William Heaney is a middle-aged civil servant doing a job he doesn’t find particularly meaningful. In his spare time he deals in forged books, currently a fake first edition of something by Jane Austen. (Despite the title he’s not the forger, but he’s the one that organizes the forgery). He also writes poems that are published under the name of a friend of his (who’s young, good-looking, and likes publicity much better than William does).

(At this point it’s probably worth mentioning that the book is written under a pseudonym; the real author is Graham Joyce.)

The thing about William is that he sees demons around people, almost everyone he meets. It never becomes quite clear whether they exist or whether it’s just him, but that doesn’t really matter. The demons attach themselves to people as manifestations of their weaknesses, suffering, or failings, and one has recently become attached to him, too.

He’s divorced, his relationships with his kids are not exactly the best, and he has a bit of an alcohol problem. We also get flashbacks to his university time, which is when he first encountered demons, in an incident that he thinks left him doomed to suffering.

Sound depressing? It isn’t. He may be cynical but he’s also got a warm heart. He uses much of the proceeds from his frauds to support a charity for the homeless, as an atonement for what happened 20 years ago. And his current demon is one of love.

This is not exactly a recipe for fuzzy feel-good book but yet somehow it becomes a story of love and redemption. There is even a happy ending. William’s character is described with both depth and sympathy.

The book is a bit odd, doesn’t fit any category, but quite often that’s the kind of book I like best. This wasn’t a greatest-ever but it was a really good book.

Amazon US, Amazon UK.

River of Gods is set on the Indian sub-continent in the near future (around 2050). This future is an extrapolation of current trends in climate change, globalization, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.

The plot is complex, with numerous seemingly unrelated strands that nevertheless turn out to be essential in the end. There is everything from TV soaps with AI actors, to wars over water, seemingly alien artefacts in space, a technological breakthrough that appears to generate free energy, etc. Plus it all takes place in India, which adds another layer of complexity and chaos for me at least. I’d try to summarize it but to be honest I read this book several months ago and I’ve already lost my grip on the plot.

The delivery is fast and dense. Even now I can open the book at any random page and immediately be sucked in, for “just another page”. The flip side is that the book can feel pretty overwhelming at times. You have to hold on carefully and pay attention or you’ll be thrown off your raft. This is not a book you can read leisurely, a few pages at a time – you’ll forget what was going on and who was who.

There are fascinating characters, fast-paced action, and intriguing SF concepts. It’s a great book that I’m already looking forward to re-reading. It’s hard to do this book justice in a review this short. But if you like ambitious, sprawling, dense SF, don’t miss this one.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

Ingrid still insists on staying with me rather than going to preschool, and really is at her best behaviour almost all day long. It’s worked unexpectedly well.

She is starting to miss her friends, but as she pointed out herself, all but one of them are in a different group at preschool anyway, so she wouldn’t get to meet them much even if she did go there. I’ve decided to take her there anyway on Wednesday so I can go to playgroup with Adrian – bigger kids are not welcome there on baby days.

In the morning, a trip to the clinic for Adrian’s 5-month vaccinations and the inevitable weighing and measuring. (8.2 kg and 68.5 cm.) Then to the pharmacy to pick up a cortison cream for a patch of eczema he has, plus some cream against his cradle cap, which isn’t bothering us in and of itself, but it’s covering his eczema and making that hard to treat.

In the afternoon, grocery shopping and a visit to the library.

A contractor was scheduled to come here today to start put up scaffolding, so the builders can start working on the new roof. But this weekend we got the builders’ estimates for the remaining tasks. (We’ve been nagging at them since before Christmas about this. I guess paperwork and estimating isn’t their idea of fun.) And the roof came in at about twice their original back-of-the-envelope estimate, so we cancelled the scaffolding immediately. With the sums we’re now talking about, the new roof is not going to happen. Not because we don’t have the money but because it’s not worth it. As an investment, it would never pay for itself – we’d never get that money back if we had to sell the house. Had it been cheaper we could have done it anyway, just because we ourselves would be happier with the house that way, but not for this kind of money. We can think of many better ways to spend it. So it looks like we’re stuck with our shoe box of an extension. Sigh.

A day of the not-boring-but-exhausting kind. Friend P’s daughter’s christening in Spånga church. Nice ceremony, probably pretty standard, and then cake and coffee in a venue next door.

We walked and Ingrid cycled all the way there and back. Weren’t home until well past 5. Made it almost all the way home when the tiredness hit Ingrid like a brick in the head, and then an inexorable slide towards a total meltdown. I could see it coming but have never managed to avert one.

The first signs of impending meltdown often appear at just about the same distance from home: when she feels that she is almost there and can let herself go, relax whatever tight grip is holding her upright and collected.

I’d promised her pancakes for dinner; in the end she ate one and probably didn’t have the presence of mind to enjoy it much at all. Fell asleep in minutes.

It felt a bit weird, listening to the christening ceremony. The texts sound so nice and friendly, about welcoming the child into a community, being received with love, a kindly father figure, and so on. Except for the few slightly jarring, weirder parts about “delivering from the powers of darkness” (befria henne från mörkrets makt) and being “cleansed of the guilt of sin” (renade från syndens skuld). But I just cannot look past the rather hard-to-ignore fact that the thought of a father in the sky is nothing short of ridiculous. And don’t get me started on original sin.

Another day without preschool for Ingrid. We spent much of the day with a bunch of mums and kids (and one dad) that I’ve “met” via Sjalbarn, an online forum nominally about babywearing but really about anything to do with babies and kids. Since it’s got its roots and its name in the babywearing world, the members are a self-selecting group whose views on parenting generally sort of align with mine.

It was pretty chaotic. I didn’t count at the time, but I think we were a total of 6 parents and 10 kids aged 0 to 5, in one living room and kitchen. I’m not sure if I would describe it as “fun”, and definitely not as “relaxing”, but we definitely had no chance to feel bored.

Much of what remained of the day was spent travelling to and from that get-together. With a stop at the supermarket on our way home, we were away for over 8 hours in total. Ingrid fell asleep on the bus on the way home. Adrian also slept like a log. Both fell asleep for the night at about 7 o’clock.

Ingrid didn’t want to go to preschool today either. She said she wanted to be with me instead. We talked about it… I told her that I needed to go to town today for some urgent shopping, and would do a lot of walking. I needed to buy a christening gift, and had left the shopping way too late (the christening is this Saturday) so online shopping was not an option. And I told her that she’d probably get bored without her friends, and that she wouldn’t like all the walking I do. (“I haven’t got anything to do” and “My legs are tired” are two ever-recurring refrains here.) But she insisted that she would not complain about either of those things. Fine, I said, we’ll give it a try.

And would you believe it. Not a single complaint about either boredom or tired legs.

It took us a while to get to town – there were severe disruptions to the train traffic. Just as we were approaching the station I was so glad that we’d make it just in time for the next train… and instead we found out that that train was cancelled. As the time approached for the next train, there were messages about it being delayed, first 10 minutes, then 20. So instead of just making it, we waited over half an hour.

By the time we were in Stockholm Central it was almost lunchtime. Because it was so late I skipped some of the shops I had planned to visit. A quick visit to a jewellery shop (which had nothing nice), the children’s department at NK (where I found both a nice gift and some chewy toys for Adrian), then a sushi lunch, and finally on the way back to the station we stopped by at Krabat and Iris Hantverk. I think Ingrid quite enjoyed the shopping experience: toys and handicrafts and other fun stuff to look at. She probably wouldn’t have liked it as much if I’d been shopping for shoes or curtain fabrics. Well, actually, she might have liked that, too…

In the afternoon she didn’t want to go to her dance-and-play group either. We read a bit, she actually helped me hang laundry, and then played on her own for some time while I was making dinner etc.

Adrian was unusually cranky in the afternoon. Didn’t want to be carried or held, didn’t want his dummy or his toys, didn’t want to eat or sleep… I was getting really annoyed (pointless, I know, but I couldn’t help it) as I tried everything I could think of. Then he started screaming and finally I realized it was his tummy again. Felt really bad about being annoyed with the poor guy when he was in pain.

The only things I ate that I hadn’t cooked myself were one piece of bread, and the sushi lunch. The bread had all its ingredients listed and it was almost the most basic bread you could imagine: 2 kinds of flour, yeast, salt, sesame seeds. And I couldn’t see anything milk-like in the sushi either, no weird rolls with cream cheese or anything like that. According to the internet there’s no milk in surimi (“crab sticks”). What can it be?

This is really bad, because if I cannot even eat bread or sushi, what am I going to do for lunch in the future? Bring my own sandwiches every time?

Lousy night. Adrian kept waking up and then screaming – didn’t want to breastfeed, didn’t want to cuddle, didn’t burp or fart, just scream. I got maybe 5 hours of sleep in total.

In the morning, playgroup with Adrian. Around lunchtime, a long nap for both of us – except that he woke up crying in the middle of it. Luckily we both went back to sleep after a short while.

Ingrid didn’t want to go to preschool (and has been a bit unhappy about it for several days now). Together we came up with a solution for today at least: we asked if she could go to her old group, where 3 of her best friends are. She spent the morning there and was very happy about it.

In the evening Ingrid went to friend J for about an hour. At the same time Adrian, for the first time, consented to a hip carry (in the Connecta). So I got to cook dinner with no complaining children around me. Nice!

Even though he was really tired, Adrian had trouble falling asleep in the evening again which doesn’t bode well for the night.

Eric is away in London for two days.

Forgot to mention yesterday: I submitted my UK tax return. This year I am reporting 0 pounds income so hopefully I will not have to do one next year. (Last year I reported some minor interest income from our remaining UK bank account.)

Today was a relatively quiet day. Took the bus to Vällingby to buy a new fleece suit for Adrian (he’s almost outgrown the previous one) but couldn’t find any in the right size for a reasonable price. Will have to look at Tradera.

The builders erected a temporary wall across the living room. Looks pretty nice actually – they do solid work. The living room is a bit smaller now, and we’re squeezing in some furniture from the rooms we’ve had to empty, so it’s a bit tight, but not too bad. Cosy. Messy, too, for now. One of our windows ended up on the other side of that wall (intentionally, since it’s going to be moved and replaced) so it’s a bit dark, though.

Some fresh bookmarks from delicious.com:

• London Names – Smith, Smith, Smith, Patel, Patel, Patel, Begum, Jones.
• How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks – Tunisian Internet censors were in the process of stealing an entire country's worth of passwords. Facebook reacted.