BWTK - What book are you currently reading

[g0zer]

i recently finished the void trilogy and the nights dawn trilogy by peter hamilton.

if you like science fiction, thoroughly recommend peter hamilton. the books are good value too, they are monster sized paperbacks.

[Hornet]

I'm half way through the last of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle quadrilogy, the forth book being Inheritance (wow, imagination on that one)!

The movie version of the first book, Eragon, was pathetic and I'm sure it's one that Jeremy Irons would rather forget, however the book hooked me and I've stuck with the series. It's an easy read but is full of detail and a unique perspective of dragon/human communication.

[Machast]

I Am Ozzy.
Ozzy Osbourne autobiography. I hardly read books at all, but this is good enough so far to keep me interested.

[cowasaki]

recently finished the void trilogy and the nights dawn trilogy by peter hamilton.

I loved those.. being a speed reader it kept me amused for quite a bit longer than normal.

Just finished the The Broken World series (4) TC Southwell.... a bit strange to begin with, was midly entertaining. Again what is with the oh run out of things to write so lets just blah blah the endings????????

Most unhappy with the kindle book cost of the new Feist, more than the bloody "rel book".

Looking for new books.............starts trolling back through the book posts.

[Professor Redfern]

This book will seriously bake your noodle, I have no real interest in Bee's to me they are just the glorious little fuckers that give me honey and they annoying fuckers that make me swell up when bitten. Reading this book however will blow your mind, the shit that these fuzzy arsed little buzzers get up to is turely amazing.

Honeybees make decisions collectively--and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees.

In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together--as a swirling cloud of bees--to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution.

[Fastgirl]

Just sitting in bed reading this now do I finish by Thursday for the evening with Matt Reilly. 100 pages in without a break, it's well paced. Looks like Mother's in love - this'll end badly.

It took me two days to finish it...damn I love Mother.

[sopheecat]

finished Catch-22 by Joseph Heller... an oldie... and turns out it is the book that invented the term 'catch-22'.

Some may think it gets ridiculous and absurd, but that is part of the writing style and I liked it... as random, disjointed and weird as it seemed at first.

I loved this book

George R R Martins Ice and Fire series. A book whose TV series does it justice. Can't. Put. Down.


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[Emily]

Brain Rules by John Medina. Really interesting as it details the 'rules' (or lack thereof) of how the human brain functions. The anecdotes in this book are what make it so easy to read.

Check out Brain Rules: Brain development for parents, teachers and business leaders | Brain Rules |

[g0zer]

I loved those.. being a speed reader it kept me amused for quite a bit longer than normal.

Just finished the The Broken World series (4) TC Southwell.... a bit strange to begin with, was midly entertaining. Again what is with the oh run out of things to write so lets just blah blah the endings????????

Most unhappy with the kindle book cost of the new Feist, more than the bloody "rel book".

Looking for new books.............starts trolling back through the book posts.

i was doing the same thing skim reading heaps so i could get to chapters with the characters i liked. syrinx and onone and joshua and ione.

[shure]

I just finished the 3 book trilogy of the Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I couldn't put the book down. The movie's coming out in march next year.. gonna be good..

[Jezzabelle]

Currently reading 'Readers Digest Crime Casebook, Vol 2'

Shame there's no interesting or gory pictures!

[JamieBlade]

Steve Jobs Biography. About 1/3 in. The bloke was a fruit cake, but geniuses often are I guess.

[Skut]

"Midnight in Peking" - factual examination of a gruesome (ie Ripper style) murder of a young English girl in China shortly before the Second World War. One thing that makes it interesting is the fact that a Brit cop has to work with a Chinese cop (or vice versa) in a very Hollywood cliche - long before the cliche existed! The other interesting feature is that the author discovered enough through his research to complete the investigation (cut short by the Japanese occupation, but continued by the grieving father...) and identify the the killer and the motive.

Also, re-reading "Ancient Shores" by Jack McDevitt, (actually, if you are a sci-fi fan, read anything by him). Discovery of a buried yacht made of an impossible element leads to much more for present day Earth. The clever 'what-if' scenario shows how fragile our economic-political model is when the the simple prospect of sophisticated technology has the markets in collapse and governments and corporations striving to destroy something that will lead to rapid changes, but is also the greatest discovery the world has ever experienced...

[Jezzabelle]

Canon EOS 40D - Digital Field Guide....

Unfortunately the instructions will not penetrate my little grey cells!

[51 New West]

Book 6 in the Wheel of Time series. It drags a bit, and parts of it could have been published by Mills and Boon, but while I can't read it for more than 10 minutes at a time, I can't put it down and walk away either.

For the Peter Hamilton fans, try Greg Bear and Sean Williams/Shane Dix

[Skut]

For the Peter Hamilton fans, try Greg Bear and Sean Williams/Shane Dix

Or Alistair Reynolds - grand space opera on epic scales, but with characters you care about. As for Sean Williams, if you can get hold of Metal Fatigue (one of his early works), it's a ripper

[51 New West]

Resurrected Man is also very good. Thanks for the Alistair Reynolds tip

[Bendito]

Ok, mega post coming your way...

I read the two Forrest Griffin books a while ago (Got Fight? and Be Ready When The Shit Goes Down), not much to add about those, they were quite good

I read World War Z by Max Brooks between them, it was kinda cool, and I generally love zombie/apocalypse stories, but it was a little irritating. It's like the guy had a short attention span coupled with a massive boner for zombie movies, he dreamed up about 40 different scenarios/zombie kills and couldn't decide which to write about... so he wrote a little bit on each one. I really wanted to stick with a few of them, but we rolled on far too quick. He did a good job of giving a global perspective on the whole ordeal, so I guess he had to jump around, but it would have been nice to linger with a few of them I guess. The weak efforts by the world's governments was a bit scary in how believable they were.

I finished The Princess Bride by William Goldman and the main story was great, as expected
The explanation about the abridged version and how it came about was tedious, but I read through it anyway. I was sure they were made up places and figured he was treating them as real for effect.
I got really shitty at the end, the later versions of the book have a sort of epilogue where he talks about getting close to his son, then his grandson, who requests he cleans up the sequel, Buttercup's Baby. Then he goes through the crap about butting heads with Stephen King, who is apparently of Florinese descent, then they sort it out, and he travels to Florin and visits all the places to keep it authentic. This threw me, because it sounded legit(ish) but then the Shogg family of Florinese lawyers started smelling really fishy and I battled through the whole ending late last night and got really shitty and got Elle to google it while I was reading and she couldn't find it and I finished it and looked myself and find out HE MADE THE WHOLE THING UP >:-(

All the irritating dribble about the (non-existent) family who hated him and his career never going well and bickering with publishers about which parts to cut was all make believe? WHY YOU WASTE MY TIME MAN?!?!?
And why didn't any of you people tell me that's what he was doing? Not my best friends anymore
In fact, I'm off books with words for a while, they are too upsetting.

Gonna look at this instead



I also have Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell waiting, as recommended by a re-run of First Tuesday Book Club on ABC. It sounds a bit tricky and interesting

Mitchell's virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel. Only after this do the second halves of the stories fall into place, pulling the novel's themes into focus: the ease with which one group enslaves another, and the constant rewriting of the past by those who control the present. Against such forces, Mitchell's characters reveal a quiet tenacity. When the clerk is told that his life amounts to "no more than one drop in a limitless ocean," he asks, "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

Sitting in the pile with it is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, as recommended by a guy at my last job. We have pretty similar tastes, and he pointed it out at the airport, so I just grabbed it straight away

In a future Thailand, calories are the greatest commodity. Anderson is a calorie-man whose true objective is to discover new food sources that his company can exploit. His secretary, Hock Seng, is a refugee from China seeking to ensure his future. Jaidee is an officer of the Environmental Ministry known for upholding regulations rather than accepting bribes. His partner, Kanya, is torn between respect for Jaidee and hatred for the agency that destroyed her childhood home. Emiko is a windup, an engineered and despised creation, discarded by her master and now subject to brutality by her patron. The actions of these characters set in motion events that could destroy the country.

[Skut]

^ is it safe?

[Bendito]

Hahaha, I read that ages ago, around fourteen maybe, didn't realise it was him. I only watched Princess Bride fOr the first time last year, I think I did it a little backwards >.<