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Continue reading →: The Heights on MelöyThe van is really lapping up the midnight sun, which will be with us until 30th July. My battery has never been so happy. It’s been almost cloudless today, until the late afternoon when some wisps have rolled in, but they only obstruct the sun momentarily. Less wind also today,…
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Continue reading →: The Heart In Winter by Kevin Barry
Barry gets better as he ages, so much so that here, almost every sentence is a work of art. Great books invite the reader to take a quote, like a photo, something to marvel at and remember the book by for years to come, in this, every paragraph bears such…
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Continue reading →: Island of MelöyThe van wound its way around the fjords a bit further north this morning, with the help of the Agskardet ferry to the small island of Furøy, linked to the mainland by a bridge. I camped here on my bikepacking journey south from Tromso in July 2016. I just looked…
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Continue reading →: The Gjerøya RidgeThe beach at Sandvika on the north coast of Gjerøya, recommended to me by Anders the farmer on the island, was an excellent place for a couple of days. Gjerøya is 9 square kilometres in size, and its year-round population, which is almost all based on the harbour on the…
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Continue reading →: The Island of GjerøyaAfter a chat with a couple of the locals, the old guy who gave me route information yesterday, and another guy with his young daughter who was working on his boat, I left the beach we had spent three days at and drove a couple of kilometres to the north…
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Continue reading →: Merrily to the Grave by Katherine Sully
Seventy years ago it is easy to understand how dark and disturbing literature fell quickly out of favour, and off the bookshelves never to return, if it wasn’t for hardworking folk like those at the Neglected Books website. Katherine Sully was such an author, and this, a very good example…
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Continue reading →: Belle by Georges Simenon
translated from the French by Louise Varèse This is the first of three romans durs novels set in Connecticut, where Simenon settled after divorcing his first wife and marrying Denyse.Rather than the sense of place being important, it is the time at which it is set, the late 1940s, early…
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Continue reading →: The Heights of RangsundøyaThere are three houses at the bay where I am parked, only one of them is lived in all year round. The other two are holiday homes. The guy came over and said hello not long after I arrived. I asked if it was okay to stay, and he had…
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Continue reading →: Antibodies
Germany 2005 This is far superior to the regular police versus serial killer drama, it is original and daring, moving into horror territory at times. The police have eventually captured serial killer Gabriel Engel. A small town policeman, Michael Martens, comes to interrogate him to see if a missing young…
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Continue reading →: Goldfish by Raymond Chandler
First published in Black Mask magazine in 1933 Marlowe receives a visit from his friend, Kathy Horne, who runs the cigar concession at the Mansion House Hotel across the street from his office. Kathy tells Marlowe about the Leander pearl heist. Two valuable pearls worth a quarter of a million…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 