Raining and snowing

Wet, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today we get a little bit of rain, a little bit of snow. Temperature is above freezing, snow is melting and sliding down from roofs. Next two days are predicted to be warm also, but then it will get colder again.

I have been reading a lot during the recent days. Yesterday I finished two books: Hit and Run by Lawrence Block and The Overlook by Michael Connelly. Crime fiction both - good dialog, interesting characters, clear writing. I admire Block especially, he makes writing seems so effortless, although what he manages to do is really hard to achieve. Next on the list, some science fiction.

Update: I read Robert Silverberg's short novel "Sailing to Byzantium", which is one of his most well known works. The book refers to a similarly titled poem by William Butler Yeats. I liked the story, although it has been revisited in some other stories of Silverberg.

Silverberg has been for me a difficult writer, ever since I first read him in high school. The book I read then was Downward to the Earth, and I didn't like it much. But the story stuck in memory. Later I read some other books by him which I really liked, for example books in the Majipoor series. But I think it would be nice to reread Downward to the Earth at some point. I think some of his books are too artificial - a common problem in science fiction - and the writing is sometimes plodding. But at his best he is great.

Today I wasn't much interested in photography, perhaps due to the wet weather. Maybe tomorrow is better. But there is a lot of stories to be read in case photography does not interest.