goo_mason
Champion barbed-wire hurdler
- Location
- Leith, Edinburgh
John O'Farrell's "An Utterly Impartial History Of Britain (or 2000 Years Of Upper-Class Idiots In Charge)"
What book are you reading?
- Thread starter Hilldodger
- Start date
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Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Melvil said:
That's who I meant earlier when I said Richard Caborn! For some reason I got the hottest thing in technothrillers mixed up with the former sports minister...
longers
Legendary Member
Aperitif said:
No, I found it hard to get into. I found I couldn't get to grips with or care about the character.
I am finding "Narrow Dog to Carcassone" a very enjoyable read though and I've started "Out of the Woods - an armchair guide to trees" by Will Cohu. Both excellent humorous reads so far.
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Uncle Mort said:
Well, he's always shocked the more bourgeois...
I've just been re-reading The Atrocity Exhibition, which contains stories like 'Why I Want to **** Ronald Reagan'... he was always so much ahead of the game on vacuous celebrity culture and the death of the enlightenment... one of the truly great British writers of the last 50 years. I do prefer his short stories to his novels though.
Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
longers said:
- it is very easy to imagine the 'character' of the dog, longers - a nice gentle read.
Night Train
Maker of Things
- Location
- Greater Manchester
I'm reading the script to Cinderella at the moment but I am about to start Varjak Paw by S.F. Said.
Vigilies
Veteran
- Location
- Leeds, West Yorkshire
Just finished "Being Eddie Wareing". Much misunderstood man. About halfway through "Agincourt" by Juliet Barker. Quite good so far.
Rhythm Thief
Veteran
Vigilies said:
Her book about Britain and the British Home Front during WWII was excellent. I've read it twice now.
red_tom
New Member
- Location
- East London
Just finished Carter beats the devil. Real page turner of a novel about stage magicians in the early 1900s. Time for a trip to Waterstones at lunchtime.
spandex
I love Dr D
Still Two Wheels
Im not a slow reader I just read when I go to bed and with in 4mins Im out for the count
Im not a slow reader I just read when I go to bed and with in 4mins Im out for the count
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Uncle Mort said:
His novels often involve boredom, in fact they could be said to be about the tedious nature of our vacuous postmodern life, but to me that doesn't make them boring. And pretentious? That implies aspiring to something he can't deliver, and he's certainly shown that he can over the years.
Anyway, I see we are just going to have to disagree.
Rhythm Thief
Veteran
red_tom said:
That's a great book. Never read any of his other stuff though.
Flying_Monkey said:That's who I meant earlier when I said Richard Caborn! For some reason I got the hottest thing in technothrillers mixed up with the former sports minister...
Easy mistake to make
Very interesting ideas, has Richard Morgan. Like the idea of near-automatic digital rebirth in a new body and how practically horrible that would be. Endure torrents of pain, die and then do it all over again. Also a whole new level of etiquette would have to be followed as you would never really know who you were talking to.
In fact, I think british SF is riding on a bit of a wave at the moment. We have people like Charles Stross (who seems to be a little bit ahead of his time - even for SF! - and also he has released some of his most award-winning works online for free, e.g: http://www.accelerando.org/), Peter Hamilton (I can take him or leave him but he's undeniably popular), Adam Roberts (read Gradisil to get a good flavour of his work) and Richard Morgan.
Shame that SF's curse (i.e. few prominent women writers in the genre) seems to be ever-present, too.
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Melvil said:Easy mistake to make
Very interesting ideas, has Richard Morgan. Like the idea of near-automatic digital rebirth in a new body and how practically horrible that would be. Endure torrents of pain, die and then do it all over again. Also a whole new level of etiquette would have to be followed as you would never really know who you were talking to.
In fact, I think british SF is riding on a bit of a wave at the moment. We have people like Charles Stross (who seems to be a little bit ahead of his time - even for SF! - and also he has released some of his most award-winning works online for free, e.g: http://www.accelerando.org/), Peter Hamilton (I can take him or leave him but he's undeniably popular), Adam Roberts (read Gradisil to get a good flavour of his work) and Richard Morgan.
Shame that SF's curse (i.e. few prominent women writers in the genre) seems to be ever-present, too.
I liked Roberts' earlier books (Hamilton's too) and he certainly knows his stuff (he's a lecturer in SF too!). Stross is a bit too fond of the geeky in-joke to be a truly top writer - his new one is almost entirely a geek in-joke - although I have really enjoyed his stuff up until now. I'm not sure I'd call Morgan an ideas-man - most of them are recycled from elsewhere but he certainly puts things together in a tough package.
Flying_Monkey said:
You're right there with Stross. I would actually really like to see the results of a collaboration between Morgan and Stross - Morgan could temper down Stross's geek tendencies / Stross could provide some inspirational and outlandish paradigms - it could be very interesting.
However, with SF I think it's getting ridiculously hard to come up with a simple, bold idea that's never been done before.
And I would still like to see sympathetic and realistic females in SF novels - they seem to be ridiculously gung-ho and unfeminine, a kind of idealised, shallow and synthetic 'liberated woman' from the viewpoint of the novelist. Witness the Culture women in any of Iain M Banks' books, or the soldier/mercenary types in Richard Morgans books, or the dominent 'mistress' types in Charles Stross books.
