This weekend I travelled from Oslo to my home town Tromsø, a two hour flight. I went to my brothers wedding and my nieces christening (a combined event). It was good coming back to Northern Norway, especially when going into a place called Lyngen, which is sourrounded by tall mountains. A really nice and different kind of terrain to what I normally get to see in Hamar where our company is situated.

Meeting my brother, his wife and my niece was also very nice. I especially enjoyed giving my brother a speech and revealing some stories that most of the wedding guests didn’t know of.

At the airport I stood in the book store for about thirty minutes trying to figure out what book I should buy. It was hard. I decided that I didn’t want to buy a book about something that I really wanted to read, or that I found interesting. Sounds odd? Yes it was quite odd. I wanted to read something that gave me another perspective, that was different to what normally comes in. And it had to be non-fiction.

I found a book about some kind of math theorem that someone solved, it seemed interesting, but I knew that this book, would not be what I needed/wanted/had decided to read right now. There was a lot of books that to me seemed to be too boring to read. So where was this balance between boring and something that fits to well with my current field of interest?

I ended up buying a book about a jewish american student that travelled around in the middle east to speak to youth in countries like Syria, Iran, Libanon etc. I have about two chapters left, and it was an easy read and a bit interesting as well. At some points I thought he was a bit subjective in his description of the conflict, but it is his story and he makes it clear what his background is. I am glad that I forced myself to pick something that I normally wouldn’t read. It’s always good to broaden one’s horizon.

But what will my next read be about?

-Håvard Christensen-