Reading is Fundamental

It's also about all you can do when your bronchials go manky. I have read through everything I had on hand - fortunately I had about four novels from the library. I can't really recommend any of them. They served their purpose - I was completely able to avoid daytime TV - and without exception they were well-written. Yet they lacked a sort of satisfaction to them, a certain sense of vigour. Perhaps the old-fashioned writer as egoist is lacking. Writers are trained to be nice now. Balls-out confidence used to be many writers' essential spirit. Now it's excellent research, thanking everyone and using a dozen editors. So civilised.

Actually, there is a book you should avoid, Robert Ryan's Death on the Ice, a fictionalisation of the 1912 attempt on the South Pole. First of all, everyone knows how the damned thing ends so there was very little dramatic tension, secondly it had some howler typos - real typos, as in "atttempt" and "property" instead of "properly" - hitting the wrong key typos, not the author's fault (I assume the author did not typeset it). I actually don't mind real typos, shit happens, they don't detract from the story the way poor writing does. But it was surprising to keep finding them in an otherwise blameless, if dull, book.

Anyway. Now that I cough only every other breath instead of each one I take, I'll see if I can't apply my right brain to some designing. Oh look, an unfinished bag - good place to start. Need to fumigate it when I'm done though... this chest infection is VILE.