Thursday 23 October 2008

Progress report

People keep asking me how the book is going. Well, a couple of people have. Maybe the rest of you are just too polite to ask.

It's hard to say what percentage of it is complete. I'm not sure yet exactly what I'll include. Without a bit of discipline, it could easily get totally out of hand. There's so much information out there that I could continue researching for years.

A couple of chapters have a good bit of flesh on their bones. 1700-1750, 1815-1850 and 1850-1880 are getting there. In fact, the 1815-1850 chapter is probably a little overweight and in need of a rigorous diet. The chapters 1880-1914 and 1914-1920 have a good bit of the required information, but still miss some elements. Most of the 20th century chapters I've barely started.

Here's an overview by chapter of how much I've done:

Chapter 1 1700-1750 45 pages
Chapter 2 1750-1780 6 pages
Chapter 3 1780-1815 10 pages
Chapter 4 1815-1850 67 pages
Chapter 5 1850-1880 33 pages
Chapter 6 1880-1914 15 pages
Chapter 7 1914-1920 17 pages
Chapter 8 1920-1939 3 pages
Chapter 9 1940-1949 6 pages
Chapter 10 1950-1973 2 pages

In total, there are just over 60,000 words.

So how far am I? About 40% done, I reckon. Of course, that's without the recipes. They'll be another couple of hundred pages.

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