The 2nd "What are you reading now" thread

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Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The prose was excellent. Bradbury was prophetic in regards to the invention of flatscreen TVs and how modern entertainment has created mindless drones. I found it a bit preachy at times though, but overall it was a good read.
 
Just finished "Black Widow" by Christopher Brookmyre, one of my favourites, excellent as usual.
The ending was I saw a bit of it coming but I didn't see THAT coming!
 

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The Hydrogen Sonata, my Ian M Banks/Culture obsession shows no sign of abating. This is the last he wrote (but I have not read them all) and is going into more depth about subliming which is very interesting. I am becoming sadder and sadder with each one of these books that he has passed away, the man's talent and imagination are extraordinary.
 
Severe said:
After a couple of years of heavy "classics" and obscure stuff I'm honestly burned out from reading to a point.

I'm getting some enjoyment from some noir thrillers and private eye novels. If anyone has some reccomenditions on easy yet interesting reads that would be good.
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If you want a fun read then the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde are awesome - very easy to read and very funny. They continually reference classic literature and characters and the universe he creates is brilliant. Plus Thursday is a wonderful protagonist.
 
Been too long since my last post. I'm currently reading 'Mystic River' by Dennis Lehane (100pgs in) which is a page turner so far.
Just finished Snows of Kilimanjaro a collection of short stroies by Hemingway. Some were brilliant others I didn't understand so a mixed bag.
Also read 'The Crossing' by Samar Yazbek which is an understandably bleak first hand account of the Syrian war. Well worth it.
 
ChubbMuff said:
The Hydrogen Sonata, my Ian M Banks/Culture obsession shows no sign of abating. This is the last he wrote (but I have not read them all) and is going into more depth about subliming which is very interesting. I am becoming sadder and sadder with each one of these books that he has passed away, the man's talent and imagination are extraordinary.
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I read all of them straight through in publication order a year or two back, and they just got better and better; and, like yourself, I really did get sadder and sadder as I got closer to the end, knowing that it really was the end.
 
Excession is mine so far, being that it deals so much with the Minds and the Interesting Times Gang. Loved Surface Detail, Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints would probably be my favourite ship out of all the books I have read to date. The battle scene where it tears apart the opposing fleet and gets to bare it's teeth is awesome. It wasn't until I read it for the second time that I realised Y'breq's tattoo was actually a slap drone - genius.
 
ChubbMuff said:
Excession is mine so far, being that it deals so much with the Minds and the Interesting Times Gang. Loved Surface Detail, Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints would probably be my favourite ship out of all the books I have read to date. The battle scene where it tears apart the opposing fleet and gets to bare it's teeth is awesome. It wasn't until I read it for the second time that I realised Y'breq's tattoo was actually a slap drone - genius.
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"Refreshingly Unconcerned With the Vulgar Exigencies of Veracity" :D
 
Sassafras said:
I'm going to attempt a David Foster Wallace novel. Any opinions of his work?
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Infinite Jest is likely my favorite novel, but he's just as great a short story/morsel writer, if not better. Mister Squishy from his anthology 'Oblivion' is objectively one of the best pieces of writing I can think of, shame it's only 100 pages!

With Jest, you just need to crack through those first 100 pages and get used to the duality of reading both front and 'back' (In the references section) and be willing to read into things as much as you want. So many stories within stories within stories.
 

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Dagless said:
Infinite Jest is likely my favorite novel, but he's just as great a short story/morsel writer, if not better. Mister Squishy from his anthology 'Oblivion' is objectively one of the best pieces of writing I can think of, shame it's only 100 pages!

With Jest, you just need to crack through those first 100 pages and get used to the duality of reading both front and 'back' (In the references section) and be willing to read into things as much as you want. So many stories within stories within stories.
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I have Infinite Jest and The Pale King, which one would you recommend reading first?
 
After a bit of a delay I finally got around to finishing Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. Possibly goes straight into my top 10 favourite books and is definitely one of the best science fiction books I've read (and I've made a fair stab at reading the genre).

It's insane that this was written in 1983 it could easily be a direct prequel to The Matrix and written anytime recently. It has probably had a similar effect on the science fiction genre and on setting up its own sub-genre as what Tolkien did for Fantasy.

The sequels get added to the to-be-read pile but for now my reading time is so haphazard with work that I'm going to check out some short stories. A while back a mate of mine gave me stacks of old science fiction books and so I'm finally going to get around to starting them with a couple of short story collections, John Wyndham's Seeds of Time and Arthur C Clarke's Expedition to Earth.
 
Quokka said:
After a bit of a delay I finally got around to finishing Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. Possibly goes straight into my top 10 favourite books and is definitely one of the best science fiction books I've read (and I've made a fair stab at reading the genre).

It's insane that this was written in 1983 it could easily be a direct prequel to The Matrix and written anytime recently. It has probably had a similar effect on the science fiction genre and on setting up its own sub-genre as what Tolkien did for Fantasy.

The sequels get added to the to-be-read pile but for now my reading time is so haphazard with work that I'm going to check out some short stories. A while back a mate of mine gave me stacks of old science fiction books and so I'm finally going to get around to starting them with a couple of short story collections, John Wyndham's Seeds of Time and Arthur C Clarke's Expedition to Earth.
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What are your top handful of scifi books?
 
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fpcookie said:
What are you're top handful of scifi books?
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I'll probably miss something but after a quick look to the bookshelves

The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
Neuromancer – William Gibson
A Scanner Darkly – Phillip K Dick
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Dune – Frank Herbert
1984 – George Orwell
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C Clarke

Those are probably the big classics that I'd be trying to fit into a top 10 list along with a good few others I didn't add mainly to keep it something near a handful.

A few others that maybe aren't quite as complete (imo) but I still really enjoyed,

The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Timescape – Gregory Benford
The Stars my Destination – Alfred Bester (probably deserves to be in the top list but ages since I've read it)
Last and First Men & Starmaker – Olaf Stapledon
Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
Time Out of Joint – PK Dick (There's better PK Dick stories but this is the first one I read).


One thing I will add is that in trying to read so many older SF authors (still trying to get through all of the original SF Masterworks collection) I've almost completely neglected modern writers. Ready Player One is probably the only SF book I've read that was written in the last decade - good read btw, great if you remember the 80s, mind blowing if you were gaming in the 80s.
 
Quokka said:
I'll probably miss something but after a quick look to the bookshelves

The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
Neuromancer – William Gibson
A Scanner Darkly – Phillip K Dick
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Dune – Frank Herbert
1984 – George Orwell
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C Clarke

Those are probably the big classics that I'd be trying to fit into a top 10 list along with a good few others I didn't add mainly to keep it something near a handful.

A few others that maybe aren't quite as complete (imo) but I still really enjoyed,

The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Timescape – Gregory Benford
The Stars my Destination – Alfred Bester (probably deserves to be in the top list but ages since I've read it)
Last and First Men & Starmaker – Olaf Stapledon
Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
Time Out of Joint – PK Dick (There's better PK Dick stories but this is the first one I read).


One thing I will add is that in trying to read so many older SF authors (still trying to get through all of the original SF Masterworks collection) I've almost completely neglected modern writers. Ready Player One is probably the only SF book I've read that was written in the last decade - good read btw, great if you remember the 80s, mind blowing if you were gaming in the 80s.
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Cool, thanks mate. Sci-fi isn't a genre I've read a lot of but have tried to look for some of the more well known titles. Out of that list I've only read Dune (awesome) and 1984 (pretty good). A Scanner Darkly has been on my list for a while. I was disappointed with Starship Troopers and Foundation. I'll have a go at some of your other recommendations though.
 
Cool and let us know if you find something you like. The thing with science fiction (and I suppose most genres) is that there's every type of writing style and approach in there somewhere. Some like Flowers for Algernon and A Scanner Darkly have almost no science or futuristic themes in them at all, in fact I don't think A Scanner Darkly was even written as a SF novel originally but by that stage that's what the publishers were expecting from Dick.

Then there are stories like Timescape, Mission of Gravity, Eon (Greg Bear) or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series which are more what they call Hard Science Fiction and great reads as long as you're into the science lesson along the way. If you end up liking A Scanner Darkly you're in for a treat with PK Dick, he's a bit trippy with most of his stories revolving around some twist on perception and reality but they can be great reads and like a lot of my favourite science fiction I love that they tend to be short books that you can get through in a few days and then look for something else.
 
Quokka said:
Ready Player One is probably the only SF book I've read that was written in the last decade - good read btw, great if you remember the 80s, mind blowing if you were gaming in the 80s.
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Read that in the beginning of the year, enjoyed it but am a bit jaded with dystopian fiction at the moment. As an '80's kid I did enjoy many of the references however.

Have you read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? It is like Neuromancer in style and a ripping story - has one of the most badass villains in literature history IMHO too.
 
ChubbMuff said:
Read that in the beginning of the year, enjoyed it but am a bit jaded with dystopian fiction at the moment. As an '80's kid I did enjoy many of the references however.

Have you read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? It is like Neuromancer in style and a ripping story - has one of the most badass villains in literature history IMHO too.
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Agree that Ready Player One relies a lot on the 80s references, I also thought the build up was better than the pay off, I just thoroughly enjoyed the build up, a bit like The Davinci Code its a lot fun as long as you keep moving and don't question things too much.

Thanks for the recommendation for Snow Crash, I've never read it but have heard good things before about it so will definitely check it out at some point.
 
Quokka said:
Agree that Ready Player One relies a lot on the 80s references, I also thought the build up was better than the pay off, I just thoroughly enjoyed the build up, a bit like The Davinci Code its a lot fun as long as you keep moving and don't question things too much.

Thanks for the recommendation for Snow Crash, I've never read it but have heard good things before about it so will definitely check it out at some point.
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For older SF (ie up to the mid 90s), the SF Masterworks (with some omissions because of copyright problems) is a pretty good representation of the best. I've read probably at least 2/3rds of them and, although some are better than others, I don't think I've come across a bad one*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks

* PS, I tell a lie, The Female Man I simply found unreadable.
 
Absolutely agree, its why my lists on the last page has so many of them. I thought I was only at a little over half but checking again I'm up to 50 now :)

I just wish the first editions were easier to buy. I read probably half and half now between books and ebooks and am not as worried about collections as I used to be but this is the one series that I am determined to eventually read and own entirely.

They are consistently good and/or interesting at worst and completely deserving of the term masterworks at their best. I haven't read The Female Man yet I didn't think Maze of Death was one of PK Dick's best and with so many of his already included could have been left out for another author, still that's a pretty high bar and it was hardly a bad read. Stand of Zanzibar was probably the hardest for me, still some really interesting ideas and methods and at the end I was glad I read it but at times it was hard work getting through it.


Out of curisity FredLeDeux same question as fpcookie asked me on the last page, what would you put as your top handful of science fiction books?


Really should start or ressurect a Science Fiction thread one day to run along the Fantasy ones.
 
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