The thing I love most about the internet isn't the social aspect, it's the access to information. I am an insatiably curious person (which accounts for a great deal of my professional success; I generally know the answers to questions before they're asked, and if I don't I can find them out quickly because I have incredibly well-developed information gathering and processing skills, not to mention a substantial network of contacts at least one of whom might well know the answer) and being able to carry a device around with me which can quickly and easily access pretty much the entire sum of human knowledge is just amazing.

So I have had a delightful afternoon reading The Ringed Castle with my laptop in front of me looking up all the historical figures and places Dunnett mentions and following Lymond's travels on Google Maps. Though it does make the reading go a bit more slowly when I keep stopping every five minutes to consult the map and look at pictures of the place online. (And apart from the season, this picture of the river at Lampozhnya looks exactly as I imagined it from Dunnett's description. Skies that make the skies in East Anglia look like nothing at all. Wow.)