Horizontal sleet from south meets my window. Sole outdoors activity today – cutting kindling with a blunt axe.

Time for a reading list:

China Mieville (Perdido Street Station and the even better sequel/companion volume The Scar)

Iain M. Banks (Look to Windward was my scifi book of year 2003 – now I’m rereading Feersum Endjinn)

Jeff Noon (Pollen – not a plot book, but an ideas book)

Mike Davis (City of Quartz, a densely packed journey through the social history of LA from a strongly analytical socialist writer)

Philip Kerr (Gridlock, a good days entertainment in the vein of The Cube etc.)