Babylon Hotel, Finished it last night

They're off torrent sites as "chronological x-men" in 2 gig files (there are 12 so far) totally sweet. I have a guy I train with who has about 140G of comics, he's kinda nuts. He just stuck em on DVD for me.

AM has to be one of the craziest men on the planet.

phew - just got it finished..... 4 hours to spare :D

Next - Michael Crichton

After that news report about him getting the guy back that was critical of his Global Warming stance, I thought I'd have a look. Same old same old Chrichton, possibly more sex than usual, but lots of quoted news reports on GE that have surfaced over the last few years. You know - grab some current info, extrapolate it to the extreme, and spin some kind of moral bit into it. And he even has stuff from Snopes and Keith Olbermann.

I'm about half way through A Storm of Swords part 2 - George Martin
I thought the series was damn good so far, but it just keeps getting better

Finished the HP books, got some more Preachers and read those, and have just finished Dune. I'm not sure what's next. Will decide after the cricket :)

Currently reading :

Non Fiction :
Revolution in the valley by Andy Hertzfeld
iWoz by Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith

Fiction :
The Waste Lands by Stephen King

Children of Men - P D James

Very good and very diff to the movie.

Is Iwoz any good?

Same old story from a nice guy perspective. I didn't know he invented the learning remote.

I've taken your advice and doing this too... knocked the first 3 off in less than a week - now 1/4 way thru #4....

Crikey - he even mentions the violent trends suggested by the Maori warrior gene... and then side steps it.

I've previously read them as they came out, and occasionally just read one by itself. It's bloody good reading them all one after the other. You get a better idea of the development of characters and themes. I've preordered the last one, but it's not out for over five months now, and I'm hanging out for it :/

Finished The Night Watch on the train into work this morning, awesome book. The Upper Hutt library is processing The Day Watch and I'm first on the reserve list, w00t.

Definitely going to track down the movie now.

Taken a deep breath and have started Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. It's one of those books that I have been saying to myself 'yerr I should really read that' for about 10 years but never had the gumption to actually start. But 1/8th through it's actually much easier than I thought.

Ppl reading HP books should really give Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy a go (I: Northern Lights, II: The Subtle Knife , III: The Amber Spyglass); it's much, much better, IMHO of course :) they are making a movie out of it and you will want to have read the books by time that's out (07 or 08 I think)

Harry Potter & the sorcerers stone, bitches.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll check those out :)

I'm reading Sheep Farmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon....AGAIN. I really am a sucker for a favourite book...

Wait wait wait - you aren't talking about H P Lovecraft then?

lol i read HP Lovecrafts " Mountains of Madness" about 2 weeks ago , and while the last quarter of the book rocked and totally made it worthwhile , it was extremely hard to get into and talk about adjective overload. He'd put like 5 or 6 one after the other lol.

You're right that these are very good books. They are quite different to HP though beyond being the same genre (fantasy) and having child protagonists.

Lyra's Oxford whets the appetite for the next book nicely too.

Just finished the first of these this morning, very cool they are. Onto the 2nd!

I am currently nearly finished 'All Quiet On The Western Front'.
It's disturbing, but interesting to get a German soldiers perspective on WW1.
Some stuff was pretty freaky, such as his mother having cancer and him commenting that "the doctors are hopeful she will recover but I've yet to hear of anyone cured of cancer".
That was 90 years ago and still there is no cure. :(


Next, is 'Scribbling The Cat' by Alexandra Fuller, which is kind of a sequel to "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight' which is a true story about a white girl growing up in Africa.

I really envy you. I would love to have the part of my mind that's read the trilogy 3 (or is it 4??) times through erased, so I could go through it all again, a la Eternal Sunshine styles :)

Incidentally they made it into a theatre production a year or 2 ago. It was long (6 hours, divided into 2 shows) but a fantastic watch; I tend to fall asleep during most musicals / plays but this had me gripped almost the whole way through.

The daemons were controlled by people wearing black body suits against black backgrounds (like a couple of TV ads have done since and that crazy asian ping pong video from a while back) and after the first 10 minutes I completely forgot the humans were there controlling them.

I won't comment on anything else specific to avoid spoiling any of the storyline :)

I've just read the The Conclave of Shadows trilogy & the first 2 books of the Darkwar trilogy (which is kinda a 6 book story line nfi why its broken into 2 sets of 3..) and they are fucking awesome win biscuits IRL.

dylan: It's funny cause i loved the first one, the northern lights, but i found the subtle knife quite hard to stomach for some weird reason and lost all interest in reading the amber spyglass.

I'm about to start reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Currently reading H.P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu and Other Wierd Stories. Have to admit I'm not particularly impressed. I haven't actually got to the Cthulhu story yet, which is why I bought it; but I was expecting something... I dunno... more?

Just (this morning) finished The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko - just outstanding - it takes a whole lot of what happens in the first book and turns it on it's head - if you're a fan of the first book, definitely read this.

I've just noticed that the second movie is actually based on parts two and three of the first book and has nothing to do with this one - stink.

Babel 17 - Samuel R Delany

Brilliant story about language as the defining weapon of human evolution.

Pixie

Pandora's Star - Peter F. Hamilton.
Pretty neat so far (200pgs in)

just finished a feast for crows, waiting on a dance with dragons to be finished, so I'm going to start reading the night's dawn trilogy again

Lol..just did exactly that!

Sad..

Armorking...I personally thought Pandora's star / Judas Unchained were far superior to the nights dawn book, so do enjoy!..I am going to re-read these next!

Also am most of the way through Black Powder War (3rd Temeraire book) ..fun, light reading, love the use of formal english and manners portrayed..very lol.

I've just begun reading Eragon.

Before that I read Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks. That's a favourite _b

I think Excession by Banks will be next.

HP Lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Finally got myself a copy of the one novel he ever wrote - will be interesting to see how it holds up considering he mostly did essays and short stories - and I understand the main character dies half way through the book!

Pixie

Its out the end of this year and there is also a videogame of the movie being released by SEGA ...

I just finished Galactic North by Alistair Reynolds which is a collection of his short stories (all set in the Revelation Space universe) and it is excellent. I hate finishing his books because they always leave me wanting more.

Eragon was great. I need to get hold of Elder, the sequel.

I'm reading the first book of the Whiteblade Saga now, The Paladin by Adam Nichols.

"The Last Witchfinder" by James Morrow. Just finished it. It was cool -- not in the "kick your ass with awesomeness" category of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but still entertaining if you're into historical fiction. Robert Hooke appears as a sort of Richard IIIish scheming evil gnome.

just finished reading origins of the second world war by A J P Taylor for the second time. great book if you are interested in the period in between ww1 and ww2. he goes into amazing detail about all the diplomacy that went on between the countries and this was really fascinating to me. he also gives a much more complex view of hitler rather then the typical 'evil bastard' characterisation.

i find with ww2 history most of the focus is on the war itself, but i find the build up to the war just as interesting.

Wired - The life of John Belushi

Personally I find that most of HP Lovecraft's stories have been re-told that many times by other authors, that you sort of feel like you've read it before even though you're reading it for the first time (imho of course).

Got a link?
I'm pretty sure I've read that one but can't remember exactly. Wouldn't mind reading the rest of them either if it's the book I think it is.