what are you reading?

everklear · Post by **everklear** » Sun Jan 27, 2013 9:41 pm 0

Started "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi about a week ago. A bit of a slog to get into it, but I think the main characters have all been introduced now and all the gene-tech future slang stuff is starting to make sense. On to the plot!

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:27 am 0

everklear wrote:Started "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi about a week ago. A bit of a slog to get into it, but I think the main characters have all been introduced now and all the gene-tech future slang stuff is starting to make sense. On to the plot!

I enjoyed that one quite a bit. A good read.

Bill

guythp · Post by **guythp** » Mon Jan 28, 2013 1:03 am 0

I read 'The Road' by Corman Mccarthy in one sitting a few days back and was completely taken in (even though I was at work), an utterly thrilling, bleak (yet short) post apocalyptic novel that had me on the edge of my seat several times and concluded satisfactorily, much to much relief and which lead me to read his 'No Country for Old Men' (another great one) and currently 'All the Pretty Horses', which I'm only part into and the lack of quotation marks that he seems to employ in his books is starting to grate, but I'm sure it'll be an equally good one.

Also, prior to 'The Road' (again if you haven't please read it) I was drawn into 'When She Woke' by Hillary Jordan, which is a futuristic sci-fi about criminals that are died according to their crimes (ie yellow for sex offenders, blue for drug crimes and red for murderers) and then released back into civil life.. There's more to it than that and I'd thoroughly recommend it, as with her 'Mudbound' (a deep south tale).

Mqark · Post by **Mqark** » Mon Jan 28, 2013 8:39 pm 0

The 4 hour Chef - primarily for the meta learning section which I hope to use for several things other than cooking.

Lord Summerisle · Post by **Lord Summerisle** » Tue Jan 29, 2013 10:31 pm 0

guythp wrote:I read 'The Road' by Corman Mccarthy in one sitting a few days back and was completely taken in (even though I was at work), an utterly thrilling, bleak (yet short) post apocalyptic novel that had me on the edge of my seat several times...

Amazing book. I love the way the writing is so sparse, it really fits with the post-apocalyptic setting.

Mqark wrote:The 4 hour Chef - primarily for the meta learning section which I hope to use for several things other than cooking.

Got that for Christmas. Tim Ferris is a very very clever man and makes it all look too easy. I found the meta-learning really interesting but was skeptical as to whether most people, me, could really do the sorts of things he can.

That said, I am tempted to get myself some street quail.

Colonius · Post by **Colonius** » Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:03 am 0

PFVA wrote:Something you guys probably all read in school but i didn't, A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens.

Love the irony of his descriptions.

Ignored Dickens for years and just read this after asking for a load of his stuff for Christmas. I really enjoyed it and loved the subtlety of some of his writing. The end, though predictable, was hugely touching with the addition of the seamstress.

Colonius · Post by **Colonius** » Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:06 am 0

Lord Summerisle wrote:Just finished Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. It's about stamps, death, LSD, the feeling you have when everyone else is in on the secret but you, a secret postal system, probate, and The Fab Four. What a remarkable imagination.

The first time I've made it through a Pynchon book in one go. Been plugging away at Mason & Dixon on and off for a few years now.

Mad as a box of frogs. Read it in one of the massive gaps between attempts on Gravity's Rainbow. I finished off wanting to start my own global secret network.

zip accident · Post by **zip accident** » Wed Jan 30, 2013 2:04 am 0

Colonius wrote:
PFVA wrote:Something you guys probably all read in school but i didn't, A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens.

Love the irony of his descriptions.
Ignored Dickens for years and just read this after asking for a load of his stuff for Christmas. I really enjoyed it and loved the subtlety of some of his writing. The end, though predictable, was hugely touching with the addition of the seamstress.

I didn't like, HUGELY didn't like, Dickens as a kid. Slow, no plot ... . Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt the same way about Verne. Not HG Wells, he was okay, in Verne's case maybe it was the translator's fault, but Dickens, no.

limb_clock · Post by **limb_clock** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 11:45 am 0

Pulphead: Essasy collection

Previous to that i read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Rolling Stone

Mat · Post by **Mat** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 1:06 pm 0

Currently REAMDE by Neal Stephenson (yes, the typo's intentional).
It's an interesting read. One of the main conceits centres around the online world of an MMO, and while I admire Stephenson's leaps of imagination about how his MMO would work and how the business around one might operate, they're more than a little naive when compared to reality. And unfortunately, this has the unfortunate result of the reader questioning Stephenson's research and knowledge in other areas of the book; "If he doesn't know this, what's to say he's an authority on that?".
Still, it rips along at a cracking pace, especially for such a huge book, and the characters are well-realised with narrative threads being a lot more taut than some of Stephenson's other, more woolly plots.
Oh yeah, and I got the Kindle edition from Amazon for 99p. Definite value for money. It's gone back up to £3.99 now, but that's still excellent value.

I've got Stephen King's The Stand to read next, but a friend bought me the physical version for Christmas, and the sheer size of it is daunting what with having gotten used to my Kindle now.
It just won't fit snugly in my pocket!

Louis G · Post by **Louis G** » Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:18 pm 0

The walking dead comics. Very good indeed

Colonius · Post by **Colonius** » Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:35 pm 0

zip accident wrote:
Colonius wrote:
PFVA wrote:Something you guys probably all read in school but i didn't, A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens.

Love the irony of his descriptions.
Ignored Dickens for years and just read this after asking for a load of his stuff for Christmas. I really enjoyed it and loved the subtlety of some of his writing. The end, though predictable, was hugely touching with the addition of the seamstress.
I didn't like, HUGELY didn't like, Dickens as a kid. Slow, no plot ... . Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt the same way about Verne. Not HG Wells, he was okay, in Verne's case maybe it was the translator's fault, but Dickens, no.

We were supposed to read Oliver Twist but I never did my homework reading as I just wanted to read Tolkien/sci-fi and, as you say, it just seemed light on plot for the length of the book and maybe because my sister loved singing the songs from the musical version I thought it a touch 'girlie'. Reading Hard Times now.
I didn't read Verne when I was younger but read 20,00 Leagues under the Sea a year or so back and thought it impressive as a piece of writing about something that was unknown territory at the time Verne wrote it but not gripping as a novel. Wells I did read as a child and the plots seemed stronger.

merman · Post by **merman** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 1:10 pm 0

Commodore - a company on the edge by Brian Bagnall

Revised and updated from On the edge, with new interviews. This book covers up to the Commodore 64, with The Amiga Years launching later this year.

corrosive · Post by **corrosive** » Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:21 am 0

merman wrote:Commodore - a company on the edge by Brian Bagnall

Revised and updated from On the edge, with new interviews. This book covers up to the Commodore 64, with The Amiga Years launching later this year.

Loved that book, read both editions now; probably one of my favourite computing history books. The first edition has mention of the Amiga, but that's entirely missing from the second one - I thought at the time it gave short shrift to the Amiga, so looking forwards to an entire book on it from him.

(And since I'm mentioning the Amiga, this is worth a look if you're interested - http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-was-here - not so much a history, as a book about what made the Amiga such an impressive machine at the time)

F-ZeroOne · Post by **F-ZeroOne** » Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:12 pm 0

"A Wild Sheep Chase" by Currently reading this by Haruki "Have I told you how much I like The Beatles yet?" Murakami.

Whilst reading this book by a "proper" author, I think I have now devised a new hypothesis on the differences between "Literature" and "Sci-Fi".

In "Sci-Fi", the author will expend vast amounts of lovingly detailed prose on descriptions of spaceships, orbital colonies, alien societies and the like.

In "Literature", the author will expend vast amounts of lovingly detailed prose on descriptions of furniture.

YakYak