… The Formula 1 season that is. I tipped my sleeping patterns slightly sideways in order to be up at 3am to watch the Brazilian race. Kimi in third on the starting grid so my hat is firmly on my head now that I’m upright.
I’d forgotten to take my notebook with reading suggestions in it when I went shopping on Saturday morning but armed with one of my 20% off vouchers for Kinokuniya, snipped from the Sydney Morning Herald, I checked out the new arrivals stands and found William Gibson‘s Pattern Recognition in paperback and dutifully picked it up from Heretic‘s several recommendations. I also picked up Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata which I’ve been meaning to read for a few years due to it being put out as a Vintage Classic/Blue edition for the pocket friendly price of $14.94 (minus a further 20% at the cash register, nice!).
Saturday afternoon, curled up at home in an arm chair and watching the rain start up again (following the heat waves of the other week, we’ve most recently been swimming about in puddles and cowering from thunder storms in Sydney) I started on Pattern Recognition. With breaks for cooking (eating being done with one hand keeping the book open and the occasional glance down to connect fork with food), making coffee and sleep, I ploughed on through its pages in to the wee hours and then through most of Sunday with breaks as before and with a few wanders outside in between bouts of rain.
Incredibly enjoyable read in style and context. Eerily, through my various jesus and mary chain sites, I can relate in regards to the enthusiasm of a small community of global companions watching and waiting for installments about something they’re fanatical about to various degrees; the devouring and regurgitating and analysing of information and the fights that break out from differences of opinion. The streets of London are true to life. The descriptive passages provide the right amount of information to paint the picture and keep the story rolling at a fast pace. It’s left me some what dazed in thought about art, coincidence, and the meaning of things in general… exactly what I needed.
Time to settle down for the race…