Nilanjana Sudeshna “Jhumpa” Lahiri (born 1967) is a Bengali American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.
Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the Indian state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was three …
The stories are about the lives of Indians and Indian Americans who are caught between their roots and the “New World”.
London Rules is the 2022 book in the Slough House series — where the failed MI5 spies (Slow Horses) are sent when there is no way to fire them.
There are some mentions of Covid.
In London’s MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster—a specialist who advises the Prime Minister’s office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate—has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down.
But the trail leads him straight back to Regent’s Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence’s First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected? …
There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm …
I flew into Tromsø, Norway summer 2022. BUT Scandinavian Airlines left my bicycle sitting in Heathrow airport for 5 weeks. … And finally sent it back to Canada. ☹️
Making the best of it, I rented bikes in Tromsø and finally travelled by bus down to Lofoten.
I decided to try again summer 2023. And this time my bike and gear did make it to Tromsø.
Tromsø
Hoo hoo.
Cycling the north of Norway was my #1 goal following the pandemic.
Tromsø to Lofoten/ Bodo is the most interesting section, for me.
I spent 2 days in Tromsø getting the bike set-up and packing groceries. Then set off south on a Komoot app route I bought from guru Matthew of CycleNorway.com.
So far it’s mostly been the very popular Eurovelo 1 cycling route.
Day 1 — July 1st, 2023
To start I took a 64km detour 😀 to hike Brosmetinden. Beautiful weather. But WINDY.
That night I set up the tent at Grotfjord beach. Free and fantastic. By law you can camp almost anywhere in Norway at no cost.
Day 2 — July 2nd, 2023
I headed for quaint Hillesøya, a short detour off my route.
There’s a steep day hikeup Nordkollen that’s interesting. Rope and chain assist.
I stash my bike in the trees for these hikes.
I put the metal to the pedal to make it to a favourite campsite from the previous summer.
Fjordgård, Senja
Norway is expensive. I rarely eat at restaurants.
Camp cooking is great — but I do prefer having a picnic table.
Day 3 — July 3rd, 2023
Weather forecast was excellent for one of my main highlights of Norway. The Hesten / Segla hike.
I’d climbed Segla in 2022, posting my most experimental and worst VIDEO yet. 😀
From Segla I cycled south until reaching a tunnel temporarily closed to cyclists. After an hour or so of waiting around, two of us crossed by putting our bikes and gear inside vehicles.
This young German speed demon (140km/day) and I set up our tents at yet another amazing free government campsite called Ersfjordstranda outdoor recreation area.
Day 4 — July 4th, 2023
The great weather continued.
But for reasons unknown, this July Senja island was tortured by big, slow horseflies. I put on my rain suit for protection.
I was waiting for the ferry — FREE for cyclists in Norway — to the next island ➙ Andøya.
Weirdly, I never saw another horse fly. Only Senja island was plagued.
Early evening I came upon this surprisingly modern building.
An ultra modern toilet block. At a push of a button, those windows could be made opaque. Cool.
I decided to set up my tent. It was me and the sheep.
Day 5 — July 5th, 2023
The following day was long and uneventful. No hikes.
The bike and gear working perfectly, my main complaints were muscular soreness in the upper back and neck. I tried to take more short breaks. I’m in no rush.
Andøya is less popular with tourists. The bog better for peat and cloudberries.
So far as I’ve heard from cyclists, France is best set-up. Germany and Austria quickly improving.
Personally, I’d go to Germany next. In addition, Germany is offering a rail pass for tourists ➙ €49 / month for anywhere in the country. You could hop on some trains with a bike.
It follows U.S. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke as he unravels the mystery surrounding his unanticipated arrival in the small town of Wayward Pines, Idaho, following a devastating car accident. …
The residents of this picturesque town don’t know how they got there and are forbidden to talk about their prior lives. An electric fence surrounds the town, and the residents are under 24-hour surveillance. The mysteries and horrors of the town build until Ethan discovers its secret. Then he must do his part to keep Wayward Pines protected from threats both within and beyond the fence.
The series covers themes of isolation, bucolic Americana, time-displacement, man vs nature, human evolution, and cryonics. …
HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. …
I call this enshittification, …
Amazon, Facebook, Tiktok. All of them.
The Google search engine app on my phone is totally ‘enshittified’ — nobody could appreciate so many inappropriate advertisements.
Wikipedia is not enshittified.
Why?
It’s not based on advertising. Ads are the main reason the internet is getting enshittified.
I don’t suffer much because I have every ad blocker known to man working in the Chrome browser. I rarely see ads, except on my phone.
Facebook ads are hardest to avoid.
I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads in the middle of my videos.
In Slough House, the London outpost for disgraced MI5 spies, memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.
Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . .
And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible for killing a slow horse breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.
Jo Nesbø is a super popular Norwegian writer. But I don’t much like Inspector Harry Hole, the lead character of his dark crime novels. An angry drunk much of the time.
At the start of The Redeemer (book #6), Harry is on the wagon. And even attends AA meetings.
Harry is both Oslo Crime Squad’s most brilliant detective, and its most frustrating. He struggles with authority
… the assassin – calling himself Stankić – arrives in Oslo and kills a Salvation Army officer, Robert Karlsen, during a Christmas street concert. Stankić has a facial anomaly known as hyperelasticity, wherein his facial muscles can be manipulated voluntarily to stop people from recognizing him. …
When a murder attempt is made on Robert’s brother Jon, it is believed that the Karlsen family is being attacked. …
From there it’s a long, complicated plot. Well written.
Still … I’m not a huge fan of this series. I’m only reading it because I’m back in Norway.
London Rules is 6th in the Slough House series — where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers.
The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. If they can’t be fired for any reason, they are reassigned to work under Jackson Lamb.
Herron is a very funny writer. Most of the best lines are from Lamb who’s a bigoted, philistine, obese, spectacularly flatulent, alcoholic chain-smoker.
But smart. And loyal to his misfits.
Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman plays Lamb in the TV series.
In this book — the weakest in the series, so far — the head of MI5 is trying to protect the prime minister.
Politicians are corrupt and much mocked.
Over at Slough House, somebody wants to kill their tech geek, Roddy Ho. Nobody can imagine why.
The new book is also set specifically after the EU referendum.
Its antagonist, Dennis Gimball, is the UK’s leading Eurosceptic MP, with a wife who writes a tabloid column.
As in earlier books, which featured a floppy-fringed bicycling Westminster populist, Herron adeptly negotiates the rules of satire and the laws of libel to create fictional public figures who simultaneously hit more than one real-life bullseye.
During a series of terrorist attacks on Britain, Slough House detects a threat to Gimball, making the reader wonder whether the espionage rejects are capable of saving the politician and, frankly, whether we want them to. …
Rick McCharles 