Minor Sunday linkage

Brent left yesterday for a week in Ottawa; fortunately the style book is now at a stage where I should be able to ramp up work hours (I find that as I first get back into a project, it's wise not to push too hard - a good hour or two every day lets you build up momentum without overstraining, it's not unlike endurance sport training in that regard - but I think I am coming to the point where I can do much longer days of work than that again), and the Kindle is as always indispensable for island living. Neal Stephenson's new novel isn't out yet, unfortunately, but I think it might be a good time to embark upon a massive George R. R. Martin reread in preparation for the new installment of the series: I read those books in a white heat, and long enough ago that it was before I started blogging (sometime during the first few years I was teaching at Columbia, maybe 2002?), so can probably stand a reread, and it is very good to undertake something of copious pages. Otherwise, if I am not watching DVDs in the evening and find myself without much else in the way of outside distraction, I need something like three books a day - it is too many! The Alan Hollinghurst book has yet to arrive, alas...

This is the sort of hobby I could use to while away an hour or two: pig-keeping! (FT site registration required.)

Light reading: Joan Vinge's novelization Cowboys & Aliens (I've been a big fan of hers ever since I read the superlative The Snow Queen and its sequels, and I was also captivated by Vinge's account of why this particular novel represents a personal triumph); Neal Pollack's very funny Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude (the Kindle edition is on sale this month for 99 cents, a definite bargain); Matthew De Abaitua's The Art of Camping, which is full of funny and interesting things but which left me devoutly grateful that I will never have to camp unless perhaps in the event of zombie apocalypse in which case I will have other things to worry about than my personal dislike of camping; and Harry Connolly's Child of Fire, which is quite good but which has caused me to declare a temporary moratorium on urban fantasy, there is just too much of it and it's all built too much along the same sort of chassis: enough!

Bonus links: Matthew's campfire mix, and also an apt illustration from the intriguing Things Organized Neatly blog.