Look's like I'm going to be throwing out the ceremonial first post of the month.

While not bad The Martian General's Daughter is too larded with half-digested Imperial Roman history for its own good (C). Though I like the concept of looking at the ultimate fall of the United States, I don't think we're going to look that Roman.

Oh yeah I've already read stuff this month.

The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove and Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett.

My to read soon pile includes Winter Song by Colin Harvey and Galileo's Dream by KSR. I also have Paul McAuley's Gardens Of The Sun on order (it should be on the shelves now, but other books on my order may be holding the order up for a few days).

No, the Byzantine Empire is more likely, with the Christian nutters taking over...

Stepping outside the genre this month, and reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson. Pretty good so far.

Just started reading the stars my destination by Alfred Bester. Very good so far.

Reading Extremes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Mixture of mystery and science fiction. Pretty good.

Finally started on The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Depending on how this one goes I may jump straight into the sequels as I bought the omnibus edition.

I'm finally reading Hidden in Sight by Julie E. Czerneda. I think I've had it since it came out several years ago, but never got to read it until now.

#7: AHS-Wolfy

Do yourself a favour and forget that Forever Free exists. It's absolute rubbish.

The thematically-related (but not a sequel) Forever Peace is excellent, though - well worth reading.

I'm just purchasd one book off of the UK site "Book Depository" - free shipping on items, and seems to be reasonably-priced, too. Has anyone purchased books through them before, and if so, what do you think of them?

Just finished Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson. It was quite good, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that it settled for being merely good instead of great.

#10 They're very good. The free worldwide shipping doesn't mean much to me, but I have used them before and their service is generally good.

#9 rojse, Thanks for the warning but I'll probably read it anyway. Isn't it good to make our own minds up about this sort of thing? And as it's just shy of 200 pages it's not likely to take up too much of my time either. With your heads up in mind though I won't let it put me off reading Forever Peace.

Just finished A Door into Ocean for the group read - I enjoyed it! The last quarter of the book or so flew by.

#10 rojse -- I haven't purchased from "Book Depository" but have received very fine books at discount prices from "Cold Tonnage" in the UK. I always check there first since some of their books are cheaper even allowing for overseas shipment costs. This is not an advertisement, but simply a recommendation.

Crystal Rain late to the party on this. The first 2/3 was painful at times but the ending made up for it. I did find the Caribbean dialogue distracting. I'll be picking up the sequel.

>10

I had moved almost exclusively to buying from bookdepository in the last few months (the only case when I still use Amazon is for the very expensive books - even with the delivery, they are cheaper from Amazon). Short of some funny moments with "Your Orders" page, no issues with them. And the "Order status" page actually works so I can leave with the quirks of the other page. Noone can beat them for delivery to not-so-standard countries. But be prepared to get the books in separate packages each if you buy more than one in the same order.

Just finished Rivers of Time. Can't decide what to start next...

Hard contact by Karen Traviss and Calculating God by Robert J Sawyer, both excellent reading recommendations I have found here on Libthing.

Edit: Oh, I forgot Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is my first Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was hard to appreciate this book. For me, it's probably neccessary to have some sort of nostalgic feeling towards it, to be able to enjoy a book like this. Unfortunately I don't have that in this case.

Message edited by its author, Oct 8, 2009, 6:12pm.

October means scary book time. Just barely started Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. Had it for awhile but haven't got around to reading it yet, hope it's good.

re:20
Good point about October. Horror isn't my usual interest, but mayhaps I'll finally read Dracula, Frankenstein, or one of the various knock-off/sequels.

Almost done reading The Godwhale by T.J. Bass. Great read!

Considering trying out Flight of the Dragonfly when there is no more Bass.

As a consumer of British beers, I'd say if there is no more Bass, then you will probably have to leave the reading on one side for a while while you sleep it off!

#22 I'm glad you are enjoying the Godwhale. I loved that novel back in the day. Some of those oldies just don't hold up when read in the present. I can't believe it has been 25 years or so. sheesh.

Loved it. Try Carrion Comfort by Simmons if you like Summer of Night.

Bought Jingo by Pratchett yesterday and dived straight in. Loving it so far.

Heres' my review of Iain Banks Transition.

Trying to keep my eyes open on the Planet of the Apes. Not sure why, I always hated the movies.

Ian
Your review of Transition isn't on LibraryThing, which is where your link goes.

I did find the review on your blog however. And sorry to hear that it is not so hot. I picked up Bank's Consider Phlebas this weekend, happily finding it at the used shop - somehow I never read it and intend to remedy that. Bank's works have generally been hard to find in the U.S. until lately it seems to me.

I'm reading Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre, which was one of my most anticipated books of the year.

#29 I put the link under "here's", rather than the book title. I may put the review on LT - or rather, the start of it and then a link.

Just finished Unseen Academicals, the new Pratchett book, which I enjoyed very much, and a quick re-read of The Grey King by Susan Cooper for the group reading of her Dark is Rising series.

re#31
Thanks Ian. Somehow I didn't see that first link, the first time.

I think I'm going to re-read the Space Odyssey books again soon, it's been a while.
2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001.

Glutton for punishment, eh? Well, the first two aren't bad but the quality soon nosedives.

I'm getting ready to plunge back into Novel Country, after a longish stint of reading short fiction, with The Diamond Age.

I have just finished The Adoration of Jenna Fox a YA book - very thought provoking story. Looking at how far Medical Science should/could go. The ethics of whether we should be allowed unlimited breakthroughs. Also brings out the ethics and possible outcome of genetic modification of crops as a background story.

I have used Book Depository and had very good luck with them. They are usually cheaper than Amazon, and the books arrive very quickly once they are shipped.

I am reading Troll by Johanna Siisalo.

#11
I finished Julian Comstock with pretty much the same opinion, but the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me. Wilson’s trademark of using “ordinary people” bumping up against bizarre circumstances (or in this case, a perhaps not so bizarre future) as vehicles for his story usually means that a quieter story without the pyrotechnics is being told (aka Simak, who Wilson always reminds me of). Here, I think that Wilson is exploring just what such a dystopian world might be like without including the cheap thrill of its improbable overthrow (sort of like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). As a bonus, I also liked the ironic use of Comstock! :)

In this month’s reading, I’ve finished David Marusek’s Counting Heads and Mind Over Ship duology. They’re strongly idiosyncratic and somewhat disjointed, but quite refreshing in an astringent sort of way. Definitely not your usual, everyday sort of SF (they reminded me quite a bit of Tony Daniel’s Metaplanetary duology, which was a little more incoherent, if still enjoyable). Quite tasty, if you’re in the right frame of mind.

Also, in anticipation of next month’s film release, I read McCarthy’s The Road and found it to be, as advertised, unremittingly bleak. What was unexpected was that it was of a far lesser quality than was his Blood Meridian (which I think is one for the ages). It didn’t have the depth or the subtlety or the incredible language that Blood Meridian did. It didn’t help that it was pretty unrealistic as well. I suppose that I might still see the film – I do quite like Viggo Mortensen.

Message edited by its author, Oct 18, 2009, 6:06am.

This month I've been nibbling away at a couple back issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction mag. For book reading I read Lewis Shiner's Love in Vain and left a review on LibraryThing. I'm a semi-fan of Shiner's work, but this collection of his short fiction had a few too many unremarkable stories mixed in with the good ones. And I'm not sure they are ageing all that well.

My much larger pleasure came from The Knife of Letting Go which I found recommended here. This is a pretty good young adult novel, but I got a wee bit peeved at the cliffhanger ending and so many unresolved issues from the book. It is however "book one" so maybe I should have expected it. Still, I can't say it really stands alone as a book should, with the ending that it leaves us with. I will be reading the newly published book two just about as fast as I can get my hands on a copy (placed a hold at the library for it), so it certainly captured my interest.

Next I'll be finishing S. M. Stirling's In The Courts of the Crimson Kings which I was really enjoying until I made the mistake of looking at Knife ... ;)

The LT threads are so full of good book suggestions...

I will start Emissaries From the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro soon.

I picked up William Gibson's Burning Chrome collection of short stories and am about a third of the way into it.

Finished up Weird of the White Wolf (A-).

I found Dune Storybook by Joan D Vinge at one of the local thrift stores.

I just received the new Farscape comic hardcover, Strange Detractors, so I will be reading that today. I'll be a 'Scaper till I die and this comic series is such a great continuation of the show.

Finished up Yiddish Policemen's Union (B+). I admire it more than I like it; I can also see a lot of future undergrads getting cold sweats over having to compare and contrast it with Man in the High Castle.

Message edited by its author, Oct 21, 2009, 10:46am.

I've just started reading Red Claw by Philip Palmer. It has a wonderful cover, and an almost pulpy feel, but is probably going to turn out more serious than the early chapters feel.

Finally got my hands on Catching Fire, the sequel to the excellent Hunger Games. Liked it very, very much!

#47 What did you reckon to Debatable Space? It's a very Marmite book. A lot of people liked it, but I'm one of those who hated it.

#49 A marmite book?

I've finally managed to put up reviews for the Promethea series. Quite a difficult series to review.

Marmite = you either like it or you hate it

On Debatable Space.

I didn't like it. I could see what he was trying to do but it didn't engage me. I didn't really like some of the characters, and found the book a little lumpy. Some bits had too much exposition, some bits way too little. It is also quite clear that his writing (at least here) is heavily influenced from his TV background - which was, in the end, to the novel's detriment. Also for most of the book I wasn't clear whether it was trying to be a serious space opera or instead some satirical look at space opera.

Red Claw is still quite televisual (at least so far) but I think it is a novel which will probably work better for a lot of people. For a start the basic plot of "a group of scientists and soldiers trying to survive on a planet with lots of weird animal/plants (they aren't quite sure which kingdom they fall in to) that are out to kill them" is more attractive to at least this reader.

I pretty much felt the same way. It was more of a piss-take of space opera which was itself trying to be taken seriously as space opera. There was little or no rigour, no attempt at plausibility in places, and the characters were unlikeable.

I am simultaneously reading Altered Carbon, Pandora's Star and Stranger in a Strange Land. I finished up Necrosope III: The Source a couple of weeks ago.

I finished an Ace double, The Brains of Earth/The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, both by Jack Vance. The first was silly, the second was better - but both were early works and not up to his usual standard.

Currently reading Radix, AA Attanasio... and not enjoying it as much as I had on previous reads. Ah well.

#54 - SwampIrish
Altered Carbon and Pandora's Star and Stranger in a Strange Land is a very interesting set. Was the choice of books random? Are you re-reading any of the titles for critical or academic reasons? I would love to find the time to experiment with reading multiple science fiction novels at once.

Halfway through The Invisible Man. Wanted something in keeping with Halloween, and the original movie adaptation was one of the treats on local tv when I was younger.

I read Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds. I thought it was a decent sequel to Revelation Space, though I still like the first book more. Maybe I was in too much of a hurry to finish it, or I wasn't in the proper mood when I started, but it felt like the book didn't have enough story for it. I also had trouble figuring out what the book was supposed to be about so most of it felt disjointed. Luckily, it finally redeemed itself in the last 50 pages.

Decided to tackle The Song of Ice and Fire series. Just picked up A Game of Thrones today.

(I know, it's not really SF, but I know a lot of SF readers who seemed to like the series.)

I just finished reading Dies the Fire and A Meeting at Corvallis by S.M. Stirling. For some reason, I really enjoyed them. I don't mean that they were badly written, there just weren't many surprises in the plot. (I liked Brin's The Postman better.)

Maybe I liked Stirling's books because people worked hard and managed so well. The thing that bothered me most was that the good guys were too good and the bad guys were over the top. It would have been more interesting if the downtrodden had found a way to step on The Protector themselves rather than have the two power guys fight it out.

I also would rather use the idea of Marion Zimmer Bradley that if you are going to fight with somebody, you are going to do it face to face instead of Stirling's idea that you re-invent long distance weapons. I don't think they really learned any lessons from The Change.

Still, I liked the system that was set up by the McKenzies. Everybody learns to fight and work together and to keep ready. Mr. Stirling obviously did a lot of research about hand-held weapons, explaining very nicely how they were made and how people were trained. And he used ideas from fantasy as well that were nicely tied in. He kept his story realistic when it came to how everyone had to work and what they'd have been able to eat and how they'd have suffered when everything broke down.

I guess the reason I liked reading about people managing by working hard is that I don't seem to be able to do it, myself.

Re-read Gateway (still excellent, in spite of some minor flaws that take it from 5/5 to 4.5/5) and posted a review.

Currently reading Daughter of Elysium which is the follow up novel to A Door Into Ocean

Brought the new Matthew Reilly book Five Greatest Warriors and had Reilly sign it and a few other books I have by him. That made my day.

Oh, and I'll post a review of the three books - read all them over the last two days.

Isn't he sort of like Cussler, only without the command of English?

Don't know, don't read Cussler.

However, if you mean does Reilly write exciting but rather unintelligent stuff, with the writing style of about a ten-year old, I'd agree with that - lots of CAPITALS, italicised words and it is peppered with exclamation marks!!! But then, sometimes I like reading junk food, if it is done well in that vein, and I think it is here.

Oh, while I was pestering Matthew Reilly to sign my hardcovers, I asked him what he thought about the opinion that his current trilogy was really "fantasy with guns". Reilly actually agreed with this assessment (and it does say as much in the Q&A session in the back of Six Sacred Stones).

I've just posted a review Seven Ancient Wonders.

Have just picked up a YA Sci-Fi
The Carbon Diaries 2015 it is very good so far.

I'm re-reading South African sci fi novel Moxyland by Lauren Beukes. I still think it's cool, and I love that it's set in Cape Town.

I'm reading Nation by Terry Pratchett. It's nominally an alternate universe setting, so it qualifies as SF.

So far I'm enjoying it more than the usual Discworld stuff.

I'm working on Line War by Neal Asher at the moment. It's far-future space adventure with lots of stuff exploding. It's loads of fun.

I gave up on his books after Prador Moon, which was terrible. Cowl wasn't bad, nor was The Skinner. But by Brass Man they were all getting very samey and not as good.

Whereas I really enjoyed Prador Moon. Line War is a bit long for me--too many lengthy descriptive passages of things I'm having trouble visualizing. But I don't ever visualize very much as I read, so I always think descriptive passages are too long. Still, there's enough good stuff in it that I'm enjoying it.

I just finished Terminal Cafe by Ian McDonald. Like a dark stained glass window that is broken into shards. The shards, assembled in no order, are the story fragments. Pretty incomprehensible, waste of an interesting idea.

Now starting The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia for a RL book group. Black humor about a repo man who works repossessing artificial organs from those who have fallen behind in their payments ...

I've just finished Winter Song by Colin Harvey which was competent but wasn't a particularly ambitious story. The Snow Queen is probably next on my list.

Enough already - it's NOVEMBER!!

If my sister hadn't just rung me and chatted for half an hour, I'd have had this spotted and moved by now!

I put my 'Doh!' moment down to the H5N1 I'm currently recovering from...