Whats everyone reading?

[Buddy]

Adobe InDesign one on one, 'cause it's sbout time I taught myself it as more and more employers are asking for it.

And I have to say it's quite an impressive bit of software.

[SmallBlueThing]

I am getting to the bottom of my book backlog (there are some advantages of not being very busy at work) and I just finished Zima Blue, a collection of short sci-fi stories by Alistair Reynolds. I don't often read collections like this and it found it's way to me by accident (my mum confusing my Amazon wish list and the "people also bought section") but I'm really glad it did, it's a superb collection.
I'm now looking forward to getting stuck in to the rest of his work, Revelation Space is already on it's way to me.

I have Zima Blue, or Galactic North, pencilled in for later in the month, after I finish Pushing Ice and hopefully whizz through an Arthur C Clarke I picked up the other day. I'm really impressed with Reynolds- Pushing Ice is quite long and exceedingly dense, but it's flown by. I've been eating it up each day, and the characters have absolutely lived for me. It's effortlessly readable, despite being chocka with the kind of 'hard sf' theory and technology that has proven hard for me to get my head around in other books. The Revelation Space trilogy is looking less like a scary 1500+ of close-packed type that I'll probably never finish, and more like a magnificent playground world that I'll never want to leave, with every passing word of his other works.

I think my upcoming book schedule may be something like this: Finish Pushing Ice, A C Clarke's Ghost From The Grand Banks, Galactic North or Zima Blue, Revelation Space trilogy, Feed, Stranger In A Strange Land, Leviathans of Jupiter (Oct paperback).

SBT

[HOO-HAA]

I think my upcoming book schedule may be something like this: Finish Pushing Ice, A C Clarke's Ghost From The Grand Banks, Galactic North or Zima Blue, Revelation Space trilogy, Feed...

I'll be interested to hear what you think of Feed, dude. I've been hearing mixed reviews of it...

[SmallBlueThing]

I started it aaaaages ago, wayne, but gave up after about thirty pages. Possibly though, i was suffering zomboverload, after seven or eight on the trot. I remember thinking it was quite bland, in comparison to some i'd read recently. Willing to give it another go, as fellow zom-heads have said good things. We'll see. How's Fever coming on?
SBT

[Rog69]

I think my upcoming book schedule may be something like this: Finish Pushing Ice, A C Clarke's Ghost From The Grand Banks, Galactic North or Zima Blue, Revelation Space trilogy, Feed, Stranger In A Strange Land, Leviathans of Jupiter (Oct paperback).

SBT

Two of the six books remaining in my in-pile are The ghost from the grand banks and Stranger in a strange land.

Before Zima Blue I re-read Rendezvous with Rama, I hadn't read it for years and I'm now interested in the sequels but I hear they are not so great, anyone else read them?

[SmallBlueThing]

I confess to getting halfway through Rama 2 before losing the will to live. Rama i found astonishing; so much so that i found myself calling it my 'favourite book' in that facebook thing that's going around at the moment- which surprised me, because ive only read it recently. But i really havent stopped thinking about it since, and was so, so dissappointed by 2. Turgid, dispiriting prose, just going on and on, with dreadful characters examined in detail whom you'd really prefer were just forgotten. I understand, from those here far more in the know than me, that clarke basically had fuck-all to do with them- which makes sense, because they really dont read like him at all. And Rama 2 ignores everything about the first that made it so distinct, warping it into some featureless, bland, doorstop nerd-fiction.

I have to go read Rama again now. See? Always on my sodding mind.

SBT

[HOO-HAA]

I started it aaaaages ago, wayne, but gave up after about thirty pages. Possibly though, i was suffering zomboverload, after seven or eight on the trot. I remember thinking it was quite bland, in comparison to some i'd read recently. Willing to give it another go, as fellow zom-heads have said good things. We'll see. How's Fever coming on?
SBT

It's going grand, thanks for asking! Visited a laboratory over the weekend as research for it. It's due in for August 1st, which should be okay; I'm about halfway through the 3rd draft.

Reading-wise, I'm digging into a lot of Shaun Hutson at the moment. Reading Purity at the moment and really enjoying it. It's the most character-driven and moderately paced of his work that I've read thus-far.

I'm hearing a lot of good things about the late Richard Laymon and so picked up one of his (delightfully titled BEWARE!) which I'm very much looking forward to checking out. Ironically, I've become a little disenfranchised with comtemporary horror and seem to be reaching for books from the 80s/ 90s. Maybe it's a comfort thing; those were my formative years in terms of getting into horror books. But I'm loving what I've discovered/ rediscovered so far.

[SmallBlueThing]

Richard Laymon was a particular favourite of mine for a year or so a good while back. He has one series, something '...house' (or something like that. Im at work and cant check) that are blindingly good. Or at least, i remember them being so, even though the details are hazy now to say the least!
SBT

[O Lucky Stevie!]

I have to go read Rama again now. See? Always on my sodding mind.

Snap.  Rama is one of on two books that Stevie can categorically state that he's read in every decade of his life.  In fact, he was re-reading this, 2001 & Childhood's End on a annual basis through his high school years. All three are currently sitting in his To Read pile even as he types.

In his teens he would have named Childhood's End as being Clarke's finest. In his twenties: The Fountains of Paradise.

But Rama... Rama is a perfect as any book could wish to be.

Was underwhelmed by The Ghost of the Grand Banks when it was first published a recent re-read shows how mistaken Stevie was.

The other book read every decade is Joe Haldeman's The Forever War . To his undying shame, Stevie didn't read The Time Machine again after grade 5 until Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships was published in the 1990s. 

[Richmond Clements]

Richard Laymon was a particular favourite of mine for a year or so a good while back. He has one series, something '...house'

Beast House. The first one is 'The Cellar', whcih is an aweseom book. Laymon worte some astonishing horror books.
Wayne, I've got a number of them here in HB, if you're still looking for some of them next time we're in the same location, you can have them.

[SmallBlueThing]

Beast House! That's the one- and i remember The Cellar as being utterly disturbing, and very, very nasty.
SBT

[Richmond Clements]

Beast House! That's the one- and i remember The Cellar as being utterly disturbing, and very, very nasty.
SBT

It is indeed. There's one of his called Endless Night that even I think may go 'too far' at times.

[SmallBlueThing]

I spent a good few months working my way through a number of Laymon's books- so, from a distance of some years, they do sort of merge into one. But i remember being astonished at how far he was prepared to go, and confused why i'd not heard of him during the horror 'golden years' of 13 to 20 (83-90). Was he just not distributed in the uk back then? It was all king, herbert, smith, hutson, etchinson and the exorcist on any self-respecting teenager's shelves.
SBT

[Richmond Clements]

Yeah- he really is your classic example of an overlooked talent. He's easily up there with the best of them.

[HOO-HAA]

Wayne, I've got a number of them here in HB, if you're still looking for some of them next time we're in the same location, you can have them.

Wow, that's very kind of you, Rich!

Was he just not distributed in the uk back then? 

I think he's fairly widely distributed now in the UK (can't remember the publisher - but they're pretty big). Oddly, Laymon was only published in the US in later years (maybe even after his death?) by the ailing Dorchester; under their Leisure imprint.

Yeah- he really is your classic example of an overlooked talent. He's easily up there with the best of them.

Excellent! You boys are really selling this guy to me. He's just moved up the pile to next-on-the-list