So what is everyone reading?

[Mercedes Benzene]

On the train ride back to school today, I read a good portion of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.

Very good so far.

[freeztar]

I received a copy of "The Art and Politics of Science" by Harold Varmus for my b-day. It looks good and I plan to start reading it soon. Review to follow...

[Jay-qu]

Trudging through "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose.

 

Its very thick and quick moving - what more can one expect when the caption on the front page says "The complete guide to the laws of the universe" :phones:

[Pyrotex]

I love Roger Penrose. In a distant, platonic kind of way, of course.

 

I once again tried to plow my way through John Varley's "Titan".

Sorry, guys, I just do not understand what you see in it. To me, it is literally unreadable.

I was never big on "The Wizard of Oz" books either. Maybe that's it.

 

Still plowing through the biography of Darwin. Good stuff, fascinating, but slow.

I'm also half-way through Darwin's "Origin of Species".

Damn! I've been talking about that book for decades, and now I'm actually reading it.

Very lucid, it's like "Evolution for Dummies" -- no ****.

But the sentences sometimes are very long.

 

I'm taking a Short-Story Writing and Publishing class, and therefore,

I'm reading a lot of my own stuff, some of which can be found in Hypo.

 

I just finished Hal Clement's "Cycle of Fire". Whoa! :lol:

I read it just once before, 45 years ago, as a teenager.

I can still remember the awe and wonder and spine-tingling amazement.

"Cycle of Fire" was one of those 20 or so, Life Altering Books (LAB) for me.

And on reading it again, it hit me just the same way.

Why can't Varley write like that? :evil:

[Racoon]

I just finished Les Miserables

 

Probably the Greatest book I have ever read! :umno: And I enjoy all the Steinbeck and Dickens novels..

I got the 1460 page unabridged Signet Classic for $9 off eBay. and it was by far the best money I've ever spent.

 

Loved it. I laughed, I cried, I spent days in bed reading it.

[Jay-qu]

Gone for a classic:

 

The Time Machine

-H. G. Wells

[Essay]

In between working through Hot, Flat, and Crowded, (Thomas Friedman) I'm also reading:

 

....just finished The Web of Life, by Fritjof Capra (Thanks JMJones), and I'm crawling through 1491 cover to cover (instead of skipping around like I've been doing for a year now on my Kindle e-book), but I'm currently zipping through a fun book, The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. It is based on the understanding from the book 1491, but it is a true account of early Amazon explorers--primarily Col. Fawcett.

 

I caught the author talking, on CSPAN's BookTV, about his search for the still missing Fawcett. His search is the other part of the book. The Lost City of Z is an entrancing and easy read, and good background for 1491.

[Jet2]

Recently read mostly Chinese language titles for books in China is so inexpensive!

Compare to books I bought in HK they are almost 3 times cheaper.

Say for example, a title in HK Chinese may cost HK$80 (US$ 10), in Shnaghai, the simplified Chinese version may only need RMB 25 (US$ 3).

Of course it's also far cheaper than buying English books from oversea countries.

Tax is one of the issues I believe.

 

So I have this conclusion here, given that Chinese people can get new knowledge (or old wisdom) this easy, if more people are hard working enough, the development of different aspects will be surprisingly big and fast.

 

I dont have the data to support whether a country is successful or not is related to it's reading population.

 

Any comments?

[Pyrotex]

I just finished a science fiction novel by an author I had not read before.

The book was "Remnant Population" by Elizabeth Moon.

 

Wow. That about sums up my opinion. Wow. I highly recommend it.

 

The story takes place on a distant planet where Humans have set up a small colony. But after thirty years, the colony is failing, and the "Company" is required by contract to move the survivors to another colony planet. One elderly woman decides not to leave and goes "missing" in the forest until the last shuttle flight is long gone. She has the entire village to herself now. Then many months later, after her life has settled into a comfortable rut, she learns that there is something living on the planet that is intelligent enough to kill Humans and destroy a shuttle on the ground. It is only a matter of time before they discover her little village.

 

This story is totally unique in having the protagonist be a very elderly woman with no special skills except for a lifetime of raising gardens and babies -- just an ordinary half-crippled old lady who wants to be left alone.

 

This is NOT a horror story or a monster story. This is an incredibly intelligent book, containing one of the BEST and most ORIGINAL takes on a sentient alien lifeform that you will ever read!!!

[Boerseun]

Things change. The world change. Everybody change.

 

So I decided to do a belly-flop back to the eighties, when things made sense. There were only two superpowers, and they were trying to kill each other. In true Pinky and the Brain style, they had enough nukes pointed at each other to destroy themselves plenty times over. I imagine Reagan and Gorbachev sitting in dark seclusion, smoking cigars, wringing their hands in anticipation in front of a big fat red knob in front of them saying "END THE WORLD", with an evil "bwuhuhahaha" kinda laugh through the smoke.

 

So I read a few Frederick Forsyths. Just for old time's sake. And I truly enjoyed it, again.

 

The Day of the Jackal, The Devil's Alternative, The Dogs of War, The Fourth Protocol and The Odessa File.

 

Vintage eighties Cold War paranoia. Awesome stuff, man. Awesome stuff.

 

A pity the Cold War is over. It made for some real good reading. Today's political config is a joke - if you write fiction based on today's reality, publishers will refuse to print it, calling it too far-fetched! Also, things like 9/11 make modern political fiction pale in comparison to the truth, I guess...

[Mercedes Benzene]

I am currently reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith.

It's incredibly good. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good laugh, while at the same time likes to enjoy something of significant literary merit.

[Jay-qu]

I just finished reading "The cole protocol". This novel is part of the Halo franchise, but by a new author. This also happened to be that authors first book. To his credit he did well, but his inexperience showed..

 

The story is cool, set before the games and helps give a bit more background to the overall halo universe. I recommend it to halo fans, but die hard scifi fans might find it a bit like cheap sweet wine.

[Victor2009]

I am currently reading "Introducing 3ds Max" by Dariush Derakhshani; Randi L. Munn

[sanctus]

"The player of games" by Iain Banks. I really like the idea of the book, because it is really just about a game-player and still really interesting.

[Pyrotex]

I'm reading "N-Space" by Larry Niven.

 

It is a collection of short stories (some co-authored with other well known writers, like David Gerrold), excerpts from several of his novels (some co-authored with other well known writers, like Jerry Pournelle), heretofore un-published chapters that had been cut out of his longer novels, and non-fiction biographical essays on how this book got written and why that story ended the way it did and how he came to meet so-and-so, and where he got the idea for a key technology, etc.

 

Very readable! Niven is just a damn fine writer, no matter what he's writing.

[Tormod]

I have finished two books, first The Graveyard Book and then Neverwhere. Been through a Neil Gaiman crush apparently, having read both American Gods and Anansi Boys before that.

 

Mr Gaiman (the guy who wrote the Sandman comic series) is a fantastic writer.

[Jay-qu]

"The Physics of the Impossible" M. Kaku goes through the physics that may one day make technology of scifi come to real life :phones: things like force shields, invisibility cloaks, warp drives. It is so far a fun read and not incredibly technical for layman readers.