ALL WE NEED IS JUST A LITTLE PATIENCE

Expectation. The Mother of all Disappointment. I should keep a lid on it, right?

Once upon a time, I picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell at an airport as I was on my way to some far away beach for a two week break. It was a monster of a hardback and frankly, I might as well have stayed at home because all I did for those two weeks was stick my head between its pages and eat crepes.

When I was done, I pronounced it to be the best book ever written (finally unseating Clive Barker’s Imajica which had held the spot ever since ummm… whenever that came out). Honestly, it blew my mind in every way: the craft, the story, the patience, the vision… it was all there, punch after punch.

I even wondered why anybody would even try to write another book if they had read it.

Fast forward far too many years (and a pretty good TV series later) and her next novel - Piranesi - is finally making an appearance… in September. That’s six months away!

Meanwhile, the greatest crime writer of the last twenty years - John Connolly - has also has his latest shoved to the back end of the summer as well:

What’s a man supposed to do?

Throw in the postponement of the Bond movie as well to around the same time and September/October is starting to look pretty busy.

Tolkien had it bang on the money when he said: “All you have to is decide what to do with the time you are given between now and when No Time To Die is released”.

I think that’s how it went anyway.