Whats everyone reading?

[klute]

Just started reading the walking dead compendium,it's teh first time i've read anything walking dead based it's a good ready so far......i wish i'd read it before seeing it on tv

[Syne]

I usually have a few books on the go at once, at the moment I'm reading David Drakes Starliner - not sure if I like his style, though it's entertaining enough -: Acid Temple Ball, a delirious bit of 60's acid-head erotica by Mary Sativa: and James Lovegrove's Age of Zeus.

As you might guess from that list, I'm on a bit of a trash/pulp binge at the moment. . .

[Syne]

Started reading Haggard's King Solomon's Mines.  Onyl started yesterday but it is pacy and fun so getting through it quickly. One of the main characters from LOEG that I have not read the source story of.

Haggard is great. If you like KSM you should definitely look into She.

JvB

Haggard is great. I'm slowly working my way through all the Quartermain novels, finished the third one, Allan's Wife, a couple of weeks ago. Not quite as good as the first two, but still quality. And it features a woman raised in the jungle by baboons, which is always a plus.

[Gonk]

One of the most famous books ever written from an animal's point of view has to be Anna Sewell's novel "Black Beauty".  Unlike the Houyhnhms in "Gulliver's Travels" there is not any satire intended in Sewell's depiction of a talking horse. It also raised an awareness of animal welfare to a contemporary society which Swift's portayl of intelligent, feeling animals, did not. The Victorians are well known for their sentimentality, and "Black Beauty" tapped into that feeling, as is evinced by the number of copies sold.

At the same time, Tolstoy also used this technique of horse as narrator in his story "Kholstomer" (Strider); which also shows human beings as being ignorant, brutal and cruel towards animal suffering. Unlike "Black Beauty" Tolstoy's story does not end so happily.

[GordyM]

Axe Cop Volume 3.

It's the gloriously demented story of, well, a cop with an axe who teams up with his best friend Dinosaur Soldier to fight EVERYTHING. Written by a seven-year-old, drawn by his thirty-year-old brother, it's really funny and really daft. Recommended!

[Kerrin]

Just finished "Blue Remembered Earth" by Alastair Reynolds. It's an enjoyable Sci-fi adventure with some interesting takes on the nearish future. Nice to see that Reynolds is really starting to get a handle on writing characters and has lost the sterility of his earlier "vast cosmic disaster" stuff.

[SmallBlueThing]

Kerrin, can you recommend one of his 'earlier, more sterile, cosmic destruction' books? I like reynolds off and on, but havent yet read anything to equal 'pushing ice', which i found almost worthy of clarke. I started revelation space, but didnt get on with it.

I, on the other hand, am reading 'last and first men' by olaf stapleton (and not, as i mentioned to the lady in waterstones when looking for it, 'oleg mcnoleg'), which has no characters whatsoever, but is instead a future history of the next 2000,000,000 years of human evolution. Written in 1930, it's very wrong about the remainder of the twentieth century, but as soon as we get past that it becomes an absolutely engrossing read. Old arthur called it 'awe-inspiring' and 'the book that changed my life'. It's certainly the former.

SBT

[Darren Stephens]

Just finished reading Orc Stain, book 1. I started reading it about a year ago and, for some reason, put it aside. It really is fantastic. Amazing art, really funny action heavy story. Loved it!

[the 'artist' formerly known as Slips]

Just finished Bear Grylls autobiography (Mud, Sweat and Tears) which is not half as bad as I thought it would be.  It was a present so seemed rude not to at least give it a go. 

Ive found it rather difficult to find Dune Messiah in my local town (and the neighbouring city).  So Ive started the Devotion of Suspect X by Kelgo Higashino, Im a third of the way through and its more a plodding police procedural than a page turning rip roaring thriller that "He is the Japanese Stig Larrson" suggests.  That might be due to the actual cultural differences more than anything.   

Maybe Im damning it with feint praise.  Ill decide once Im finished. 


 

[Greg M.]

I, on the other hand, am reading 'last and first men' by olaf stapleton (and not, as i mentioned to the lady in waterstones when looking for it, 'oleg mcnoleg'), which has no characters whatsoever, but is instead a future history of the next 2000,000,000 years of human evolution.

Oddly enough, so am I. I love this sort of thing ('Man After Man', a book of speculative naturalism, is another favourite), and you are indeed right - once it breaks free of the trappings of the retrospectively known and into the wild blue yonder of charting the destiny of the species, it becomes remarkable. Have you read Stapledon's 'Star Maker'? It's similar but on a much grander scale - the history of life in the universe. Trance-inducing stuff (in a good way. Reminds me oddly of the really trippy space-travelling bit in my favourite book, 'The House on the Borderland' by William Hope Hodgson.)

[SmallBlueThing]

Star Maker is next on my list, Greg. I would have read it first, as i'd picked it up months ago and fallen in love with the idea based on the back cover blurb, but then i found FaLM and thought id go through them in order. Im just past the martians, and cant put it down.

SBT

[SmallBlueThing]

Or even LaFM!

Duh...

SBT

[GordyM]

Just finished reading Orc Stain, book 1. I started reading it about a year ago and, for some reason, put it aside. It really is fantastic. Amazing art, really funny action heavy story. Loved it!

Everyone should read Orc Stain! It's like nothing else on the shelves and the art is stunning.

[Mardroid]

Alice in Wonderland. Don't laugh. I got it as a free download for my Kobo ereader. I'm not sure I've ever read the original story all the way through and I was curious. I actually read Peter Pan for the first time in my 30s purely out of curiosity. (I wasn't that impressed mind you, although there was a particular passage that gave me the shivers in a good way, but I'm deviating from the topic of this thread.)

Boy is it an odd story! I'm not sure if I like it or not. I quite like the writing style, but all this business of Alice finding what she needs laying around in the near vicinity I find a bit irritating. And I think they might be overdoing the whole size changing thing. I remember that vaguely from the film or possibly a shorter version of the story, but in the orginal book she seems to change size for each little adventure.

To be fair I'm not really the target audience... but I'm finding it quite readable, even entertaining in places nonetheless.

I also came home to find the last two Marvel Trades in the Marvel Ultimate collection had arrived. A Thor book and a Captain America book. I'm not all that taken with Caps but then again, I haven't read much Captain America stuff. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.  I actually quite enjoyed his treatment in The Ultimates book. I think Thor might be more my cup of tea though.

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Kerrin, can you recommend one of his 'earlier, more sterile, cosmic destruction' books? I like reynolds off and on, but havent yet read anything to equal 'pushing ice', which i found almost worthy of clarke. I started revelation space, but didnt get on with it.

Chasm City is what  you need to get your chops around SBT. Not merely whole heartedly  deserving of it's 2002 British Science Fiction Association Award it reads like Wagner & Grant drawn by Ezquerra. It takes place in the Revelation Space milieu but can be read independently of the other books.

Which,  contentious as this may be, are on the whole  Reynold's weakest. Revelation Space is very much the promising debut novel – vertiginously high concept, an engaging setting let down by inordinate pages  developing characters who are ultimately not that interesting.  Redemption Ark is a corker which could do with a bit of a trim in places. But Absolution Gap?

Oh dear. ISHO it's a literary trainwreck of Trans-Siberian proportions  that feels as if  Reynolds had written it because Gollancz asked it of him.

The Prefect is a solidly written SF procedural that's reminiscent of Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton stories (there's a lot of Niven in early Reynolds) but Stevie's Pick of Reynolds' Novels are the later stand alones.

Both House of Suns (Edmund Hamilton & Doc EE Smith's rebooted in a 21st  Century Space Opera Year Zero)  & Terminal City   (simultaneously a homage to Clarke's City & the Stars, a critique of steampunk & the history of science fiction as a genre rendered as narrative) are just stunning.

That said, if the Clarkean Blue Remembered Earth is anything to go by this new trilogy will be the business.

I, on the other hand, am reading 'last and first men' by olaf stapleton (and not, as i mentioned to the lady in waterstones when looking for it, 'oleg mcnoleg'), which has no characters whatsoever...

Yet arguably –paradoxically-- it is the greatest science fiction novel ever written...

and you are indeed right - once it breaks free of the trappings of the retrospectively

...& a young Elizabeth II being impaled upon railings is the best bit!