What do you mean :-)? My influences? Honestly I don't read much and only picked up the pace somewhat recently. Books that is. Other than that I guess I speak to the internet, if that counts. I watch movies here and there, which might've had a bigger impact on me than actual literature. Which also isn't exactly a blue print for success, because I'm the kind of guy who uses Bing to farm Amazon vouchers (not an internationally lauded writer). Besides, I'm no film buff either.

Currently I'm reading Interface by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. So far it seems to be about an international financial consortium implanting a politician with a programmable brainchip, after the latter suffers a stroke. Mainly because another presidential candidate threatend debt forgiveness and that's bad for the investor's portfolio. I'm not too far in, but I assume he's going to run for president himself and they're going to put words in his mouth. According to advanced polling and such.

It's an ok book. Mostly I'm just trying to understand filler and other things. So not necessarily in the sense of me wanting to ape Stephenson, but in terms of figuring out how a writer's brain works. Take that politician for exmpale. The actual plot points are pretty straight forward: Guy has a stroke and gets implanted with a chip that tells him what to do. But the bulk of the book are just descriptions of how things are. Including people. It goes into family histories, describes relationships, business, the media, or just stuff the authors seem opinionated about. Obviously in context of the narrative. Just little microscopic tangents about perfume, cultural stuff, or company logos.