Book recommendation Summary:

[Klors]

http://www.myextralife.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SFSignalNPR100Flowchart.jpg

Nice one!

[DrKazza]

http://www.myextralife.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SFSignalNPR100Flowchart.jpg

Nice one!

+1

By the way if I've not already mentioned it.... The Blade Itself, amazing trilogy (first law trilogy) by Joe Abercrombie.
About 150 pages from the end and loving it.

[~Dear Old Granny~]

Going to read Stewart Lee's 'The Perfect Fool' now.

I always do this - I find someone I like, then overdose on them. Clive James was the recent writer/broadcaster I have dug out and read to death. Very funny he is too. Unreliable Memoirs is really excellent.

[Kaitain]

Have you tried to read Reliable Essays? I made that mistake - I think there was at least one word a page that I didn't know. It is not a funny book

[Monie]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson

One of those books I felt I should really read at some stage and have finally gotten around to it thanks to Kindle's making reading a little less of a hassle. I've got no real connection to drugs, never really done any or had much of a desire to, but the book is really well written, and the story is just a totally insane trip for the entire thing. There's no deep plot to speak of, but it's worth the read, and bits are pretty funny.

[~Dear Old Granny~]

Aye - Clive James is a very very clever man, who spends his life engaging you in the idea that he's a bit of a buffoon. However when you have a crack at something like that ^ or 'Cultural Amnesia' it soon becomes clear that he's inhabited a very educated planet and this "I'm just an ocker with unsuitable shoes and flared trousers in Mother England" act melts away. He is so smart that I found I was sleep reading quite a lot. (When you get to the bottom of the page and realise that a lot of it didn't really sink in).

Plus he uses a lot of 'References' - Which unless you have Classics at Oxford under your belt, or you spend your entire time in a library swotting up, you wouldn't get. I didn't get a lot of it.

His home page is very good though. Clive James dot com or something.

[Kaitain]

Yeah, that was pretty much my experience

Incidentally, I am flying somewhere over Michigan right now and have wifi on the plane. I think that is amazing

Just reading "Micro" by Michael Crichton. It's actually pretty good, but it reads like a novel that is intended to be made into a movie...

[~Dear Old Granny~]

Where are you going?

[Kaitain]

heading to Silicon Valley to tell them how they should be doing the internet

[stoz]

Bloomberg's best economics and finance books of 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-1 ... um=twitter

[Kaitain]

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/030788743X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325212062&sr=8-1

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - awesome book that seems targeted at our demographic Child of the eighties, played a lot of video games, likes iconic movies like Blade Runner etc. Unfortunately it's his first book, so there's nothing else from him yet.

10/10

[Klors]

Cool, I shall add it to the wishlist. Cheers!

[stoz]

Couple of books that I've read recently which I'd recommend:

Kafka on the shore - Murakami. Surreal, post-modern fiction, really well told. Vivid, poetic description, with two interlinking stories effectively combined. Amazon will give it a better synopsis than I could; recommended. link

Adapt: why success always starts with failure - Tim Harford. Business/economics book about trial and error in the business world, finishing with a great chapter on how the principles from his book can apply to personal life (if that sounds a bit self-helpy that's only because my description hasn't done it justice). Fascinating read. link

[DrKazza]

Blackout by Connie Willis
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackout-Connie ... 926&sr=8-3

it's about a bunch of historians from 2060 who travel back to WW2 to observe stuff... however shit goes wrong and they get stuck.
There's almost no scifi stuff in it, it's more about WW2 and what was going on. Unfortunately it concludes in the 2nd book... expect to read both or neither.

So far 1 book down and I'll give it 7/10... conclusion could change that.

[Monie]

Dreamer's Cat - Stephen Leather - 6/10

It's about a near future where entertainment has developed to fully immersive virtual reality type dreams. Plug in, experience a world entirely from the first person. Only a few people are able to create these disks, to control dreams to order, and they're very sought after. They get contracted by massive conglomerates to make 10 disks and retire filthy rich. Most never make it that far, losing their minds before they reach middle age an the end of their contract.

Dreamers start dying in the middle of laying down their disks and nobody can figure out why, so the oldest dreamer around, about to lay down his last disk and get the hell out of the bidness, has to investigate.

I liked the premise, and it was a decent enough story, but was just lacking something imo. Still, worth the read.

[feign]

23 things they don;t tell you about Capitalism - Ha Joon Chang
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Don ... 613&sr=8-1

Developmental Economist and proponent (as in not opponent...) of capitalism, who has some well thought out observations.

It does get rather ranty in places, and the "data nerd" within would prefer a tome 2x as thick but with demonstrated data rather than anecdotes to back up arguments, but a book that opens up the thought processes a lot on the simple assumptions that are often made in business/economics reporting.

<As far as being a "data nerd", it's what my wife called me after we watched the Brad Pitt Moneyball film, in saying "that film was for people who like watching Brad do weights and data nerds like you". She didn't intend it as much of a compliment, but the alternative is worse, clearly.>

[~Dear Old Granny~]

Diary of a young girl - Anne Frank.

Got round to finally reading it on holiday, and it was so much better than I expected. Although painful.

Absolutely beautiful bit of bringing history to life, although somewhat sadly you already know how it ends, which makes her wishes for the future so much more gloomy.

[larchy]

Peter F Hamilton's new book "Great North Road" is pretty good. Nowhere near as astounding as the Void trilogy, but pretty good and it's also set just up the road from me, 'cos we're all really cool and scifi up here in the north. Or we'll be the first ones to go to another planet because its so shit here. One of those two.

Aaaanyway.


Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn book was really good.

[Quinnbeast]

Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke

He wasn't known for writing in-depth characters, but he could certainly knock out some great sci-fi concepts packed with the kind detail/realism that can only come from someone who - in his day - offered considerable ideas/insights into how satellites could be used as communications relays.

For a book that's 60-years-old, it reads like something far newer. There are several social / political / scientific premonitions in there that are strangely accurate. I frequently had to remind myself it was written a good 15+ years before the moon landing.

[feign]

Peter F Hamilton's new book "Great North Road" is pretty good. Nowhere near as astounding as the Void trilogy, but pretty good and it's also set just up the road from me, 'cos we're all really cool and scifi up here in the north. Or we'll be the first ones to go to another planet because its so shit here. One of those two.

Aaaanyway.


Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn book was really good.

I'm too cheap for hardbacks and I'd not trust myself with teh ipad in the bath, so have to wait a bit

There's a part of me that pines back to the Greg Madel series, though I admit to enjoying everything he's written, something I don't say that often.