what are you reading?

[HGFB]

[SimonB]

Now moved on to Andrew Chaikin - A Man On The Moon.

Fantastic.

[gravy]

After being encouraged by my girlfriend to read a few classics, i've just finished Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy. Once I had got my head around the old (and to me, odd) language used in conversations, it turned out to be pretty good.

Now i'm getting back into Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, with Wolves of the Calla before I pick up another classic.

Read Far From The Madding Crowd, Hardy's best IMHO, a book bursting with ideas and twist and one that led me right up the garden path much to my surprise and delight

[VNVObit]

just read Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade (I really liked it hence http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=61320

now looking forward to reading Fat by Rob Grant

[HGFB]

This thread was a bugger to find again.

Recently I read the Dragon's Egg book mentioned earlier in the thread (And the sequel Starquake). Both were excellent. Cheers for the recommendation.

I'm currently reading the Faction Paradox series of books. They're a spinoff (But unofficial) of the Faction Paradox storyline from the BBC series of Doctor Who novels released while the show was off the air. They're about the first great Time War (Not to be confused with the second great Time War you might have heard about).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faction_Paradox

The Faction Paradox universe is centered around the "War in Heaven", a history-spanning conflict between the "Great Houses" and the "Enemy". Originally a subplot in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the War features characters and concepts evolved from the original Doctor Who set-up, in several cases with names changed or obscured for reasons literary (most of the groups or items mentioned are described in rather different terms with a different emphasis on certain aspects) and legal (the Faction and The Enemy are Miles's creations, but other elements are not — the Great Houses are the new series's equivalent to Doctor Who's Time Lords). Faction Paradox themselves are not the Enemy, and play a relatively small, neutral part in the War, willing to act against both sides in their own interests. Lawrence Miles has described them as "a ritualistic time-travelling guerrilla organisation".

I've read the first standalone FP novel "This Town Will Never Let Us Go" and I have to say it's probably one of the oddest books I've ever read.

Here's an sample
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0972595 ... eader-link

I'm getting read to start my second FP book (They're all standalone so it doesn't matter which order you read them in). This one is called Of The City Of The Saved which looks very interesting to me.

FOR HUMANITY, THE WAR IS OVER.

We all remember Resurrection Day.

Even now, three centuries later, we cannot forget that awakening: our bewilderment, our terror and our joy. Each of us had experienced death, imagining ourselves bound for oblivion, Heaven or Nirvana, according to taste. Instead, we found, each member of the many human species – from tool-wielding australopithecines to posthuman philosopher-gods – had been harvested, gathered here by the Founders’ unfathomable technologies.

Reborn in our countless immortal bodies, we were given the freedom of the City of the Saved. A single conurbation as broad as a spiral galaxy, she has been our sanctuary from the ravages of the War. That monstrous conflict between inhuman cultures cannot touch us here: we live our afterlives beyond the end of time, in perfect safety.

We may be certain, therefore, that these rumours of a murder (the brutal stabbing of a City Councillor, no less!) are nothing more than lurid fabrications. The supposition that the murder weapon is missing, or that it could have been – as hysterical conjecture has claimed – a "potent weapon", capable of injuring a Citizen within the haven of the City, is equally absurd. The idea that a guerrilla war has already begun in one of our less harmonious enclaves need not be dignified with refutation.

Please go about your business, Citizens, as normal. We are perfectly safe, here in the City.

Humanity has never been safer.

Of the City of the Saved... is not a novel of violence and political intrigue, set against the backdrop of humanity’s last resting-place. There is no evidence that it is the second in the series of original Faction Paradox novels.

[HGFB]

now looking forward to reading Fat by Rob Grant

I didn't enjoy that one at all. I much prefered Incompetence.

[Firefox]

Just reading The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold again for the first time in many years. Fuck me if it's not still completely un-put-down-able.

[snaff]

I'm currently reading David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

I love the way he talks and he writes the same way too.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0a86oKl34ZQ

[Istar]

Somehow, despite going-on 30 years of being an avid SF fan, I managed to completely overlook Orson Scott Card.

I was recently given a Tescos' bag of books - people know I collect stuff, and it's common for such gifts to appear. Today, for example, I got 'Beyond Uhura' by Nichelle Nichols, and 'Outbound Flight' by Timothy Zahn left on the doorstep.

Anyway, I digress. The aforementioned plastic bag contained six books by OSC, an author I'd never heard of. On looking at the flyleaves it became apparent that they were the first six books in the SF "Ender" series - equally, none of which I'd heard of.

I started with the first (unsurprisingly) entitled "Enders' Game". I consumed it in two sittings, and was alternately gripped with tension, laughing uproariously, and in tears.

I have now moved through "Speaker For The Dead" and "Xenocide", both of which have echoed - and intensified - the gamut of emotion of the first, and am currently enthralled with "Children of The Mind". If any of you are, like myself, die-hard SF afficionados, and you haven't done these books, then do your wetware a favour and pick them up.

Don't dismiss "Enders' Game" as a simple hybrid of "Starship Troopers" and "The Rowan". It's evidently OSC's first go at that sort of writing, and for a 1985 story can be a little elementary in places, but it's got depth and pathos and some interesting ideas and concepts I haven't seen elsewhere, and is just fantastic. "Speaker For The Dead" hits the ground running and takes you to places you didn't expect, and shows you things you wouldn't have thought of (at least, I hadn't). And "Xenocide"... well, awesome is a much overused word today, but is entirely applicable in this case.

Now they may not be everyones' NCoT, dwelling far less on SF 'tech' and concentrating instead on Human expansion into the galaxy and the subsequent ethical conflicts arising from the events in "Enders' Game". The tech is subsumed in a similar way to the Star Wars universe - no-one goes around saying "Look! Talking robot!" in that, and equally the mechanics of the future in OSCs' books are ubiquitous (almost) to the point of inconsequentiality. So don't crack them expecting blazing starship battles and worlds colliding. Planetary collision is confined to the idealogical rather than the physical, and is no less jaw-dropping for it.

Anyway, can't stop here talking all day - 'Jane' is calling me back to "Children of The Mind"...

[hype]

Now:
Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

Next book:
On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall

[grue]

I started Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought yesterday. It's the final book of the Prince Of Nothing series and it looks to be as excellent as the other two.
If you like your fantasy books gritty and without elves and dwarves then you'll love those. I still prefer Steven Erikson for his witty humor and unbelievably realised world but Bakker is quite up there too for his philosophical and full of anguish heros.

Recomended.

[HGFB]

I managed to completely overlook Orson Scott Card.

I'll need your geek badge and your usb stick son. You're suspended without pay until a board convenes to assess your geek credentials. You've let us all down.

[Orava]

Currently: The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes

A good read so far.

[v@lentine]

Currently reading "I'm with the band" by Pamela Des Barres (italian translation, of course). Brilliant!!! I envy her !

[Istar]

I managed to completely overlook Orson Scott Card.

I'll need your geek badge and your usb stick son. You're suspended without pay until a board convenes to assess your geek credentials. You've let us all down.

<sob> I'm sorry. I don't know how it happened. I've been so careful.

I do own all the Starfleet Technical Manuals and History of The Future editions though - and have committed fairly large chunks of each to memory. That must count for something.