I've recently re-read "Evolving the Alien" (very absorbing) , the Alexei Leonov / David Scott space race book (the name of which currently escapes me, sorry) and also Terry Pratchett's new book "Nation".... (made me cry at the end)

I'm currently reading "Things my girlfriend and I have argued about" , not as good as his newspaper column.

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There we were in the park when suddenly some old lady says I stole her purse..... I chucked the professor at her but she kept coming..... So I had to hit her with this purse I found.
-- Bender

At the moment:

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Pe...6324422&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/High-Lord-Blac...6324522&sr=1-1

I finally broke down and read Sandworms of Dune. Yeah, Deus ex Machina all over the place, but at least I finished it. I've been eyeballing another novel they wrote which bridges the time between Dune and Dune: Messiah, but I dunno...

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, this author never disappoints IMHO.

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But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about: Jayutah


I are Learnding.

"Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks.

Sphere packings, Lattices, and Groups, by JH Conway and Neil Sloane.

But in the fiction department, decided to try out Man Kzin wars book 1 (already read The Warriers, the first story, as part of some other collection).

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Almost America: From the Colonists to Clinton: a "WHAT IF" History of the US. Next, I will be reading Folklore of Discworld.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I am reading Phil Plait's "Death from the Skies", and I hope his next book will be "Bad Astronomy Volume II"

I am currently reading two books: Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience, A Personal View of the Search for God & a fairly recent biography based on recently published letters and documents of Albert Einstein--entitled: Einstein by Jurgen Neffe.

What do you think of the book, so far?

That is a very harrowing book to read. Have read other Holocaust/WWII-related books as well.

In recent years I've read a lot of history regarding the 18th century Enlightenment. Ayn Rand. Machiavelli.

Currently I'm relaxing with a slew of Gothic Romance novels. Its height of popularity was the 1950s - mid-70s. Generally fiction is not my thing, but I have fallen in with this genre.

I've been reading Cry, the Beloved Country for school. The descriptions of the African velt are so beautiful.

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When you're standing on the edge of nowhere, there's only one way up...
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I'm reading Phil's Death From the Skies as well

But I'm also reading a book by a local Toronto author (non-fiction) about his 2 year experience teaching in a foreign country in the 80's

I'm also "reading", very slowly, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, but that will probably take me a vary long time

World of Warcraft tends to get in the way a bit..heh

Pete

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PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

I think it's pretty good. He actually manages to convince me that there would be widespread social significance if TR had successfully banned college football. (Not that he seriously tried to. But he threatened to, if certain reforms were not put in place.) The author, Steve Tally, presents the history as it did happen, speculation as to how it could have happened, and an analysis of why the way it worked made the changes it did. Fascinating stuff, even when I'm not sure I agree with him.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The Hobbit, but I haven't much time to read at the moment.
Don't tell me how it ends.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Anathem-Neal Stephenson

It's a tour de force; the man never fails to write amazing novels.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Across a Billion Years - Robert Silverberg.

I last read it around 30 years ago.

Wandered into the local second-hand bookshop in the hopes of leafing through some SF anthologies to see if I could find the story I've been looking for. Found no anthologies at all but I found Across a Billion Years, so I bought it.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients:matter, energy & enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

"The universe is not only stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know." - Louis Wolpert

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison

Via Brave New World I'm now at Death From The Skies too.

I hope Gillian finds The Folklore of Discworld as interesting as I did...

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If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be so simple we couldn't

QQR

I was very pleased with it, yes. I can heartily recommend it to anyone who studies folklore or is interested in the Discworld; one need not care about both in order to find the material interesting.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I loved all the Revelation Space books and just finished Chasm City (which I though was great right up until the very last scene. I hated the ending, it seemed like such a cop out)

Currently reading Hidden Empire (The Saga of Seven Suns Book 1) by Kevin J. Anderson. It's not my favorite book, not really getting that vested in the story.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville.

His first "kids" book but still with lots of imagination and weirdness and still fairly dark (but tame compared to eg "The Iron Council".)

What is it with English writers these days? Did they forget happy pills, or has it become even gloomier there since I last left 15 years ago?

Janissaries, by Jerry Pournelle, into the sequel actually. A couple more of his "Soldier in SF environment" stories, like Falkenberg's Legion. Good stuff if you like the genre.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin | Meet the OOONG TOE.
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
'No, mad's when you froth at the mouf,' said Gaspode. 'He's insane. That's when you froth at the brain.'

Anyone else here an absolute fanatic for Stephen R Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series?

Robert Heinlein's A Tunnel in the Sky.

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Aim high (but don't blow yourself up)!- Homer Hickam

In Soviet Russia, UFO report you!- Phil Plait

Carl Sagan may have seen a pale blue dot, but I see a sapphire.- Doug Phillips, Discovering Alabama.

Clear skies Maksutov.

February 12, 2010 Never Forget

I just finished "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton. It's better than the name makes you think! It's a "what if": what if the legend of Beowulf is based on real events? The story is a fictional account of what "really" might have happened. The other big "what if" is--what if a small population of neanderthals survived into the 1st millennium AD, in the remote northern parts of Scandinavia. It is told from the point of view of an Arab, kidnapped by the vikings who fight the neanderthal "grendels", who eventually sympathizes with his captors and earns their respect as a hero in battle.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I was in the '70's. Good reading while on board the sub.

I used to be, back when I was waiting for White Gold Wielder to come out in hardback.

I've not read the third series, although people have urged me to. It's been a long time since I read the other books, and I'm worried that I will have changed too much to enjoy them now.

i finished reading physics of the impossible so decided t read a novel im currently in the middle of monster 1959 wich is a fantastic book for fans of giant monster movies

I started reading Dawkins' The God Delusion, but lost interest rather quickly.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Started rereading "Footfall" by Larry Niven--it's one of Niven's "Farnham's Freehold" type novels (he was clearly a Heinlein fan--oh yeah, Heinlein is in the story!). It's a case of first contact with a war-of-the-world's type invading species, except not quite as smart as the mobile brains of wotw.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info