Norse Myhthology done. Interesting read, did it’s job, I just wanted an easy to read recount of the key stories.

Of the two books I picked up at the airport, think I’ll start The Child In Time (McEwan) next.

tigerswiftly wrote:

McEwan getting shredded by the sci-fi community.

I thought he was friends with Banks? Surely he had a vague idea of what the genre entailed? The quotes going around are incredibly embarrassing.

I read the McEwan thing, and rolled my eyes, but in retrospect I think the issue was more the interviewer’s assertion that McEwan has “little time for conventional science fiction” than anything McEwan himself said.
Admittedly the anti-gravity boot stuff is pretty dismissive, and he has the usual “successful author” arrogance of believing his take is the only one worth listening to, but... The suggestion he’s utterly unaware of all the times SF has explored the ideas he’s talking about is slightly undermined by him bringing up Frankenstein as a point of comparison later in the interview. (Even if he perhaps labours under the misapprehension that he is the first to invert it.)

Bluffocracy.

An excellent short read which gives a fascinating insight into the bluffers out there, particularly in government but elsewhere also.

Kernowgaz wrote:

Nearly finished Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence and I’m gutted it’s only 300 pages long and the completion of another great trilogy from him.

Actually it was 340 pages, what a trilogy. Mark Lawrence’s best to date.

Gonna rest the last part Peter Newman’s Vagrant trilogy, Seven next. Loved the first 2 and it’s on Kindle format so I can read anywhere and not have to carry a big hardback everywhere.

tigerswiftly wrote:

Bluffocracy. An excellent short read which gives a fascinating insight into the bluffers out there, particularly in government but elsewhere also.

Initially read that as 'Biffocracy'

Figured I'd sign up a ceefax life

Finished Children of Time. Enjoyed it in the end.
Now I need to decide what's next. Thinking of getting a library card and just grab anything potentially interesting. Used to do that a lot as a kid.

Nina wrote:

Finished Children of Time. Enjoyed it in the end.

Spoiler:

Really enjoyed the ending, didn't see that coming. Last 100 pages or so were really good

Now I need to decide what's next. Thinking of getting a library card and just grab anything potentially interesting. Used to do that a lot as a kid.

 


Glad you enjoyed it.

Reading is great. It seems obvious but I went off it for the longest time. The purchase of a Kindle got me back into it which I find a bit weird.

John Cooper Clarke poetry collection called The Luckiest Guy Alive


Haven't read him before. Quite brilliant.

I remember reading it at 15 and it did me over. I now look at it a little more distantly as a grand Guignol text, but I do love it.

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole

Written by a US doctor and his insight into the brain arising from his experiences. He seems to have been the guy they sent people to when they didn't know what was wrong with them.

Some amusing, nutty stories but also some heart breaking ones.

He's very much into the human side of doctoring and using old fashioned investigative work by analysing people through conversation because the act of conversing is a diagnostic tool for his work.

Interesting read.

Although all my Banks stuff needs to be tempered as I see it through nostalgia filters. I was lucky enough to meet him twice not long before he died and he was just the most lovely and gracious man. When he came into our school I got to have a cup of tea with him and he sat and chatted Excession, Wasp Factory, and all sorts of stuff with me for 30 mins. So I'm tilted.

No but it's speculative come on tempy keep up hup hup

I wouldn't call The Wasp Factory pulp but I bloody loved it and it affected me a lot.

Yeah. Boy

David Gray has just recommended the book I'm reading on national TV. It's not even that new out. But now everyone's gonna think I'm a fanboy when I read it in the train. FML.