December 2011 Reading

Still reading Classic Traveller Supplements...

Still working on Stealing Light.

Read recently (meaning November not December :-) )

Grantville Gazette V edited by Eric Flint. I'm not typically a big reader of short stories, and this became my least favorite of the Gazette series. The previous ones all had at least one story I really liked. This book only had one story grab me and it managed to annoy me on the last page of the story.

License to Ensorcell by Katherine Kerr. Contemporary fantasy with some leanings towards paranormal romance. OK but not as good as some of her previous work.

The Passage by Justin Cronin. My sister read it since she had seen some great reviews and passed it to me because she didn't understand the fuss being made about it. I read it and agreed with her. To me it read like a Sci Fi book written by someone who doesn't read Sci Fi. The science was laughable to the point that I would classify it as Science Fantasy. (My definition, a fantasy that uses science terms to explain what's going on but it's probably not scientifically possible.) The world building was OK but this wasn't my first post-apocalytic novel and I couldn't rate it higher. The action was decent but not great. It wasn't a character driven novel. Towards the end of the book when it was down to 8-10 characters, everyone else either dead or otherwise out of the story, I was still stopping to think, "OK, which character is this again?" It had some mysticism in it that didn't work for me. I've seen some novels where mysticism worked, this one felt more like deus ex machina which is never a good thing. The interesting thing is that the Author blurb on the jacket said Cronin was an english professor and had done writing seminars. I found the first 100 and some pages (out of 700+) a hard slog before the book started moving.

The good news is that now it's December and I've got 8 or 9 books coming from the library, most of which I'm really looking forward to.

I attempted to read This Alien Shore but I just couldn't get into it so I switched to Veteran and am enjoying that one so much more.

Nearly done reading JEM.

Began listening to Against a Dark Background.

Still reading Gridlinked by Neal Asher...

Just began River of Gods yesterday.

Vargr (Traveller Alien Module 3) by J. Andrew Keith

started American Gods
finished a reread of Foundation
started 2001: A Space Odyssey (I must have read this at some point in the past.. but its not sounding familiar at all... so I guess I can count it as a new read)

Still working on The Picture of Dorian Gray. Need to get cracking on it as I promised some friends I would read Cryptonomicon by year's end.

I'm still listening to WWW: Wake but I only have about 3 more hours to go. Must see if the others in the series are available as audiobooks.

Finished reading Jem. Wasn't bad (3/5). Without giving away anything - the end, epilogue, put not called such, was not at all what I expected. The whole thing, even the end, was laden with social commentary.

Started reading Tau Zero.

It is an old dusty paperback. I have a bad dust allergy. Does anyone know of any way to make a dusty book not so dusty?

I'm tempted to wash it in the sink but that's probably a bad idea.

Vacuum cleaner?

Tried that. Helped a little.

Have just started Isles of the Forsaken.

Finished the first three Dune novels and I pretty much agree with the general consensus - Dune is excellent, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are both decent but don't live up to the original. Dune Messiah struck me as just an afterword to Dune and could (should?) have been a fourth novella in the original novel. Now I'm taking a break from the series with The Hunger Games. It's very fast-paced and interesting so far, I can see why it's so popular.

There's actually two consensuses. One says that Dune is best and the sequels inferior. The other says Dune is the weakest of the six, and that series improves as it progresses. I think the latter is true.

Well just can't hack the dustiness of Tau Zero or Man plus. Allergies just get to me too much. I love old books but they don't love me.

So until I get to the library tomorrow where 3 of my 5 holds "in transit" should be I'll just brush up on my Buddhism with What the Buddha Taught. I've taken it out so many times they should really just give it to me.

I know its OT but there you are. I'm just a bad seed.

Still enjoying the audio rendition of Against a Dark Background. A fine reading of it.
Next for audio: Look to Windward. My fav Banks.

Almost finished with Lord of Light which I've really enjoyed, haven't decided what to grab from my TBR pile next.

Also signed up for Daily Science Fiction which sends a SF flash or short story to my inbox everyday. So many small press publications out there, trying to find a few more to read and see what's new.
http://dailysciencefiction.com/

#3 pjfarm

Thank you for the comments on The Passage. It is one of those books I've looked at wondering "will I, won't I". Even this morning I spotted it in a shop at 8euros.

Your comments have saved me at least 8 euros. Thank you.

PS I found the extend version of "The Stand" just about bearable so I'm assuming I would throw The Passage against a wall at a very early stage.

20 brianjungwi: Thanks for that online shorty link. Very cool.

I enjoyed Lord of Light and am wondering what else of Zelazny's work is of similar caliber. I think he does tend towards SF fantasy more than Hard SF as I tend to prefer.

More than halfway thru Against a Dark Background on audio. Audio renditions of Iain M. Banks's books seem to be exceptionally good even across readers. I often wind up with paroxysms of laughter so severe I come in danger of passing out.

#21: Peter, do you know when Mr. Banks will release more Culture?

The book The Stone Canal came in and is not dusty at all like some of my recent disappointments. Can't wait to start.

Working my way through Linda Nagata's Nanotech Succession series -- on the second one, The Bohr Maker.

>21 pgmcc: I've never read The Stand so I can't comment. I took a quick look at your library and saw that you apparently like horror more that I do, so you might like The Passage more than I did. All I can say is that I haven't read a book in the last few years that I liked less, though I can think of a couple that were competitive.

A book I did like was Ghost Story by Jim Butcher which I finished last night, about two hours after I intended to be in bed. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it did make it hard to get up this morning.

Currently reading Ring of Fire III edited by Eric Flint.

Finished and reviewed The Fifth Head of Cerberus. Still considering a re-read of The Book of the New Sun.

Finished Isles of the Forsaken. An excellent fantasy - and that's not something I say lightly - but now I have to wait six months for the sequel, Ison of the Isles.

#22 Hi, Randal,

I know Iain Banks has a "mainstream"* novel due out next April. It's called Stonemouth.

He works on a yearly cycle and alternates between mainstream and science fiction. That being the case 2013 should be his next SF novel but I don't know if it will be Culture. Based on his last book, Surface Detail, and some on-line comments, it looks like he might be using links to previous novels in his stories. If this is a trend he's following then I suspect the next SF will be a Culture novel.

* Inverted commas used to say that some people have difficulty with describing some of his mainstream books as mainstream, e.g. Walking on Glass.

#24 pjfarm

I haven't tried any Jim Butcher yet, so I will put him on my "watch" list.

As you've looked at my library you may have noticed I have quite a few tagged as "unread" so I really have to put a dent in the books I have already.

You comment " I haven't read a book in the last few years that I liked less," is good enough for me to stay away, especially as it is quite a book and I have limited reading time and it is a pretty big book.

I just started reading Die Astronauten by Stanislaw Lem. I finished the first chapter but once again I have to say I like his style. The story is interesting and got me hooked right away.

> #17 & 18

I am currently reading after several decades away Arrakis and I am impressed with the storytelling and readability of the book. As a teenager I remember the follow up books to be equally entrhalling. The God Emperor of Dune in particular stuck with me. I'm looking forward to the re-read.

In a note on content, although dimly aware of the muslim references in the book, the deeper implications were completely lost on my 16 year old self. As an adult I'm finding the work much richer ... typical comment but what the hell ...

#30

I found Dune Messiah and Children of Dune both to be good books, but I think they suffer from being sequels to a book rated so highly by many. My main problem was the lack of action in the two, if found there to be a lot more talking about doing things rather than actually doing them. I consider myself a reasonably patient reader and I enjoy philosophy and theology in my SF but both books hit my "Get on with it!" button at points. I thought Dune struck a much better balance of ideas and action.

As a side note, I highly recommend David Zindell's The Broken God to anyone who likes Dune. I actually like it better than Dune. They share several themes: a coming of age story, gaining philosophical insights through a hallucinogenic substance, survivalism, and man becoming godlike to name a few.

Finished audiobook rendition of Against a Dark Background. Great story and the reader was most excellent (4/5).

Still reading The Stone Canal. Enjoying.

Got work that my library hold for Futures : four novellas has come in. Very excited about that.

> 32: I'm still working on Against a dark background - just the last quarter to go. Glad to hear you liked it. I love it so far, but I'm afraid that the characters I like best are either going to turn out to be traitors or die horribly (or both)! All the weird cities they visit remind me of Jack Vance, so this is one of the things I'm liking most about the book.

#32 & #33

I think Against a dark background is the book from which I learned that milk and yoghurt dissolve the spices in Indian food and that water is a waste of time if you're trying to cool your mouth after a forkfull of vindaloo.

How does one spell the name of the restaurant they visited?

Finishing up The Call of Earth and Starting Fire in a Faraway Place

#34 A well-known fact over here. Yoghurt is good but lager is better. Water is useless. They even proved it on Brainiacs. :-)

Finished Drumlin Circus (though not the other book in the double. Bother.) Really fine tale. Now I gotta get cracking on my library copy of Consider Phlebas, as I just found out that I can't renew it because others have requested it. Even more bother.

#36 Indian food is much more popular and ubiquitous in England than in Ireland. Chinese is much more common here and most of that doesn't reach the heights of heat found in the Indian cuisine, hence my heat quenching ignorance.

Iain is very fond of some hot Indian food, so he was writing from full knowledge.

If it has been proven on Brainiacs then there is no doubt whatsoever. I'd like to see Myth Busters testing the various hot food balms. It would be fun to see them with a mouthfull of vindaloo and steam coming out their ears.

In the late 1980s I had two visitors from Ghana. They asked me to take them to a traditional Irish restaurant. The closest thing to a traditional Irish restaurant in Dublin at that time would have been Chinese. No-one was serving Irish stew or cabbage and bacon.

Thankfully there are now places that have revived the traditional dishes and ingredients for the tourists.

I had the same problem when I was in Germany in the early 1990s. We couldn't find any traditional German restaurants. Happily that was no longer the case when I was there a few years ago.

As for traditional English food, that would be... the curry. :-) Or fish and chips.

Here we eat a lot of hot food. Tex-Mex, Creole, Cajun. And yes, milk or yogurt is definitely the secret we tell visitors who I sometimes feed food that is not hot to us at all but is blazing hot to them. :(

On visits to England the food I would think of as traditionally English would include, as you say, fish & chips; roast beef with Yorkshire pudding; ploughman's lunch; Cornish pastie; toad in the hole; spotted Dick; etc... But then again, in England I'm a tourist.

I remember being taken to Rusham in Manchester for a curry one night. It had a quarter mile long row of Indian and Pakistani restaurants with an Irish pub at one end. We had a number of pints of Caffery's in the pub and then Cobra with the curry. A great night.

pjfarm- I couldn't agree more about The Passage. I wasted a gift card on that book when it came out because it got such good reviews. I thought the entire book really dragged, with long periods with no action and no really meaningful character development. Now I don't remember all the details of the story, so I would probably have to do a quick re-read before reading the next one. I think I will pass.

I am currently reading Seed by Rob Ziegler. It took a little while for me to get into, and some of the mystical/scientific mumbo jumbo from the clones is irritating, but I am enjoying it. About half way done, and curious to see where it goes.

Not scifi, but I'm reading the Exorcist and Legion this month. Never read it before, but MAN does the author like to start dialog with "Well,......"

Reading Mirage by Matt Ruff. Kind of a scifi/thriller alternate history book. Very interesting premise though. Christian fundamentalist attack a middle eastern super power triggering a muslim war on terror.

I used to enjoy the murgh (chicken) vindaloo at this beautiful restaurant near NYU. The waiters would pity me as I chugged Kingfisher lager while drenched in sweat as I enjoyed my meal.

Well they pitied me or thought I was an idiot I'm not sure which.

Many moons ago I was in Waterford for work. I dined in a steak restaurant called The Old Stand. My meal was a peppered steak and it was very nice.

On the following night I went to the only Indian restaruant in town. In those days I loved a vindaloo, so I ordered a vindaloo.

When it arrived it was milder than the peppered steak I'd had the night before, so I asked for it to be heated.

Of course, this is one of the most dangerous things one can ask in an Indian restaurant. Anyway, when it returned it was much hotter, but it was just as I liked it.

I think the waiter was irritated to see me enjoying this much hotter curry that he must have thought would teach me a lesson.

I was not in that restaurant again for over six months. On my next visit I ordered the vindaloo.

I think he remembered me and wanted his revenge; and he got it. I have never had a vindaloo since. :-(

Are we still on topic here?

Oh, sorry, I'm reading The Seething Pot by George A. Birmingham.

Sounds like your reading has tied the curry-related posts neatly into topic!

Mine too! I'm reading River of Gods

Back to reading Ringworld Children by Larry Niven...

All this food talk reminds me of one of my favorite food ideas in SF -- I think it might have been in one of the Maijstral books by Walter Jon Williams, but am not sure -- where a wealthy character has an alien cook who creates gourmet dinners even though his metabolism is so different he can't even taste the food because it's so poisonous to him. He creates the food like a chemistry experiment, but is so good that the guests keep trying to steal him away from his employer. Neat idea.

I love Indian food too (and cook it as well). Yogurt is good, but starches also are good for relieving too much hotness (bread; rice).

Vindaloo is now quite common here in the States but I usually have to ask for it English hot as the standard version for American palates is rather mild. One thing we don't have over here is the phall, hotter than a vindaloo and when I had British drinking habits my hangover cure of preference.

Picking up of the excellent River of Gods I'm segwaying to The Dervish House which I have just started and which will finish my bid to read all the major SF award winners of 2010.

Started Look to Windward on audio. Did so several years ago.

Next audio in que: Ringworld Engineers

Still reading The Stone Canal seems slow getting started.

Next in reaing que: Futures: Four Novellas.

#46 When I lived in Abu Dhabi, I occasionally went for lunch with the Indian guys from work. One time, myself and Vidyha went to Airlines Restaurant, a place I'd been to many times before. I decided to order the chicken angara. Vidyha explained that it was very spicy, very hot. I insisted I could handle hot curries. The waiter told me it was very spicy, very hot. I told him I could handle hot curries. The dish came it was. It was fucking hot. Too hot to eat. The waiter was so embarrassed he gave me a free ice cream. After wards, Vidyha explained that he knew I liked spicy curries because we'd been for them before. So when he said the chicken angara was hot, he meant it was even too hot for him.

#48 lol

#54 It is through little experiences like this that we learn what our limits are and educate our palates. We also have the benefit of long periods of meditation and contemplation in very small rooms. :-)

>41 pgmcc:: Agreed, the Curry Mile in Rusholme is an amazing place. It's the only place I've seen a fish and chip shop advertising "Clay Oven Cuisine" in the window! Now I'm craving Indian food, and it's only breakfast time here :-(

>40 majkia:: I do wish we had more/better Mexican food in the UK. It's probably the thing I miss most about living in the States.

I'm so close to the end of Against a dark background I nearly stayed on the train an extra stop just to finish it this morning!

The one thing I really miss about the Middle East is the Lebanese food. It's not readily available here in the UK.

We also used to go for thali regularly. A thali is a metal tray with six little pots on it, and each pot is filled with a different vegetable curry or dal. You eat it using chapatis. And they come round and keep your pots filled up and hand out more chapatis when you need them. It cost Dh 8/- (about £1.50), for as much as you can eat. We took one guy there once. When the waiter saw him, he asked, this your first time? He said yes. The waiter pointed to me and said, he is regular. I replied, I bloody will be when I've finished this...

I like Lebanese too.

There's this restaurant south of Washington Dc in Alexandria I like. Its called Persopoly I think, its Persian and so is Iranian I guess. Well they have this dish called Fesenjan (misspelled too I'm sure), it consists of walnuts ground to a meal in reduced pomegranate juice with chicken over basmati rice. Awesome! You sprinkle sumac (spelling again) to taste over it. I'd get it with the rainbow trout.

I had a sumac source but then the store closed ;-(

Alexandria/DC has so many awesome world restaurants.

I like Ethiopian too.

>58 iansales:: My local Indian restaurant does Thali. They don't refill the pots when they're empty though :-( And it costs a lot more than £1.50. It is delicious though.

#58

I think The Cedar Tree is the only Lebanese restaurant in Dublin. It has been there for years and is very well regarded. To my shame I have never visited it.

http://maps.google.ie/maps?hl=en&q=the%20lemon%20tree%20dublin&gbv=2&amp...

Shame on you! I've been there at least three or four times (but more than ten years since the last time; I've heard it's still good, though).

I even took a picture of it when I was in Dublin for Octocon.

Finished Against a dark background during lunch. Really enjoyed this one, especially the tour through various weird and wonderful(?) cultures. (Sadly my lunch was not as good as any of the food being discussed on this thread.)

Started The Sparrow last night. So far, I am riveted and had to restrain myself from staying up late reading. I really like the style, and the premise has me hooked.

#59 I like Ethiopian too. We have a restaurant here though I've not been for a couple of years. Apparently, I'm the only person that likes the injera.

> 65

Ethiopian food is great, and I like injera.

#59 If you don't mind ordering thru the mail, or have a Penzey's near you: http://tinyurl.com/mzd3ra

Another fan of injera here too. How can one not like it??!!

#62 Must have had a near meeting. I was at Octon for the Saturday.

We could have had a European LT meet up.

Will you be over for P-Con in March or next year's Octocon?

Reading a book of alternate/alternative history, The Burning Mountain by Alfred Coppel, a novel from the early 80's. Not exactly science fiction. any more than The Man in the High Castle. I'm liking it a lot. It supposes that the Trinity test near Los Alamos failed in 1945 and the United States and allies were forced to invade Japan to end WW2. Lots of small stories interwoven to give the big picture. Sort of compels one to think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as blessings in disguise. It is based on the actual War plans of the United States and Japan for the invasion and defense. I'm about 2/3 done.

on the food front I worked in a small Lebanese restaurant in college. It affected my food preferences and cooking for a very long time. I loved the stuff.

Greg Egan's Zendegi was uncharacteristically emotional for him. Now reading Ian Whate's compilation Solaris rising. I normally come here to escape the wall to wall foody stuff on TV :-(

67majkia: Thanks for the link :-)

Just finished Veteran and I really enjoyed it. That could be influenced by the fact that I just finished reading all 5 of the A Song of Ice and Fire books straight, so a book where something actually happens (and in less than 5000 pages), things are explained and you really like the characters is just awesome and so enjoyable. I liked the ending and I hope he doesn't try and write a sequel.
I'm now moving on to Earthbound, so another fast paced easy read.

And now, I really want to make a curry and have lebanese for lunch! I'm thinking hommus and bread.

I finished listening to WWW: Wake and I'm sad to find out that the other books are not available from my library's electronic media site as audiobooks. They have the other books as ebooks. The audiobook was really well done and Robert Sawyer introduced it so I would think there would be demand for it. Maybe my library just hasn't coughed up the dough for the audiobook licenses.

bj. Er, the second book in the trilogy has just been published: War in Heaven.

Bugger, now I have to have it just to see what he did. Looks like the 'to read' pile just got one bigger.

Damn! Veteran and War in Heaven looks like my kind of SF. I gather its a UK release. U.S. marketers/ publishers seem reluctant to provide a lot of UK SF. The schmuck bastards idiots!

Well. If Gavin's work turns out to be popular (hate the word) I'll get it some how.

> 44 Just finished an advance copy of The Mirage. What did you think?

>79 sturlington: I'm just barely started. I'm juggling about 6 books I'm trying to read right now, which includes The Mirage and another couple ARCs. I'm liking it so far.

> 78 do I need to apologise or to say 'you're welcome'? :-) You can always buy them through Book Depository, that's where I got mine from. I'm in Australia so those books at $30+ for me to buy here so I get them from the UK and it cost me 1/3 the price.

The cheap mass market edition of War in Heaven doesn't come out until June so I have to wait until then to get it. I can't justify spending $20 when I have so many other books to read.

I got the trade paperback. Er, free. From the author :-)

I'll just have to wait for my library to get them or for paperback to be available here on the relatively cheap. I just can't justify the expense when I almost never re-read anything.

>82 iansales: You suck! I want more free stuff :-)

>28 pgmcc: pgmcc
If you're considering giving Jim Butcher a try, here's some unsolicited advice. In both of his series, the internal timeline follows publication order so reading in order makes sense. The only problem with this is that I consider the first two Dresden books to be Butcher's journeyman effort. I felt that his writing changed noticeably, and for the better, along about book three of the Dresden series.

Finished Ring of Fire III edited by Eric Flint. I'd give it a B grade.
Read Steel by Carrie Vaughn, a young adult novel which I liked. It's primarily fictional history with a wee bit of magic to move the plot in the direction the author wanted to go which got it labeled as fantasy.

Just started Wanderlust, the second Ann Aguirre book about space pilot Sirantha Jax. Not liking it quite as much as the first: very derivative, and lightweight -- but if you like underdog-space-pilot-adventure as much as I do, it's OK.

My SF & fantasy reading are cut way down right now because I'm finally reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time, after putting it off for years. It's wonderful, but whew! I need something lighter between the volumes. I think an old favorite children's book, after the next Proust volume...

Just finished Seed by Rob Ziegler. Slow at times, but overall I enjoyed it. Character development wasn't fantastic. Okay, it was probably pretty bad, but the story was good enough to carry me through.
I am now moving on to the next Craig Johnson book on my list. Different genre, so I will talk to you all later.

#85 pjfarm Thank you for the Butcher advice.

Currently reading Major by Rick Shelley...

Just knocked off Hogfather (B).

Just finished Aces Abroad, the fourth Wild Cards book, edited by George R.R. Martin.

Started River of gods, after the curry-related talk and praise for the book on LT.

#92: I'm about half-way through River of Gods and it just keeps getting better. Hard to put it down last night!

> 92, 93

Hell, I just read that book in July, and I'd reread it now if there weren't a whole world of other stuff to get to. I tried to share it with my Other Reader, but she couldn't get past the *ick* in the opening chapter. Still, I think the seamy underside of the Kurtzweilian optimism is a big part of what makes the book so solid.

I was at the library yesterday and picked up the current issue of Analog. I started reading the serial by Robert Sawyer and couldn't put it down. It takes place in Washington in the near future. The President has been shot and rushed to a nearby hospital where a memory expert is conducting a procedure on an Iraq War vet to try to rid him of flashbacks. There's a bomb planted at the White House and when it goes off a huge electrical pulse goes out. Lights go off at the hospital right while the President is being operated on. He survives but everyone that was in the vicinity of the memory experiment, including the President, suddenly can access the memories of another person. So someone who was in the hospital at the same time knows everything the President knows. But we don't know who that is. And that's where this part leaves off. Which means I have to wait another 2 months to read the next installment! I really should have known better but I just got sucked in.

About a fifth of the way through On Basilisk Station by David Weber. Had the eBook for about a decade and finally getting around to it. (One of the problems with eBooks not taking up shelf space is they don't shout at you to be read). So far it's been more exposition than anything else, but that was what I was expecting and the author has thought his world through well.

I'm jealous of Cosmicdolphin reading Classic Traveller supplements :-) Wish I hadn't sold mine years ago. I blogged about Traveller recently because my 5yo son has taken to shouting "Mayday! Mayday! Free Trader Beowulf!" at random points in the day. I can't imagine where he got that from. Ahem!

All that world-building that went behind the best of commercial RPG supplements and scenarios back in the 80s is a big reason why I read people such as Stephen Baxter. Some of them made great reads.

97 TimCTaylor

You know you can buy the whole of Classic Traveller as PDFs on CD-Rom cheap Now?

http://www.farfuture.net/cdroms.html

Although I decided to buy/rebuy it all in the original editions which is erm...a little more expensive :-(

I did the same with my Traveller supplements. Fortunately I did it at a time before the prices skyrocketted...

>96 TimCTaylor:

There have been ebooks for a decade now? Future Shock alert! :O

ETA: Apparently they're quite a bit older than that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book#History

Shows you what I know. :/

At least TWO decades. ;)

While not that old, I remember reading Brave New World on my Palm Pilot.

In space floating between the stars, in the middle of some background infodump on interplanetary politic upheaval and conflict, as I'm just beginning, and enjoying, Downbelow Station.

Now reading Helm by Steven Gould...

Still reading The Stone Canal

Finished Look to Windward. The audio rendition is awesome. Definitely my favorite Iain M. Banks

Next on audio - another re-read The City at the End of Time. I read the book when it came out and found it to be a real page-turner. I know some didn't care for it but I like trippy weird SF.

Finish Earthbound, was just ok and that's only because it was the last book in the trilogy. I am disappointed as I usually enjoy Joe Haldeman's books but there was just something missing from this one - I think it was suffering from third-book-itis.

I am now moving on to The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions and I'm hoping that it's as good as it sounds. I haven't read Robert Rankin before so I'm really looking forward to reading a new author.

Someone is now going to tell me that it's awful or something, aren't they!? :-)

105 bj: Yeah. I couldn't hack Earthbound (my first exposure to the serial and so didn't go back to earlier ones). I began banging my head against the wall!. I like much of his other stuff.

Re: Robert Rankin; I thoroughly enjoyed The Witches of Chiswick and another of his. Funny and bizarre.

#106 Randal, Robert Rankin is Guest of Honour at P-Con IX in March 2012 in Dublin. I'l let you know how it goes.

I remember his being a guest at Octocon over 15 years ago. He was a good guest.

#105

I found The Japanese Devil Fish Girl not as funny, but more coherent, less anarchic than his earlier work.

I met Rankin at Fantasycon last September. He seemed like a nice bloke.

I'm about to start Ecotopia to commemorate my return to the Seattle area. Cascadia uber alles!

Just finished Consider Phlebas. Fantastic book. Only thing I don't like about it is the title (even knowing the allusion).

111 brightcopy. Discovering where a title comes from is usually a delight. I always have a "Oh, that's why its called X" moment when the title pops up in the text.

The "...consider Phlebas" of the same poem is present in Look to Windward as well. Kinda unusual. I wonder why the author did that.

Finished audio rendition of Look to Windward. Excellent reading of an excellent book.

Decided to listen the Ringworld Engineers in stead of The City at the End of Time.

Still reading The Stone Canal; seems a bit of a slog.

Apparently, there's not much reason behind why the name was chosen according to Banks:

"Phlebas is the drowned Phoenician sailor in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land which is my favourite poem, if you exclude Shakespeare. Not that I like what Eliot stood for, but he was a genius and The Waste Land is his masterpiece. Well, his and Pound’s, also of iffy political leanings. I just always like the words, ‘Consider Phlebas’. They looked good, they sounded good. They just looked like a title somehow. I tried all sorts of titles for the story before I settled on Consider Phlebas, but they all sounded too much like Star Wars. I knew it was a weird title but I thought well, if it works it’ll just become right for the book."

Well, I have to say that I thought the words looked bad and sounded bad. I hate to admit it, but one of the reasons I put off reading Banks for so long was actually the title he chose.

"A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question."

Well here's a question (and not profound; I've been hanging onto that quote forever):

Divisions is an omnibus of books 3 & 4. Book 3 is The Cassini Division so what is book 4?

The Fall books are The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, and then two alternative third books, The Cassini Division and The Sky Road.

I'm trying Crossover by Joel Shepherd

116: Thanks Ian. By "alternative third books" do you mean alternative endings?

117: Let me know what you think. I enjoyed the series.

Yes, The Sky Road is an alternative ending to the trilogy, and not a sequel to The Cassini Division.

Ah, yes, Ken Macleod. "Eat neutron death, Canary Wharf!"

Just about to start William Gibson's Pattern recognition.

>115 randalhoctor:

"A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question."

Best ST:TOS episode ever. (Well, okay, "Shore Leave" is pretty good, too.)

Finished The Picture of Dorian Gray (not SF, but probably the best novel I've read this year; Wilde makes just about everybody since who has tried their hand at epigrammatic wit look a little stupid) and started Cryptonomicon. I feel as though I am setting off on a great journey.

120> I really enjoyed Pattern Recognition, good stuff

Not really SF- ok maybe a little, I decided to read all of Micho Kaku's books I am a bit over half way through Einstein's Cosmos {very interesting - fills in a lot of gaps for me. incredible the topics he big E was arguing before 1911}, and have Physics of the Future and Physics of the Impossible ready and Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos is on the way.

Nice to have the concepts explained at such a level that I can understand them - so far! ;-)

Started Earth Abides.

After almost a year I finally got back to looking at the anthology Steampunk'd (C), which is a bit stronger then I first thought at the time; however, there are still better anthologies that are an introduction to the genre.

Just finished reading The Stone Canal. Slow start, good ending. (3.5/5)

I've got The Cassini Division, but I'll wait till after Ring by Stephen Baxter.

I never read books in a series one immediately after another. Ya need to let it breath IMOHO.

Now I imagine The Cassini Division will make sense.
I'll probable get to The Sky Road at a later date.

Still listening to The Ringworld Engineers. The reader is doing a good job. Does anyone know if Larry Niven is a recovering person? That's the impression I get. A central theme of the story is the hero's struggle with recovery from addiction to intracranial stimulation. Indeed, rats will lever press for electrical stimulation of the median forebrain bundle eschewing food, sleep, and sex until they die.

I'm re-reading the Chanur books by C.J. Cherryh for the 3rd time since they first came out. I feel like I've come home after a long time away. I really needed this holiday ;)

I've started reading Ring and it sure seems like I've read these first pages before. Is it possible the part about Lieserl growing up is also found in another of Baxter's (maybe Vacuum Diagrams)?

It's a short story, tho I forget the title.

>123 DugsBooks:: to continue the Einstein theme, this Flickr set contains two interesting memorial plaques just a few streets apart in Salzburg, Austria:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30301546@N06/sets/72157621925239228/with/3781874655...

One marks the place where Einstein first gave a lecture on the Theory of Special Relativity, the other marks the birthplace of Christian Doppler (of Effect fame).

Just finished Seed by Rob Ziegler. Decent, but world and characters needed to be fleshed out more. Felt like a lesser version of The Windup Girl.

Ian,

I think its that Ring and Vacuum Diagrams both share plot elements
**SPOILER ALERT**
they both include the "Ring" and the character Lieserl
the books are overlapping with VC incorporating the Ring story
anyway
the book is a bit dusty but bearable

Have posted my review of Solaris Rising here.

Reading In Fury Born by David Weber...

Finished River of gods, which was an excellent read. I slightly preferred The dervish house though, not sure why. But I am looking forward to Cyberabad days, which is on the tbr pile.

This month I started with a non-genre novel Land of the Golden Apple then switched to sf. My second book of the month was Gateway and now I am reading The Uplift War having read the first two books in the first Uplift Trilogy earlier in the year.

> 135 I slightly preferred The dervish house

I'm delighted to hear it, because I loved River of Gods and I still have The Dervish House to look forward to!

#135 and 137: Ditto!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have just finished Replication: The Jason Experiment and found it really good for some reason I thought i wouldn't enjoy as much but i really did! Kind of Sci-Fi but it seemed to have a dystopian edge to me too, it had mystery,suspense,a murder and a little bit of teenage romance too.

I finished Incandescence. It was engaging, but I admit I made no effort to really understand the copious physics.

I finished The Japanese devil fish girl and other unnatural attractions. It was ok because it was easy to read and kind of amusing but I won't be going back for any more Robert Rankin books. I'm not sure what I'm moving on to next but I'm thinking a non-fiction book.

Not strictly my December 2011 reads, but I did receive the books below for Christmass.

Reamde
The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy
Colllins Night Sky & Starfinder
Freakonomics
Critical Mass
Prague Cemetery

Pictures here: http://pgmcc.livejournal.com/126406.html

Finished listening to Ringworld Engineers on audio.

Still reading Ring.

Merry Christmas all around, as appropriate.

Finished Cryptonomicon and loved every minute of it. Despite taking me so long to read, I am thinking of delving into The Baroque Cycle. Unfortunately, when I told my other to buy me Quicksilver for Christmas, she bought me Quicksilver by Neal Stephonson. It was really hard to explain that though she bought the right title and the right author, that the book Quicksilver has been broken up into its three constituents, the first of which, is titled "Quicksilver." Stupid, confusing, and now I have to go exchange it, for Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. :P

Listening to City at the End of Time. I read the book several years ago and really enjoyed it. I've noticed LT reviews lay at polar opposites. You either love it or hate it I guess. Greg Bear's hard cutting edge and speculative physics with weird trippy mysticism.

Still reading Ring: big book.

Have you read William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land? I've heard City at the End of Time is sort of a take off on that. I haven't read either yet.

My current SF reading is Doktor Sleepless. Warren Ellis is at hazard of becoming one of my favorite contemporary science fiction writers, illustrated or no.

Finished Consider Phlebas -- didn't work for me -- and now starting two recent gift books: Magic for Beginners and The Dream of Perpetual Motion. I only get to read in short bursts, so we'll see which one I keep picking up.

146: No. Haven't gotten to that yet.

Finished the non-fiction book From poison arrows to prozac and found it really interesting (and only 200 pages long!). I'm moving back to fiction and on to Halting State.

I read William Gibson's short-story 'Johhny Mnemonic' yesterday and can't believe that 23 page story got turned into that crappy movie. Apart from the lead characters name, the fact that he is carry info in his head and someone wants to kill him the stories are nothing alike. Though, it wasn't really a good story so expecting an awesome movie to be made from it by Hollywood is expecting way too much.

Finished Legacy by David Goleman. Not bad; pretty much what you expect from an Event novel. Perhaps a bit lengthier than it needed to be, but overall entertaining.

Finished one of my SantaThing books Starship Troopers and have started one of my other Christmas books Changer of Worlds.

First book reading on my new Kindle Touch is Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire -- not exactly SF but still appropriate for this group, I hope.

I also got a nice copy of Day of the Triffids for Xmas and am looking forward to rereading it.

Just finished Rule 34 (pretty good, I thought) and started Embassytown, which kept me up way too late last night.

I'm part way through Vurt from Jeff Noon. Not made my mind up about it yet.

Rule 34 caught my eye too... so I grabbed Halting State first. After a 100 pages or so I'm finding that I am enjoying it very much (it doesn't hurt that I spent ~8 years in Everquest's and World of Warcraft's virtual worlds).

I need to read some Charles Stross. Which is the best to start with?

Crossover by Joel Shepherd was pretty good. It rambled a bit in places, but Cassandra is a great character and the action scenes were fun. I'll read the next one.

I enjoyed Cory Doctorow's The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, a trippy, post-apocalyptic novella that revisits some themes from his first novel (Disney parks, immortality) and has a great Dickian ending.

Finished reading Halting State and really enjoyed it, even if I did have to read some of the explanations a couple of times to work out the computer jargon. As for a recommendation as to where to start with Charles Stross I've only read a couple of his but I really enjoyed this one and also Glasshouse. I didn't much care for Accelerando. I really enjoy the dry, black sense of humour in his books and that they pass the Bechdel test is even better.

I've started Prophets and I'm not sure about it yet. I've read the first 40 pages and I'm just not hooked. Hopefully it will get better but seeing as it is, of course, 'Apotheosis: Book one' I'm not expecting a great ending.

I really liked Prophets -- and the Swann's Moreau and Hostile Takeover in the same universe -- and I have to read the last two in the Apotheosis series yet.

Currently I'm reading Vast, the last of Linda Nagata's Nanotech Succession.

Reading My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny...

Currently reading The Recollection by Gareth L Powell, and enjoying it very much.

>157 jnwelch:

Main options are Atrocity archives, the first in the Laundry series, a mixture of SF and fantasy or Halting State (again first in a series) for near future techy SF.

Less mainstream choices might be Saturn's children, on robots and space exploration or yet another series, beginning with The Family Trade on alternative Americas...

Wireless is the best collection of his short fiction.

Finished up Changeless (B) yesterday evening, which had a certain middle-of-the-series quality even though it's only the second book in said series.

> 163

I liked The Atrocity Archives quite a bit, but genre-wise it's really a mix of espionage and Lovecraftian horror, in a SF/cyberpunk vein.

I'm reading Survival by Julie Czerneda, which I'm really enjoying so far. I liked A thousand words for stranger when I read it earlier this year, too.

>>163 AlanPoulter:, 165 Thanks, very helpful. I think I'll try Halting State, although one reviewer said the second person perspective can get irritating.

hmm I find the second person narration interesting although you DO have to keep track of who is 'you' in every chapter. Hasn't irritated me yet.

Glad to hear it.

The Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton

I'm really enjoying Lanark. It touches so many areas of life.

I'm reading Angel Seeker, although this edition in the series is leaning more fantasy than SF since it predates the characters being aware of the technological background.

Oh, Lanark was a truly exceptional reading experience. It's almost 25 years since I read it. For a while, during the late 80s, Alasdair Gray was one of my absolute favourite authors.

pursuing the lord of the flames in Samuel R. Delany's The Fall of the Towers.

Running for my life (as usual) with the Ketty Jay crew Black Lung Captain

Back to Bujold with Komarr...

Komarr begins a big change for our pal Miles . . .

>175 majkia:

I've just added Retribution Falls to my reading list for 2012... sounds like its right up my alley!