Object Dart

jaine fenn – principles of angels

what i was reading

michael adams – napoleon and russia

anthony birley - marcus aurelius: a bibliography – (12 Oct 09) an interesting biography where the author sticks to demonstrable facts largely informed by primary sources. this means there is a lot of discussion of correspondence between marcus and his main teacher fronto. on average, dull.

william gibson – all tomorrow’s parties – (27 Sept 09) a well-told story and pretty much wat you’d expect from gibson. the future is a weird place apparently.

john ralston saul – voltaire’s bastards. – (20 Sept 09) i really tried. but you just have to think so damn hard. maybe when Chef Du Plunge is a little older.

ian macdonald – brasyl

whitley strieber – 2012 – (12 September 09) awful on so many levels. here, aliens descend from a parallel universe to plunder earth. but… it’s actually a parallel eart have to try save the other parallel earth from the parallel earth full of reptilian aliens. that, and everything is all wrapped up in CHEESY quasi-religious mythology. avoid.

$karl schroeder  – pirate sun  (8 September 2009 – Another go on the roller-coaster. This time Mr. Fanning gets to adventure in Virga.

walter mosley – the wave (4 September 09) a guy is woken to someone calling him late at night. turns out his father is… RESURRECTED! interesting if not only because the author is black, and constantly refers to characters by their skin colour?

karl schroeder – queen of candesce (30 August 09) another rollicking tale of virga, this time centring on the least likable of the sun of suns characters, venera fanning.

iain m. banks - matter - a redemption story for a spoiled brat of a prince who sees his father murdered.

karl schroeder – sun of suns

roger zelazny – lord of light

china mieville – the iron council

j.g. ballard – vermillion sands – bit 70s, and a bit dull, though imaginative (23 July 2009)

david marusek - counting heads

j.g. ballard – concrete island

john r. alden – history of the american revolution

china mieville – the scar

harry harrison – a transatlantic tunnel, hurrah!

william gibson and bruce sterling – the difference engine

jay lake – mainspring

jay lake - rocket science

orson scott card – ender’s game

jay lake – dogs in the moonlight

nicky hager – the hollow men

catherine asaro – catch the lightning

M.S. Anderson – war and society in europe of the old regime 1618-1789

sherri tepper – grass

neil gaiman – neverwhere

charles stross – glasshouse

david brin – earth

dan simmons – hyperion

bruce sterling – the caryatids

carol b. stevens – russia’s wars of emergence - fascinating, but has been shelved for a  little bit.

ben okri – the famished road – have read this before, and i’m never going to finish it, because it was a stop-gap… that said, GREAT book.

arthur c. clarke – the fountains of paradise

charles stross - saturn’s children

china mieville – perdido street station

kim stanley robinson – red mars.

daniel miller – the comfort of things – 29 January 2009 - highly interesting bit of social anthropology, but there were sooo many vignettes it got a little much.

henryk sienkiewicz - with fire and sword

jay lake – trial of flowers

h. g. wells - the sleeper awakes

jay lake – escapement

robert a. heinlein - the moon is a harsh mistress

greg egan – permutation city

alexander solzhenitsyn – a day in the life of ivan denisovich – 26.11.08 – a classic and oft-referred to novel, but stuffed if i could figure out why it deserved the novel prize…

dbc pierre – vernon god little - 22.11.08

hugh kennedy – the great arab conquests – 16.11.08 – this is a very, very good ‘military’ history of the arab conquest. it uses primary sources, is well-balanced, and a genuinely interesting read.

rodney collomb – the rise and fall of the arab empire – 1.11.08 – an extremely mediocre, high-level history of the middle east and the various empires that swept through after the arab conquest. collomb’s main contribution to appears to be listing how successive leaders died, something he relishes.

jeff vandermeer – veniss underground

vernor vinge – across realtime – this is a compendium of two novels. the first, the peace war is a good read, and a bit of a sci-fi legend. the second, marooned in realtime, is not.

james belich – paradise reforged – i think i need to face facts. i’m never reading this book…

s.m. stirling – the sky people – this novel has a great premise. set on an inhabitable venus, the cold war has come to outer space. at first the writing was quite simply alarming, but i hung in there see if it improved. short answer no. all the actual dramatic fun was scheduled in the last 50 pages… which was too little too late.

john meane – paradox – a fairly conventional scifi. think dune, but with overtones of the universal hero story. the guy has a good imagination, but the science seemed contrived, and the story kind of wandered at points where it should have gotten gritty. all in all? meh.

jonathan lethem – fortress of solitude – a great read. i’ve enjoyed a lethem where he wirtes abotu what he knows, which seems to be 1970s and 80s brooklyn. this book is gritty, a little challenging, and just plain interesting. that said, it loses it’s way towards the end, which is a pity. otherwise, a curiousity.

james lee burke – julie blon’s bounce - highly enjoyable read. a murder mystery in contemporary southern louisiana.

clay shirky - here comes everybody – sigh.

rudy rucker - the hollow earth – a great story from the ‘hollow earth’ genre, which i only just discovered is an actual genre! rucker has a great imagination, and takes us on a simple, pulpy trip into the centre. recommened, alough light. i hated the man character after a few pages, but he grew on me. which i think was the intention?

ken follet - world without end - in a word, turgid. this tome drags on for over a thousand pages, and just wouldn’t bloody end. i hung in there to see if what was supposed to be a key plot device actually lived up to its promise. short answer, no.

charles stross - halting state

some guy - wikinomics- entirely conventional pseudo-lessons on how wikis and mass collaboration work. probably best considered as a entry-level guide to the sport. otherwise, boring.

philip k dick - a scanner darkly

kurt vonnegut – slaughterhouse five

james surowiecki – the wisdom of crowds – an enjoyable bit of pop-science that starts with lots of great information, then appears to slide into a discussion of “the market”. recommended.

normal mailer - the fight

hugh fearnley-whittingstall – the river cottage meat book – a great tome of lessons on how to cook meat. thoroughly enjoyable.

jack mcdevitt – odyssey – dull space opera with little direction and no real story.

neil gaiman – smoke and mirrors – interesting a quirky, a collection of short stories and poems by gaiman across the entire length of his career. but… not interesting enough for me to finish it. maybe if i owned a copy i’d read it slowly, but too many stories seemed to make too little sense. maybe this is his “b-list” of work (3.5.08 )

lloyd jones – mr pip – a beautiful book that pays too little homage to the horrors of the war in bouganville. written simply and effectively, but with hidden depths that will have me returning to figure out more of what jones hid between the lines.

charles stross – singularity sky – a great story, and a great space opera with something resembling a hard-core of science underlying it. once again stross’ imagination is far and above other recent sci-fi readers.

buddhism for dummies

a. mackay – spain in the middle ages: from frontier to empire

john scalzi – old man’s war - great premise, but the story simply doesn’t follow through. it’s a pity, because the characters are authentic and enjoyable people. unfortunately scalzi turns what could have been a great story into a very, very weak version of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.

philip k. dick – galatic pot-healer – i’m glad i’ve forgotten a lot of the stuff from the biography of dick. made this an enjoyable, if not slightly quirky read. it’s about a pot-healer who is summoned to another planet to help raise a mystical cathedral.

jeff vandermeer – city of saints and madmen - a great read. provided the background to shriek, and had some genuinely funny foreshadowing that book.

christopher tolkien – the children of hurin

jeff vandermeer – shriek: an afterword

chris trotter – no left turn

j.d. salinger - a catcher in the rye

f.w. walbank - the hellenistic world

malcolm vale – war and chivalry

jon courtney grimwood – effendi

jonathan lethem – girl in landscape

jon courtney grimwood – end of the world blues

liam callanan – the cloud atlas

ursula le guin – the birthday of the world

isaac asimov – the gods themselves

jonathan lethem – amnesia moon

john m. harrison – light

m.k. joseph – a soldier’s tale

tony williams – cassino

jonathan lethem – motherless brooklyn

john burdett – bangkok tattoo

stanislaw lem – the star diaries

john burdett – bangkok 8

tom robbins – fierce invalids home from hot climates

ursula le guin – the left hand of winter

maurice shadbolt – the new zealanders

ursula le guin – the lathe of heaven

jose saramago – blindness

albert camus – the plague

isaac asimov – foundation

david cohen – a perfect world

neal stephenson – snow crash

neil gaiman – stardust

thomas pynchon – the crying of lot 49

c.s. lewis – perelandra

stanislaw lem – solaris

charles leadbeater – living on thin air

arthur c. clarke – the lion of comarre, and against the fall of night

jamie oliver – cooking with jamie

c.s. lewis – out of the silent planet

do androids dream of electric sheep? – philip k. dick

a fire upon the deep – vincent vinge

valis – philip k. dick

cat’s cradle – kurt vonnegut jr.

accelerando – charles stross

divine invasions: a life of philip k. dick, lawrence sutin

les halles cookbook, anthony bourdain

iron sunrise, charles stross

veniss underground, jeff vandermeer

the atrocity archives, charles stross

jitterbug perfume, tom robbins

the algebraist, iain m. banks

ubik, phillip k. dick

the dispossessed, ursula le guin

midnight’s children moor’s last sigh, salman rushdie

the sirens of mars – kurt vonnegut jr.