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Friday 11 June 2004

So, What are you Reading? [vagga]

So, I’m having one of those afternoons where it’s dragging on for ages. So I’m going to do one of these short and sweet blog’s people have been doing here over the last few days!
The question is, what are people reading, or indeed what good stuff have people read over the last while. I’m just about to finish a book I have been on for a while, and have nothing lined up to read for the first time in a while. So I thought I would ask you lot. Just like my email to the list this week, I have some time on my hands over the next while, so I could get through a few books, as well as play some games!
I’ll read anything. I suppose I don’t really enjoy that much Sci-Fi, or else I would have picked something off the list Matt did in that blog a few months back.
I had a look at the BBC big read top 21, and I have read about 15 of those, and there are only two left that I would want to take a look at, Birdsong and War and Peace. Now the fact I know what happens in War and Peace having seen some crappy BBC drama of it, and the fact it weighs in at just less I do makes me think twice! I know birdsong is good, but I have read enough history type books to last me a lifetime over the last few years!
But I’m wondering if there were anything else out there I just would not have seen yet that could be good. Just like my ma picked up Da Vinci code in a random shop, and we found a great author we had never heard of before..
So I’m about to finish this book, Innisowen, it’s the latest book from my favourite Irish author, Joseph O’Connor (sane brother of loud, singing, wing nut, Sinead). Fantastic stuff altogether. Murder and strange Americans getting mocked in rural Ireland – what more does a book need. He would be famous at home for writing funny stuff, but every book (and a few plays wrote) he does is less and less a piss take, but he has some great lines and a bit like Roddy Doyle or Irving Welsh, he is great at writing funny dialogue.
Just before that I read the Da Vinci code, after my ma had read it in the space of a few days in America over Christmas, followed by the other 3 books Dan Brown wrote. I would highly recommend Angels and Demons, the book he wrote right before Da Vinci, far better than The Da Vinci Code in my opinion, and featuring the lead character, Robert Langdon, same kinda plot, but it’s a far better story. I can’t wait for his next book, out later in the year. Another of the Dan Browns ‘digital fortress’ – his first book, is ok. Its about the NSA and Cryptography, but it reads like a John Grisham, flowing nicely, but you know all along there will be about 7 twists in the tail. A good airport read :)
Just before that I read the 3 books in the His Dark Materials trilogy after seeing them in the BBC big read, loved them all. Only small down part, is the anti-religion bit gets more and more preachy as things go on. But the first book in the series is one of the best books I have ever read.
So what are the rest of ya reading then?

9 comments:

  1. I'm ploughing my way through the third Alaistair Reynolds Inhibitor book. I can't remember a single thing about what came before, and the new one confuses me deeply, but there's something about the imagery that I can't put down.

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  2. 'Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.'
    Death to shite Hollywood blockbusters

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  3. I'm currently reading the feeblest blog ever posted.

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  4. Hardly classics :)
    - Professional UML Modelling Using VS.NET (not a patch on Rational XDE obviously or even Borland Together)- Professional C# (coming soon)- Adobe PhotoShop CS for Photographers (a good follow on from someone like Scott Kelby, v good)- Stalingrad (stalled)

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  5. latest Wilbur Smith is a cracking read and going cheap in supermarkets. River God and follow on books by Smith are even better (set in ancient Egypt).

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  6. Right now I'm reading Northern Lights - first of the Phillip Pullman 'Lyra' series of books. I'm reading it for two reasons - one because my daughter has now read the whol series, and I quite like to know what she's been reading. and two because someone at work said they thought it could make a good game. I've read about half the book and I think it would be a SHITE game.
    I've also recently read Terry Pratchett's Hat Full of Sky. I really do enjoy his kids books - not sure what that says about me, but who cares :-)

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  7. Just finished Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which was magnificent - probably the finest historical novel I've ever read, and an absolutely fascinating education in a whole range of areas I never really knew about before. Any book populated by the likes of Newton, Leibniz, Huygens, Hooke, Wren - and more political figures such as William of Orange, James II and Louis XIV - and written by someone as accomplished as Stephenson was always going to be damn good, but Quicksilver was even better than expected despite a slightly slow start.
    Currently pondering whether to run out and buy the second volume of The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver is the first of a trilogy) or launch into Peter F Hamilton's Nights Dawn trilogy, having been threatened with physical harm if I don't read that one soon...

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  8. On my reading list for after my exams: Master & Commander, by Patrick O'Brian. *pause for obligatory sailor jokes*
    Also, Cryptonomicon and Snowcrash by Stephenson, Pandora's Star by Hamilton, and The Iliad, The Aeniad, The Odyssey. Bah. Exams suck.
    (May I also reiterate for Rob's benefit that the Night's Dawn Trilogy is a Must Read. Further procrastination of embarking upon this epic may lead to the issuing of a P30-n)

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  9. Just finished Banks's Consider Phlebas. Bit dissapointed really.
    In a fit of pique & to get in the mood for Rainbow Six 4 I turned 90 degrees & picked up Clancy's Rainbow Six. Wonder if anyone will mind if I read it aloud on the bus in my best Sam The Eagle voice?

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