What book are you reading right now?

[umopapisdn]

Just finished Dan Simmons' The Terror and it quite irritated me, in spite of the stonking review from SFX and others on the cover.

The Franklin Expedition is pure horror material as it is, setting a supernatural killer on them as well just seemed... unfair and unnecessary. All the expedition stuff was superb; I feel almost like a traitor saying this, but it would've been much better as a non-genre novel.

Plus when it did get down to the reveal it didn't help that I could see all the machinery. [SEMI-SPOILERS]Oh, it's going to die off before any other white men get that far. Convenient. Oh, they speak a dialect made up from various Inuit languages. Means the writer can just mix-and-match. Useful. Plus there's never any explanation for the old man Silence is with when they find her - he's not sixam ieua, he speaks dying words.... All that said, the Communion parody was actually pretty effective, even though Simmons jumped through hoops to make Crozier have taken Communion before.[/SEMI-SPOILERS]

[gsmith5678]

Stan Lee - The Alien Factor.

[Stratos]

Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom (Movie Tie-In)

8)

[Chris B]

The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen

I'm always interested in challenging my own views. A book criticising things like wikipedia, facebook and online criticism? Oh, yes, please. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing a web-junkie should read.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), this is badly written, and the arguments fundamentally flawed, especially in the third part of the book where he starts to cite specific examples.

For example - Man gets addicted to poker. Is the fault the casino's or the mans? There's a theological argument there, and it's not an easy one.

Man gets addicted to Internet poker, though? Easy. The internet is to blame.

There's a fault in that reasoning, and it marks the fault with the book. That huge gap continues, unfortunately, throughout. Selecting a strong example from the offline world, and connecting it to a weak example in the online world (Gosh, the Beatles were very big, weren't they. But I watched this band on Myspace, and they were rubbish).

The problem is, once you've picked up on this, it mars any credible arguments he has.

On top of this, he never really defines what seperates a professional from an amateur, or says why (for example) a bad professional is better than a gifted amateur.

Skip it. There's a good book to be written on this subject, but this isn't it.

[insomniac_dream]

Have just finished Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. Absolutely fantastic fantasy. Currently reading The Perk by Mark Gimenez and will start The Ghost Brigades next.

[swedeheadchris]

Originally Posted by insomniac_dream

Have just finished Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. Absolutely fantastic fantasy. Currently reading The Perk by Mark Gimenez and will start The Ghost Brigades next.

Lud-in-the-Mist is on my reading list after Neil Gaiman recommended it on his blog thing.

Bit of a reading double-whammy for me here, since I've had a bit of time off...

Just reviewed Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, and damn, if it isn't one of the best SF/Fantasy novels I've ever read! Combing Hindu religion with science fiction ... and an unforgivable pun ("The fit hit the Shan")...

Review here!

Then I moved onto the next book in Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen series, and it's a worthy sequel, fun, fast paced, and generally original. Chinese Heaven/Hell, etc. Not quite as good as the previous novel, but still good...

Review here!

~Chris

[Sass1]

Amazon delivered (whee!) so I'm reading Dale Smith's The Many Hands the first of the three new Ten'n'Martha books...

[Stratos]

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (Movie Tie-In)

8)

[jokers_wylde]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Now the trick's going to be to try not to spoil the tv series for myself...

[Sass1]

I'm halfway through Mike Tucker's Snowglobe 7, second of the Ten'n'Martha novels.