Spotted this group and I thought I'd join in - not that I need much motivation to read 75 or more books in a year. Anyway, here's the first batch of books I've read so far this year (two more batches to follow).

1. The Caryatids, Bruce Sterling - reviewed for Interzone; I had to interview Sterling for the same issue too. Thought the book was very good, certainly better than his last two novels.

2. Ringworld, Larry Niven - reread; my review of the book is here.

3. The Survivor, James Herbert - reread; had to review the film (see here), so I reread the book first. It's not a very good book, but the film isn't bad.

4. The Hidden World, Paul Park - 4th in the Princess of Romania tetrology. Excellent. One of these days I'll have to read all 4 back-to-back.

5. Ice Guard, Steve Lyons - Warhammer 40,000 novel, read for a sample review for a gaming magazine which was never published.

6. The Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod - while it failed as a crime novel, and didn't entirely succeed as a sf novel, it's still very good; my review is here.

7. Conversation Hearts, John Crowley - novella; it's been 8 months since I read this and I can't actually remember all that much about it.

8. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke - reread; my review of it is here.

9. Flavors of My Genius, Robert Reed - novella; Reed rarely disappoints.

10. The Craft of Writing That Sells, Ben Bova - not a big fan of Bova's writing, and this how-to is pretty pooor as well.

11. Spirit, or the Princess of Bois Dormant, Gwyneth Jones - excellent; contender for a few shortlists next year; my review here

12. Riding the Torch / Tin Soldier, Norman Spinrad / Joan D Vinge - Tor double; I remember both being somewhat dated.

13. Moon Shot, Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton - poor; my review of the book is here.

14. Star King, Jack Vance - reread; my review of the book is here.

15. Millennium, John Varley - reread; picked it up after watching the film again. The short story on which the film is based, 'Air Raid', is a favourite; the film is not very good (although it has its moments); but the novel based on the film is an enjoyable romp through every time travel paradox known to humanity.

16. The Six Directions of Space. Alastair Reynolds - novella; interesting alternate world that turns into something much stranger; good stuff.

17. A Fire upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge - reread; LT group read; some of the ideas in this struck me as less convincing this time around, nor did I think the climax was that good. But the Tines are cool.

18. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis - not to be read by adults; incredibly patronising.

19. Seeds of Earth, Michael Cobley - twenty-first century new space opera, pushes all the buttons. Good stuff; my review here.

20. The Enemy Stars, Poul Anderson - Hugo winner, apparently. Thin stuff - not too shabbily written on prose-level, but the author's so busy waving their hands you can't make out the story.

21. Viator, Lucius Shepard - Shepard channels Ballard; the results are as expected; good stuff.

Message edited by its author, Nov 28, 2009, 3:35am.

Welcome to the group! Nice start on your reading, too.

Thanks. Got another 40-odd books to post up yet.

Welcome! I'm looking forward to seeing the next batch. Looks like you're on a classic sf binge...

Here's part two...

22. The Custodians, Richard Cowper - 1970s UK sf author, so he can write but the premises are a little dated now.

23. The Tar-Aiym Krang, Alan Dead foster - reread; not as good as I remembered it; my review is here.

24. Rocketman, Nancy Conrad - doesn't really get to grips with its subject; my review is here.

25. Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon - LT group read; some of the throwaway bits were the best bits in this; otehrwise very dry and distant; probably a book that needs a reread.

26. Starfall, Stephen Baxter - novella; an author who rarely disappoints, and this is up to the usual standrad. Not wildly inventive, perhaps, but he gets the awe across well.

27. Spaceships, Robert Goehlich - reference work, not especially useful; my review is here.

28. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K Dick - the best Dick I've read, and I've read a few of them. Hilarious.

29. The Stainless Steel Rat, Harry Harrison - reread; thought it quite poor, which is not how I remembered it; my review is here.

30. Offworld, Robin Parrish - reviewed for Interzone; more of a blockbuster than a sf novel, and not done well especially well.

31. The Dorsai Companion, Gordon R Dickson - despite being overly talky, and the Dorsai being a bit too good to be true, I still have a soft spot for these.

32. The Spirit of Dorsai, Gordon R Dickson - see above.

33. How to Build Your Own Spaceship, Piers Bizony - requested a review copy from the publisher, they obliged and... thought it very good and informative; my review is here.

34. The Discovery of Heaven, Harry Mulisch - I reviewed the film adaptation a while ago (see here) and liked it enough to want to read the book. Excellent, and surprisingly it didn't seem especially Dutch...

35. A Law for the Stars, John Morressy - the last of Morressy's Sternverein novels that I hadn't read. Not the best one, either.

36. First on the Moon, Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins - read as part of a celebration on my blog for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11; thought this was an excellent documentation of the Moon landing; my review is here.

37. The Pilgrim Project, Hank Searls - bit of a potboiler, and better use has been made of the central premise since, but... my review of it here.

38. Second Stage Lensman, EE Doc Smith - reread; as bad as I expected it to be; my review of it is here.

39. Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes - well, now I know a lot more about Flaubert... didn't think the narrator's "secret" was all that shocking, though, or even enough to hang a plot on.

40. After the Vikings, G David Nordley - collection of short stories set on Mars; not bad although they seem to have dated faster that I would have expected.

41. Eclipse 2, Jonathan Strahan - a good read, although the contents are a bit mixed. Stand-outs are Tony Daniel's 'Ex Cathedra' and Peter S Beagle's 'The Rabbi's Hobby'. Terry Dowling's 'Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose' is near-incomprehensible as you have to be familiar with the universe of his novel, Wormwood - to be fair, it might be worth reading. Alastair Reynold's 'Fury' has some good ideas, but feels a bit weak for him. Stephen Baxter's 'The Turing Apples' is polished, but felt cold and uninvolving. Nancy Kress's 'Elevator' is just plain dull. The rest are enjoyable and well-written, but none struck me as especially exciting. Oh, and there's a Chiang too.

42. Sagas and Myths of the Northmen - last year I bought the Penguin Epics set, and every now and again I pull one out and read it. Well, it's sort of good for you. This is just excerpts, but at least I'll be able to bluff a bit more knowledgeably about Viking myths...

And the third and final part, which brings me up to date:

43. Starship Fall, Eric Brown - novella; a follow-on from last year's Starship Summer; quality character-driven sf.

44. Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual, Chris Riley & Phil Dolling - another one for the Apollo 11 anniversary; my review is here.

45. The Affinity Trap, Martin Sketchley - Banksian twenty-first century space opera, but lacking the wit of Banks. Not bad, though.

46. Return to Earth, Buzz Aldrin - and another for the Apollo 11 anniversary; my review is here.

47. Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins - and another Apollo 11 one; the best of the lot; my review is here.

48. First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, James R Hansen - the last of the Apollo 11 books; doesn't actually get to grips with the man; my review is here.

50. Jack of Eagles, James Blish - reread; and while not as good as I remember it, by no means terrible; my review is here.

51. A Fair Day's Work, Nicholas Monsarrat - short anti-union potboiler by Monsarrat. Killed a couple of hours.

52. Open Your Eyes, Paul Jessup - novella; surreal space opera, very Delanyesque; won't be surprised if it appears on a couple of shortlists next year.

53. Starcombing, David Langford - review for Interzone; a collection of his columns from SFX magazine, plus assorted other non-fiction pieces. It's Langford, nuff said.

54. The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan - fantasy that caused a big splash on publication but isn't actually all that remarkable - Moorcock meets noir.

55. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood - expected it to be good, and so it was; wasn't quite the story I expected, though.

56. Sicilian Carousel, Lawrence Durrell - my favourite author; lots of lovely prose.

57. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K LeGuin - reread; much better than I'd remembered it; my review is here.

58. De Secretis Mulierum, L Timmel Duchamp - novella; originally published in F&SF in 1995; interesting premise, handled well.

59. The Buonarotti Quartet, Gwyneth Jones - four stories set in the same universe as Jones' most recent novel Spirit, or the Princess of Bois Dormant (see here); she's still one of the UK's best sf writers.

60. Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, Samuel R Delany - read for an LT read; an easier book to admire than it is to like or enjoy.

61. One Small Step, PB Kerr - YA novel about a boy who goes to the Moon in 1969 with chimps as crew; wasn't entirely convinced by the premise; my review here.

62. Renaissance, AE van Vogt - from 1979, so late van Vogt and pretty poor - sexist nonsense.

63. Nights of Villjamur, Mark Charan Newton - fantasy novel; interesting world, but problems with the plotting and the writing is variable.

Message edited by its author, Sep 11, 2009, 3:24am.

Welcome to the group! I'm happy to read that The Hidden World (#4) is excellent. It took me a long time to get through The Tourmaline. I've put The White Tyger and The Hidden World on hold for now. Maybe I'll put them on next years list.

I liked all four books, but then I'm a fan of Park's writing. His Coelestis is one of my favourite novels.

Current reading is Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle, which is September's book for my 2009 reading challenge (of rereading assorted sf novels I remember fondly from my childhood/early teens). I'll write a post about it once I've finished on my blog.

Message edited by its author, Sep 11, 2009, 6:42am.

I saw this on another thread, and thought it worth having a bash.

1. What were the last three books you bought?
Transition, Iain Banks
Stealing Light, Gary Gibson
The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan

2. What are the next three books you want to buy?
Grazing the Long Acre, Gwyneth Jones - a collection of her short fiction, due from PS Publishing.
If The Dead Not Rise, Philip Kerr - the latest Bernie Gunther novel.
Exultant, Stephen Baxter - I have books 1 and 3 of the trilogy already.

3. Which three books would you most like to give someone as a present?
To Catch A Thief, Keith Sheffield - a small-press-published space opera novella by someone I know.
Postscripts #20/#21 - a double issue of PS Publishing's quarterly anthology, to be published this Christmas; because it has one of my stories in it.
Catastrophia, Allen Ashley - an anthology from PS Publishing, due to be published next year; it also has one of my stories in it.
I know, it's (almost) all about me :-)

4. Who are your three favorite authors?
Lawrence Durrell
Paul Park
Gwyneth Jones

5. Which three books will you buy as soon as they are published?
Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds
The Restoration Game, Ken MacLeod
Imagination/Space, Gwyneth Jones - a collection of her criticism and non-fiction, due from Aqueduct Press later this year.

6. Who are your three favorite characters in books?
Kid from Dhalgren, Samuel R Delany
Tabitha Jute from Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
White Crow from Rats and Gargoyles, The Architecture of Desire and Left to His Own Devices, Mary Gentle

7. Which three books did you inherit (not necessarily physically, but as recommendations from parents/grandparents)?
My parents read chiefly crime and thrillers, and often pass novels on to me they think are good. Sometimes I return the favour. The authors we share include Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Reginald Hill, John Harvey, Robert Goddard, Robert Harris...

8. Which three books would you love to pass down to your children?
I have no kids, but I've been trying to encourage my young nephews to read sf. It seems to have worked: one of them wants to be a sf writer like his Uncle Ian when he grows up :-)

9. Which three books do you most often recommend?
Coelestis, Paul Park
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland

10. If you were going into hospital, which three books would you take with you?
Panic Spring, Charles Norden (AKA Lawrence Durrell)
Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
The Magus, John Fowles
They're on the TBR and they're also hefty books that will take a while to read.

11. If you were stranded on a desert island, which three books would you want to find there?
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
Canopus in Argos: Archives, Doris Lessing
Books I'd like to read - well, yes, I know they're actually series, but never mind - but which would require a substantial investment in time. I'd also like to reread The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet (both Lawrence Durrell), The Master Mariner by Nicholas Monsarrat, and finish off Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet.

12. Your house is burning down and you can only rescue three books, which would you grab?
My entire Lawrence Durrell collection, which is a few more than 3 books but never mind.

13. Which book would you like your children to look at and immediately remember you by?
Hopefully one of my own, when I finally sell one to a publisher.

14. Which book would you like to be buried with?
Does it make any difference? I'll not be able to read it...

15. What are you reading right now?
Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg
It's a reread; once I've finished it, I will blog about it, as part of a reading challenge this year to reread sf novels I remember fondly from my childhood and early teens.

Finished book 64, Lord Valentine's Castle. Blog post to go up shortly - probably this coming weekend. I'll post the link here when it's done.

Currently reading Broken Symmetries, a short story collection by Steve Redwood and published by Dog Horn Publishing (who publish Polluto magazine). I have to review the book for Interzone. Not especially impressed so far...

Message edited by its author, Sep 20, 2009, 11:56am.

Finished my review of Lord Valentine's Castle. It is here.

Book 65: Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming. Oh dear. Stick to the films. This is just a potboiler, and not a very good one either. It's also very racist, moreso than I would have expected for the 1950s.

Welcome to the group, Ian. It will be good to have your trenchant voice contributing here as well as in the science fiction fans group. There is a thread in this group, by the way, called "What we are reading: Fantasy/SF", although it has not been very active for the last month. It can be found here
WWAR:F/SF

Book 66: Fantasms and Magics, Jack Vance. Short story collection. The opening novella, 'The Miracle Workers', is classic Vance; as is the Dying Earth novella, 'Guyal of Sfere' (which I keep on misreading as 'Gruyere of Sphere'...). The remaining stories are slight.

(Gah. Some people are just plain stupid. The cover art clearly says Fantasms and Magics - Magics, plural - so what eejit enters it as Fantasms and Magic?)

Book 67: The Dan Dare Dossier. I've had this on the book-shelves for a while - in fact, I have all thirteen volumes of the Hawk Publishing Dan Dare Collector's Editions. They're superb. I think I glanced through it once - it's a history of the Dan Dare strip, a discussion of the characters and universe, an article on the merchandising, and a pair of strips from Eagle annuals. But I'd never read it. So I read it last night.

Book 68: Broken Symmetries by Steve Redwood. A collection of short stories by a small press author I have to review for Interzone. Can't say I'm that impressed. Redwood can string words together to make readable prose, but the jokes in some of his stories are terrible, other stories don't go anywhere, and there's a couple of stories which are misogynistic.

Book 69: Winged Rocketry by James C Sparks. Readable but not very comprehensive study of rocket planes up until the year of the books, publication, 1968. More interesting because of what it expected the future to hold than what it actually says about research programmes of its past. My full review here.

Book 70: Shades of Gray by Lewis Shiner. A chapbook of four stories which came with the limited edition of Shiner's last novel Black and White. In an afterword, Shiner explains that the stories in this chapbook are either too rough, too slight or too silly to appear in his forthcoming Collected Stories. He's right.

Book 71: Shifts, Adam Thorpe. A collection of linked short stories, each focusing on a specific career, and told entirely in the voice of someone whose life is defined by that career. Most are set in the UK, but a couple are set in other countries. Some take place in the present day, but others are scattered throughout the twentieth century. The earliest is set in the 1930s. The stand-out is 'Shifts', about a Ghanaian immigrant in London in 1996. Also very good is 'Sawmill', set in, I think, an invented African nation.

Book 72: The Visitor, Ann Halam. Ann Halam is, of course, better known as Gwyneth Jones (who happens to be one of my favourite authors). As Halam she writes excellent YA novels - mostly sf or horror. But she also uses the pseudonym for some early reading books, published by Stoke Barrington. This book is one of those. I've no way of judging how effective they are for their intended reading level, but the story is reasonably inventive given the limited wordcount. Fat teenager Tim does his work placement at Experiment House, where his dad is head of security. It turns out that they're studying an alien there, and Tim gets involved in a none too happy fashion...

Book 73: The Lordly Ones, a collection of short stories by Keith Roberts. Not as good a collection as his The Grain Kings (which includes favourite 'The Lake of Tounela' and the excellent award-winning 'Weihnachtsabend'). Nonetheless, it's a solid, well-written collection, although one or two of the stories feel a little dated.

Book 74: Transition, Iain Banks. A science fiction novel published in the UK under Banks's mainstream identity. On the one hand, I welcome the blurring of genres; on the other, I wonder what non-sf readers will make of the book. Because it's not simplistic sf-appropriated-by-mainstream such as that by PD James, Jeanette Winterson or Margaret Atwood.

I'll post a full review on my blog some time in the next few days, and I'll put the link here when it's done.

#21: I will look for both The Lordly Ones and The Grain Kings. I do not believe I have read anything by Keith Roberts before.

#22: I look forward to seeing your full review of that one.

#22, also looking forward to your review, as I don't know quite what to make of it. I am reading The Culture now, but should I read this in the Iain M. Banks SF pile, or leave it, as it is in the Iain Banks non-SF pile...

#23 Keith Roberts is best-known for his Catholic England alt history novel, Pavane.

His short fiction is certainly worth reading. I suppose he belongs to that group of British sf authors of the 1970s who wrote sf of a more literary bent than that common in the US - authors such as Richard Cowper, DG Compton, early Robert Holdstock, Christopher Evans, and many of the New Wave.

Message edited by its author, Oct 8, 2009, 7:50am.

#24 Transition* is nothing like the Culture novels, but neither am I sure it should be read as a mainstream novel. It's an odd beast - less plotted a genre novel, and with a resolution more in keeping with literary fiction... but it relies entirely on the tools of sf to make its story work - without actually provided the sort of rigorous explanation demanded by sf.

* Yay - the touchstone for Transition now throws up Banks' novel straightaway.

#25: Well, I have never heard of any of those guys. Makes me feel positively under-read. Are there any of their works that are particularly notable with which I could start?

Richard Cowper - Clone, or the White Bird of Kinship trilogy: The Road to Corlay, A Dream of Kinship and A Tapestry of Time.

DG Compton - Chronicules, Scudder's Game, The Electric Crocodile, The Continuous Katherine mortenhoe

Robert Holdstock - best known these days for Mythago Wood and its sequels, but good early works include Where Time Winds blow (a personal favourite), Earthwind, Eye Among the Blind

Christopher Evans - Capella's Golden Eyes, Aztec Century, Mortal Remains, Omega

You might also consider a few UK sf anthologies, such as Other Edens, Zenith and New Worlds.

Thanks for the list! I will look for all your suggestions.

Book 75: T is for Trespass, Sue Grafton - I've read all of this series from A is for Alibi, although the first one I actually read was C is for Corpse. Grafton isn't as good as Paretsky, but she's a lot better that many others. The quality of the series slipped around N or O, but T seems more of a return to form for Kinsey Millhone.

Do I celebrate now, or something? :-)

Message edited by its author, Oct 9, 2009, 2:56am.

I think a celebration is definitely in order if you last all the way through Z!

Well, U is for Undertow is due out early next year, and I'll almost certainly be reading that. But Grafton seems to be taking two years per book at present, so she'll have finished the alphabet in about eight years' time.

If she won't finish for another 8 years, you sure can plan some kind of celebration!

Congrats on reaching the 75 book mark!!

I completely overlooked the fact that you hit book 75!

Ta for the, er, jumping thing.

As promised here's the long review of Iain Banks' Transition.

#3: Thanks for the review - I think I will be skipping that one.

I seem to have mastered the art of making a book I like sound bad. Transition is not his best novel by any means, but even his bad books are a cut above those by many other authors.

Congrats!

T is for Trespass is my current "gym read", the book I'm reading while trudging on the treadmill. I've also been thinking this one is better than the few previous books.

Book 76: The Translator, Leila Aboulela. A woman of Sudanese extraction, born and living in Scotland, falls in love with the Scottish university lecturer for whom she translates Arabic texts. He won't convert to Islam so she can't marry him. The narrator frequently describes things as though she is seeing them "through fog and mist", and that's what reading this book felt like. I like lyrical prose - I'm a huge fan of Lawrence Durrell - but this felt over-done.

I think I will give Transition a try, on to the wishlist it goes :D

It probably only disappoints in relation to Banks' other novels. There are some lovely bits in it.

Book 77: The Right to an Answer, Anthony Burgess. An earlier work with not quite so much flamboyant prose as later novels - although it's certainly written in Burgess' style. It's about an expat, and as a former expat myself, I enjoy such books. It's also very funny. I especially loved the description of the Dutch: "...was met by fair plump men in blue who spoke English so well that, when they returned to Dutch among themselves, one grew afraid as in the presence of Ray Bradbury Martians, clever at quick human disguises." And later, "For Dutch, though it looks like a reasonable language, never really sounds like one: it is, as Gulliver implied, the right tongue for talking horses." I'll have quote those to all my Dutch friends...

Book 78: An April Shroud, Reginald Hill. An early Dalziel & Pascoe, but not an especially good one. Pascoe has gone off on his honeymoon, so Dalziel decides to take an holiday. This is n Lincolnshire. He ends up falling in with the inhabitants of Lake House, where something strange is going on...

>43 "who spoke English so well that, when they returned to Dutch among themselves, one grew afraid as in the presence of Ray Bradbury Martians, clever at quick human disguises"

Certainly sounds accurate to me! :)

Book 79: The Brains of Earth/The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, an Ace double and both by Jack Vance. The first is just plain silly, not one of Vance's best, with an opening chapter written so obviously to be a hook it doesn't actually logically fit the story. The second book is a collection of short stories featuring the title character and from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ridolph is part Cugel, part Kirth Gersen. Early works, so not up to Vance's usual standard, but not as daft as The Brains of Earth.

Book 80: Of Worlds Beyond, edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. A series of essays on writing by past luminaries of sf - EE Doc Smith, Jack Williamson, Robert Heinlein, AE van Vogt... As writing advice, they're not very effective, but as snapshot of the thinking of the day regarding sf they're quite interesting.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 4:55am.

Book 81: Radix, AA Attanasio. A reread. I'll be writing about this on my blog - I'll post the link here when I've done it. For the time-being... it's clearly a debut, over-written in places, but there's a good story. Reads a bit like Dune crossed with Delany - sometimes a bit too self-consciously Delany. I liked it enough as a teenager to continue reading Attanasio's novels, and I think if this had been my first read of it I'd have done the same.

Book 82: Peripheral Vision, Karen Joy Fowler - actually issue 6 of Author's Choice Monthly published by Pulphouse. Contains four stories, including the excellent 'The View from Venus' and the very good 'Lily Red'.

Book 83: Islands, John Fowles & Fay Godwin. A coffee-table book about the Scillies, with text by Fowles and black and white photos by Godwin. Fowles prose is good, but the book seems neither one thing nor the other - it's not big enough or glossy enough to be a proper coffee-table book; it's not informative enough to be a guidebook (nor are the photos - admittedly very nice - useful in that regard); and it's not personal enough (cf Lawrence Durrell's The Greek Islands) to be a book by and about Fowles...

Book 84: My Death, Lisa Tuttle - a novella from PS Publishing. The history of the made-up author which the narrator researches is done extremely well, as is the unsettling similarities between the life of that author and the narrator's. But the ending feels a bit rushed, and I'm not sure if the coda works all that well. Despite that, recommended.

Book 85: The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass, Vera Nazarian - another novella from PS. I remember thinking this looked interesting when it was published, but I didn't buy it until a couple of months ago when I saw it going for less than half-price on PS Publishing's web site. And... it's not as interesting as I'd expected - the prose has its moments, but feels stilted in places; the world-building is a bit perfunctory; and the story is not entirely original. Overall, it feels like a valiant attempt to do something that someone else once did, only the original one was better...

I hope your next read is better for you!

Book 86: Two That Came True, Judith Moffett - or Author's Choice Monthly #19. A pair of novelettes originally published in the mid-1980s. The first, 'Surviving', about a woman who grew up feral with a troop of chimpanzees and the psychologist who becomes close to her, isn't bad. The second, 'Not Without Honor', is less good - a first contact story in which the aliens use the Mickey Mouse Club as the format for their approach.

"the aliens use the Mickey Mouse Club as the format for their approach?"

I can't even imagine....

It's not as weird as it sounds. The aliens had fixated on Jimmie Dodds and the Mickey Mouse Club from the 1950s. So they came to Earth hoping to persuade Dodds to accompany them home to sort out their children. But, of course, he died decades before. There are excerpts of the show on youtube, so I watched a couple... but I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

Message edited by its author, Nov 2, 2009, 4:28am.

Book 87: Journey into Space, Toby Litt. Or Yet Another Literary Author Does Science Fiction. It's better than most of its type, but it still felt old-fashioned. Literary authors don't really know how to deploy sf tropes - they lack confidence in doing it, and that makes their stories feel diffident and ineffective.

Book 88: The New Space Opera 2, edited by Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois. I like space opera - it's the sub-genre which got me into sf, and some space opera books remain among my favourite sf novels. When "New British Space Opera" appeared, I knew it to be a good thing. But over a decade later, and I'm not so sure. Because there's little that's "new" about this anthology. Half of its contents could have been written twenty or thirty years ago. There are some good stories in it, but most are bland and dull and seem to have forgotten what it is that made "New (British) Space Opera" interesting. As for the back cover blurb's "some of the most beloved names in science fiction"... beloved? Wtf does that mean?

Message edited by its author, Nov 11, 2009, 3:18am.

Book 89: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy. I don't get it. I don't get the bizarre punctuation - some contractions use apostrophes, some don't; no quotation marks for dialogue. I don't get why McCarthy is currently considered one of the US's great writers. He has a good eye for landscape, and parts of All the Pretty Horses are actually quite funny. But. It took me ages to work out when the story was set - 1949, apparently. The two sixteen-year-old protagonists act like thirtysomethings, and it's, well, it's a western. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy the book. Nor do I think it is rubbish - it is quite good. But I can't honestly see what all the fuss is about.

Book 90: Without Me You're Nothing by Frank Herbert. Read for completion's sake. This is an early - published 1980 - book about home computers. The authors (FH & Max Barnard) get quite apoplectic in the early chapters about what they see as unnecessary obfuscation of the fields by those in it. There are some interesting thoughts on the future of computing - some almost prophetic, some that have been proved comprehensively wrong in the 30 years since. Half of the book shows to write programs in BASIC, and is completely uninteresting and useless.

Hi Ian - I've really enjoyed reading through your thread, and will now have to visit your blog. I read my first Culture novel late last year - The Player of Games and will definitely be reading more. I finished Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy at the beginning of this year which was rather epic.
You have me interested in reading Lawrence Durrell now, I just had a quick look at his bio on wikipedia.

Hi. I'm not such a big fan of Hamilton. I've read the Night's Dawn trilogy but never bothered reading anything by him after that. If you like British space opera, other authors to try include Stephen Baxter (of course), Gary Gibson, Michael Cobley, and Eric Brown.

And yes, definitely give Durrell a try.

I had read and quite liked Hamilton's Greg Mandel books before I tried Night's Dawn. Last year I read my first Stephen King novel The Stand, and Night's Dawn kept reminding me of that. I was entertained but it was a lot of reading and a bit too supernatural for my liking.
I'll check out the writers you've suggested.

Book 91: Predator, Patricia Cornwell. I used to read these when they first came out but got sick of the formula - Scarpetta sets herself up as target for the serial killer, who breaks into her house, and she shoots him. This one at least doesn't do that. But the characters have all turned into shits. They're not at all sympathetic, they just moan about each other all the time. And the violence has turned into torture porn. I won't be reading these again.

Hi Ian - I gave up on the Cornwell books a few years ago. I did hear that her latest was better than the last few but I'm not tempted to go there at all. I have the latest Ian Rankin home from the library and am looking foward to meeting his new detective, Inspector Fox.

I've not read any of Rankin's. When it comes to crime fiction, I've read mostly Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Reginald Hill, Philip Kerr, and a few others. If you can find them, Kate Ross's Regency crime novels are really good - Whom the Gods Love, A Broken Vessel, Cut to the quick and The DEvil in Music.

Book 92: Brain Thief, Alexander Jablokov. Can't say too much about this as I'm reviewing it for Interzone. But I will say it's very good, it's might well be the novel Bruce Sterling would have written if he had written The Caryatids.

Book 93: Spies, Michael Frayn - Whitbread novel of the Year 2002. The narrator returns to the street where he grew up during World War II, and recounts his adventures there - chiefly an incident when he and a friend decided the friend's mother was a German spy. A very Banksian plot - at least the final twist certainly is - but where Banks would use it to split apart the family, Frayn uses it to illuminate the character of his narrator. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would - it took a couple of chapters to get going.

I gave up on that one when I tried to read it several years ago. Maybe I need to try again since you say it takes a couple of chapters to get going . . .

Book 94: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde - dear me, this is like the Twilight of its generation. It's all so melodramatic. Characters lecture each other at length - when they're not dropping bon mots or languishing listlessly on an ottoman or something. The writing is pretty poor - book-saidisms everywhere. And Dorian doesn't even work out what his picture is good for until the end of the chapter seven.

Book 95: Austerlitz, WG Sebald. This is much better. Thought this was very good indeed, and enjoyed it a lot. The narrator meets the title character in Antwerp in 1966, and then a few more times over the following years, before losing touch with him for 30 years. In 1996, he renews his friendship with Austerlitz, who then tells him - with many digressions - the story of his life, from adopted son of a cheerless Welsh minister and his wife, through boarding-school, and his subsequent travels across Europe to discover his origin... Recommended.

#70: That one does look very good. Thanks for the recommendation!

It's worth noting that the book is written entirely without paragraphing - or rather, in one long paragraph. And it's framed mostly as the reminiscences of Austerlitz as told to the narrator, so you often get lines such as, "... she said, as Austerlitz recounted...". There are also photographs scattered through the text, related to parts of the story. I wouldn't have thought the style worked, but it does. It works really well. The lack of paragraphing just keeps you going - it's sort of like the prose equivalent of that movie, "Russian Ark", which was filmed in one long take.

Thanks for the additional info. Sounds interesting!

It's definitely worth getting hold of it. After reading Austerlitz, I put Sebald's three other novels - The Emigrants, Vertigo and The Rings of Saturn - on my wants list.

Book 96: The Informers, Bret Easton Ellis - a reread because I had to review the new film adaptation for VideoVista. I'll post a link when the DVD review goes up.

Book 97: To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer - read as November's book for this year's reading challenge. Blog post to go up on it shortly - I'll stick the link here.

Oh, and my review of the film of The Informers is here.