Saturday, January 23

Libaries in Helsinki remain open, but only for borrwoing and returning books. To borrow a book you must order it online or pick one from a small table of new books. The bulk of the library stands off-limits because of the pandemic.

A couple of weeks ago I returned a library book and looked at the table of new and “featured” books. I could only find three in English and I chose Gun Love, a book I had not heard of by an author I had not heard of. I liked it a lot.

More interestingly, when I mentioned this to Mark in a Zoom conversation this week, he pointed out that we used to do this a lot as teenagers. He remembered that I bought the Clear Light album solely on the basis that I liked the cover and it had come out on Elektra records. He also remembered that the local post office used to have a rack of imported remaindered paperbacks and I first discovered Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith there.

Today I returned another book and, following the same principle, I took out two books: Long Shadow by Mark Mills, and a non-fiction book by David Quammen called The Tangled Tree. Choosing from a very small set of more or less random options has a lot to recommend it.

On the way back from the library I cross the bridge into Tallinninaukio and photograph the still-present Christmass decorations. Maybe they have become winter decorations.

I have taken to using an open source camera app on my phone, imaginatively called Open Camera. I experiment with the settings and get a somewhat unrealistic result. It does, however, capture the uniform greyness of the day.