Whats everyone reading?

[Zarjazzer]

Just started Kraken by young Mr Mieville myself. i got it partly as it features the Natural History museum one of my fave museums in Londinium. When I bought Kraken the staff at Waterstones kept saying he's got a new book out and why don't you buy it? Well let me read this one first. Hard sell means no sale to me.

[I, Cosh]

Just read The Embedding by Ian Watson. An engaging yarn about attempting to understand alien consciousnesses and whether we can force our own minds into completely new ways of thinking. Short and sweet. Highly recommended.

I've got another couple of his - Alien Embassy and Miracle Visitors - lined up next.

[O Lucky Stevie!]

You're in for a real real treat there Cosh. Ian Watson is da shiz.

Enough ideas per short story to fuel another author's novel. novels brimful as other's trilogies.

& he never repeats himself.

Miracle visitors is possibly Stevie's fave.

[HOO-HAA]

THE RESIDENT by Francis Cottam. Film tie-in from new HAMMER press. So far, so good...

[Mardroid]

Currently reading Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Witches versus Vampires! But like many of Pratchett's books, these are largely the toys used to explore something deeper. It's really a story about choices on the edge and being of two minds*.

Interesting stuff.

*[spoiler]Quite literally in one character's case.[/spoiler]

[TordelBack]

Currently reading Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Carpe Jugulum is a good one, and begins an excellent run for the series: ideas first encountered here run into The Fifth Elephant, The Truth, Going Postal, and perhaps best of all, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (a book that deserves a follow-up of its own).  Definitely a turning point for my up-to-then flagging enjoyment of Discworld.

[I, Cosh]

Miracle visitors is possibly Stevie's fave.

Good to hear. I dug them out after reading this piece about that one. I remember starting The Jonah Kit when I was about 12 or 13 and not managing more than a chapter or two. Idiot!

[Albion]

I recently read Alfred Bester's The stars my destination.
I read it after hearing good things about it on this very forum. I liked it but not as much as some on here. The story jumped along a bit too quick for me at times. I felt that some parts would have been better if they were a bit longer.

I got Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss for my birthday this week. In the acknowledgements he mentions Ben Willsher. Anyone know if this is the 2000AD artist?


Edit:
I might have answered my own question. There is a commission of the lead character Lucifer Box, on Ben Willsher's website.

http://www.benwillsher.co.uk/photo_3533989.html

[Mardroid]

Carpe Jugulum is a good one,

I agree! I finished it earlier today.

and begins an excellent run for the series: ideas first encountered here run into The Fifth Elephant, The Truth, Going Postal, and perhaps best of all, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (a book that deserves a follow-up of its own).  Definitely a turning point for my up-to-then flagging enjoyment of Discworld.

I've read The Fifth Elephant and Going Postal already. I appear to be reading them all out of order! (In my defence I've borrowed all Pratchett's books from the library.)  Heh. On the plus side you can get away with that with most of the disk-word books. I did sense the it was a bit of an introduction to characters/vampires I'm already acquainted with though. (The Pictsies for example. And possibly the vampires too.)

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

That's something I love about Pratchett, there's no right order to read the books. Everyone jumps on the Discworld series at different points and works through it in their own way. It gives rise to a variety of different interpretations of the characters/themes. He's a very clever man is Pratchett.

[House of Usher]

To Kill a Mockingbird

I'm five chapters in, but I was hooked from page one. Harper Lee is a startlingly talented writer. The most wonderful thing about the book is the faux naive, tongue-in-cheek narrator's voice: it's the adult Scout (Jean Louise Finch) faithfully recalling the experiences and thought processes of the eight-year-old Scout in her childhood in 1930s smalltown Alabama. Incidentally, the film starring Gregory Peck was a superb cinematic adaptation of the novel.

[TordelBack]

Paying For It, by Chester Brown.  Now Chester isn't my favourite of the former Toronto Three, but this is a pretty amazing piece of work.  A savagely honest and thought-provoking account of a decade of having sex with prostitutes as an alternative to indulging in 'romantic love', with obligatory appearances (and commentary) by Seth and Joe Matt.  It has what to me seems a wildly improbable conclusion, but to judge by the dozens of pages of footnotes and comments at the back, it's a completely true story, and given what Chester has already laid bare in his previous books I don't see why he'd indulge in fantasy at this point.  

[House of Usher]

Whereas 'romantic love' is all some of us can afford. Heh. But given the choice it's still what I'd prefer. I've heard of this book; I may read it one day. I've just finished reading a trashy memoir, Blue Period: Notes from a Life in the Titillation Trade by Nicholas Whittaker. Someone had pressed a peeled-off £1.99 price sticker from The Works onto the inside back cover, giving some idea of its pre-charity shop retail destination.

The book's main payoff for me was partial delineation of the origins and genealogy of British top shelf publications in the 1980s (e.g. Razzle was started as a direct competitor to the downmarket Fiesta, and founded by an ex-Fiesta editorial team for a rival publisher). The secondary payoff was the author's rumination on the aspirational qualities of the magazine Club. The publisher intended it to conjure up associations with gentlemen's clubs, flying Club Class and Canadian Club whisky, but all it made the council-estate raised freelancer who wrote for it think of was the advertising jingle "if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club." Best gag in the book.

[TordelBack]

Whereas 'romantic love' is all some of us can afford.

Oh don't worry, he works to a strict budget, based on a cost-benefit analysis of maintaining a 'girlfriend' relationship.  Live the dream.  The best bits of the book are where he strives not to offend women he doesn't find attractive, and his gradual descent from the courtesy of tipping every woman regardless to a snarky omission if the experience is sub-par. 

The book's main payoff for me was partial delineation of the origins and genealogy of British top shelf publications in the 1980s (e.g. Razzle was started as a direct competitor to the downmarket Fiesta, and founded by an ex-Fiesta editorial team for a rival publisher).

Why do I find this completely fascinating?  What's wrong with me!

[House of Usher]

There isn't much more information than that apart from grouping together the titles by the two publishers the author worked for, thus omitting Gold Star Publications which he didn't. Fiesta was started in 1968. The bulk of the book is divided between autobiography and portraying the unsurprising shabbiness of the magazine premises and what went on behind the scenes.