another great day at sea has its fine moments. one sitting was all it took: the world was fascinating enough, the writing witty enough, one wanted to keep going. throughout the speculation hovers however that it would be a different and better book had it been written by david foster wallace; though i don’t believe anyone else but dyer would have carried off that ending. that feeling may have something to do with why all the american reviews were poor (the english ones without exception glowed) — and has in turn to do with american reverence for its military, not least from the military itself (which i, from a country with conscription, could respect but struggle to understand.) in the meantime this sudden intimacy with aircraft carriers immediately sowed in me an enormous hankering to reread all the iain m banks culture novels.