This month has already started out as a fantastic reading month. Whether by choice or by circumstance, I’ve found 20-80 minutes almost every day to keep up on whatever I’m reading at the time. (This post is late by an entire book – I’ll post about The Reluctant Fundamentalist later.)

I’ve been meaning to read the rest of William Gibson’s books for a while now. Having read several a few Christmases ago, I’ve been nearly as hooked on his writing as on that of Neal Stephenson. Admittedly, Gibson’s books are shorter, easier reads. They’re also not quite as compelling. Win some, lose some, I suppose.

Virtual Light begins the Bridge trilogy, a trio of stories set around what has become of the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, California. The environment, a more anarchistic version of our present, set “in the future” of 2004, is somewhat like the reality of Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. It is different enough, however, to separate the literary works into distinct macrocosms.

The book is excellent, though not quite as dweeby as some of his earlier stuff. I’ve gotten the impression while reading each of Gibson’s books that he started out writing Cyberpunk and has been trending towards Conspiracy Thriller ever since. I don’t dislike the trend overall, even if I found his first books more interesting. I’ll have to pick up the next two in the series soon to keep the momentum going.

The book was a very easy read, much like Spook Country and the rest of Gibson’s books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Again, however, I was struck with the single-person-on-drugs thematic element which I have yet to see anyone else take and interest in. Maybe it’s so minor that no one else cares, but every one of his books that I have read to date shares it. It is as if Gibson is a closet fan of substance abuse, or that he’s never experimented and wants to live its effects vicariously through one of his characters. Nevertheless, it was just as entertaining this time around. There is, again, an element of control loss when the addiction is in play.

I’m still psyching myself up to get started on The System of the World later this year. I think I’m going to cram in another book before the end of the month, and try to do another two in September so that I can spend October through December on the third tome of The Baroque Cycle and hit my “one book a month” goal, in number anyway.