What I'm reading
Concentration has been in short supply this week but one beats on, boats against the current and all that.
I started The Old Curiosity Shop, which so far has not aroused in me a great deal of curiosity. (I've only read three chapters.)
I got 20% into David Gemmell's Legend before I gave up. Pretty sure I read it, or at least another of Gemmell's books, as a teen. I like swords and/or sorcery just fine but Gemmell's writing is inert: there's no life to the story or characters, and his prose lacks flavour.
Much much better is Miracleman by "The Original Author", aka [credit-redacted-due-to-legal-wrangles] Alan Moore, plus various artists. As everything ever written about it points out, Miracleman is very much a precursor to Watchmen, but it's also a brilliant comic in its own right. Much darker and more horrific than I was expecting.
I've also been reading Ursula K. Le Guin's beautiful rendition of Lau Tzu's Tao Te Ching.