Adrian’s picture of the road to school. They’re working with a traffic theme at school.

An interesting combination of detail in the important parts (such as the “no parking” sign next to our house, and the shape of the house, and the schematic map of the schoolyard, and the two alternative routes between them) and lack of detail in everything else.

In the evening, when they’ve done their things and run out of screen time and bedtime is approaching, the kids often come to me, looking for company. Often I am tired at that hour. Sometimes too tired to want any company, but not always. So then we do something quiet. With Adrian, it’s often reading. Sometimes with Ingrid as well. Or we may work on a jigsaw puzzle, or colour together.

I’m binge reading Brandon Sanderson. I really enjoyed the Mistborn series, and the first book in the Epics series, but I’m not enjoying the rest quite as much.

Mistborn is an example of a (fantasy) book series that gets growing scope right. What I mean with “growing scope” is the way series tend to start with a small story that hints at a wider world and larger events, and then gradually the characters in the book learn more and see more and do more, and we follow along, and we end up somewhere grand.

Done well, it all happens naturally. Each step that the characters take is obvious, natural, almost inevitable – given the character’s personality, surroundings, past experience etc. And before you know it, you’ve gone from reading about a street brat to saving the world.

Done badly, growing scope feels like the author just desperately keeps piling on more stuff, each addition more dramatic than the last, in the hope of keeping your attention. But the added parts feel disconnected and overdone, and never cohere into a believable whole.

Exhibit one: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Book one was great: a girl with a magical object sets out to rescue her friend, makes friends, overcomes obstacles. The rest of the series was just silly. Let’s add angels! And magic weapons! And soul-eating ghosts! And alien intelligent animals! And the land of the dead!

Exhibit two: Mercedes Lackey’s Dragon Jousters. Again, book one was great. A slave boy taking care of dragons for a bunch of dragon-riding warriors dreams of having his own dragon. And again, in subsequent books it all spirals out of hand. Give the boy a noble girlfriend! Who can talk to dragons! And let’s make his friend a prince! And add impending war! And super evil magicians! No, that wasn’t evil enough, let’s make them even more evil! What started out as a low-key, believable story about a boy and his efforts to make his dream come true, turns into an over-the-top pile of ridiculous drama. It manages to be predictable and not believable at the same time.

Back to the good stuff, though. Mistborn gets it right. The story starts off with a street brat, and one thing leads to another – a new gang, an ambitious leader with an audacious plan – and before you know it, they’re trying to kill the God Emperor.

And even though this world also turns out to have super evil magicians, and even though the street brat ends up trying to stop the end of the world instead of a plain and simple war, somehow it’s all believable. The characters are believable instead of crude simplifications. The good ones aren’t “heroes”, perfect in all ways except for that one charming weakness that is thrown in to make them look human. And the evil ones turn out to not actually be evil.

The secrets are uncovered gradually, going from suspicions to hints to vague sightings and then to final understanding. And in the end, the parts all tie together – once you see the big picture, all the parts are so obviously right. Everything just had to be this way and no other, because it all makes sense.

I also like the magic system in these books. I have a fondness for books where magic has a system and makes sense, rather than being made up of hand-waving and random words. The magic in these books is not only unique – it is also logical and has obvious limitations and weaknesses as well as interesting implications. (Another example of magic with logic is Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books. And another example of totally unique magic is N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth.)

Anyway. To cut a long story short: the Mistborn books are great and you should go read them.

Mall of Scandinavia, colloquially known as MoS (which means “mush” or “mash”) is the latest, greatest mall to open on our side of town. It is huge. Which is good in a way, because it means the mall has so much choice, including several stores that we’d otherwise have to go all the way to central Stockholm for. And it has a good choice of restaurants, which many other nearby malls and shopping centres really neglect. (I’m talking about you, Barkarby!)

But I just don’t feel comfortable there. Even though it has small seating areas and plants and cafés, and a fountain, and cool decorations, it’s just so large that I end up feeling lost.

And somehow, despite its size, it often manages to be overcrowded. I suspect it’s due to the equally giant arena next door. Today we happened to visit MoS together with hundreds and hundreds of football fans, because it turned out that a major game was due to start in the arena a few hours later. Nice for the shops, not so nice for the shoppers. I found it really stressful.

The one argument for going to MoS rather than any of the alternatives is the multitude of Pokemon Go gyms and stops. Mos is littered with sponsored pokestops, and many of the people walking around don’t appear to be doing any shopping at all, just catching Pokemons. You can recognize them by their distracted air, and the fact that they all have their phones connected to power banks.

We finally bought a much-needed new bike for Ingrid. The old one went straight to Adrian. Which says something about how small the old bikes were for both of them!

All of a sudden, standing next to a large bike, Ingrid herself looks older and bigger, somehow.

Quite a different design, compared to what he has built in the past.

Adrian ploughs through the old issues of Bamse comics we have, again and again. But only the ones that are in binders, for some reason.

The binders are a decent way of storing the magazines – the alternatives are worse. But putting the magazines in them is a pain. And they keep falling out, the way Adrian handles the binders. I wish there was something more solid and permanent, but given the cost of these magazines, it’s unlikely.

On his way home from a birthday party.