I dag er det altså 20 år siden Are skrev den første posten på calcuttagutta.blogspot.com, noe jeg tilfeldigvis la merke til da jeg var innom for å slå opp i julekalenderen jeg skrev i 2010, som forklarer norske juletradisjoner. (Jeg har et par nye kollegaer fra henholdsvis Canada og Tyskland som følte at de godt kunne vite litt mer om norsk jul.) Og da dukket altså 10årsjubileumsposten opp i boksen for gamle artikler. Jeg ser jeg var litt optimistisk omkring det fremtidige aktivitetsnivået for 10 år siden, det har nok vært betydelig slappere enn jeg hadde håpt, spesielt fra min side.

På et par ulike måter føler jeg tiden har løpt litt fra konseptet intern gruppeblogg, som dette hovedsaklig har vært. Facebook har sikkert mye av skylden (både her og for andre mer generelle trekk i samfunnet). For min egen del har også mye av motivasjonen for å skrive vært å dele noe litt morsomt, og periodevis har Instagram vært en enkel og grei kanal for å få delt en morsomhet eller noe man har gjort. Nå har jeg riktignok mistet litt interessen for instagram i det siste, både fordi de stadig flytter knappen for å poste bilder, og fordi jeg er litt skeptisk til ymse nye brukervilkår, men for min egen del velger jeg altså å skylde litt på Instagram for å få meg ut av vanen med å blogge.

Min mest brukte kommunikasjonskanal med venner for tiden er egentlig Signal, der vi har en liten men ...

Jeg slumpet tilfeldigvis til å legge merke til at for fem år siden slumpet jeg tilfeldigvis til å legge merke til at fem år før der igjen hadde jeg skrevet om kaffesnobberi på jobb. Som for fem år siden er jeg overrasket over hvordan tiden flyr, og samtidig over hvordan tiden står stille. Det er nå litt over ti år siden jeg begynte å jobbe etter endt utdanning, og de ti årene har lært meg en del, ikke minst om kaffe.

For fem år siden skrev jeg at når jeg så tilbake på fem år før der igjen virket ikke det jeg drev med den gangen som kaffesnobberi. På en måte føler jeg at endringen de siste fem årene ikke har vært like stor. Når det gjelder tilgang på kaffebønner er situasjonen i Trondheim ganske lik nå som for fem år siden. Jacobsen & Svart leverer kvalitet, den gang som nå, og Sellanraa har som regel et variert og bra utvalg av bønner både fra lokale (Pala, Kaffi, Langøra), mer perifere (Jacu, Fuglen, Tim Wendelboe), og sågar internasjonale (Coffe Collective) brennerier. Når det gjelder tilgang til en god cappucino har faktisk verden gått bakover i Trondheim siden før corona. Hvis man hadde lyst på en cappucino før job i 2019 kunne man få det både på J&S og Sellanraa, som begge åpnet 07.30, og det var heller ikke noe problem å gå på kafé på en søndag. Nå for tiden åpner J&S klokken 9, og Sellanraa klokken 10, og ...

Another weird year. Pandemic aside, I had migraines most of the year, and reading was at times a tricky prospect. I grasped my chances with both hands, and selected books carefully. Still, as is tradition now, here is my selection from what was already a good list.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- Michael Chabon
Who does not love a chess murder mystery? And the name of Emanuel Lasker is one to conjure with. So when Chabon's novel opens with a man by that name found dead in a hotel room, alongside a mysterious unfinished chess game, it was clear this was for me. But the book also wraps this in so much delightful texture, spurred by its counterfactual setting in an Alaska in which a Jewish temporary homeland is coming to an end. I loved the turns of phrase, the descriptions of chess, and the reminders of obscure Jewish sects I learnt about as an undergraduate. Above all, I love (minor spoiler) that the murder was zugzwang. I will read this again.

Capitalism: A Ghost Story -- Arundhati Roy
I find I like Roy's essay style as much as her fiction. I appreciate her willingness to highlight the links between rampant capitalism and nascent fascism, the machinery of war and inequality. It is heartening in a Luxembourgian fashion. And while its focus is India, it demonstrates the international nature of this beast. I came late to this book, but it is no less on point half a decade later ...

A decade ago (good grief) I wrote an overview of my reading since 2000, and as we now write 2021 I take it it is time to repeat the exercise. Fair warning: this may primarily be of interest to me, but I like keeping record. This is a decade in which I have completed my PhD and worked in higher education here and there, and also one in which I have made an effort to include more diversity in my reading list.

Apart from the PhD stuff, my reading in 2011 was heavily shaped by a reading challenge in which I had to read six genres and according to a variety of other criteria. I discovered some books it might otherwise have taken me longer to find, like the utterly amazing Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. I also started my Kazuo Ishiguro binge this year, as well as a Le Carré one, and reread all the Dickens books I had not read since I was a kid (and in retrospect, I am fairly sure those had changed) because I came to Trondheim and was given charge of a Dickens course. I also discovered Angela Carter, David Mitchell, and Neal Stephenson, and Marvel through Gaiman's Marvel 1602. And I continued to pick up non-fiction on the outskirts (or outside my field) because there is something deeply relaxing about that, and Naphy's Born to be Gay stuck with me.

With the arrival of 2012, I was teaching and in the ...

Weird year. I spent most of trying to write a book, trying (failing) not to read the news, and winding down with books that were sufficiently familiar to help me forget about work at the end of the day.

The Sea Cloak & Other Stories -- Nayrouz Qarmout
Reading this collection of short stories drawn from Palestinian experience, while sitting in a lovely little café in Hampstead in January was discordant, but the stories were very good. The title story reminded me a little of Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', with a twist, which may have been intentional. The tone and rhythm of the rriting, and the occasional jarring intrusion of war was very effective. I also liked the tension she sets up between the violence of war and the violence of gender and social expectation. The way hopelessness builds as completely normal plans and desires are frustrated, fruitless, leading to radicalisation or despair.

Single & Single -- John Le Carré
David Cornwell died this December, which means Le Carré did, too. This was the latest of his that I read (I had waited a while, as my mother once told me I was too young and I tend to assume that applies in perpetuity). I love his tortured spies who have hidden away in out-of-the-way lives/careers, the lawyer who knows his business to the fingertips, and the father/son dynamic. It reminds me a little of Perfect Spy in that respect. Also, I am a sucker for any book that ...

When we were eight or so, my friends and I had a detective club. One of the mysteries we tried to solve was the murder of Olof Palme. Like many others, we were unsuccessful. Possibly because our methods (after reading all we could find on the subject) were hanging around the local museum and the window outside the teachers’ lounge, looking for suspicious activity.

We used very similar methods for determining the identity of Nessie, the existence of aliens, and the theft or destruction of something at the local museum. Come to think of it, we had some fairly plausible theories about one of the teachers and a stationery racket which I am not sure were altogether wrong.

I am fairly sure my life-long obsession with stationery comes from the fact that writing implements and writing books were all hidden away in the basement, where we were not allowed, inside a cupboard we had no access to.

How do I know there was a cupboard in the basement and that the cupboard contained stationery, you ask? Well...

Sometimes the door was left ajar. And we WERE detectives.

This should have been posted on the 8th, but I forgot to crosspost from Circumlocuted. Sorry.

Mrs Tope's care has spread a very neat, clean breakfast ready for her lodger. Before sitting down to it, he opens his corner-cupboard door; takes his bit of chalk from its shelf; adds one thick line to the score, extending from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom; and then falls to with an appetite.

When Charles Dickens finished the penultimate chapter of the sixth instalment of Edwin Drood, on this day 150 years ago, those were the final words he would ever write.¹ Later that evening he had a stroke, and he died the following day without regaining consciousness. While Dickens the man got up from his desk, dined, complained of a toothache and asked for the window to be closed before dying, Dickens as author dies with the final words of Edwin Drood.² His final novel is indissolubly linked with its author's death, not least because the premature end to the life is the cause of the premature end to the text. Sometimes, there is speculation that it was the other way around: that the novel killed its author. I have written about the narrative significance of Dickens' death elsewhere.

The propinquity of the last words of the last work and the death lent them some of the sanctity of the grave. Fans and ...

If you google "pockets" (or at least, if I google "pockets"), the top thingy leads you to a menswear designer. Which I think is rather rubbing it in.

Women's trousers famously have completely ludicrous attachments which do not deserve the name, but if like me you happen to have given trousers up as a bad job (because, really, how much time is one expected to spend trying the damned things on?), and decided the future is skirt-shaped, things are even worse.

Skirts and dresses don't just have useless pockets -- quite often there are no pockets at all! Which means, if I leave my office to buy lunch and do not want to lug a handbag or a large wallet around -- or carry a lone card which you know I would leave at the first available flat surface -- my option is basically stuffing the thing up my sleeve. Which is inelegant, to say the least. And should I also want to bring my phone, well...

Hence the sewing machine.

That is a lie. I got the sewing machine because I am short and at 15 I saw the future before me. But it has proved useful. Also because of the pockets.

Sources are unclear on whether the reason for the lack of pockets is a) that they ruin the silhouette (what?), b) that they are too expensive (really?), c) that they are trying to force us into buying handbags (I will murder you in your sleep), or d) that ...

I have decided to repeat last year's stocktaking/recommendations exercise. It seems like a good way to ensure I manage at least one blog post each year. Following last year's rather white, male year, I once again resolved to read more women of colour, and did. Paying attention to structural inequality helps you do something about it. Here are some of the ones that stuck with me the most this past year. I could happily have recommended all I read last year, so I have made some hard choices.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy -- Cathy O'Neill
There is a tendency among people in power (and middle managers the world over) to think that if a computer spits out a number it comes express from divine truth. There are few things that scares me more. This book gives a good account of how the abuse of algorithms by people who believe they are objective leads to spiralling inequality and injustice. It should be mandatory reading despite her tendency to reach for baseball to help her explain things. Some of it is particular to the American context (which seems to be ahead of the curve when it comes to spiralling into dystopian nightmares), but that does not make it less relevant. It is not a technophobe's book, though: there is a faint glimmering hope that if people could get their act together, the same algorithms could be a force for good ...

Under årets jazzfestival begynte jeg å legge merke til at jeg kjenner igjen en del navn på jazzmusikere. Nå er jeg ikke spesielt flink til å oppsøke ny jazz det meste av tiden, men de siste årene har jeg vært ganske ivrig til å gå på konserter på Moldejazz, og det har altså begynt å betale seg i form av en følelse av begynnende oversikt. Jeg ergret meg derfor over at jeg ikke tok meg tid til å blogge om jazzfestivalen i fjor (eller noe særlig annet i fjor, for den saks skyld), så her følger et forsøk på å rekonstruere Moldejazz 2018 fra hukommelsen (godt hjulpet av mobilbildebiblioteket mitt).

På mandagen gikk vi (som vanlig) på jazzåpningen i Aleksandraparken. Jeg husker ikke noe av ordførerens tale, men jeg antar han sa noe om næringslivet, og om at det er bra at vi en gang i året slipper til musikk som kan provosere litt. Jeg husker imidlertid talen til artist-in-residence Maria Schneider, som snakket godt og engasjert om problemene med finansiering av musikkbransjen. Hun snakket for eksempel om hvordan det kun er noen veldig få, meget populære artister som får godt betalt av Spotify. De aller, aller fleste får bare utbetalt bittesmå tøysebeløp. Jeg mener å huske at hun nevnte et eksempel på at noen hadde fått en sjekk på under 1 dollar.

Dette er egentlig et veldig interessant tema. Om jeg har forstått det riktig, så betaler Spotify et fast beløp per avspilling til rettighetsholderne. I følge denne siden ...