Whats everyone reading?

[zombemybabynow]

Pratchett's Snuff about to download to my kindle any mo'

i think it's about dwarf-death-porn?!

[chaingunchimp]

Was given  the Death Note boxed set for my birthday last month, so far I've read halfway through.
Very very impressed with this, and can totally see what all the fuss is about.
Very intricately plotted, extremely complex but never boring series.
Lots of nice twists and turns and some cool character design.
Love it! 

[Daveycandlish]

Hammer Films have started releasing novelisations (is that a word?!) of their films

http://hammerfilms.com/

and I've just started reading Kronos by Guy Adams adapting the 70s film Captain Kronos - one of my favourites (and a big influence on my Jikan character in PARAGON).

Shaun Hutson adapted Twins of Evil - that's next on my list!

[Tjm86]

Anyway, currently reading 'Red Mars' by Kim Stanley Robinson
...
After a long run of books that were a struggle to get through, and several that just plain beat me, this is proving to be one of those rare novels that i'd happily live in. That ive got nearly 2000 pages to go til i finish the story makes me ridiculously happy.

All three are good (and the way he gets away with having a lot of the same characters throughout is pretty neat) but the first is far and away the best. If you're still in the mood once you've worked your way through the lot, Antarctica is a pretty good prequel of sorts (in that I think they mention Antarctic training in Red Mars so it's clearly spun out of the same thread, but it doesn't use the same characters.)

the gold coast and pacific edge also follow some of his ecological themes and are a much lighter read.  Finished running through the mars trilogy this summer after a hiatus of a few years.  read Red Mars then just couldn't get round to Green and Blue.  Had another stab on the whole in one go and found it well worth it.  Thinking of having a go at his number novels (50 days and counting, 40 days of rain, etc ).  Anyone tried them?

[Devlin Waugh]

just finished "1984" by George Orwell.

We've always been at war with Eastasia

[Devons Daddy]

100 bullets is the current standard download on the Ipad,

also enjoying some of the free tasters they put up on COMICX which is an incredible site.

shall be placing some orders soon, based on the enjoyment i have on a couple of titles.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

I'm in the middle of Michael Caine's latest autobiography The Elephant To Hollywood and a very interesting read it bloody well is.

[Professor Bear]

Sakkara by the board's own Michael Carroll, the second in his New Heroes trilogy and a great little book full of comic book conceits like expository third-person prose, teenage superheroes changing their name at random when they get a new power or costume, team-ups, and big splosions.  As with the preceding Quantum Prophecy there's a cinematic pacing to the action scenes and the infodumps about characters' pasts really give the impression that you're seeing small parts of a larger comic book universe, but it all works as a prose adventure without feeling like an ill-advised switch in mediums as most such books like this tend to, and there's some nice cliffhangers and twists in there, too, like I used to enjoy in comics before Bryan K Vaughan went and made such things tedious - but here they add to proceedings rather than detract from the narrative, so fair play.
It's a bit of a quick read, and very 'Mid Atlantic', but these are minor niggles in what's been a very enjoyable series so far.

[Spikes]

Hammer Films have started releasing novelisations (is that a word?!) of their films

http://hammerfilms.com/

and I've just started reading Kronos by Guy Adams adapting the 70s film Captain Kronos - one of my favourites (and a big influence on my Jikan character in PARAGON).

Shaun Hutson adapted Twins of Evil - that's next on my list!

and speaking of Twins of Evil, this is on e-bay at the moment,
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%20220875087971

[Hoagy]

The Stars My Destination. Chapter 2. Its interesting that its bad review reflects its good review at this stage. The jumps from location to location to the actual description in depth, of jaunting are flawed yes. But it's fifty's noirish pace is its charm too. It's just sometimes a little jarring with its science fiction in places. I'm stumbling through it never the less. Terms like "Negro teacher " and Foyle's bullish attitude may be a bit dated but in its way this makes the bookquite the early science fiction artefact.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Incredible stuff. The story of how US Military Intelligence [*insert mandatory joke about how that's a contradiction in terms*] was so psychologically scarred by Vietnam that it was prepared to indulge a bunch of nutty cranks. There are some interesting insights into the kind of thinking behind the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

It's presented rather impartially too, or at least it's as impartial as a writer can be when not wanting to piss off crazy spooks. All the unbelievable stories are presented coherently and are presented in a way that they flow into one another smoothly.

Next in the pile is my long sought after book about Jack Garcia.

[Professor Bear]

Absolute Power, the third in Michael Carroll's New Heroes/Quantum Prophecy trilogy.  I reckon the epilogue was a mis-step, but only because it creates further threads that won't be resolved, though I do suppose it's in keeping with the series' use of comic book tropes and idioms such as the 'shared universe' that dictates that even though a comic book series comes to an end the final issue is littered with notes from the editor about where the characters might end up next among all the happy ending stuff.
As ever, the scraps are well done, with superhero in-fighting ala 1980s X-Men that ends up with kids battering each other in the Grand Canyon using their own dismembered arms as weapons at one point, though I would have liked to see where all the references to "ordinary people" was going, as it doesn't get resolved or addressed in the book.  Also features a cameo from board members in long standing RAC and Queen Firey Bou.

A very enjoyable and recommended book and trilogy.

[Richmond Clements]

.  I reckon the epilogue was a mis-step, but only because it creates further threads that won't be resolved

You know that Mike's currently two books into the prequel series..?

Also features a cameo from board members in long standing RAC and Queen Firey Bou.

Yeah, that was rather cool!

[Professor Bear]

You know that Mike's currently two books into the prequel series..?

I knew the Superhuman stuff was a prequel, but didn't know it addressed what came after New Heroes.

[Mike Carroll]

Glad you enjoyed the books, Prof!

The prequel trilogy (Super Human, The Ascension and next year's novel, Stronger) are indeed all tied in with the first trilogy. They don't necessarily address what comes after the first trilogy, but they do plant a lot of seeds.

My initial plan was to have the fourth novel continue directly on from the events of the third book, but my original editor at HarperCollins left for pastures new, and his successor had little interest in continuing the series: the books sold very well, but apparently not quite well enough.

However, the powers that be at Penguin, who published the US editions, were interested in more superhero novels. There was one catch, though: pushing Book Four of a moderately successful series into a crowded marketplace isn't nearly as easy as starting fresh with a brand-new series, so that's what they wanted me to do. I came up with the prequel trilogy as a handy compromise: it meant that new readers could jump on without having to be familiar with the existing books, plus I could expand on lots of background stuff that I'd been planning to present in flashbacks in the fourth and subsequent books.

I'm about to begin the first draft of the seventh novel. It's set a few months after the end of Absolute Power (or The Reckoning, as it's called in the US), and continues the adventures of Colin Wagner and the other New Heroes. This is the first in a sequence that will wrap up all the loose ends from both trilogies in one great big satisfying conclusion (I hope!).

I've still not yet decided whether I'll do two or three in this sequence... Three would be nice: three trilogies! Nine novels, plus the short story collection (some of the stories can be found on the website)... That makes for a decent-sized series.

Anyway, as I said, glad you like the books, and thank you for the reviews: Not nearly enough people have read these books!

-- Mike