Be Excellent To Each Other

If you like weird short stories then compilations by Jeff Noon (Pixel Juice) and China Mieville (Looking for Jake, and other stories) might interest you.

Yeah, might be nice to have the paper version (could do with a lecturn for that and my Necronomicon ). Did you buy the digital version or do you have an offsite backup that I could chuck on my techno book?

Bought it I'm afraid.

You fucking idiot.

Actually it was my wife who bought it but I will pass along your comments.

She's fucking an idiot.

I really enjoyed Monstrous Regiment!

Curio, can you remind me about that vampire book you mentioned on the last page on Monday?

Think it was "The Passage", with it's follow-up "The Twelve", by Justin Cronin. Mrs Squirt *loved* them. Vampires, but Horror Scary Vampires not Sexy Sparkly Vampires. You can get the first one for cheaps now, I think.

It was indeed those two.

Seriously good stuff. Occasionally confusing by virtue of jumping forward decades at a time, but really ace.

I'll but them either on Friday or Monday. Depending when I get paid. Or maybe Tuesday. I'm confused. Payday is Tuesday, but Monday is a bank holiday so maybe I'll get paid Friday.

I ordered the first three Stainless Steel Rat books in an omnibus. I was going to get the Hydrogen Sonata, but can't decide if I want a kindle version or a hardback. Amazon have a reasonably priced box set of culture novels on sale right now.

Just buy the first one in case you don't like it!

I bought Ash by James Herbert the other week, it was on special at £1. My God, how has this man made a living as an author? It is ]appalling! I haven't read any other of his books since I read The Dark when I was twelve, has anyone else read any, are they all appalling?

His early stuff (Moon, The Haunting, Rats, Fluke, 48, Creed) is good. His later stuff isn't. If you really want to squirm, read half horror, half porn book "Once".

Blood Meridian: very, very good. read it soon. superb descriptions, brilliant story, excellent characters.

i am not spoilering this as it was first published in 1985. I think the judge is actually the devil. He is present and bears witness to the brutality that goes on all the way through the story. He revels in the ill gotten wealth, does not seem to age, and never says "stop". he uses the people to make his journey, and at the end, meets the kid and i think, takes him on . as an aide so it can begin again.

It is a genius book. Someone somewhere wrote that the Judge rapes and murders the kid (I think the phrase is something like "he gathers him up in his flesh" and then two men find his body). Someone somewhere, again that I read, thought that the judge was a paedo and had raped and murdered that Latino kid too (where the horses head has gruesomely swollen) and as the kid had turned into a man he no longer had an interest in him and killed him.

He was evil no doubt, but whether there are religious connotations I'm not sure. There no balancing power of god just a trail of killing and murder throughout.

Fabulous book.

Reading catch 22 again. Still the greatest book ever written. (Interestingly I bought it on kindle rather than did out my old paperback.)

Before that I read "The Last Policeman" by Ben Winters about the last policeman. Slight and not amazingly well written but a bloody good idea, thats well realised. It has rolled around my head ever since - which is huge praise. The whole concept is realised perfectly. Highly recommended. Could easily see it picked up as a TV series.

It's about a Police Officer investigating a suicide when no one else around him gives a shit. It would be awesome to read it blind, but the setting (which is given away within the first 20 pages and in all the advertising for the book) is that:

i finished it today and wanted to start reading it again. straight away. i shall have . a think over it, tonigjt and maybe write some more tomorrow on it. i often see religion in lots of things, but i saw the judge as the pivot amongst this carousel of madness, from the killing if the preacher in the beginning to the death of the bear at the end. always there.

I have that on my Kindle, amongst about 20 other books I have bought and need to read!

Trilogy I think. Each focusing on a different aspect of what the setting means.

I read that recently. I enjoyed it. Worth it for the aforementioned ship and the minor skirmish its involved with.

Out of the Culture books I've read Excession>Player of Games>Look to Windward>Use of Weapons>Surface Detail>Consider Phlebas.

Don't fancy Matter at all. Will give Hydrogen Sonata a go once it comes down from ridiculous price.

Religion is certainly a theme in what is clearly godless country. I just don't know if the Judge was supposed to represent the devil - he was more the arbiter of the morally corrupt.

Just finished Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Fair enjoyed it, fed my imagination & filled my head with silly ideas

Reading "Wool" at the moment by Hugh Howey. Post Apocalyptic tale of a society living in a giant silo, told as a series of connected short stories...a real slow burner but really interesting. Enjoying it so far.

Edward bunker's autobiography was interesting. Worth the 99p. Banks's Hydrogen Sonata made it 83 pages before the shit sex scene. It is ok so far, but no excession.

Just finished up the Sprawl trilogy by Gibson (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) Very Good. Now what?

Is Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson any good? Zodiac and Snow Crash are ace, but I got Quicksilver and hated it.

Try "Vurt" by Jeff Noon. Kind of pschadelic cyberpunk; like Gibson but for dreams instead of computers.

I lucked out and bought it for pennies ages ago. Obviously started as a short story and grew, but definitely worth reading it all. I seem to recall it getting optioned as a movie, or talk thereof.

Yep, I believe Ridley Scott picked it up (or at least his production company).

Not bad for a self-published story!

Working my way through the Gollancz 50, and recommend everything in there. I am Legend is great, and short. The Lies of Locke Lamora, though, is spectacular, especially the first 2/3 or so - the plotting, counter-plotting and tricks described are just wonderful.

It's not great. Cryptonomicon is though.

Just a shame that the 2nd book didn't quite live up to the first

About 2/3 the way through the lies I was going to order it so as to have it lined up. But the amazon reviews agree with you completely. A great pity, he seems so inventive with the thief stuff.

Does anyone else read the subtitle in a "what're you buying?" voice?

Really? I read the second book first (stupid library), and absolutely loved it, and then leapt on the first book. They're both brilliant.

Hydrogen Sonata - yeah, it was alright.
100 year old man that climbed form a windo - entertaining so far.

Mike Carter - One Man and his Bike......nice easy and fun read about a guy who cycled around the UK coast, especially fun for cyclisty types in middle age who are thinking of doing something like this.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Man-Bike-Mi ... 716&sr=8-1

Yeah. That was 'interesting'.

'Cryptonomicon' done. It was a very interesting read, however it wasn't exactly 'edge of the seat' stuff. It also drags a lot in certain places. Also also: Stephenson writes awesome action scenes, but he seems to deliberately avoid doing them. What few action scenes you get are absolutely riveting. Shame there wasn't more. A solid 8 if you can stand the endless crypto talk.

Am reading A Memory of Light, the 14th and final book finished by Brandon Sanderson for Robert Jordan, am only a quarter of the way through but the epic is all coming together nicely. Sanderson seems to be doing a better job imo then Jordan was with the books. Books 12 and 13 were definitely more engrossing as Jordan had thrown so many balls in the air with the previous books he seemed to struggle with dealing with it and fell into a rote pattern for all his 'middle' books.

The final battle is nigh!

Also reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, am enjoying it alot at the moment, although it does seem very slow

I'm still smashing my way through the Jack Reacher series. One of them was a bit ropey, but on the whole they're superb books, which basically follow these rules:
Is there a bad person? Reacher will beat them to death.
Is there a hot chick? Reacher will fuck them.
Does someone think they're smarter than Reacher? Reacher will show them they're not. And then he'll probably beat them to death.

God bless Tom Cruise.


In other news, I am reading "Trickster" by Jeff Somers, author of the Avery Cates / Electric Church books.

Seems decent so far.

SHUT THE FUCK UP THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

ZOMG WHAT!

<off to the kindle machine>

<wonders whether I should re-read the last book, as I'll have no idea what is going on anymore>

Not released on Kindle till April!

<off to the torrent sites>

When will the publishers learn?

*disclaimer - my friend wrote it, but if it were shit: I'd tell you. And him.

I finished "Magnificent Joe". It's superb. It's incredibly bleak at times, but there are genuinely heart warming moments as the bond between the main protagonist and Joe, the mentally disabled man he knows is explored and grows. The characters are well written and believable as a product of their environment, and the element of desperation and hopelessness comes through well. The story moves between past and present to fill out the history between the characters and this really helps to explain the bonds between them all, and how trapped the main character is. I'd recommend it, there are highs and lows, good humour and real tragedy.

A friend of mine (pen name, Tom Wood) has just published the third part of his assassin books to the kindle store. By all accounts, he's doing really well

The first book is called The Hunter and the reason I mentioned it is that it's been compared to the jack reacher books.

I haven't read it