Both these books are gratifyingly slim considering their reputations, suggesting a relatively short read time: Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that the median size of novels has increased over the last hundred years or so. I’m so used to picking up modern books several inches thick, science fiction especially: not to mention multi book series of impressive physical dimension such as those recently produced by Stephenson.

Perhaps it is related to the advanced technology of writing tools compared to years past: it certainly seems reasonable to suppose that once ease of editing is considered, it is easier to produce a longer work using a word processing package as opposed to a hardcopy typewriter, and even more so comparing the use of a typewriter to writing by hand.

I’m about 4/5 of the way through reading Iron Sunrise: the last week has afforded me a number of hours opportune reading time, and as predicted from the rich experience that was Singularity Sky, it is good enough to have been demanding more and more of the hours which really should be reserved for sleeping. I find that reading, like writing, is an activity which can only be achieved ruthlessly: that is to get anything done in that arena it is necessary to co-opt the time resources required as part of an aggressive expansionist policy regardless and at the expense of other, likely more immediately pressing items on the agenda (such as assignments, the sorting of taxation records, learning of lines for the latest play before the curtain goes up, et cetera).

In between delicious bouts of fiction, I’m making slow but steady progress on Failed States.

On a side note, I resisted the temptation to purchase a book on Film Noir whilst in the bookshop: it is one of the provided constraints of the reverse festival piece I’m currently chewing my digital pencil over. I like the idea of noir as a writing style, I like hardboiled, and Raymond Chandler is on the big list of things to read, but for the time being I’m going to have to settle for the wikipedia article on the style to feel out the appropriate literary mechanics to achieve what I want.

Such a tasty problem to solve, working on a new way to flavor a piece of writing.

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