November 2011 Reading

Halloween is gone and November has arrived. Whatcha reading?

I'm still working on Migration: Species Imperative #2 by Julie Czerneda. Waiting for it to heat up a bit...

Also picking out one of my next set of short stories to read. Probably going to just tackle another Year's Best collection, since I have a ton of unread ones.

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville for me. I don't know why I read this fantasy stuff, when there's so much science fiction waiting for me ...

I will finish Anathem tonight after work. I really enjoyed it although it went in a direction far from what I expected. A solid 4 star book thus far, we'll see if the ending changes my opinion. Up next, I will finally read this Dune series that I hear is a big deal. :)

Rereading 2001: A Space Odyssey for a start.

Reading Reamde but it will be slow going as I'm a NaNo'er.

Still reading A Dance With Dragons...

#5

I finished Reamde on Sunday. I started on Thursday and had read about 60 pages at the RPG club before people turned up. Didn't read any when I got back. I just breezed through. But I'm not NaNo'ing which must take quite a bit of your time.

5> Majkia: Are you writing SF for your NaNo story?

Blasted through Old Man's War again last night and this morning. I love John Scalzi's sense of humor.

Elizabeth Bear's Grail brings to an end her Jacob's Ladder trilogy, about a generation starship which uses continual 'evolutionary' struggle though out its voyage. The twist here is that it has lagged in technological development and the star system it is going to has already been settled. Just started Red Plenty which seems like a cross between a novel and a thesis....

#8 - I am! And having a blast with it. Although i didn't suspect it was going to be quite so funny as its turning out.

Just finished John Wyndham's The Chrysalids and thoroughly enjoyed it. Next up is probably Zoo City.

Finished Tricia Sullivan's Maul, which I did not like as much as I had expected to. Full write-up to go up on the blog soon. Also finished Synthajoy by DG Compton, which was excellent. Also to be written up in full on the blog soon-ish.

I am reading Christopher Priest's new novel, The Islanders, and it just keeps getting better. A highly unusual book, like shards of a broken mirror that are slowly pieced together, disguised as a gazetteer of a fictitious world (it's set in his Dream Archipelago). It's gorgeous. Lots of unreliable narrators and overlapping stories. It takes a while to understand how all these stories tie together.

>14 anglemark:: I really, really want to read that, so I'm glad to hear good things about it.

Currently reading Terminal World, my first non-Rev Space book by Reynolds. Definitely not in the same class, yet not so horrible as I'd feared given the reviews. But in spite of there being a lot going on, the book is just not terribly compelling.

#14 anglemark, I have enjoyed any of Christopher Priest's books that I've read and have been tempted to buy The Islanders. Your comments have increased the level of temptation.

I thought The Quiet Woman was a huge let down, and The Extremes wasn't entirely successful, but apart from those, I also like everything he's written and think some of it is among my all time favourites in the field.

I'm on the fourth book of The Dresden Files and am loving it so far. Some of the best stuff I've read, incredibly entertaining!

I'm currently slogging through Hell's Gate, but it's terribly hard going. The blurb sold me on a war between magic and technology, but at about 1000 pages in, it's been 90% politicking and screwed up attempts at 'diplomacy'.

Olympos by Dan Simmons. Just finished reading Ilium and it was faaaaaaaaaaaantastic!

19 Magnetawolf

A Low Point for David Weber I think.

Finished The Ethos Effect several days ago. I found it quite exceptional (4/5), and I'm sorry its over. If anyone has read it **SPOILER ALERT** and happened to wonder whether I would use the device; my answer is YES and I consider myself to be a fairly decent person. Would you use it?

Now reading the last two (those I haven't read) stories in The Engineer Reconditioned. Looking forward to his latest.

Almost forgot! Listening to Neal Gaiman's Fragile things again. I listened to it a couple of years ago and in my opinion this (the audio product) is one of the most finely crafted things there is on the planet (4.5/5). I'm incapable of giving a 5/5. This really irritated my students back when I was an TA.

I'm particularly found of "Other People" (found in "Fragile Things") and try to get guys in the program I volunteer at to listen to it because I feel its very relevant to D&A recovery.

#21 - I've started it several times and just can't make it even halfway and I really like Weber's work.

Read Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and several other stories out of David G. Hartwell's The Science Fiction Century, most notably James Tiptree, Jr.'s "Beam Us Home", which I commend to all of you (keep the tissue box handy, though).

Reading Reamde. Incredible pacing. The first 200 pages have flown by. Of course, good pacing does not always mean a great story, but the other elements are good, too. Some of the characters are a bit cartoonish, but in an entertaining way (Devin "skeletor", Ivanov, etc.)

Finished 2001, which I liked a lot. It's been years since I read it. Now on to The Man in the High Castle.

Reamde for me too. I am supposed to be writing my review for And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (which I finished the same day my copy of Reamde arrived) but am too compelled to consume new Stephenson.

#27 psybre I bought a copy of Reamde when it was released, but I my son has it to give me as a Christmas present, so I won't be starting it until after Christmas. All the good comments about it are very reassuring.

Cyteen is on my TBR list, and is sitting on my shelf.

I've tried to read it before, but unlike other C. J. Cherryh books, I just could not get very far into it.

Time to give it another try...

>29 fuzzi: I had the same issue with Cyteen. I really enjoy a lot of her other books but had to put down this one about 1/3rd of the way through and have never gotten back to it.

Just finished "Nocturne" by Sharon Shinn in Angels of Darkness. Didn't bother with any of the others, but I like the Samaria series.

> 13 I was a big big fan of D G Compton. Pretty much everything he wrote was worth the reading. I didn't realize till just looking around that he had some books after Ascendancies.

>29 fuzzi: & 30
Me too! I love much of Cherryh's stuff, but I found Cyteen draggy, wooden & lifeless. I did manage to finish it, barely. Also I found the main protagonist (I forget her name; the powerful woman who seems to be controlling much of the action) to be very distasteful, though I'm not sure the author meant me to.
It's kept me from reading 40,000 in Gehenna, which I own. I'll try it eventually, since Cherryh is so good -- maybe she finds her way back to life, there.

I stalled out on Cyteen as well, but I remember 40,000 in Gehenna as one of Cherryh's best.

Halfway through Cryptonomicon and still loving it more than I thought I could. I'm seriously thinking of starting the Baroque Cycle next.

Also moving through the Dresden Files on audio. Not sure what I think of James Marsters as narrator. A bad sign considering I like James Marsters.

I've had the slab that is Cyteen sitting on my shelf for a few years now, and just haven't been able to bring myself to read it.

Cherryh is one of those authors that I stockpile though, mostly you will get something interesting from her work, and it's worth the time.

I did buy Regenesis and add it to my stockpile, so that probably reaffirmed my intent to get round to reading Cyteen eventually. Still, I have 50+ other Cherry books I will likely read first.

>35 Valleyguy: - loved Cryptonomicon but had a hard time with the first book of the Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver - I'm still not sure if I'm going to finish the trilogy.

My review of Synthajoy is now up on my blog here.

(36) "I have 50+ other Cherry books I will likely read first"

50+?

Wow...I've a measly 20 or so...

Now on to Distress.

Still listening to Fragile Things which is a mix of fantasy and SF. It's read by the author, and he does a very good job of it too.

So many good books are butchered by the reader making the audiobook version that it is notable when a good rendition comes along.

> 29 et seq.: I've had similar false start problems with Cherryh; struggled with Downbelow Station and The pride of Chanur (the latter probably because the premise sounded interesting, but when I read it I thought 'wish fulfillment cat fantasy - with politics'). However, Rimrunners and Hellburner I found quite gripping, and I was then able to attack Downbelow Station again, successfully.

#41 by @RobertDay> wish fulfillment cat fantasy - with politics

That really MUST be your review.

Finished Migration by Julie Czerneda. Again, it took over half the book to really get started. But once it finally did it was worth it. Getting really excited to start the next one, which I handily got from the library in advance.

Started Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds...

I enjoyed Pushing Ice. May have to re-read.

I put Distress down, may return, now reading Starfire.

I seem to need something involving future space travel discovery/crisis/aliens or something in the Weird.

I didn't think Pushing Ice was one of Al's strongest books. I felt the relationship between the two central characters was pushed too far to be implausible. And the ending reminded me a little of something by Sean Williams and Shane Dix.

If you want something to do with space travel and can wait until next April, that's when Rocket Science, the anthology I'm editing, will be published...

Re-reading my review, Pushing Ice had a great first third and last third but the middle was boring. You need to read it quickly, otherwise you may just find that you put it down in the middle and have difficulty picking it up again.

> 42: Done!

Finished Snuff, starting Probability Moon

>46 iansales: Thanks for the tip on the anthology. Do you have a decent reader lined up for an audiobook rendition yet?

>49 ChrisRiesbeck: Let me know what you think of Probability Moon. I tried the audiobook version but the reader was poor and so bailed out. That doesn't mean it isn't a good book. I may decide to read that series.

I've not even considered an audiobook version. I shall have to speak to my publisher...

Wow Reamde surprised the devil out of me last night. Talk about not being able to predict where a book is going. I love it!

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Ares Express. The plot is more linear and centralized than Desolation Road, and yet it seemed slower to get going, but it's on a good roll now, and I should wrap it up shortly.

Finished Terminal World on Saturday. I can't put my finger on why I found it so unengaging. It had plenty of the stuff I like in it, yet it never stopped being a chore to read. Back to the charity shop it goes.

Was on a business trip last week so pounded through Mistborn on the plane ride. Moved back in to the Honorverse with More than Honor and started Crown of Slaves.

I'v just finished Angelmaker. I really enjoyed it.

Reading Rude Astronauts by Allen Steele

@pgmcc, good to know that his 2nd didn't disappoint.

#58 AHS-Wolfy No, it certainly did not. Same fast pace as The Gone-Away World, good humour, plenty of plot twists, entertaining characters, and a lot of fun. Very pertinent to life today.

I just started The infernals by John connolly. This is the YA sequal to The Gates of Hell are Open, Want to Take a Peek. I read the first one just because I like John Connoly, and I thought it may be similar to The Book of Lost Things. It wasn't, but it was hilarious and wierd in it's own way. Thus the sequal.

>46 iansales:
Will the anthology be released in the US at the same time?

Will be a print book or e-book only Ian?

I finished The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem and liked it a lot. Not I'm halfway through The Last Flood by Stephen Baxter. I allready read The last Ark and didn't realise it was not a stand-alone novel. But Flood is way better than Ark so far. i really need to check out Baxter's other books.

#62 Both. The print book will be published first, tho I'm intending to send out PDF ARCs beforehand. Afterwards, we'll put it up on Kindle and Smashwords.

#46 The book will be available for purchase online, but distribution to shops in the UK and US is bit beyond the publisher's capabilities.

63> Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is laying around here somewhere on my "to read" list. I've been put off by it being a translation, but I've heard nothing but good stuff about his work.

Stephen Baxter is one of my top five authors. I like his Xeelee sequence and Destiny's Children series books especially. Very much Hard SF.

So your copy of Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is actually lost, then? Have you tried looking in the bathtub?

Lol. No its qued on audio. It would go under "trying something new" so inertia has caused me to put it off. Is it something like Philip K Dick or Vonnegut?

#63

In the English editions the Stephen Baxter books are just Flood and Ark. It is interesting that the German edition has gone for "Die letzte Flut".

(Note - following up with correct touchstones).

Finished and reviewed Ares Express! Good stuff.

Just finished The Uncensored Man by Arthur Sellings. Will be blogging about it soon. Now reading The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which is pretty close to sf.

Just about to read Eternity And Other Stories which has been clogging up my to read shelves for a while.

Despite, or maybe because of. Johan's glowing praise, in msg #14, of The Islanders, I am going to leave that until I have a long lazy weekend where I can give it the attention it deserves. I always find the Dream Archipelago stuff to be slower reads and when someone describes this current book it as "highly unusual" it doesn't sound as though I will find this one any different.

Entertained myself with reading a 1954 issue of Galaxy; a Fred Pohl story that read like something written twenty years earlier, some Sprague de Camp that I found quite objectionable, some decent Sheckley, a factual rocketry article by Willy Ley which shows he knew nothing about aerodynamics, and a serialised novel about a future where the insurance companies run the world which seemed (and mainly was) ridiculous but was strangely prescient over anti-capitalist protestors.

About to start Gibson's All tomorrow's parties.

Finished Crown of Slaves and now onto Torch of Freedom.

Finished Probability Moon.

> 50 It's aggressively old-fashioned SF -- by which I mean the 1970's -- from data infodumps ("Automatically her mind reviewed the planetary data. Point six nine AUs from its primary, a G8 emitting .48 of Sol's energy per unit area....") to sketchy characters to a puzzle-driven plot involving an apparently primitive humanoid race to a bit of space opera involving a variant of crashing moons. It's dedicated to Charles, her husband Charles Sheffield I assume, and I took it as an OK attempt at an affectionate recreation, a la Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." It was slow going until page 186 in the hardcover, then went pretty quickly until the end. I put it on a par with Stableford's Daedalus series. OK enough for me to put the next one in the queue, not good enough to call it a hidden treasure.

75: Thanks. I actually like "info dumps" me being a geek and a dork with a science background.

Currently reading Scourge of the Gods.

Info dumps are just non-fiction. As such, it's all in the author's ability to make non-fiction interesting. (And, of course, the information having at least some ability to be interesting. There are probably some topics that would be very difficult to make readable info dumps out of.)

>76 randalhoctor: & 78

My thing with info dumps is that a big part of what I read speculative fiction for is that sense of being thrown in medias res, that sort of pleasant sense of vertigo that results from being "thrown" into a situation/setting where you really don't know what the hell's going on (It's pleasant in fiction, anyway. In real life... not so much.) A great storyteller gives you just enough information so that you don't feel COMPLETELY lost & give up on the work; a not-so-great one does info dumps.

In Between Selling books at the local con:

Reading Weight by Allen Steele (Damnit..can't get the touchstone..too many Weight Watchers cookbooks)

Eventually I'll get around to his Coyote stuff.

Reading Devils Planet by Manley Wade Wellman. One of those British pulp reprints from 1951 of a 1942 story from Startling Stories. Will have to scan the cover in. Typical excuse for a murder mystery thriller set on Mars. Silly but just as the thirsty Martians do in the story, we must return to our roots every once in a while.

Just finished Bitter Angels by C.L. Anderson, who turns out to be Sarah Zettel using another name (didn't realize that when I got it). I'm not sure why she did that, since it doesn't seem that different to me from her other stuff -- but that's fine with me, since I like her books. This was a compelling tale of oppression & intrigue, definitely cybertech-y and dark. Kept me wondering for a long time exactly what was happening and what was going to happen.

Now I've finally started North Wind by Gwyneth Jones. Not sure why it took me so long; I read White Queen ages ago & liked it, and loved Divine Endurance. So far it seems to live up to its predecessor. She does a great job on the misunderstandings of the two races, and their attempts to coexist better (or not).

Taking a break from SF to read The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Finished Outward Bound by James P. Hogan, one of the TOR Jupiter series of Juvenile SF Novels, and my 100th book of the year. :-)

>82 rshart3: I liked Escape Plans as well as those you mention.

I was very impressed by Red plenty. It is not science fiction as such but fiction about science. Just started How to live safely in a science fictional universe and am struggling to maintain interest in it.

Just finished Eye of Infinty by David Conyers (Lovecraftian sf) and Linda Nagata's new YA Skye Object 3270a and am now reading Hodder's The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man (like a lot of steampunk, I'm not sure I'd call it sf).

Finished Torch of Freedom, The Shadow of Saganami and am working on Storm from the Shadows all by David Weber

I am about halfway through Phobos the third in the Steve Alten Domain trilogy. I liked the first two, and don't hate this one. I do find it somewhat convoluted though. Alot of jumping around in time, not only the stories perspective, but also characters.

Reading Judas Unchained.

#90 I enjoyed it. I like the Commonwealth universe even if P F Hamilton writes books you could bludgeon a cow with.

Anyone have any feedback for me on The Physiognomy The Well-Built City Trilogy, Book 1 by Jeffrey Ford? Is it at all Hard SF?

#91

No. I wouldn't call it hard SF or even moderately hard SF. Pretty good book though.

Just finished Reality 36 (A), which I thought was a first-rate cyberpunk thriller.

#92 thanks andyl. I'm stuck on hard SF right now.

I love those books by Ford, but think some sort of "weird magical metaphysical realism" instead. More "Flann O'Brien meets Bulgakov".

Finished reading Starfire. It was...well...meh. (2.5/5)

Starting Gridlinked.

Can't get hold of Line of Polity but I've read the rest not counting the Spatterjay story line, which didn't engage me.

Yeah, LoP is scarce in the US. Mainly because it wasn't ever published here. According to Asher, publishers said it was "too long."

*eyeroll*

Because it was "too long"? Well I always have thought marketing is inscrutable at best and completely out of touch at worst.

#98 by @randalhoctor> Yeah. I can only guess the publishers had never heard of Peter Hamilton or Tad Williams.

Asher must have learned his lesson, as he told me "To my mind, Polity Agent and Line War are more like one book". I wonder if the reason they became two had anything to do with the LoP experience.

Finished The Testament of Jessie Lamb. First half is good, then it turns into a YA novel. Read The Garments of Caean by Barrington Bayley, which was bonkers but not far from hackwork. Currently reading Infidel, Kameron Hurley, the sequel to the excellent God's War.

I consider myself lucky to have picked up a copy of Line of Polity used; not that I've gotten around to reading it!

As for what I'm reading right now I just finished Carrie Vaughn's superhero pastiche After the Golden Age (B+).

Gave up on How to live safely in a science fictional universe as it is written mostly in 'Hitchhikerese'. Egans' Zendegi is hitting the spot...

Finished Devils Planet, now to Consider Phlebas. I wanted to avoid the bends coming up to modern times too quickly. Then will do something in this millennium.

Finished Reamde. I liked it a lot. Great pacing, and I like Stephenson's writing style. Although this is my first Stephenson novel, I can see why his hard-core fans would be disappointed - more of an action adventure than a deep exploration of some esoteric concept. Many of the characters (not all of them) were a bit cartoonish as well.

I'm definitely going to read more of his work.

104-Yeah, not looking forward to that one, but still have other Stephenson novels to tackle.

Read Fool Moon and on to Grave Peril. I don't love these, but I'm giving them a chance due to strong recommendations. I'm probably giving them longer chance than I normally would because the library in my new town has a terrible audiobook selection, but has all of the Dresden Files on hand.

105:Fool Moon is often cited as being the weakest by fans . From my own experience it does get better.

Finished Scourge of the Gods and Scourge of the Gods, The Fall; now I'm on to Ythaq. For whatever reason, my mid-November SF reading consists of BD (i.e. French comic books).

@ #69: Thanks for the correction. I should have checked the English title but I didn't have the books at hand and was too lazy...

Anyway, I think I should read more English originals anyway. I'm on my way through the Space Odyssey series in English and I enjoy the books a lot. I allready finished 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010 Odyssey Two and I'm really close to the end of 2061: Odyssey Three. Need to buy the last book of the seris as well as the books Arthur C. Clarke wrote with Stephen Baxter. I enjoyed Baxter's books but even more the stuff Clarke wrote. Imho among the best sci-fi ever, I really need to get more of his stuff. Amazone used books here I come...

#108: Yeah. I really enjoyed the 2001 series too. Really made me feel I was entering "profound knowledge". Stephen Baxter's Exultant series was IMOHO most excellent. I loved Transcendent but could never get the last of the series (Resplendent).

Just started 11/22/63 on 11/22/11. It has time travel in it so I guess it can be considered science fiction of a sort.

106: Yes, Fool Moon was messy, and I prefer simplicity. I will continue to give it a chance because I know Butcher wrote a longer arch that the stories fit into. Kind of like the tv shows I like, that started average and then picked up steam.

108: Loved the beginning and end of the series, the two middle books were readable though.

Melome (Dumarest of Terra #28) by E. C. Tubb

Sf umm The H-Bomb Girl did not realise it was a YA when I picked it up an ok read but oh so PC.

I also started King's 11/22/63 and certainly consider it SF with the time travel. Really enjoying it so far. The writing is very good.

#114 The first ever episode of Dr.Who was broadcast on Saturday, 23rd November, 2011, the day after JFK was killed. I mentioned that fact at work today and my colleagues asked me if I were suggesting a connection between the two events. Now that I hear King's 11/22/63 features time travel, then perhaps there is.

My memories of those two days...
http://www.fantasy-matters.com/2011/09/keys-to-tardis-unearthly-child.html#more

OT, but thought some of you might wish to know:

Iain Banks interview on BBC Radio 6 on Sunday (27th November) at 12:00noon (GMT) - Talking about music and stories of student life and squatting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017pncn

I'm listening to WWW:Wake right now. I'm ashamed to admit, as a Canadian, that I haven't read any of Sawyer's books. The audiobook is quite well done. Sawyer did an introduction and apparently pops up somewhere as a character. The characters' voices are done by different narrators which makes it more like a radio play than an audiobook. (Yes, I am old enough to remember radio plays!)

A friend passed me Lord of Light which I'm loving so far (only a few pages in). I remember reading a couple of Zelazny's Amber books in high school, I feel I should search around to see what else he's written.

#118: I liked it too.

118 brianjungwi

A Night in a Lonesome October is another of Zelaznys to look out for. Hard to find, and a very different book to Lord of Light. But some of Zelaznys best work.

120> thanks

>120 cosmicdolphin:

I've been wanting to read that one for a while now; sounds a bit like a prose version of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. 8)

Just finished Gridlinked. I really enjoyed it a great deal. long (pp.423) but very good (4/5).

I have a question regarding the "broken" golem 25 Mr. Crane: In Gridlinked Mr. Crane was bested by two ECS golem thirties and his brain removed and destroyed. How is it then that in Brass Man his bits were found, assembled (mostly), and Mr. Crane resurrected, if his brain was destroyed?

I'm sure it was explained. I just can't remember. Perhaps my brain has been partially destroyed by a golem 30 or maybe just all that proper living.

Finally got through all 5 books of A song of ice and fire and I'm very relieved that it's over. I kept reading it thinking/hoping that it was going to go somewhere but it never did. Oh well, can say I've read them now. Have moved on to hull zero three and am enjoying that so much more. I read embedded inbetween books 4 and 5 of ASOIAF and I really enjoyed that which I think made a dance with dragons drag so much more.

Just started Reamde and am about 130 pages in. Good so far.

Angado (Dumarest of Terra #29) by E. C. Tubb , my 28th and last Dumarest book of the year. The remaining 4 books had smaller print runs and are now stupidly expensive.

>124 bj:

It's not over. Well, I guess it might be over for you if you're tired of it. But the series isn't.

a bit more than halfway through Goliath and loving it.

123> Re: Mr Crane (Agent Cormac series spoilers)

Skellor uses his Jain technology to reassemble the fragments of the AI crystal. It's a technology that in many ways is far beyond the top-of-the-line Polity technology.

I read the rather excellent Peter Watts short story The Things. It was the story of the movie The Thing, only told from the standpoint of the "thing". It added a wonderful new dimension on the whole story. You can read it online:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

Other random freely available short stories I loaded onto my phone and read over the holidays:

Bad Medicine by Robert Sheckley (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9055)

Scales by Alastair Reynolds (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/scales/)

Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order by Damien Broderick (http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/05/time-considered-as-a-series-of-thermite-burns-in-no-particular-order)

Starting Stealing Light by Gary Gibson. Liking it so far. Unfortunately, the two sequels seem to be hard to find in the US.

Starting Gridlinked by Neal Asher...

Just finished Regeneration by Julie Czerneda. A good finish to the series, though once again a bit slow at the start. I wonder if anyone else can comment on how common that is in her other works?

What next? So many books to choose from, but I keep putting off The Princess Bride. May have to take a scifi sabbatical.

I polished off an Ace double during a train trip on Saturday: Time to Live, John Rackham / The Man Without A Planet, Lin Carter. They were both bad. Currently slogging through Songs of the Dying Earth, which I have to review for Interzone.

129> Yeah. That's it. I forgot to mark the post as a spoiler.

Thank you.

Also, thanks for the short story links.

Just starting The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which I've meant to read for years now.

Reading Dune after more than 20 years away. I knew it would be good, but I am amazed at how engrossing it is.

Having consulted my catalog and realized I don't own a copy of The Princess Bride, I have instead started Drumlin Circus. I feel my review upon completion will be the best review for this work on the entire site. Sadly, it will also be the worst.

Myself, I'm reading The Freedom Maze, which is also the first e-book I read (I miscalculated how long my previous book would last and in panic had to buy some e-books). I had no idea what it would be about, but I enjoy it so far.

Just started reading Incandescence.

brightcopy: I enjoyed Scales, Nice shorty.

Good to hear!

For anyone interested, I've found there's tons of scifi stories freely (and legally) available. Of course, I'm sure there's some who will claim that me copying the webpage over to my phone and stripping out the surrounding site isn't legal. To them I blow a hearty raspberry.

Now reading JEM

and

listening to The Quantum Thief

Reading Bioshock: Rapture by John Shirley; never played the video game but the book's premise drew me in. Great in the first half, now tipping over into the horror genre which I've never been a fan of, but at least I saw it coming ...

Halfway through Against a dark background. It's a good read so far.

I'm currently reading three or four books at once right now, I keep getting distracted with the new shiny! There's still 51 books in my 'to-be-read' pile(s), too...

Age of Odin, Falconfar, Metal Swarm, and The Morgaine Saga in my car.

And now I have just started on Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, since he'll be one of the guests of honour at the Swedish national science fiction convention next year. The first five pages were good! ;)

>143 randalhoctor:

Learned from this site that JEM won the National Book Award for Science Fiction, which I thought was fascinating because previous to learning that I was unaware that there WAS a National Book Award for Science Fiction! :D

>147 anglemark:

I'm currently reading three or four books at once right now, I keep getting distracted with the new shiny!

Always reassuring to see I'm not the only one with this problem. Having figured out how to download books to my cell phone has not helped matters much. :/

I finally got Reamde from the library just before going to see a doctor so I started reading it while I was waiting. I got interested in it immediately, which is great. Yesterday I started reading
The Pride of Chanur by CJ Cherryh and, just like the first 2 times I read it, I don't want to do anything else but read it and never finish.

#148 I think 1980 was the only year the NBA was awarded for Science Fiction. It was also awarded for Mystery and Westerns in that year.

>150 justifiedsinner:

Which would help explain why I'd never heard of it. :D

Far Traveller Edited by J. Andrew Keith
Far Traveller (Issue #2, Fasa 1302) Edited by J. Andrew Keith (Sorry Touchstone is fried)

Finished Reamde yesterday and found it entertaining throughout, although of lesser caliber than his previous works with fewer concepts and a bit too distant in tone from the punk for my taste. Now reading Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod.

#153 I started reading Cosmonaut Keep when visiting my daughter in Edinburgh. I enjoyed reading about places I knew but in the future.

While I enjoyed the three books in the trilogy I found that onced I'd finished the last book the total was much more than the sum of the parts. A great trilogy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I'm starting Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, one of his I've never read.