Hugin & Munin Publishing AB

After no end of bother all the administrative tasks involved in starting up a business have finally been completed, and Hugin & Munun Publishing AB is now incorporated. There are still a few other remaining administrative tasks to be done, like opening a bank account and getting registered for VAT. But the first step of the journey is now complete, and even if the current times are perhaps not the best for starting a new business, but as the aim is to be mostly digital, the impact is less severe. And isolation could do wonders for productivity, so it is not at all bad.

Current Reading February

I haven't actually managed to finish any of the books that I mentioned last time, but I have made good progress on most of them. Ben Elton's Time and Time Again, really went of the rails once I picked it up again, so I will be especially interested in seeing where it will go.

I am about two thirds through The Last Wish so far, and I am still enjoying it. I did however finish the TV series in the mean time, and parts of the series really follows the book very closely. For good or bad. The books are riddled with references to classical fairy tales, which can be quite fun, but which at the same time adds quite a bit of silliness to the stories, which makes it difficult to take it too seriously. In many ways it reminded me of classic pulp stories. That too for good or bad.

However most of my reading time the last few weeks has been taken up by Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. I have heard a lot of good things about Sanderson, but never really gotten around to reading anything by him. The Way of Kings is classic epic fantasy, with a large cast, but initially limited to just a handful of viewpoints. To me this works better, as too many viewpoints can make the story fragmented and difficult to follow. The worldbuilding and mythology is interesting, and history place significant role in the story, and by the look of things will take on an even greater importance. I like stories that don't just live in the now, but connects the past and present, as it makes both the story and world more alive.

The book is truly epic in proportions as well, with the hardcover exceeding a thousand pages. Although the story starts with the different viewpoints, which seem to be entirely unrelated, everything comes together nicely in the last part of the book. Despite it's length the story feels remarkably fast paced, and in the end it doesn't feel bloated. Which is not always the case in this genre, but we will see how well Sanderson managed to keep it altogether as the story progresses. There are plenty of examples of epic fantasy stories that have started off in the same manner, and then failed spectacularly to keep it together both length wise and from a pacing perspective. All in all good, and I look forward to see how things evolves in the next book.

After finishing The Way of Kings I wanted to read something entirely different. In this case read is perhaps not the right word, as it happened to be an audio book. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. Those who know me, know that Steven Brust is one of my absolute favorite authors, and I have generally been picking up his books as they are published, from around the time I caught up with the Vlad Taltos stories around Issola. For some reason I never got around to picking up Vallista, the latest of the Vlad Taltos books. Maybe because of limited shelf space these days, or maybe because I haven't enjoyed the last few books as much as the previous ones. Either way Brust is an excellent story teller, and I thought it would be wonderful to see how his books would work as audio books, and as I was in the mood for some Vlad Taltos, I ended up picking up Vallista as an audio book.

In the last few books the story hasn't really moved forward in any major way, but I am not really reading Talros for the story itself. I know I read it because of the wit and style. I am about one third through the book so far, and I am not disappointed. The books is narrated by Bernard Setaro Clark, and all I can say is that he is doing an amazing Loiosh. If you haven't yet discovered the magic that is Steven Brust, then you are in for a treat.

As always I hope to be back writing about more books in a week or two, but it is more likely to end up being the better part of a month.

Almost there

As mentioned earlier, the intention was to start up Hugin and Munin at the beginning of the year. However we were slightly delayed by the fact that it apparently isn't possible to start a company in Sweden without being physically in Sweden. I could of course have done it using a power of attorney, but that felt too complicated and a bit unnecessary given the fact that we had already planned a trip to Sweden during the school holidays for mid February, so we put everything on hold until then.

February came, and we went to Sweden. No snow unfortunately, to the disappointment of the kids, but otherwise a success. I managed to squeeze in a bank visit to clear the last hurdle during our visit, in-between museum visits and other kids activities, and was finally able to submit everything to Bolagsverket the day after coming back. So now I am just waiting for the administrative process at Bolagsverket to complete, which may take two to four weeks. Hopefully there is no objection with regards to the name. The bank mentioned that Bolagsverket have become more and more restrictive of late, objecting against too generic names or names too similar to existing companies etc. We will just have to wait and see.

Overall I am actually looking forward to the administrative part of running a company, as I think that will be very educational. As I work with both accounting and taxes on a daily basis, it will be interesting to see it from the other side for once, even if it will be from a Swedish perspective. A lot of things a very similar though, due to the harmonization within the EU. I hope to get back to this topic, as I imagine there might be a lot of other people out there who have dreams about starting companies, who would find it very useful.