Whats everyone reading?

[TordelBack]

Eclectic, thy name is Albion!

[Bolt-01]

Judt finished Vol 1 of Long John Silver from Cinebooks (cheers again, Rich) and it is as wonderful as I thought it would be. Next up is Artemis Fowl- The Atlantis Complx; I've read all the other books (started getting them for Mini-bolt when he was of an age, but I actually bought this one for Nano-Bolt.

[chaingunchimp]

more Peter David Hulk.
from the gray years.
brilliant

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Tonight I shall be reading the TPB of Jericho (Season 3 - Civil War) and I have been waiting for this at my comic shop for bloody ages. It continues from where the TV series ended!

I shall follow this up with SFX #212 as it has a 4 page article all about Starlord starting on page 76 

[HOO-HAA]

Man, I loved JERICHO. Let us know how you get on with this one.

I'm reading UNMARKED GRAVES by Shaun Hutson with all three NO MAN'S LAND trades on the side. It's a Batman set from the turn of the century. So far, so good. 

[Richmond Clements]

all three NO MAN'S LAND trades on the side.

Don't you mean five? As well as Cataclysm as your first course..?

[Keef Monkey]

Been reading a Dragon Age spin-off novel (called 'The Calling') and it seems to have mirrored my experience with the game almost exactly, in that I got really absorbed in the first half and am now finding it a real chore that I'm only really persisting with to get it finished. Probably not a fault of the novel, I get that way with a lot of fantasy for some reason, maybe it's just not my thing.

So, when I can't be bothered reading that I'm dipping in and out of the Necronomicon. I've never read Lovecraft and decided that's just not right, so far it's tremendously creepy stuff.

[SmallBlueThing]

Finished Steve King's 'Full Dark, No Stars', which was by far the best thing of his i've read in many years. The first story, '1922', especially was magnificent, but everything in it was of such high quality, it makes me feel bad for having taken a sabattical from the man's work.

Now reading 'Starbound' by joe haldeman, the sequel to 'marsbound', which i had previously enjoyed. This one sees our heroes off towards the planet they believe mankind's almost-destroyers, 'the others' inhabit. It's full of the same warm characterisation, hard science ideas, and amusing bits. Fly-In-Amber gets some pagetime and it's impossible not to fall for haldeman's 'martians'. Loving it so far.
SBT

[mogzilla]

still ploughing through a storm of swords

[vzzbux]

Just about to start 'The life of Luke Skywalker'
This will be followed by 'The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi' then 'The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader'.
Scored these in TK MAXX for £6.




V

[HOO-HAA]

all three NO MAN'S LAND trades on the side.

Don't you mean five? As well as Cataclysm as your first course..?

I think the trades collect two or three stories each (maybe?). I picked them up in a charity shop. Just grabbed all they had, so you could be right: I could be missing the final two trades!   

[TordelBack]

Ian McEwan's Solar.  Now I like McEwan a lot, particularly his short fiction collections, but with his later books I'm finding him progressively more flawed as a novelist.  This started with Enduring Love (which was a great book largely ruined (for me) by its bafflingly unnecessary  appendix) and continued in subsequent books (although I haven't read On Chesil Beach), but it really peaks in Solar.  He presents some interesting ideas about physicists, environmentalists and those in the humanities, creates a loathsome but engaging central character with a web of interesting relationships and a fascinating trajectory, then for some reason [spoiler]ties the second half of the book around the usual 'cover up an accidental death in case anyone thinks it's a murder' [/spoiler]plot, with some added immorality, and then leaves the fate of his protagonist hanging on the familiar [spoiler]farce element of 'when will his misdeeds be found out?[/spoiler]'.  It could have been a really interesting novel about its characters and the topical conflict of their ideas and ideals, but instead it's a disappointing jumble of unnecessary melodrama, zeitgeist and insight.

I won't deny that the conclusion resonated strongly with me, but the good bits could have stood free of what felt like a tacked-on plot. 







>>>>>>P minus 4<<<<<<

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Did he do Amsterdam?

Cos all I'm saying is that it was nothing like any of my visits.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

'The Truth' By Terry Pratchett.

Picked this up as a second hand hardback, it was missing the jacket* so there was no blurb and whatnot. I had no idea what this one would be about. I do enjoy Anhk Morpork stories. Soul Music was the first Pratchett book I ever read and it's bloody cool how the city has developed it's own personality and become a(n insane) city in its own right, after its humble beginnings as a parody of Dickensian London (But with Trolls, and Dwarfs and suchlike) .

[spoiler]In light of recent developments in the (boring) real world, I found this story of a burgeoning Paper  of News to have a bit more of an edge than it otherwise would have.[/spoiler][spoiler]They break the story by listening to someones private message, and then cover for the guilty parties, for example.[/spoiler][spoiler]Having Vetinari sleeping for most of the book irked me slightly, but only because some of my favourite Pratchett lines concern His Lordship's facial expressions (or lack thereof).[/spoiler]

Unseen Academicals is next in the pile.

*£1.25, bargain

[Dark Jimbo]

I do enjoy Anhk Morpork stories. Soul Music was the first Pratchett book I ever read and it's bloody cool how the city has developed it's own personality and become an (insane) city in its own right, after its humble beginnings as a parody of Dickensian London (But with Trolls, and Dwarfs and suchlike) .

I always read it as more of a riff on Lankhmar, myself, with bits of London/Cairo/Paris etc as the stories require it.