I've said a couple of times how I never get to explore Gibson's entire catalogue, past and present, because the four of his books that I actually have read are so good that I keep rereading them. I do the same with records. There are records I've listened to thousands of times that I love infinitely but still haven't gone and searched up everything else that artist has made. It's a rare a couple of exceptions where I do have everything because usually I fall more in love with an album than with an artist.

So here's me attempting a new-to-me Gibson. Count Zero. It's not one that Kamnert translated (there's a 1:1 correlation between the four Gibson books I'm obsessed with and the four books she improved; I just can't get enough of her mastery at rendering turn-of-the-century pop into glisteningly clear Swedish prose) so I'm reading this one in English (although I'm aware that there are oft-reprinted Swedish versions of this and the other two Sprawl Trilogy books). This is one of "the 26" new books; and it's from the three books I got from the second-hand bookshop. I'm in no hurry to rush through "the 26" and I might get at some other books from my pre-existing to-read pile, and today I wasn't gonna read any prose but I wrapped up The Drought and started this; I'm four chapters in and I love it so far.

What strikes me the most in this cyber future of rooftop antennas and telefax machines is how it's from an era where kanji were called "ideographs". That's probably the one part that took me out of it so far. After all, in the alternate timeline that we acidentally ended up living in, words like "signal", "mail", "telegram", "book", have all taken new meaning so maybe when these guys are talking about velco and faxes, that means something else to them amid the holographic cathedrals and psychoactive door knobs.

Loving this book so far.