Book book book

[sebab]

As usual, nothing's ever all good or all bad. Currently I'm full of profound sadness, much anxiety, moderrate happiness, great anticipation, etc. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and all that

Comments

[azhdragon]

I'd have to recommend Julian May's fantastic Saga of the Exiles and the followup series, 8 books in total which are very well written. Having read these books since they were first published, I'm amused at how she correctly predicted so many technological items which didn't exist then, but do now. I'm also amused by those parts where she got it quite wrong. (Dammit, I want my hovercar!)

If you like more space in your science fiction, you could try David Feintuch's space opera series, the Seafort saga, beginning with Midshipman's Hope.

If you like fantasy, you could do worse than Katherine Kerr's now-completed series beginning with Daggerspell and winding its way through 15 excellent novels.

[sebab]

re: May: Was recommended to me sometime in the early 90s; tried a whole bunch of them (I read fast then, possibly again even with the goofy vision now) and they were ok but didn't engage me as much as I would have liked.

I'll look into the other authors; apparently part of the trick is to FIND books in some eBook format or other, bleh...

I dunno, feels like the return to recreational reading should be something really special, yet something I haven't read before...

[suddenlynaked]

I really enjoyed Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon series - though it has a fair amount of mental masturbation in it.

Really liked Brin's "Kiln People" and Bear's "Vitals" and teh "Eternity" and "Eon" books. That's about the newest stuff. Oh, Sage Walker's "Whiteout" was pretty good and Lee and Miller's "Liaden Universe" was decent too. Haven't seen much that beat box aside from that lately...

[sebab]

I remember being sort of lukewarm about Eternity and Eon --two of quite a few books that I felt as if I should have liked a lot more than I did.

I'll put the others on the list of possibilities, definitely.

[suddenlynaked]

I had the same response to Enternity and Eon - worth the read, but not over the moon.

Outside the science fiction: Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds, Phillip Pullman's "Sally Lockhart" mysteries are well done...

You've got some class of biology degree don't you? If you do Carl Zimmer's books might be redundant, but it's really good "science for the layman" reading. Parasite Rex is my favorite, but I haven't read anything he wrote that wasn't worth the read.

I also like the Kushiel's Dart series up to a point - it's got wonderful premises and you get to like many of the chracters, but the supernatural aspects, even in such a cool framework (different set of demi-gods in pre-France France...) get a bit tiresome. First three or four are great...

[lilituc]

though it has a fair amount of mental masturbation in it.

And literal!

[stinkygoat]

I have found Iain M. Banks' Culture novels to be pretty satisfying over the years - I'd recommend looking at either Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games as a good introduction to them, plenty more from there if you like them :)

[sebab]

Several other people I know have recommended him to me (not terribly recently thoug) so I thought I'd look at the possibilities. Feersum Endjinn looked interesting... but of course Amazon doesn't offer it to US peeps in Kindle format, nobody else I tried seems to have it available, and Googling mostly brings up a bunch of possible torrent downloads plus one slightly suspicious-looking site that offers a bundle of 12 Banks books for $85.

Dammit. *sulks briefly*

[suddenlynaked]

OH! Ian Banks, "The Business" - really wonderful book.

[rhialto]

"Up the line" is my favourite time travel book :-)

I have read a lot of Charles Stross' books recently, and some are available for download on a CC license. The first of his books I read was Accellerando, which starts out in Amsterdam: http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html I'm currently reading "Scratch Monkey", available from the same site. Many of his books touch on virtualising human minds, these two included.

[sebab]

That's of interest as a subject, depending on the other factors; ok, on the list to investigate further :) Thanks!

[geekdood]

Robert Asprin's MYTH Inc. series is always a fun read...

[sebab]

It was an awesome read way back when (1983 orso?) but wouldn't be a good fit now. Thanks for the suggestion!