Be Excellent To Each Other

Then buy the book instead of the ebook.

I don't really go for crime thrillers but an acquaintance of mine writes crime (and it's not really the crime genre, but the murder genre, right?) novels of rare quality when she's on form.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Billie-Morgan-J ... 1852428651

One of her other books was pipped to the Orange Prize by "We Need To Talk About Kevin" a few years ago, but Billie Morgan is sort of from the antagonist's POV. Or is she a protagonist? Or both? Or neither? Eh? eh?

The style of her stuff tends to be focused more on the world and characters than the 'event' that defines the narrative, but that just lends it more weight when you read the right bits. Borrowed Light, set in Cornwall and quite kitchen sink/surf until the denoument is my favourite, I remember reading it in .doc format while a publisher was being sorted out. Then Stone Baby, her debut, melding Peter Sutcliffe and the world of standup/spoken word performers. Corazon is a bit more about cults. But yeah, Billie Morgan there is £1.20, so worth a punt for you maybe.

I'm sure it's been said elsewhere that there are people who will buy a DVD/BD/CD of a film or album they like after buying (or 'buying') the electronic version, just to have it on the shelf or in their collection. A solid copy, for the sake of it. Same with books. Why not? I don't want every book I download, some of them were 89p or less than £3, I saw them and thought 'Hmm, the reviews look good but I don't know if it's my kind of thing really but it's only 89p, I'll give it a go'...sometimes they're rubbish and sometimes I really like them. If it's the latter, I might want a copy for my shelf.

Books I have read in the last few weeks are, as I remember them:

Only Forward; Michael Marshall Smith - I enjoyed this book a lot, I liked the setting, the lead character, the style it was written...The plot, I felt, was a little weak in places and it seemed to jump to it's conclusion a bit too quickly. After the work that had gone in to describing everything else and setting all the scenes and getting the pieces in place, the end did feel a little rushed. That was a shame, as it did detract slightly from the otherwise enjoyable journey.

One of Us; Michael Marshall Smith - This one I purchased on the strength of Only Forward. I didn't find it as engaging, the character writing was good, the story was well paced for the most part, then it turned into something that pretty much turned me off almost completely. I'm pretty sure when a certain reveal was made and my suspicions were confirmed, I rolled my eyes and sighed....Which is never a good sign. After that point I almost lost interest, I knew what going to happen at the end and the only good thing about that was, once again, the wrapping up of the story felt a bit rushed.

Carpe Jugulum; Terry Pratchett - I love the Discworld books, we have a TP thread and I can't add anything that hasn't been said already, I don't think! They're all enjoyable books, this one especially so as it focuses on the witches.

Superheroes vs Zombies; Various (short stories) - I read this between the M M Smith books, it was a nice distraction and leant itself to being read when I had a spare 10 minutes around lunchtime. I found most of the stories a little weak, the superman type one near the end (it could've been the last one actually) was probably the best for me.

Wonders of the Universe; Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen - About stars n telescopes n shit, innit. It reads very well to me, it seems filled with awe and wonder but then, I read the whole thing with Brian Cox saying it in my head so that probably helped.

Apart from the non-fiction sciencey stuff in my 'to read' selection, there are a couple of classics and the rest is sci-fi and fantasy. If it's not jovial TP style stuff then I like it dark and post apocalyptic and futuristic, at the moment I'm looking for something a little more Blade Runner-esque, I had Neuromancer in mind for my next read but then started reading Spore by Ian Woodhead, so far so gross...I'll probably get Neuromancer on the go as well, as they seem like they'd be different enough books to read concurrently. I also have Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson, which may well be shite. The book description made me think Terminator straight away but that's ok because I like Terminator.

Not sure how well Neuromancer will have aged. Gibson's later work, and in particular the stellar Pattern Recognition, might be more palatable.

I also read Ex-Heroes. It's not going to change your life, and it felt rather like a failed action movie script respun into a novel, but it was amiable enough company.

Does it not have the best origin for a zombie outbreak you've ever heard of, though?

Yeah, it does, to be fair. I noted as much on my Goodreads review.

(Incidentally, Beexers-who-read, Goodreads is awesome. My page is here.)

I've been meaning to join Goodreads for a while. Looks like it could be fun! I'd hope it's more a forum for ideas than a place for people merely to identify as literate types, in a Facebooky sort of environment, but I'm guessing it's probably a bit of both. I think I'd probably add books very selectively, though - I get through a few each week, and can only really be arsed talking about the stuff that's important to me. I've noticed a couple of my friends have inventoried and reviewed almost everything they've ever read, which is just grotesque.

It's because she likes to have her cake and eat it.

I've only bought one physical book since iBooks was released, and that was only because the publisher temporarily pulled the ebook in favour of a physical + digital bundle for the same price.

I'm on goodreads, but never use it, I just can't be arsed
If I could link my kindle to it, so that it automatically updated, that would be good. (can it do that?) Anything I have to do manually will get ignored after day 2...

Mmm, cake.

Flis - You should still read the third MMS novel (well, second, but y'know) - 'Spares'. Probably the best on in terms of plotting, though 'Only Forward' is my favourite in terms of imagination. And the ending is better on second read, as knowing what it is helps significantly with picking out the thematic elements that have been hiding.

Either way, I love the Neighbourhoods.

Doc G - After I read 'Pattern Recognition' (many years ago), and gave it to the wife to read, I immediately booked us a table HERE. Great restaurant.

Shelfari is what I thought would be the answer to that, but sadly it only links to Amazon.com accounts and not .co.uk.

Quite. You moron.

@Curio: hah, good work. I don't know why I loved that book so much. It really got under my skin though.

I was searching for books the other night and saw one for 69p on Amazon, thought I would give it a crack, The Killing Moon by Rod Glenn.
It is set in post apocololllypoptic Middlesbrough (no one noticed, lol)! I am 50% of the way through, I can whole heartedly recommend this book. If you like badly written, poorly thought out and hateful characters. A pointless and idiotic plot, and nonsensical, pointless violence. Still, only another 50% to go.

I've seen loads of these cheap books and would not even consider any of them unless I got a personal recommendation from someone who isn't a complete buffoon. It's not the money spent I object to, it's the time taken to read them.

I got a Peter F Hamilton one for cheaps, but it is now full price so I assume it was a sale item. It was good though.
Also there are a few first in a series which are cheap (free) to get you into the series then the books slowly increase in price. I have read a couple of these and they aren't bad.
And then there is, "how to marry a millionaire vampire and bonus material". Note, I haven't read this, it could be excellent, but...

Other books everyone should read include:

"The Night of the Avenging Blowfish" by John Welter, which is the funniest book I've ever read. It's about the day to day life of a Secret Service agent, who is looking for something interesting to happen, and also for love. It's got superbly slapstick dialogue, and made me laugh out loud many times.

"Bombadiers" by Po Bronson, which is another extremely entertaining book that made me laugh a lot. It is set in the office of trading company who try to sell various bonds, debt packages and similar. In other words, the kind of bastards who broke the economy. It's a great satire (and written long before the economy went boom) and thoroughly entertaining.

There you go... I just recommended two books that weren't even SF or Fantasy!!! That almost never happens.

For Fantasy, the first two Myst books (the Book of Atrus and the Book of Ti'ana) are surprisingly great.
They go into a lot of detail about the Books and how they link from one place to another in an infinite universe. Well worth a read.

They're out of print now, but there's plenty of second-hand copies around:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Myst-Book-Atrus ... 208&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Myst-Book-Tiana ... 208&sr=1-5

The third one, however, isn't as good.

Neuromancer has aged fantastically well. It still reads like Scifi.

Oh good. I shall buy the Sprawl trilogy for Kindle then (making the third or fourth time I've bought it, I think.)

They don't appear to have book 2 for download in the Kindle store....

Curio, thanks for that recommendation, I'll have a look in to it

Goddamn, you're right. Cocking idiots.

I've read 1 and 3 (Neuromancer and mona lisa overdrive?). Not 2. So you're probably not missing much....

Well, on the one hand they're a very loose trilogy so it's not like you lose meaningful continuity. But on the other hand, Count Zero is a fine book.

I've picked up Stephen Baxter's early Xeelee Sequence compendium with the novels Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring all bundled together for a tenner. Very good stuff if you like your hard science fiction.

I've just finished the first book (Raft) which is about a group of humans who accidentally travel into a parallel universe where the force of gravity is a billion times greater than our own. Stars live and die within a matter of years and people exert their own gravitational pull on others. As they're early Baxter the characterisation can be a bit weak sometimes, but some very interesting premises nonetheless.

Short book I assume?

<squish>

I can ignore the fact that the big bang wouldn't have worked if that were the case, but how does he get around the fact that people would just be crushed ?

Virtual Light is still one of my favorite books. I thought of re-reading it recently, due to all the hacking stuff going on.
Yeah, it's still SCIFI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(novel)

Theyd be crushed on a normal planet, but I'm assuming they avoid normal planets. Instead, they could rig their ship to have normal gravity by carrying a modest mass around.

In fact, the 'Raft' is

They're all descendants of DavPaz. They crush gravity.

Man, I couldn't read that book without going mental over the ludicrous physics!

Did they just climb out of the sunroof and teach themselves to breath space?

Gravity is quite a weak force, though, when you think about it. There's something wrong there.

Oh yeah.

*Levitates*

I would put forward the position that gravity is the strongest force in the universe, myself.

*falls back down*

Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces at short ranges, but the only one that has any meaningful strength beyond a few metres. You're both right.

lol

Gravity holds the whole universe together, see that huge hunk of rock that circles our planet, I wonder what holds that in place? See this planet you are standing on, and the star it circles, I wonder why it does that?

It's still an incredibly weak force, though. Weaker than the weak force, in fact.

It's so weak that the hypothetical graviton has still yet to be proven to exist.

It's having a strong impact on your face.

Magnets.

The graviton is just a particle that has been made up because we have no other idea how gravity works, isn't it? They fact that no-one can find it, tells me something

Gravity is effectively infinite and unlimited, sure the individual "bonds" are extremely weak, but the culmination of those "bonds" is incredibly strong, the strongest force in the universe in fact

The most powerful force in the Universe is love. Everyone knows that ( although the existence of the underlying particle, the smoochitron, is yet to be confirmed ).

Let's embark on that journey of discovery.