what are you reading?

[HGFB]

Quick update time. Over the past month or so I've read, Halting State by Charles Stross, Excession and Consider Pheblas by Iain M. Banks, Heliconia Spring by Brian Aldis, The Great Explosion and Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russel.

Next I'll be reading something I've wanted to for a while. Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon.

[disciple]

Blimey.

How many hours a day do you put into reading HGFB?

[HGFB]

I have a 45 minute each way commute to work. You can get a lot of reading done in that time.

[Istar]

Hmm. In the last six/eight weeks I have read:

Excession (Iain M. Banks, Culture Novel)
Doctor Who (Mark Campbell, Episode Guide)
Look to Windward (Iain M. Banks, Culture Novel)
The Time Traveller (Ronald L. Mallett, Life Story, Quantum/High-Energy Physics)
Electronic Brains (Mike Hally, Computer Science, History)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman, London, Fantasy)

Now reading:
The Rules of Modern Policing - 1973 Edition (Gene Hunt)

Next on the list:
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (Simon Winchester, History)

LibraryThing says I have 34 other works in my library as-yet-unread.

[Devlin]

Last proper book I read was called 'The Handbook of the SAS and Elite Forces' (ISBN 1-85487-675-9)
Solid Snake could learn a thing or two from this book
but i'm currently reading Chapter 8 of the Amstrad CPC User Guide.

[lazerwalker]

I've just finished The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi. It's the sequel to Old Man's War, and is really rather good - fast paced, exciting, interesting plot, mil/space opera. He's got a great sarcy/snarky way of writing as well, which I like.

If you've not signed up to the Tor ebook thing, and you like SF, then you really should do so asap. This weeks is the aforementioned Old Mans War, and next week is apparently Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. It won the Hugo last year, which it well deserved to do imho, as it's an incredibly interesting book. I'm crap at reviewing stuff, so here's a review I agree with: http://www.steelypips.org/library/2005_ ... 0731019287

[HGFB]

I've read Spin. It's excellent.

[HGFB]

Over the last couple of weeks I've read The Pinhoe Egg, Deep Secrets and the Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones. I'm currently reading "BreakawaY" the second in the Cassandra Kresnov series by Joel Shepherd. This IMO is an utterly fantastic, violent and bizarrely heartwarming Sci-fi series about a female artificial soldier working as a SWAT team member in a large futuristic city. It sounds cliched but they really are very, very good reads.

Once I'm finished Breakway I won't be moving onto the third and final book Killswitch but switching instead to Line War by Neal Asher. It's the latest in his Polity series and I have to say again that anyone who likes Iain M. Banks Culture series really needs to start reading Neal Asher's books. Everything you like about Banks Asher does far, far better. His space ships are bigger and more interesting, his AIs have much more rounded and entertaining personalities and the space battles just rock my world. A good standalone novel to try is Prador Moon. It's set inside the Polity universe but tells the story of a war that is referenced by a few of the main Polity books.

[Firefox]

(Neil Asher)

Argh! I've been avoiding his books like the plague for years, because I *really* hated one of his novels when I gave it a go!

Or at least I thought I did, but there aren't any novels in Neil Asher's bibliography that sound even vaguely familiar... After much head-scratching and trawling through Wikipedia and Amazon I've worked out that I've actually been avoiding Ken MacLeod's stuff all these years. Dunno how that happened, similar cover art or something...

Anyway, that'll be something new to try then. Ta HGBF!

[HGFB]

(Neil Asher)

Argh! I've been avoiding his books like the plague for years, because I *really* hated one of his novels when I gave it a go!

Or at least I thought I did, but there aren't any novels in Neil Asher's bibliography that sound even vaguely familiar... After much head-scratching and trawling through Wikipedia and Amazon I've worked out that I've actually been avoiding Ken MacLeod's stuff all these years. Dunno how that happened, similar cover art or something...

Anyway, that'll be something new to try then. Ta HGBF!

Start with either Prador Moon or the Ian Cormac series

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

The two Spatterjay books are good but more planet bound (Although a very,very interesting planet).

[Firefox]

Start with either Prador Moon or the Ian Cormac series

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

The two Spatterjay books are good but more planet bound (Although a very,very interesting planet).

Ah, cool. I've already chucked Gridlinked into my basket.

[F-ZeroOne]

I'm currently re-reading "The Meaning of Ichiro", by Robert Whiting. Its about baseball in Japan.

NO! COME BACK!

The same author wrote one of the funniest books I've ever read - "You Gotta Have Wa!", which was also about Japanese baseball; specifically about foreign baseball players who went to Japan and some of the international incide - er, I mean, cultural differences they encountered. I am not a sports fan and know very, very little about baseball, but if you like reading about Japan then "You Gotta Have Wa!" is a must.

The "Meaning of Ichiro" is slightly more serious in tone, and tackles the same subject from the other direction - Japanese baseball players going to the U.S. to make it big in the Major Leagues. You never know, after reading it you might find yourself browsing YouTube for clips of "The Throw" as well...

[limb_clock]

re-read Alan Moore's From Hell and Terry Pratchett's "men at arms"

and no, i still can't stand Eddie Campbell's art.

[HGFB]

I've finished Line War and The Engineer Reconditioned by Neal Asher and House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. House of Suns is very, very good indeed.

I'm just about to start Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. Something I've meant to read for a while but never gotten around to

[RiK]

Currently reading Trudi Canavan's Priestess of the White