[All the pictures in this post are from [ " OMINOUS " ] – please check there for info! He has copyrights on all the pictures here!! Take contact with him if interested in using his exceptional material!!]
Ahh.. now I have finished reading all the Chuck Palahniuk books present at Stavanger library! A tour de force that required a couple of literary breaks, with 2 new entries among the interesting writers I had a chance to read: Natsuo Kirino, suggested by a friend, and Cliff Burns.. with a special word about him later! 
These books, actually all 7 of them, are well described by the visual work of my friend Ominous, that’s the reason of the title and the pictures. I love his work as I loved most I read in those books! This is 100% positive ominous good work.. if this adjective was ever used in this way!
Palahniuk OD because reading one after the other 3 of his books was not an easy task. Survivor, Choke and NonFiction. Three very different books. Maybe the first two more similar, but every Palahniuk story is a surprise. Or, better said, the last one, NonFiction, is quite different. You think that after so many books you could start guessing “what’s next..” but it reveals every time to be something different.. In Palahniuk story-telling what is not normal becomes absolutely normal.. even more you ask yourself why you never thought about that before, or why you thought as weird, maybe the first time you read it. It is weird.. but Palahniuk convinces you that it is not.
Out and Grotesque were the two Natsuo Kirino books available at the local library. She is probably one of the first really good harsh thriller female writer I have ever read. Psychological too, but in a totally different way than authors like Patricia Cornwell. A much better way, I would say, but this is my personal taste. At least for Out. Very strong and detailed descriptions of brutal crimes, emotions and situations that destroy normal lives and bring normal people in a tunnel from where it is more and more difficult to see the light. Out has more strong points than weak ones, Grotesque is the other way around, but both are worth reading! And the darkest roles are the female ones. There is the occasional yakuza, ヤクザ, type who behaves.. as the common yakuza kind.. still it is expected. All the rest isn’t!
Cliff left a comment on my 2007 yearly reading wrap-up and I really enjoyed his words, so I checked his blog and, surprised that a *real* writer did wrote on my blog, I purchased at once 2 books from Amazon: The Reality Machine and Righteous Blood. The Reality Machine gave me a sort of déjà vu feeling: I am pretty sure I have read some of the stories before! Some other stories reminded me of William S. Burroughs‘ Naked Lunch. An interesting collection. Righteous Blood on the other hand is a two novel book: Living With The Foleys and Kept. The first one reminded me Ray Bradbury: it was a very strange feeling, since I haven’t read anything from Bradbury in years, but still that was what I thought about! And next came Kept.. and I stop thinking about anything else! Wow! Violence, creepy aspects of extravagant existences, like a place out of reality where an outsider get really really angry and decides to reset it.. bring it to a restart point.. where everything is dead except him.. A story were it is difficult to take a side and keep it for all its length. Who are the good ones? Who the bad ones? Are there? Are there in a jungle?
All the pictures of this post are from a great artist, a friend, that I was lucky enough to meet on Flickr: Antonio Ruiz, aka [ " OMINOUS " ] aka Yakuza Mexicano. He is living in Mexico City: he is a photographer and a genius digital visual artist.
Last Sunday, in order to enjoy in some way the great weather and the bike I got from a good friend when he left Norway, I decided to visit another quite famous beach in Stavanger area, after having been in Møllebukta, the Swords in Rock monument location.
So I biked to Sola beach, and it was not easy, both for wrong or confusing road signals (as if they were turned 180 degrees on the support pole!!), the heat and my not so great condition!! And it is not *that* close to Stavanger!! But that’s me, doing things without deep thinking or planning..
Sola beach is really huge, with nice sand but I really like only one side, with rocks in the sea, and not too high concentration of people! Actually there is only one area that looks crowded, the one close to the main parking place and Sola beach hotel. But that area had some perks to offer to the eyes 
Nothing like Hawaii, but still not too bad!! 
