The covers of most of his books have a sticker saying “The next Stieg Larsson”, which probably helps his sales figures a lot, being able to cash in on the success of “The girl with the dragon tattoo” et al. They do have a bit in common, in terms of being translated Norwegian books about investigators who are misfits. But other than that, they differ quite a bit.

Harry is a mostly former alcoholic, a detective who does things his own way and doesn’t really get on with most of the police force (now that I write that, it doesn’t sound very original, but it does work, honest). In this second book, he is brought in by the robberies unit because a bank robbery included the murder of a cashier, and an ex-girlfriend commits suicide hours after he is the last one to see her alive. The book entwines the 2 investigations as he pursues the truth through a complex and tortuous path.

I really liked this book, as I liked the first one (Redbreast). Nesbo’s characters are nearly all misfits in some way, from the police to the suspects. There’s not a lot of happiness in his world. But the books are real page-turners, and I sat up fairly late a few nights this week wanting to get to the end.

I’m not a major reader of crime fiction, but I like this. Recommended!

So off I headed on the red route. The rain wasn’t heavy, so I sat upstairs in the open air, on the basis that sitting in the drizzle was still better than walking in it. The red route took me round many of the places I had already walked, but it was nice to get the commentary and find out a little more about them. Though the bus had fundamental problems when the rain got heavier and I had to go downstairs – the windows were covered in adverts for the bus, and you couldn’t actually see the sights through them! When we got to the big square in the middle of the city, I shifted onto the blue route, which took me up towards Tibidabo. This is the hill I could see in the distance from my hotel room, with the huge telecoms mast and cathedral (there’s a picture back here).

Once I got there, there was a tram, and then a funicular railway to get to the top, but that involved a lot of tiresome waiting, and the rain had stopped, so I set off walking instead. That started off well, but I ended up climbing up a mountain bike trail rather than a walking path. But nonethess, I got to the top eventually, after a climb of 3.5 miles (according to my fathful GPS tracking phone).

The cathedral at the top doesn’t get a lot of respect because of Gaudi’s masterpiece down in the city, but I still thought it was rather splendid.

At this point, you are quite high up, and there’s a great view of the city. But there is a lift to take you you to the roof of the cathedral, and then some more stairs that take you to here.

As you can imagine from here, at Jesus feet, you’re a long way up! Unfortunately, it was a bit hazy up there (probably inside a cloud), so the pictures of the city aren’t really clear enough to show much, but it was a magnificent view, and it’s worth a visit.

I got the funicular back down the hill and got back on a tour bus for the rest of my jaunt round the city, then closed off my evening with dinner in a nice restaurant near La Rambla (though ending with a disappointing creme brulee, so I had to go and get an ice cream to have a satisfactory ending to my day).

Anyway, I got all dressed up for the rain and headed off.  Again, I had got up late, so I was keeping my eye out for places to eat brunch. Ended up having paella just across the road from my main destination for the day – La Sagrada Familia, otherwise known as Gaudi’s Cathedral. As I had expected, the location made the food was a bit more expensive, but it was dry and that was the main thing.

And then over the road to admire Gaudi’s masterpiece. And you know what, it really did impress me. The concept behind it impresses me, of a building so ornate and massive that it takes generations to complete – there’s a visionary quality to just embarking on a project on those terms. To start on something, knowing that you will never complete it, but depending on later generations to continue your plan is the kind of long-term planning that is basically extinct these days. Apart maybe from some mortgages…

Anyway, I approached it from this side, the eastern facade, which shows the story of the nativity.

On a picture this size, you just have no chance of seeing the detail. But it is a great piece of sculture, on a huge scale. My favourite part is the slightly incongruous tree up at the top between the towers with birds nesting in it, which represents the church. It brings a touch of humour, or humanity or something to a huge stone building.

This side was where I started queuing, and then ended up at the west side, which represents the crucifixion, in a completely different style of art.

Again, you can’t see the detail, but it is very impressive in reality. However, this picture misses out my favourite part – in the second picture you can see the spires, and up near the top, behind some green netting of some sort, you can just about make out the statue representing Jesus’ ascension shows him sitting on a crossbeam like a builder taking a break. Again, it’s suspiciously like humour!

And no, there is no way of getting a picture of the building without cranes in it. And it’ll be that way for years!

But they have finished the inside, and it is a beautiful place. This is the inside of one of those facades.

And this is the view towards the front of the building from the back.

I especially like the way that the columns branch out to support the various levels of roof. On a horrible wet day, it was a lovely place. It occurs to me that it could only be a religious building – no-one is ever going to put so much effort into making a conference centre, or a city hall, or an airport so beautiful. The pictures don’t do it justice at all, so if you’re ever in Barcelona, just go an see it. You’ll not regret it (despite the fairly steep entry price). And for the record, the towers were closed, so I couldn’t go up and enjoy the view from the top.

The rain did ease off a bit as the afternoon continued, so I did some more wandering around until I couldn’t walk any more, then got the metro back to my hotel, and had dinner just round the corner. Some rather messy but very nice seafood in the Eden restaurant.

As predicted by the weather forecasters, it was raining when I got up. The good news is that I was expecting it, so I put on my new waterproof walking trousers, my waterproof coat, my big thick socks and my waterproof walking boots, and off I went, as waterproof as I could be.

However, I have to admit that I was a really bad tourist. The plan was to head for La Rambla, and have breakfast/lunch there. I fancied nice local tapas, but the rain got so hard that I ended up taking shelter in a sandwich shop until it eased a bit. And the highlight of the menu was the “British bacon” sandwich. With chips. Very authentically Spanish Oh well. By the time I came out again, it was a bit drier, so it was worth it.

Off to one side of La Rambla (the most famous street in Spain apparently), I found Barcelona Cathedral. The actual Barcelona Cathedral – possibly not tjhe one you’re thinking of.

I love visting cathedrals – I think they are brilliant places. I love the space, the peace, the architecture, the craftsmanship – all the things that makes cathedrals and temples kind of unique. And yet cathedrals are odd places. Yes, it is a Christian place of worship, but it is so different to my own experience of what a church is that I find them hard to relate to. I suspect that the only golden objects in my church are the jewellery of the members! My church is also only 39 years old. Take it from me, it’s not much like Barcelona Cathedral! In contrast to that, I also visited the Estrella del Mar church later in the day. It’s much less ornate, with a lot less gold and furniture. But it turns out that’s because it was all destroyed as punishment by the victors when Barcelona was on the losing side in a battle. But ironically, I thought it gave it a really nice spacious feel that it probably wouldn’t have if it had all of those original fixtures and fittings!

I also visited the beach, where they have free WiFi! Imagine! Free WiFi at the beach! This must be the 21st century after all!

And then pasta for tea, in a very nice fresh pasta restaurant near La Rambla, and ice cream from an ice cream shop there too. Got the metro back to the hotel, with tired legs. A wet, but very enjoyable day.

Okay, now that I have gone back to add the pictures, I have to add what was the photographic highlight of the day. Very cute!

Once again I was reminded just how good The Walking Dead is, my own personal in-flight movie on my android tablet. Yes, it is gory and unpleasant in places, but it’s great TV.

Arrived to find the Barcelona weather much better than expected, which was a nice surprise. So jumper off and short-sleeved shirt on. A straightforward and cheap (3.60€) journey on the train took me to Sants station, and if I had taken the right exit, the hotel would have been right in front of me. Of course I used the wrong exit, but the hotel was still very easy to get to. My room is on the 15th floor, and has a splendid view over the city.

But it was only when I left the hotel when I realised how good it is – just a short walk and I was at some splendid buildings, towers and fountains which turned out to be the Montjuic area of the city. Really beautiful architecture, much of which dates to 1929 and a grand exhibition (I will resist slagging comparisons with the millennium dome, as I am secretly quite fond of it).

Behind that, the Olympic Park, from 1992. Behind that, the cemetery, which I thought might be a castle. It wasn’t, but it was still very interesting – cemeteries are multi-story here, and consist of stretches of wall with a niche per person, above 5 stories high. Which is why I thought they were castle walls. Then to the actual castle, where it started to get a bit cooler, and I started to worry about rain. But was quite pleased to find that I could see my hotel from there, as it
is a 23 story tower with a neon sign on the top!

Then a dander back towards the hotel, with a few stops to select a restaurant for dinner. And it was really excellent! I ate in the Filigrana restaurant, where they kindly gave me the lunchtime set menu, even though it was nearly 9:00, as I hadn’t realised it was a lunch menu. Yes, what originally attracted me was the delightfully poor translation of the “candied bacon with outbreaks of spring”, but it really was a lovely meal – 3 1/2 courses and sparkling water with very attentive service (in perfect English) for €30 including tip. A great spot that deserves to be busier. And accompanied by a fresh new book on my kindle.

A great start to my trip!

I made the mistake of writing up blog posts offline, and then expected to just paste them up, but I discovered I can’t do that on my tablet, for reasons that are clearly tedious.

So rather than paste up all 5 at once, and blow the minds of readers who are only used to a blog post every few months, I’ll space them out over the next few days.

But just so you know, I am already home!

“The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone” has been sitting on my bookshelf for far too long (since my last trip to India in fact), but I finally got into reading it this year, and I am really glad that I did. Shashi Tharoor is a former UN diplomat, so he knows India, having grown up and spent much of his life there, but he also has enough of an outsider’s view that he doesn’t assume too much knowledge of the country for the international reader like me.

The book is a series of fairly short and easy to read essays on all of the major subjects of Indian life – politics, religion, history, economics, and of source cricket. What is clear is that the writer has his own opinions on Indian life, and although he loves his country and is very proud of it, he is honest about the good and bad of India in the 21st century. Although this is a forward-looking book, some of my favourite parts were about Indian history – the campaign for independance and the people who led it, the pain of partition, and the politics since then. I’ve always known a little about Gandhi, but not so much about Nehru and others, and I think my next non-fiction reading might be to find out more about them.

If the book has a central message, I think it’s the great diversity of India. When I was there, I was astonished by the profusion of languages as I travelled around, and wondered how a country could stay bound together without a single common language. But perhaps that question says more about me than India;  we struggle with division in Northern Ireland, even though it’s not that big and there aren’t that many of us. And Scotland isn’t much better these days…

His answer to that question is that India is at its best when it embraces the diversity that spans languages, religions, castes, ethnic types – pretty much everything. India is proud of its democracy, the massive exercise that ensures that votes are gathered from every corner of the country, and rightly so. And it’s proud of its secular society, where prime ministers, politicians, cricketers, and celebrities come from all of the different faiths.

India will be the most populous nation on earth before too long, and with its combination of science and technological leadership, and a massive diaspora of Indians all over the world, it’s a culture that we need to take notice of.

I really enjoyed this book, and it makes me want to find out more about a country that I have even greater respect for now.

He hasn’t changed since the last time I saw him – he still has no interest in talking (the only words he said all night were to thank the audience, and to get the audience to applaud the band). But he lets his music do the talking for him. As I remember from before, he leads his band all the way - waving at them, pointing, talking to them, directing the music. And he loses himself in it too, the head nodding, and applauding some of the solos.

But what made this concert special was that he doesn’t have a new album to sell this time round. So instead of new songs the audience doesn’t know, this was mainly old songs that we did know. But not as we know them. His band included a trombone and saxaphone, plus a part time trumpet and keyboard player (an odd combo I thought). So it went from having the feel of a jazz quartet when he joined in on his sax, to a solid horn section backing up the rest of the band (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, drums and more percussion) with brass stabs. As always, the arrangements were really good, with some really subtle details on muted trumpet and tinkly piano. He started with a great, really fresh version of brown eyed girl with very jazzy horns. My immediate thought was “Wow – he’s still got it. Michael Buble or Jamie Cullum could be singing that arrangement”. And I was really pleased about that, because Van is getting on a bit, but he can still do it. Other classics were Gloria, Tupelo Honey, Moondance, Sometimes we cray, and Have I told you lately. And others I can’t think of right now. All of them reworked and sounding fresh, and unpredictably performed by Van himself, when he gets stuck on a line or a word and uses his voice as an instrument, repeating whatever it is again and again. He’s also very unsentimental with his own songs – a lot of them end very suddenly, with no gradual run down at all.

I’ve got no pictures, because they would have been awful from my phone, because the staff were telling peopple off for taking them, and because I know Van hates that sort of thing. I fully expect to have sore neck in the morning from sitting at an angle for two and a half hours. But I don’t care. I still thank Van Morrison is great.

(And his daughter was pretty good too as a support act – she can sing!)

PS: Double Usefulness also enjoyed the gig, and you can read his review here. It’s probably better than mine ; )

• I’ve never watched less of the Christmas TV! Spent quite a bit of time with my wee nephew Mason, who was more entertaining than most things on tv, despite the fact that he’s only a few months old. Or perhaps because. Many photographs taken (some will make it to facebook).
• And much of the tv I did catch was on iplayer on my android tablet (Which worked very nicely).
• Was able to go out walking in the Mournes with the church walking group at the end of the year. About 8 miles, ending at Maud’s on the sea-front, which was an excellent ending. It was a wet day, but never miserable.
• Got out cycling on New Years Day and again the day after. Only 10 miles each, but better than not getting out at all. On the Sunday I got wet, on the Monday I got cold, but at least not both together.
• Went to a spin class for the first time, with my sister to her gym. Think of it as a cross between line dancing and cycling, with the same struggle to stay in rhythm with the music, to hear the instructions, and the hope that the music will somehow improve, but on a half-bike instead of dancing. It wasn’t actually that bad, and I went back again, so I did that twice!
• Bought and installed Skyrim for my PC. At level 6 right now, with my first dragon killed. Looking like a pretty good game so far.
• I unexpectedly ordered my next car today, for July when the lease runs out on my current one. That’s a very long way away, so I’m surprised to have got it all sorted out so quickly!
• Read an excellent book (on my kindle) – The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds. A bit of a prequel to the Revelation Space series, but a good standalone story in its own right.
• Since there was no snow, I did manage to catch up with a few folks, which is always good. Though as usual, not quite all of the people I had hoped to see. But some is better than none!

And those are roughly the highlights of the past couple of weeks.

The first one is:

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax (1979)
  Okay, I don’t think I ever had a copy of the original 1st edition DMG, but I have certainly read through it, and its many successors through to the current 4th edition. I love how Wired describe it as a book for building worlds. But be warned that much of the charm of the first edition was the crazy tables for all sorts of things, which are handled in the modern editions in a much less entertaining way.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (1979)
  An absolute classic, as a book, a radio series, or on tv. Really can’t be recommended highly enough – he really was a comic genius. Up until last week, I had the tv series on my iphone, for emergency watching in boring situations, since it couldn’t fail to cheer me up.
• Watchmen, Alan Moore (1986 to 1987)
  Yes, it’s unpleasant in places, and the whole Curse of the Black Ship thing is a bit random, but as a study in humanity it’s a rich and interesting book, which happens to be told in pictures as well as words. Though I do feel that the conclusion of the film actually improved on the original.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
  The first one on the list that I haven’t read. Though I did search for it on ebay last month, so there is some kind of intention to read it sometime. All I know is that it was a course text at Queens for the History and Philosophy of Science, wchi has always both attracted and repelled me…
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1985)
  I read this a lot of years ago, and I remember it as a gripping and surprising book. I also remember that the sequels were very different, and a bit disappointing.
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson (1992)
  Another one that I haven’t read – possibly next on my reading list.
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (1954 to 1955)
  The one, the only, the classic. I remember reading it as a young teenager, and getting a bit bogged down in the middle book, but it is a great set of books, with an important message - little people are important!
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte (1992)
  I’ve never even heard of this. Wired make it sound interesting, but I worry that it would only lead to fancy powerpoint slides. The one I am least likely to read.
• Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
  Again, one I haven’t read. I’ve heard of it, and I suppose I the right time to have read it was 20 years ago when it wasn’t at all dated. I rather suspect it will have aged a bit, in a way that he Lord of Rings hasn’t

And that’s all for the first list. Will get the second tomorrow perhaps.