A New Year's Wish

                              ... for each and every one of you!

Source

I found this in a wonderful book called The Akhenaten Adventure many years ago. I remember falling in love with many a passage in the book, and here is one of my favourites:

"May you get all your wishes except one, so you'll still have something to strive for."

There is a next line in the wish, too, and I have already posted that in this blog post from a while back.

It is somewhat strange that we have once more turned a full circle - that we will, in a few hours, stand at the beginning of a new year. I have turned the last page in my diary, and so, tomorrow, I will start all over again from scratch. Many good things have happened this year. Many sad. Hundreds of memories have been made, and most of them shared with someone special. I try not to take things for granted. I am grateful for the past and still curious of the future. I am loved, too. A lucky girl, all things considered.

I wish you all  A Happy New Year.  I do hope you will experience the greatest year yet. I have faith in you finding happiness in a great many little things. Be well. Be loved ❤

An excerpt from The Akhenaten Adventure

A Discovery of Witches

Tonight I am reading a book that has been in my possession for a long time. I have planned to read it several times in the past, but somehow I never got around to do it. The fact that it is the first book in a trilogy where the third book is not due until the summer may have had something to do with it, though. I do have book two in my shelves, so if I read them both slowly I might even get around to book three! That would be really something.

That is me in a nut shell, you see...if the series have unpublished books, I have a tendency of neglecting to read the last volumes - not because I do not want to, but simply because I move on to books I have not yet read while I am waiting, and then I figure out, at some point, that I have to reread the first books in preparation for the last books - and, well, guess what? One thing leads to another and then I just cannot seem to find the time to reread those books I have already read as there are sooooo many new ones on my tbr-list that I am ever so curious about! I am impossible, I know.

Right. Back to the book.

It is called "A Discovery of Witches" and is, as you now know, the first book of a trilogy named "All Souls". Witchcraft, libraries, old forgotten manuscripts...what more can you desire? Oh, creatures, of course. You did not think there would only be witches, now did you? Of course not! There are four different types of creatures in this trilogy, and although our main character is a witch, the other ones come in to play as well. There might even be some love in the air, although I have not gotten that far into the story to be able to tell for sure. I do have a sneaking suspicion, however. Set in Oxford, with a magnificent library as a backdrop and wonderful alchemical texts as the center of attention, I have every hope of this being a great story.

Here is a teaser from the main characters childhood:

"Sarah didn't tell him about the voices, about my habit of picking up the phone a good minute before it rang, or that she had to enchant the doors and windows when there was a full moon to keep me from wandering into the woods in my sleep. Nor did she mention that when I was angry the chairs in the house rearranged themselves into a precarious pyramid before crashing to the floor once my mood lifted."

excerpt from A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, p. 9

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Have a great Sunday, everyone!


More teasers (although a few weeks old this time, due to Christmas):
Flukten fra virkeligheten
Should Be Reading

Meeting a friend

A Christmas holiday to me is visiting friends and family. Although I could not go home this year, I had the luxury of meeting a dear friend at a café just before I had to leave for work. Would you believe it was raining outside? I sure had problems believing my own eyes, but there you go. Rain five days before Christmas, when there ought to be snow all around!

To make up for it a hot chocolate and carrot cupcake was in dire need ❤

...and Christmas presents, obviously!

It was indeed a good day - and I wish you the same for today.

It has been a while.

It has been more than a while, actually, since I wrote my last post. So much have happened these last two months, and my life is left not quite the same.

For a start I am not even at home. This is the first Christmas I have spent at work, away from my family. It has been strange, being here on my own, not really having much of a Christmas celebration. Strange knowing my family is spending the holiday together without me, doing all the usual things that we always do back home. Strange seeing and hearing about it all from a distance, only through pictures and phone lines. I have missed out on the little stories, the laughter and the late nights. They even have a puppy in the house that I have yet to meet! Apparently it is a little bundle of energy that is crashing through the house, frightening the cat into my parents bed - where it is not allowed, mind - and doing all sorts of mischief. My sister now has to get up in the mornings, which I find rather amusing as that is really not her cup of tea.

Most of all, though, I miss my grandma. She was a presence in my life that is now gone, a source of happiness and family stories from days long past and a place to go to. She was always there - and now she is not. I am still finding it hard to fathom that she no longer sits in her rocking chair with a crossword or three by her side, pondering a difficult word or browsing one of her dictionaries, or that I will never hear her voice again or record one more story. So much is lost with her. Her memories span across nearly a century, and the way of life she knew as a child is now nothing but whispers on the wind.

I have all this spare time now, too - time I used to spend with her. Time I have yet to figure out what to do with. Time is a funny thing.

"Each moment is a word of glass;

Each life, within a bubble sealed."

poem by Nicholas Gordon

Walking forward
Source: Jan Tajcnar

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas - wherever you may find yourself.

Cherish each moment.