and discovered Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch.

Title: Jamrach’s Menagerie
Author: Carol Birch

Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 295
Originally published: 2011

Genre: Mainstream, Historical
The dice landed on: 6

Nineteenth-century London comes vividly alive in this story a street urchin named Jaffy Brown. After a close call with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals. As the years pass, Mr. Jamrach recruits Jaffy and another boy named Tim to capture a fabled dragon during the course of an epic three-year whaling expedition in the East Indies. But when a violent storm sinks the ship, Jaffy and Tim are forced to confront their relationship to the natural world and the wildness it contains.

In some ways this feels like reading three different books. The first part takes place during Jaffy’s childhood in the poorer parts of London. You can practically smell and feel the environment he lives in. It’s a hard life, but the description of it all manages to stay light hearted. The second part is his and Tim’s life at sea, from their first insecure and happy steps on deck of the Lysander to seasoned sailors to…. This part is also very physical in many ways. I really liked, and loathed, the whale hunting bit. Carol Birch described it so you could practically see, not to mention smell, the whole thing. The last part is Jaffy’s return to London, and his years after the trip with the Lysander. Again a great shift in the story from the two other settings.

Even though the mood differs in the different parts of the book there are things that stay with you all the way. Carol Birch writes beautiful sentences, and she manages to say a lot without wasting many words. The sensuous quality is also a constant, I always had the feeling that I could see, smell or hear what was going on in the story.

A lot happens in this book, a whole long life really, where we follow Jaffy from an innocent young boy to a seasoned man marked by some very harsh times. Despite this it doesn’t feel rushed, the important bits gets the time they need.

I also read the 2011 winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, but I like this one a lot better.