This is where I’m going to record information about the books I’m reading in my book-a-month project (that link should tell you all about it). For the blog-postings about it, where I may well write something about the books I’m reading, check out the book-a-month category. On this page you can see the list of books I’ve been reading… it’s a work-in-progress, as I need to try and remember what I’ve read in the past two years, and when I read it. At some point I’ll add more information about the books too. Links in the book-names will be to blog posts about the book in question.
The list is ordered by month, with the most recent at the… top! Why not, eh?
- December 2009 – “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross
I’ve read a couple of Charles Stross’ books, and this is one of his latest (OK, so it’s over a year old) that follows the “Space Opera” style. Despite the advertising blurb that I’ve seen (no references, as I can’t remember where I read it), it doesn’t actually follow on from the same storyline as “Singularity Sky” and “Iron Sunrise”, which on the one hand is a shame, but I’ll just be happy if this one is as good as the others. Stross (is it polite to reference him just by surname?) is certainly one of my favourite authors, and one to watch. His blog is a good read too.- November 2009 – “Postscripts #19: Enemy of the Good”
The latest issue of the wonderful Postscripts landed on my doormat yesterday (despite any postal strikes that may be ongoing). Unlike the previous issue it has more varied content (the previous issue seems to be just horror). At just under 200 pages, it’s an ideal catch-up book, hopefully providing me with the time to finish my book from last month *cough*.- October 2009 – “Postscripts #18: This is the Summer of Love”
This is an interesting book, if only because it’s the first of the new style of Postscripts – book-style, and losing the quite annoying two-column format. It’s a collection of new writers’ stories, and interestingly for me it contains a story by an author called James Cooper – which is the name of my Son. How weird is that? Well not very really, both “James” and “Cooper” are quite common names. But still…- September 2009 – “Revelation Space” by Alastair Reynolds
Revelation Space is the first novel by Alastair Reynolds in the… Revelation Space universe. However, it’s not the first story set in this universe, that being “Dilation Sleep” which was written a good decade before. This makes it tricky to work out what to read first, but I figure that the novels should be read in chronological order of writing, and the short stories I consider to be… supplemental. Maybe that’s the wrong approach, but who knows. I did find a blog entry that detailed the order of the stories by chronology, so maybe that should be used as a guide.- August 2009 – “Schild’s Ladder” by Greg Egan
This is certainly not an easy book to read, and has been called one of Greg Egan’s “hardest science fiction” stories. It’s full of theoretical physics, much of which went a little over my head, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. One of the things I like about Egan’s work is that he provides supplementary material, which helps to visualise the concepts in the story – although even some of that requires a lot of cranial capacity to fully understand.- July 2009 – “Cabal” by Clive Barker
- June 2009 – “Mind of My Mind” by Octavia Butler
- May 2009 – “Postscripts #17″
- April 2009 – “Luminous” by Greg Egan
- March 2009 – “Postscripts Chapbook #4: The Long Way” by Ramsey Campbell
- February 2009 – “Ringworld Engineers” by Larry Niven
- January 2009 – “Postscripts #16″
- December 2008 – no book
- Uhm… see November 2008 for my excuse.
- November 2008 – no book
- I had recently become a Dad, and so my priorities were elsewhere, so the end of the year kind of slipped past whilst I got used to my new role.
- October 2008 – “Postscripts #15: Worldcon All-SF Special
- September 2008 – “The Best of Interzone”
- August 2008 – “The Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror #18″
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008 – “The Mammoth Book Of Best New SF #18″
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008