What are you reading?

[Kryten]

Broken Homes, PC Grant book #4 by Ben Aaronovitch, is now out.

[crocos]

Ooh! Buying!

[Saladin]

Originally Posted by Cyberbob

Anyone grabbing Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Looks interesting but unsure if it's too overdramatic for its own good.

The author is doing an AMA over at reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...ons_author_of/

[Cyberbob]

See him interviewed by Fox while you're at it.

http://www.inquisitr.com/876082/reza...terview-video/

[The Brad]

If you like Zombie apocalypse novels or massively sarcastic anti-heroes (which I do), give Zombie Fallout a try. Tufo also does a few other novels around the same character and he really makes it work.

Zombie Fallout is 6 books and I could not put them down. Tufo could publish his shopping list and I'd read it.

I love anti-heroes, but Mike Talbot is ........ spend the dollar and read it for yourself.

http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Fallout.../dp/B003A022YO

yeah yeah I'm a fanboy, fuck you.

[Thornan]

Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell.
Amazing, watching his videos on youtube as well.
What an amazingly smart man.

[chiQ]

Snuff by Terry Pratchett, for the third time.

[Baxton]

Joe Abercrombie
Fantasy. All the main characters are bad guys. If they end up fighting it is hard to know who to back being they are all bad.

Tis an interesting way to tell a story but you kinda just start waiting for people to start dropping.

[StN]

Fermets last theorem - Simon Singh.

I usually re-read The Codebook every 4-5 years, but I leant my copy to a colleague who died just before the quakes. Thought I'd mix it up this time and try another from Simon.

[StN]

...and when I don't have my Kindle handy, anything that I can dredge up from a pile of files that found their way onto my phone. I've done Jaws and Requiem for a Dream. Now on Fear and Loathing. If the wife correlated my reading pattern with getting SoHo just for BB she'd think I was obsessed with narcotics. On the plus side, she found Fear and Loathing at MightyApe and got the DVD for me.

[DrTiTus]

This is Reggae Music - Lloyd Bradley

[GM]

I'm on a no-brain taxing roll at the moment, just finished 'The Rook' wiki and the Timothy Zahn 'Thrawn' trilogy books over the last month.

Trying to brace myself before starting the mind numbingly dry Prince2 manual for exams in a few weeks.

[Kryten]

Republic of Thieves, the third Locke Lamora book by Scott Lynch was released at Amazon a few hours ago. Feels kinda momentous, given his personal battles and the long road to getting the book out.

I've been reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, which is the source of the articles you may have seen recently about how lucky the US was to not blow itself up with it's own nukes during the Cold War. Morbidly fascinating, even more so because of the USA's current domestic issues. They're all fucking nuts over there.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Kryten

Republic of Thieves, the third Locke Lamora book by Scott Lynch was released at Amazon a few hours ago. Feels kinda momentous, given his personal battles and the long road to getting the book out.

Based on this I've just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. It was fantastic. Took a couple of chapters to warm up then I was totally hooked. To the point where sleep was put off and work not done

[Spink]

Steelheart was enjoyable YA stuff, started Red Country looking forward to that.

[Baxton]

Originally Posted by Spink

Steelheart was enjoyable YA stuff

twas okay aye. completely stolen from "the boys" comic though. originality 0

[GM]

I'm really enjoying an anthology of mars based sci-fi put together by George r r martin called 'Old Mars', the collection could be classified as retro 50's sci-fi, if that makes sense, in the way each short story has been written.

[aR Que]

finally forgot the tv show enough to start reading through GoT... the lack of pictures makes for tough going tho.

[DrTiTus]

Designing Sound - Andy Farnell

Creating sound effects from first principles, rather than sampling/recording. Huge amount of math, physics, and example models that demonstrate how to create "procedural audio" objects using Pd. Demo sounds include rolling, creaking, bouncing, fire, bubbles, electricity, thunder, wind, motors, clocks, footsteps, and more! Models are described, built up, and explained along the way. Great combination of noise and nerd.

[Delphinus]

Just finished the first two books from the Odyssey One series by Evan Currie. http://www.goodreads.com/series/79684-odyssey-one
Good military sci-fi space opera.

[[Malks] Pixie]

So my latest list of things is...

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (damn good)
Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega
A Theory of Fun in Game Design by Ralph Koster
Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games
by Stewart Woods
The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell
Media Semiotics: An Introduction by Jonathan Bignell

Pixie

[pxpx]

http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/The_Expanse

Just read 1,2,3 from this series. The author(s) both collarborate with GRRM.

Not too bad really - quite light sci-fi space opera.

[Cyberbob]

Originally Posted by Cyberbob

Anyone grabbing Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Looks interesting but unsure if it's too overdramatic for its own good.

Reading it at the moment. So far so good!

[kRAdENkO]

Originally Posted by pxpx

http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/The_Expanse

Just read 1,2,3 from this series. The author(s) both collarborate with GRRM.

Not too bad really - quite light sci-fi space opera.

Gonna give it a whirl.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by pxpx

http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/The_Expanse

Just read 1,2,3 from this series. The author(s) both collarborate with GRRM.

Not too bad really - quite light sci-fi space opera.

Highly recommend.

[Redneck]

Long enough to be worthy of the reading thread: an amazing piece on Julian Assange by Andrew O'Hagan - the guy who was hired to ghostwrite Assange's autobiography.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/02/21/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

TL;DR - Assange: what a prat.

[Ab]

Pixie's post above reminded me to read Anathem, which is doing my fucking head in.

[StN]

Originally Posted by Redneck

Long enough to be worthy of the reading thread: an amazing piece on Julian Assange by Andrew O'Hagan - the guy who was hired to ghostwrite Assange's autobiography.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/02/21/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

TL;DR - Assange: what a prat.

That explains why I only got 1/3 through it. Wasn't gripping - just described him being weird.

[Savage]

Finally got around to reading Ender's Game, and I see why fans were disappointed in the movie. Anyone know if the sequels (and Shadow Saga parallel series) are worth going into?

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Redneck

TL;DR - Assange: what a prat.

You gotta be to be able to achieve what he has. Ideals aren't enough, you need personality and drive.

[Ajax]

Originally Posted by Savage

Anyone know if the sequels (and Shadow Saga parallel series) are worth going into?

Strongly advise not reading them.

[Savage]

Ok thanks - I was borderline after reading Ender's Game; thought it was alright, nothing special. Apparently they get a lot more philosophical in nature, which sounds like a bit of a snorefest.

Eyeing up The Expanse based on recommendations here

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by Ab

Pixie's post above reminded me to read Anathem, which is doing my fucking head in.

Oh yes, I'd held off (because of Uni stuff) for too long - it's quickly become my favourite of his novels.

Pixie

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Ajax

Strongly advise not reading them.

But how can you not enjoy the tales of Space Hitler resurrecting the Space Jews on Planet Brazil?

[Lightspeed]

That actually sounds not too far off the plot of Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Which is freaking awesome btw.

[TD]

Read Horatio Hornblower, re-read Horatio Hornblower, now reading Honor Harrington.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by [Malks] Pixie

Oh yes, I'd held off (because of Uni stuff) for too long - it's quickly become my favourite of his novels.

Pixie

Thought the space opera stuff was tacked on. I didn't need the aliens to be characters and the ship to be a setting. I felt like I'd been reading Name of the Rose with monks and inquisitors and dangerous philosophical enquiry and then all of a sudden I was reading Footfall with nukes and orbital kinetic energy weapons and a risky assault on an alien generation ship, wtf my brain hurts.

It's like Stephenson went "oh fuck better have some sci-fi shit in here to keep the fans happy" and it added very little to the story IMHO.

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by Ab

Thought the space opera stuff was tacked on. I didn't need the aliens to be characters and the ship to be a setting. I felt like I'd been reading Name of the Rose with monks and inquisitors and dangerous philosophical enquiry and then all of a sudden I was reading Footfall with nukes and orbital kinetic energy weapons and a risky assault on an alien generation ship, wtf my brain hurts.

Yeah I get where you're coming from (the Footfall comparison is very apt). I really really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book and the end did kind of feel, not tacked on, but at least rushed. I'd picked that it would be "aliens" at the point of the pink dragon conversation so it didn't surprise me so much. What he did do well (and does seem to consistently do well) was setting up his philosophical premise and because of that I was happy to to just go with the flow. It would have been nice if he could have kept up the level of abstraction that he had in the first half of the story, but oh well... Still it's Stephenson and he doesn't do endings well at all so I was kind of expecting that.

Originally Posted by Ab

It's like Stephenson went "oh fuck better have some sci-fi shit in here to keep the fans happy" and it added very little to the story IMHO.

Which is odd seeing as he hasn't done very much sci-fi recently at all (and he's better for not doing it in my opinion).

Pixie

[chiQ]

Originally Posted by Savage

Ok thanks - I was borderline after reading Ender's Game; thought it was alright, nothing special. Apparently they get a lot more philosophical in nature, which sounds like a bit of a snorefest.

Eyeing up The Expanse based on recommendations here

I enjoyed Ender's Shadow, which was the same time-frame as Ender's Game from Bean's PoV, but the rest of the Shadow books are a bit meh. The two sequels, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, might tickle your fancy. They're not spectacular reading though.

[StN]

I'm liking The Luminaries. Very much like Deadwood - in fact, if they end up making a mini series, I think a lot of the monologues will end up being just like Swearegen talking to the Indian in the box.