Whats everyone reading?

[Mangamax]

Just got "Sci-Fi Art A Graphic History" by Steve Holland and would recommend it to anyone into SF design work.
It starts from the illustrations for the likes of the original printings of Wells and Verne, up through the pulp covers of the 30's to 50's, comic art (including 2000AD), preproduction art of film and telly, promotional art for films, SF paperback covers and on and on and on.
Only downside is its quite small to show off all the brilliant art, and the binding ain't too good.
But, an insperational read.

[Mardroid]

I recently finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

A very entertaining read, although I wasn't over keen on how a few of the characters [spoiler]just happened to turn up on the Caribbean island. To his credit Gaiman actually did make a reference to the apparent coincidence in the book, stating that things like that do happen in real life (and he's right, they sometimes do), but I felt this stretched things a bit much.[/spoiler]

There were some great characters and interesting ideas though. Writing a novel based on the mythology of Anansi the Spider was a great idea.

[Mardroid]

Sigh. I edited the post with more stuff, but it timed out on me.


I also recently read a Star Wars book Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn.

While I love the Star Wars universe, I've avoided many of the novels since The Prequels came along and contradicted some of the stuff established. I was interested in this book though as

a)It's written by Zahn, and is set in the prequel time period (between episode 1 and 2 to be precise) and

b)It involves two characters that featured in some other Zahn books which I read before the prequel films came along, namely Thrawn and Jorus C'Baoth. (Strictly speaking the latter featured indirectly, as the character in the other book was a [spoiler]clone[/spoiler] called Joruus.
and
c) I was interested in how Zahn would tie his version of history with the official prequels. I.e. in his other books he refers to a great war between the Federation and The Clone Masters, which turned out to not be what The Clone Wars was about. To be fair, the contradiction here isn't really George Lucas's fault as the remit in those days was that the Clone Wars time period was out of bounds, for authors, so most set their novels after RoTJ. Zahn was one of these, but he and others bent the rules somewhat by still referring to events of that time period. He didn't go into detail but he left in enough to give a rather different impression of what they were about. (I'll admit, his version is very interesting though.) You'd have thought the  editing team would have sorted that out, but I guess they weren't that fussed really.

Anyhow, the novel didn't really do much to cover point c, but it was an interesting enough read just the same, particularly seeing Thrawn's role before he became a Grand Admiral of the Empire. C'Baoth, while not as dark [spoiler]as his later Clone, who is pretty much an outright Sith wannabee[/spoiler] is a somewhat unusual Jedi Master. Not a particularly likeable character though.

Anyway. The story wasn't bad, but I'm not over keen on Zahn's writing style.

I'm currently reading a fantasy novel: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
Early days yet, but it's okay at the moment. A lot of swearing for a fantasy novel though!

[TordelBack]

Anansi Boys is a great read - I may have mentioned on here that I actually listened to the audio book, read performed by Lenny Henry, and he made me laugh more than he has at any point since the early '80s.

Outbound Flight is an odd one.  On the one hand, I love books with plans of really big starships at the front, and it was interesting to see L'il Thrawn in action and see the Jedi in a different more Star Trekky mode.  The bit I didn't get was the huge number of pages devoted to one Jorg Car'das (obviously a version of George Lucas), who I have been informed by nerds nerdier than I is everywhere in the Star Wars EU, having hung out with Yoda on Dagobah and been given Force powers by him, created Talon Karrde's crime syndicate for him, learned to teleport using the Force... etc. etc.  No thanks, Tim.

[Mardroid]

Outbound Flight is an odd one.  On the one hand, I love books with plans of really big starships at the front, and it was interesting to see L'il Thrawn in action and see the Jedi in a different more Star Trekky mode.  The bit I didn't get was the huge number of pages devoted to one Jorg Car'das (obviously a version of George Lucas), who I have been informed by nerds nerdier than I is everywhere in the Star Wars EU, having hung out with Yoda on Dagobah and been given Force powers by him, created Talon Karrde's crime syndicate for him, learned to teleport using the Force... etc. etc.  No thanks, Tim.

I liked the character of Car'das in the book, but... I didn't know that! That does sound rather dodgy!

I am curious about the idea of a non force sensitive gaining force powers. Considering the idea that midichlorians (ugh, yes I know) are the interface with the force, what would happen if a normal bloke got a blood transfusion from a Jedi? (Assuming they were of the same blood type obviously.)

I'd imagine the affects (if there were any) would be minimal, even temporary, but... well. I'm curious. Of course in the thousands of years of history I'd have thought someone would have tried it...

[Emp]

Death Masques....the Dredd paper back. Its not to bad...from the 1st chapter but
since i'm only starting it are there any of these i should really get or really avoid?

[SmallBlueThing]

'Pushing Ice', by Alastair Reynolds, grabbed on a whim and a desire not to get involved in a trilogy such as his 'revelation space' books. Very good stuff, so moreish that ive been setting aside time to read this, rather than just cramming it into available periods of the day.
Basically, Saturn's moon Janus breaks orbit and makes a rapid beeline for distant star Spica, shedding its ice and revealing machinery underneath. An asteroid-mining ship is the only available thing to follow it, and her crew are given the job of catching up and studying it briefly, before returning home. But things go very wrong indeed.
About halfway through, and its bringing to mind the best aspects of 'rendezvous with rama', but coupled with the level of characterisation and interpersonal plotting that the rama sequels aimed for, but failed so dismally. Rapt, i am.
SBT

[Albion]

Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History of Beer by Pete Brown.
A fascinating history of beer drinking, brewing and of course, the pub. It's the second of his books that I've read and again I find it hard to put down.

More relevent to this parish, my to "to read" pile is currently the first three Hellboy trades that I've finally got round to buying and book 4 of Northlanders.

[Ignatzmonster]

More relevent to this parish, my to "to read" pile is currently the first three Hellboy trades that I've finally got round to buying and book 4 of Northlanders.

Be patient with the first Hellboy book. It's a bit clunky compared to the rest. I attibute that to John Byrne's "help."

[mogzilla]

GAME OF THRONES! on offer in gamestation for a fiver when we got the nippers ds and ive just bought the next four for a fiver each off play.com !  should keep me out of mischief for a while.

[mogzilla]

More relevent to this parish, my to "to read" pile is currently the first three Hellboy trades that I've finally got round to buying and book 4 of Northlanders.

Be patient with the first Hellboy book. It's a bit clunky compared to the rest. I attibute that to John Byrne's "help."

agreed, though i prefer the ones with the short stories "chained coffin" and "right hand of doom" meself

[HdE]

I got around to reading the Serenity graphic novel 'The Shepherd's tale' tonight, after having it on my shelf since Xmas.

Oh dear. Not a fan.

After two very, very good Serenity graphic novels, this one comes off very badly, in my opinion. It spoils the potential of telling Shepherd Book's origins with a slightly-too-adventurous storytelling device of jumping backwards in time at regular intervals. It starts well, but moving backwards all the time, I can't help but feel it loses momentum rather than gains it.

A real shame.

[Mardroid]

I found that device took a bit getting used to, but I largely liked it. Some interesting twists!

[Ignatzmonster]

More relevent to this parish, my to "to read" pile is currently the first three Hellboy trades that I've finally got round to buying and book 4 of Northlanders.

Be patient with the first Hellboy book. It's a bit clunky compared to the rest. I attibute that to John Byrne's "help."

agreed, though i prefer the ones with the short stories "chained coffin" and "right hand of doom" meself

I tend to prefer the longer stories just because it gives Mignola a chance to wander off topic which tends to delight me. That said I don't think any comic artist does better short stories. Their almost like poems. And "Chained Coffin" is possibly the greatest comicbook short story of all time. I've read it dozens of times and it never fails to make me happy.

[Rog69]

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've just started reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, despite reading everything else of his, this one has always slipped by me until now.