what are you reading?

[Kronos]

Reading all the magazines I should have been reading during the golden age of 8-bit pre-microsoft era on my laptop atm.

(and no that isn't porno mags...I said 'reading' )

[Yak]

Still forcing my way through Dianetics.

[thalamus]

The Best a Man Can Get (John O'Farrell)
Witty, enjoyable, read-it-on-the-plane-to-the-Canries fodder, with some really nice observations about kids and the birth of new parents. Think Robert Llewellyn meets Richard Curtis.

[limb_clock]

i WILL be reading Pratchett's "Nation"

it's my yearly b-day gift from mum

[SimonB]

Now on to In Search Of Elvis by Charlie Connelly. Good travel stuff so far.

Oh, and still listening to the Pern series in strict series chronological order - now up to Dragonflight.

[Saint Sandy]

re-reading ...



followed by

[F-ZeroOne]

Just finished "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". Its possibly the oddest SF book I've read in a while. Apparently the author is an ex-Airborne infantry marine biologist, which suggests some interesting tactical problems are expected to be encountered by the U.S. military ("Stingrays, son. Stingrays. We've got to go down there and teach 'em that no-one kills Australian naturalists on our watch.").

Its set in a distant future where a very advanced human society has lost most of its technology and is now at war (being a library book, its the nth book in the series, so some of the background details are a bit hazy for me). Apparently, human-kinds enemies played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, as most of our opponents are taken staright from the Monster Manual - Orcs, goblins, kobolds, elves. We get to ride dragons as cavalry and have dwarves and mermaids as allies (the technological basis is that genetic modification is still possible).

So, what we basically have is Warhammer 40,000 but with no bolt guns, as most projectile weapons appear also to be on the list of Stuff We Once Had.

What makes the book really weird is as follows: first, about two-thirds of the book is taken up with the politics and planning surrounding the virtual suicide mission that makes up the last third of the book. Second, where the book does go SF, it really goes SF, SF so hard its makes Wolverines skeleton look like its made of cheese strings. Soft cheese strings. Thirdly, the reasonably good military action stuff is balanced by naughty bits that verge on the borders of bad, and hover very nearly in the crude DMZ. Every main female character apparently escaped from a harem in a previous book, and at one point our hero is fighting off assassins completely nekkid, which cues many jokes about the size of his mighty assassin-slaying chopper.

Fans of Warhammer 40,000 and the really-detailed school of SF might want to give this series a try.

[HGFB]

I'm currently about halfway through Broken Angels by Richard Morgan and enjoying it far more than Altered Carbon (Steel Remains beats both of them though). As a side project I'm currently getting caught up with Order of the Stick. Only a few hundred more strips to go.

[piku]

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey

It's a thick bugger of a book, weighing in at a meaty 400-odd pages. Right now I'm reading about late 80s US phone systems and how to make them do amusing things.

Despite its thickness, it's a great bog-time book since it mostly consists of reprinted articles from 2600, each one being no more than about three pages long.

[/morten]

For work: "SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintenance" - the focus of this is a bit off but will do the certification when I'm done.
For Fun: "The Rincewind Trilogy" - lots of fun - I like Pratchet.

[/morten]

I'm currently about halfway through Broken Angels by Richard Morgan and enjoying it far more than Altered Carbon (Steel Remains beats both of them though). As a side project I'm currently getting caught up with Order of the Stick. Only a few hundred more strips to go.

I loved the Morgan books - can you recomend anything like those ?

Cheers

[pogo]

As a side project I'm currently getting caught up with Order of the Stick. Only a few hundred more strips to go.

If you like OOTS then it's well worth hunting down the books, especially On the Origin of PCs an Start of Darkness, which are all-new, i.e. no reprinted strips, and full of essential back story. Of the two Start of Darkness stands out as the better story, though I'm happy with both.

[HGFB]

I'm currently about halfway through Broken Angels by Richard Morgan and enjoying it far more than Altered Carbon (Steel Remains beats both of them though). As a side project I'm currently getting caught up with Order of the Stick. Only a few hundred more strips to go.

I loved the Morgan books - can you recomend anything like those ?

Cheers

Have you read his new fantasy novel yet? His new hero Ringal is Kovacs turned up to 11....and gay.

[benedictw]

60 Days and Counting - Kim Stanley Robinson

[ShadowTail]

Read a bit here.

It's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.