Unsatisfying satisficing

There’s no getting away from it. You know perfectly well you can’t try to optimize a book — that way madness lies (or at least, never finishing). You know perfectly well you have to satisfice. But that is oh so unsatisfying. When I had to finish books for work reasons, I gritted my teeth and let stuff go. Now I’m retired, it’s more difficult not to keep on keeping on editing and (hopefully) improving. I need a contract settled for the second edition of IFL to concentrate the mind. But CUP’s wheels are grinding slowly (fingers crossed that that isn’t a bad sign).

Anyway, for anyone interested, here’s a tolerably polished draft of the first ten chapters of the second edition. Comments as always most welcome — and many thanks to those who have already given me some very useful feedback. And if you want to skip the pre-formal preamble made up of Chapters 1 to 6, and start commenting from Chapter 7 when the formal work gets under way, that would be perfectly welcome. (I’ll send more chapters to anyone who comments on at least some of these first ten.)