I’ve just got my laptop back, with a new 80 gig fast drive replacing the slow, small very worn-out old one. Yay! for AppleCare for covering it. So the last three days have been a slow process of installing software, checking for updates, installing more software, endless repairing permissions, restarts, checking everything is working… the usual.

In-between all of that, I’ve had my head buried in the monster work of China Mieville, Perdido Street Station. I’d been looking for Iain M. Banks’ new novel, but not finding it, followed the recommendations, “If you like blahblablah, you might also like blahblah…” The cover art was good, and at 640 pages I figured it’d get me through the next week till I fly back to China. Wrong. Like the best work of Banks, the richness of the alien world and city of New Crobuzon was so transfixing, I finished it in five days. Bugger. Now I’ll have to go out and buy his other books.