Thread: What are you reading?

Originally Posted by StephL

@Sageous - if you liked 'Reamde' from Neal Stephenson, you should really check the others - this is his weakest novel in my eyes -

I wouldn't say it was weak at all, though certainly different and more accessible than most of his work. To me it seemed like it remixed a lot of elements from Cryptonomicon into a stripped-down thriller format, though the range and depth of knowledge on display was clearly greater than most thrillers. On the whole I'd say it held together much better than Snow Crash, which to me read like he put years of work into the first three chapters then banged out the remainder in a few months after he sold it to a publisher. The opening promised something really mind-bending and insightful, then what we got was a gimmicky cyberpunk action movie.

That said, I read Snow Crash years and years ago, so I might give it a re-read and see what I think of it now. Also, wow, looking at Stephenson's wiki page he has a lot of books I haven't read, and here I've been chewing on bubblegum fantasy.

Just finished Lost Regiment 2, which was fun but didn't hold my interest as well as the first one. It was more war, less technology and civilization building. I was also distracted with other activities during the past month it took me to finish.

I started into The Magic Engineer (Recluce 3) on audio. So far these books have been very solid--the first several are more standalone novels set in different times on the same fictional world, and the first is worth a read as a standalone even if you don't want to dive into a series. Because they're not telling one long story (aside from the history of the world) there's not really a drive to jump straight into the next book as with some series.

I've also loaded up Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars on my Kindle. I've listened to the audiobook before, but think a closer read will be worthwhile, and I'd like to pick up the remainder of the series. It's one of those "love it or hate it" works, with a lot of hard sci-fi elements (including quite a lot of Mars geology) and not the most likable characters. If you're all about "page turners," this ain't one of those.

Red, Green and Blue Mars - love them, maybe the most realistic science fiction, I read.
And yeah - I did Stephenson an injustice there, probably, and agree on Snow Crash, and I did re-read it, was my first some 15 years ago.
I didn't know, you read these all Sageous - or did I forget it? Sorry and great!

Anybody aware of K. J. Parker?
Been posting free short-stories on here somewhere else before - I'll do it once more:

Fiction: A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K. J. Parker — Subterranean Press

The Sun And I by K. J. Parker — Subterranean Press

And found one more, I didn't read yet: Illuminated by K. J. Parker — Subterranean Press
But I read almost, if not all novels, heavy and great, I find!

Originally Posted by Astaroth

Now I'm with Solaris, Stanislaw Lem.

That book my friend is a fantastic choice!!!!!

I'm actually currently reading an israeli mystery thriller(or how ever you call it) called "heart". started it 2 days ago and it's a light read but I have this thing where I start a book then I must finish it, so that's what i'll do(in fact, i'm gonna start reading it again soon!)

Originally Posted by Box77

After finally finishing to read my first book in German, I'm on the second one!! It's another Dean Koontz's novel, it's entitled "Morgengrauen", the original title is "Ticktock". I hope it won't last to read as much as the first one

Oohlright! Why on earth do you learn German?! And since when and with which material?
Didn't even hear about "Morgengrauen" yet - seems you like this author and I need to catch up on him! But it's a nice title, with a possible second meaning, this word - "the becoming grey of the morning" = dawn, but "Grauen" means "horror " as well.
There's also the "rosenfingrige Abendröte" - "rose-fingered evening-redness" or something, but this nice expression is "stolen" from Latin, I think.
Due to the Saxons invading Britain, and the Romans leaving their traces - there's quite a good chance at understanding half of German from English.
What about endless sentences, grammar and the arbitrary sexes of things? Like soup being female, but the plate is male and food as such neutral. Everybody seems to groan having to deal with learning those aspects...

Just saying, because I like rambling, who would have thought that?!
Do you plan on coming along one day, too? Du bist herzlichst willkommen - ich hoffe, Du weißt das - wäre wirklich phantastisch!
I guess with a bit of imagination - everybody can translate this approximately - and I mean it! And yepp - these ellipses are me, not the German...

Ooh - I have just finished something like teaser, maybe, of John Scalzi's new novel 'Lock In' - called 'Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome' - consisting of "testimonials" promising a really powerful book. I just copied a review of the latter from: Lock In | John Scalzi | Macmillan now - no idea about the criminal story of it. What I read is a separate piece, the background. Fantastic - can't wait to read the novel! Made me cry and for me this is a good sign...

A blazingly inventive near-future thriller from the best-selling, Hugo Award-winning John Scalzi.

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent – and nearly five million souls in the United States alone – the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what’s now known as "Haden’s syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" – someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time.　If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

But "complicated" doesn’t begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery – and the real crime – is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It’s nothing you could have expected. ...

Finishing The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks. Its been a great couple books so far, I recommend them! First book is The Traveler.

Spoiler for part of the story I am at:

And omfg just got past some parts where Vicki died trying to protect herself and Matthew Corrigan, and it didn't have to happen if Mother Blessing just stayed with them! And didn't kick Maya out of the island just because of some love affair! lol geez. I'm like are you effing kidding me. If Mother Blessing was there then at least things could've gone down better than they did. But no. sigh /endrant

I don't know what the common opinion is, but this is actually a very funny and enjoyable book. The translation in this version is great, and a lot of the comedy still stands quite well today-- and what doesn't is quickly explained in the footnotes and still worth a chuckle. It's easy to recommend.

Also, I don't know if it actually matters to anyone but certain people like myself, but this has got to the most enjoyably bound book I have ever encountered. It's technically a paper-back because it gets rid of the hard covers and just gives you a sort felt-y cover in the shape of a jacket-- with the same fold over. And the pages are recycled paper so it's super soft to the touch.

Man, I get as much enjoyment out of holding this book as I do out of reading it.

I started "Echopraxia" - sequel of "Blindsight" - and I don't like it, I put it away unfinished. Even my husband doesn't - doesn't mean you won't - but I can't recommend it.


Buut -this is highly recommended:



The following fantastic review is by another fantastic science fiction writer, Kathleen Ann Goonan:

Linda Nagata's first novel, THE BOHR MAKER, is an assured, sharp, and fascinating foray into a future where molecular engineering is possible but legally limited. It highlights a battle between those concerned with preserving the Goddess--Gaia; nature--and those who live on the exhilarating edge of innovation, where the definition of what it means to be human is tested and expanded and possibly utterly changed.

The antagonists are evenly matched. Kirstin Adair, a seasoned police chief of immense power, intelligence, and conviction, squares off on the side of Gaia. She is utterly no-nonsense, somewhat sadistic, double-crossing--yet likable somehow for her chutzpah and commitment to creating a bulwark between nature and what she sees as Armageddon, the melding of human and machine intelligence.

Nikko, the creation of the man he calls his father, is programmed to expire very soon when the book opens. He was an experiment, time-limited by law, of a brilliant man, Fox Jiang-Tibayan, who has plenty of other fish to fry; namely, the preservation of Summer House. Summer House is a huge, wondrous, and beautifully depicted organic space habitat created entirely from code, clinging to an astroid. Nikko is hot on the trail of the Bohr Maker, named after its creator, a molecular device of enormous transformational power. With this he hopes to circumvent the legally proscribed death of his body and the wiping out of his code.

"At its essence, the Bohr Maker was a microscopic packet of instructions. But once the instructions were executed, it became a molecular communications and design system that would insinuate itself throughout the body and mind of a single host, resulting in profound physiological change. The host individual would own the talents of an expert in molecular design, along with the physical mechanisms to execute those designs."

Though identity can be easily flung hither and thither via the net and be incorporated in temporary bodies or in waiting nascent clones, death does exist; the law is particularly harsh about various infractions and is empowered to wipe out coded identity, and to seek it out wherever it may be hidden. Molecular engineering is allowable in perfecting human potential--correcting disease and the flaw of old age--but this is the work of legal Dull Intelligences. And, be this as it may, these boons are for the most part available only to Citizens of the Commonwealth. Citizens live primarily in the orbiting Celestial Cities. Unfortunate non-Citizens live in the Spill, on Earth, subsisting on "fluff" and whatever else they can scavenge or steal. They do not live long, and incorporate any stray manifestations of nanotechnology into a superstitious religion. For them, the Imperial highway, a mega-mile-high elevator, is but a myth, or the road their soul will travel when they die.

Thus, when Phousita, a former prostitute kept artificially tiny by illegal means, is suddenly infected with immense power, she believes that she has become a witch. From being an inconsequential everywoman she is hurled into the heart of a conflict she could not have previously dreamed of, and her growing ability to make her own decisions about the use of her powers is one of the most satisfactory aspects of the book.

The search for the Bohr Maker provides a rough-and tumble chase scene through the Spill, space, and Summer House which is tight and sparkling. By the end of it the personalities and values of the main characters have undergone positive changes, for the most part, and the evenly matched tension between natural enemies Nikko and Kirsten is powerfully maintained right up to the final instant.

Nagata has created some science fictional dazzlers in THE BOHR MAKER, in particular Summer House and its fate. And, most importantly, she has brought into sharp relief the difficulty of limiting a viable nanotechnology while at the same time meeting head-on the question of whether or not a viable AI is actually possible. She has given us a "man," Nikko, a completely believable self-aware creature created entirely by another person. Fox and his "son" strongly challenge the creative monopoly of Gaia.

It may be that a hundred years from now such stories will be looked upon as quaint fairy tales from The Time Before It Changed. For now, Nagata makes fine science fiction using the information at hand.

If you go on this page, you can read an excerpt of it, and see, if you like it: Fiction by Linda Nagata


Meanwhile I read something non-fiction - it's got the not very inspiring title: "Why We Get Sick" by Randolph M. Nesse - I'm not yet in the middle , but it seems to be a great book, if you have an interest in biology, medicine and evolution. You need not be a physician to understand and enjoy the read and learn something.

We can cure hundreds of ailments, but we understand remarkably little about why diseases exist at all. Why do we crave the very things that make us sick? Why, after thousands of generations, hasn't natural selection eliminated cancer, schizophrenia, and other scourges and evolved us into perfect human beings? Such questions are at the heart of the new discipline called Darwinian medicine, which applies the principles of evolutionary biology to the problems of medicine. The result of a unique collaboration between the chief architects of this new science - a groundbreaking Darwinian physician and one of the pioneers of modern evolutionary theory - Why We Get Sick offers a whole new set of scientific questions and suggests new ways of understanding illness. Finding evolutionary explanations for why we get sick - infectious agents that evolve faster than we do, environmental novelties, genes that are selected despite the fact that they cause disease, defences, design compromises, evolutionary legacies - can help us uncover new, more effective methods of treatment. It can help resolve medical quandaries - for example, when is it best to let a fever run its course and when best to bring it down with medication? It offers a new view of disease that changes the relationship between our bodies and ourselves. Why We Get Sick takes the first major step toward reconceiving medicine as we approach the twenty-first century. Incorporating an evolutionary perspective into our understanding of illness will revolutionize the art and science of medicine and enable its practitioners to come close to achieving its ancient goals: To cure, sometimes. To help, often. To console, always.

Well finished "Heart", t'was a good read. Starting "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl since it was recomended to me by a friend who got it from her litrature teacher.

Red Mars got set aside for now. I finished up The Magic Engineer, which filled in more of the history of the first Recluce book, and now I'm reading and listening to The Shining, one of the few Stephen King books I haven't read. It definitely has that old school King vibe, though I doubt it would have meant much to me as a teenager, when I read most of his books. I picked up Doctor Sleep from Audible when I was clearing out my credits so I could finally cancel (been meaning to for months), and I want to read the original before I start the sequel.

Originally Posted by StephL

The following fantastic review is by another fantastic science fiction writer, Kathleen Ann Goonan:

I'll have to check out that series--I loved Goonan's Nanotech books when I read them years ago.

Currently working on 2 equally massive books - Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and the Complete Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle. Not sure that's the right name of the Holmes collection, but it was $2.99 on Kindle (public domain don't ya know). I could have picked up just about all of them for free actually, but the first book, A Study in Scarlet, isn't available for free except in a censored version they're calling "Remastered", where they removed all references to radical Islamic violence and barbarism, (part of the story is set in the middle east and involves Gaza). No thanks, not a fan of PC denialist history. I've been wanting to read Holmes to find similarities with House (which was based on it) and I'm also looking forward to watching the pilot episode, don't know if I've ever seen it. Will be interesting to see how the intro stories parallel each other. So far digging both books immensely, but man I've got a long way to go!! (Probably only going to read a couple of Holmes stories actually, but hey, now I've got them all if I get hooked).

Cryptonomicon was slow going for me and definitely a journey-rather-than-destination novel, but the journey was worthwhile. I thought the older male protagonist in Reamde was something of a rehash of "The Dwarf" from Cryptonomicon, but in a package more streamlined for accessibility.

Lol yeah, slow going for sure, and at times I almost want to just stop, but Stephenson is an amazing writer who has a real gift for words - lots of big ideas and some good characters and scenes as well. Like somebody on Amazon said - it jumps between different groups of people/ timeframes, and when it does I'm always a bit sad to leave the previous group, but within a page or 2 I'm equally gripped by the new one.

Just watched House S01E01 - ok, seen it several times already, didn't know that was the pilot. No similarities with Holmes book 1 that I can see, and I remember the story of how House and Wilson met - also not similar unless it's something that happens later in the book. Oh well. Still interesting.

Stephenson also connected the Baroque Cycle to Cryptonomicon by implying, that some of the latter's characters are descendants of characters in the cycle. Besides that - Enoch features all through them. I'm not quite sure, where I got the notion from now - but is he maybe meant as the immortal wandering Jew, proposed by the church in order to make a bible claim possible, namely that somebody witnessing Jesus crucifixion would be still around, when he'll do his second coming?

Edit: I plan to take up "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking" by Douglas Hofstadter next. Did somebody read his "Gödel Escher Bach"? I didn't - but it feels like an omission from what I read about it. First I'll try the new one - but I'd like to know, what you think about GEB, if you read it!

^^ Yes, you should definitely read Gödel Escher Bach; it was Hofstadter's masterpiece. I read it and, even though it was difficult at times (I hate math, and math hates me), it was well worth the effort.

A lucid dreamer ought to like it as well, because of its focus on self-reference.

Well I finished "man's search for meaning", now i'm reading "The complete guide to world mysticism". This one sounds interesting, definately gonna read more philosophical/metaphysical stuff soon...

Just a quick correction - it isn't Islamic barbarism that got A Study in Scarlet censored, it was Mormonism! Oops!! Apparently in Victorian England there was a misunderstanding about it, that it was a murderous and barbaric religion, and he wrote the story with that idea in mind. Also apparently all the Kindle versions of the book are censored, or at least all the ones I checked the contents of using the Read Inside function don't include the section called The Book of Mormon (including the one I got), which was the contested part. I could order an old used copy that would probably have it, but I don't really care now that I understand the problem and that it was a misconception. Apparently Doyle issued a public apology after learning the truth and was invited to Utah to speak at a Mormon college where he was warmly received.

Interestingly (or not) there is a brief paragraph at the beginning of the story describing Watson's sojourn in the middle east in which he was shot in the shoulder fighting against "murderous Ghazis", which was not removed.

After finishing Star Wars: Hard Contact by Karen Traviss, I had to immediately start reading the sequel, Triple Zero. These books are wonderful. Great characters, a surprising amount of interesting ethical dilemmas, and most importantly, they're fun to read.

Just finished Solaris. Now I'm reading Dune, Frank Herbert and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

… And suddenly I come to the realization that the Sherlock Holmes tales are detective stories. I'm expected to pick up clues and try to solve the mystery, and so a lot of clues are given in long explanatory passages or conversations. Blah… I hate reading stuff like that!!! I don't mind it in House, but then I also never try to actually solve the medical mysteries - the viewer isn't expected to. Those parts pass as tech-speak, usually delivered quickly and alongside other more interesting stuff like the interplay between characters which keeps it interesting. And besides, Holmes doesn't have Olivia Wilde.

Originally Posted by Astaroth

Now I'm reading Dune, Frank Herbert

I just got that, it's next on my list to read.

Currently enjoying "The System of Nature" by Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach ... desperately wanting to read "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche

Originally Posted by Astaroth

Now I'm reading Dune

The sequels sometimes get a bad rap, but I'd recommend continuing on through God Emperor of Dune. Dune Messiah and God Emperor are both arguably better than the original. Children of Dune doesn't stand as well on its own merits, but serves as connective tissue between Messiah and God Emperor.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

The sequels sometimes get a bad rap, but I'd recommend continuing on through God Emperor of Dune. Dune Messiah and God Emperor are both arguably better than the original. Children of Dune doesn't stand as well on its own merits, but serves as connective tissue between Messiah and God Emperor.

So...don't read Heretics or Chapterhouse?