What I have read in 2009

Reread Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams and every single meep book by Terry Pratchet from The Colour of Magic to Making Money.

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'neill

The End of Faith by Sam Harris

A collection of short stories called Transhuman compiled and edited by Mark L. Van Name and T.K.F Weisskopf

I'm currently half way through Ilium by Dan Simmons. Awesome story and I'm looking forward to reading the follow up Olympos.

The Singularity Is Near - Ray Kurzweil

A much needed dose of geek powered optimism in such troubling times. Kurzweil sez that all we need to do is survive the next 10-20 years and we will get to live forever and expand our collective intelligence into the cosmos. Unfortunately, the survival part may be a bit more difficult than anticipated. Nonetheless, Kurzweil has managed to convince me that the future will rock.

genetics + nanotechnology + AI = WIN

Yes, I've read more than one book this year so far, but this was the first one I've read for ages that I've truly hated, and I've pretty much been fantasizing about ripping it to shreds on the internet since starting it. Thankfully, I used the extra hours spent commuting on the shockingly-bad London bus network over the last few days to finally finish the bloody thing.

Anyway.

Darwin's Radio - Greg Bear

Firstly, I realise that this book was probably published about 10 years ago. Yes, I'm slow to catch up. Anyway, I first heard of it a few months back in a Slashdot thread about evolution or some meep, or was it on Reddit? Can't tell, but anyway, somewhere on the internet, there are references to this book in comment threads relating to science articles. This is all the background that's needed.

For those who don't know it, Darwin's Radio is a Sci-Fi "disaster" novel, in which a human endogenous retrovirus emerges and promotes a human speciation event. Yes, re-read that last sentence and try to parse it, because here comes the first, and major problem with this book: it is filled with page after mind-numbly boring page of science, half-baked and presented up to the reader without apology or explanation.

Let me try to explain. You know how on ER, the patient arrives on a gurney and all the doctors swarm around a babble all their ER doctor talk and noone knows WTF they're saying because we aren't doctors? Well, on ER, it doesn't actually matter, because you still get to see the action and see what the docs are up to, and eventually work out what a heamotoma is because the bloke has a meeping huge one on his leg or something? Yeah. Darwin's Radio is like that, execpt there's no "action" whatsoever. The vast majority of this complete meepheap of a book consists of characters attending meeting after boring meeting that goes on for pages, and pages and pages, consisting of nothing but scientific buzzwords collected like sweeties from the back of a biology textbook.

Look, I'm not trying to slate a book just because it hasn't been "dumbed down" for a general audience, but really, I've got two biology degrees and there were places in the story that I honestly believe I wouldn't have been able to follow what was being said without both of them. What's the point? Fair enough, you've written a Sci-Fi book and you've got this idea about evolution, I can forgive a few pages of heavy science, but not when you waffle (and a fair bit is just waffle; pointless and boring) every other chapter for pages and pages until even people who love all this science conspiracy stuff start having to flip forward just to see where the plot will start up again. It's just terrible and inaccessible and boring.

Which brings me onto the characters. God, if there's anything worse than the pages of jargon, it's the boring, stereotypical mouthpieces that the author introduces to spout it. Every-single character in this book is either mind-numbingly dull or insufferably smug. Quite often, they're both. Each one is introduced with a formulaic two-line description:

He/she was a tall/short/fat/thin man/woman with a neat/dirty/old/expensive suit/dress with blonde/brown/red hair.

..and that's pretty much all you'll get in terms of character development for the vast majority of them. In fact, even the single actual human relationship that the author explores (between the two main protagonists) is clumsily done - like an alien read a pamphlet entitled "human romances" and then tried to write a Jane Austin. Their 'romance' goes from bad teenage flirting to sickly interdependence in the blink of an eye, and with it, the accompanying change in pace and direction of the story is frankly just farcical. You'll work out the end about two-thirds of the way through and you'll come away wondering how a book that seems so intent on mystifying you with confusing science ends up with such a predictable plot.

Review done and now I can finally bin the thing.

I just finished reading Downtown Owl: A Novel by Chuck Klosterman. I really enjoyed it. If you've spent anytime in a small town you'll definitely recognize the characters in this story.

God is Not Great by Hitchens - Good for the first 2/3, then you kind of get the point and it gets dull. Two chapters of Darwin's Black Box. - Very interesting, but this guy hates atheists. Not atheism - atheists. And he's wrong. Anthem by Rand - Excellent until the end, when she starts doing her thing that she does at the end of her - books. Half of Flatterland - VERY heavy reading, but extremely interesting. The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood - Starts very slowly, but it pick up alot at the halfway point, and is golden from there. Right now I'm reading The Quantum and the Lotus.

BTW, read Oryx and Crake. Atwood did it. Awesome.

Wotak: Just starting this. I hear it's a story about George W. Bush. Edit for huge pic dumbness <span class="post_was_edited">On 2009-01-10 at 00:59:45, Wotak asked to smell your meep</span>

So how far did you get? I couldn't make it through the first few chapters. Utter drivel. It's no wonder the sorry meep couldn't make it as an artist.

Just finished the two Dune prequel trilogies.
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, Dune: The Machine Crusade, and Dune: The Battle Of Corrin. Then Dune: House Atreides, Dune: House Harkonnen, and Dune: House Corrino. The house books were really good, they fill in a lot of "info" about Dune and the back story behind the emperors betrayal of house atreides and the events leading up to Dune. The Butlerian Jihad series was OK, but it was about a book longer than it needed to be and in places it was a bit stupid...The whole story of the titans was a bit silly... Anyway, It was entertaining overall.

I just finished the Song of Ice and Fire series. It was pretty meeping good. Brutal, gritty, adult fantasy that is essentially one big down note. The good guys never win and typically end up brutally slaughtered. It was one of the few series where I actually got mad and stopped reading. Theres a lot of good wit, some meeping, tons of killing, and an engrossing story.

Im almost done with The Monstrous Regiment by Pratchett, which is hilarious if you like British humor and/or have been in the military, and Im going to pick up Night Watch and Hogfather next.

About half of this book reads like Morpheus telling Neo that the Matrix (working 40-hours a week for the man) is an illusion.

If you delete all that, you get a pretty good guide to creating a business which basically runs itself using Internet tools and marketing tricks. Your mileage may vary.

Yep. Never read it, but had absorbed all the references through cultural osmosis. Sure enough, this is the book which launched cyberpunk and all that followed. Oddly, after being compelled to read it, I learned they are in preproduction for the film.

Just finished "The Human Disguise" by James O'Neal which is near-future sci-fi written like a crime novel. It was a pretty good read, but a little too much time describing how the world is different rather than letting the reader figure that out through character actions, dialog, etc.

Mostly through "Cahokia : ancient America's great city on the Mississippi" by Timothy Pauketat - about the great mound-building peoples who inhabited the area around modern-day St. Louis. Very textbook-like in style, not the most exciting read, but interesting.

It was a pretty good read, but a little too much time describing how the world is different rather than letting the reader figure that out through character actions, dialog, etc.

That's why I rarely read scifi. I must have horrible luck, because every time I pick one up I feel like I'm getting a bunch of "cool" futuristic technology shoved down my throat.

Yes, yes. I never read any cyberpunk growing up, and now I'm trying to catch up. Anyone have any suggestions on GOOD stuff?

This was fun, and the ideas around information, memes, religions, franchises and language being viral in nature was interesting.

As novels go, this one was at least 40 percent exposition, which at times was as obvious as having a guy basically get on Wikipedia for two chapters.

re: cyberpunk

i've found guide1,guide2, a list, and two forum posts (one, two) for reference. also a link referenced in one of the forum posts, and a wikipage.

aside from neuromancer and snow crash, i've read (in no real order (from the lists i linked)):

vurt - jeff noon accelerando - charles stross (3/4 done) altered carbon - richard morgan pattern recognition - william gibson the diamond age - neal stephenson cryptonomicon - neal stephenson the philip k meep reader - philip k meep

what's on my wishlist:

distraction - bruce sterling all tomorrow's parties - william gibson schismatrix plus - bruce sterling mirrorshades - anthology the shockwave rider - john brunner arachne - lisa mason atrocity archives - charles stross halting state - charles stross looking glass - james r strickland hardwired - walter j williams when gravity fails - george a effinger software - rudy rucker

i tried to limit these to what was recommended in the above links as well. i like sci-fi in general, so i tried to keep the space opera/hard sci-fi out.

out of what i've read, i'd say that vurt and altered carbon were the weakest even though i enjoyed them both - particularly altered carbon. i guess maybe they're just 'simpler'? i would probably say cryptonomicon and accelerando are the strongest. i might be biased because i'm still reading accelerando, though. pkd is on another level altogether, really, but isn't necessarily cyberpunk as such.

*edit: i also found another two lists, one somewhat small, and one pretty large. i know there's a lot of overlap, going on... the larger list seems to include somewhat tangential stuff i left off my wishlist, like stand on zanzibar - brunner, and across realtime (peace war, etc) - stross. also, perhaps hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world - haruki murakami.

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2009-09-23 at 04:22:42, mundhra asked to smell your meep</span>

Well...meep. This is the meep.

I thought I'd toss in an old favorite. This is one of two or three books the police study from for conducting "interviews". It is an incredibly wise investment if you think you'll be visiting the inside of a station at some point. (Because it's a police manual, there's plenty of pictures and flow charts to keep their little minds focused.)

Lownotes: Well...meep. This is the meep.

Dude, read the Transmetropolitan trades by Ellis, also very much the meep. Imagine Hunter Thompson in the future, with better drugs and a gun that makes people meep against their will.

so far:

ishmael -- good tell no one -- marginal the children's blizzard -- terrible next -- marginal the gunslinger -- marginal riot and remembrance -- good working class war -- good life of pi -- good the giver -- still don't see why it's good snow crash -- marginal house of leaves -- terrible

starting to re-read siddhartha...

Just finished 'Terraforming Earth' jack williamson and 'The Man in the High Castle' Phillip K meep. Both excellent stories.

LORDKAHUNA:

Lownotes: Well...meep. This is the meep.

Dude, read the Transmetropolitan trades by Ellis, also very much the meep. Imagine Hunter Thompson in the future, with better drugs and a gun that makes people meep against their will.

also, lownotes, depending on what aspects of neuromancer/snow crash you really like, you may or may not find cryptonomicon enjoyable. i mean, a lot of cyberpunk deals with the future and has a lowlife/highbrow thing going on. cryptonomicon takes place in present day and WWII era. some of the concepts apply (technology, great-big-world-out-there, etc.). basically, what i'm saying is do research because i don't want to be the giver of 'bad' advice.

I dig the high-tech/low-life stuff, sure, but I think what turns me on most is the transhumanism/singularity tangents these stories take at times.

Lownotes: transhumanism/singularity

accelerando deals with the run-up to the singularity (i like it a lot).

i've read:

a fire upon the deep - vinge (a space opera with singularity overnotes)

singularity/xhuman stuff on my wishlist:

glasshouse - stross (accelrando's universe, sequel?) kiln people - brin rainbows end - vinge across realtime - vinge (peace war + marooned in realtime) postsingular - rucker blood music - bear

altered carbon, which i've mentioned before, involves being able to 're-sleeve' consciousness.

i've heard good stuff about ian m banks' culture books, but never checked them out.

*Stephen King Lisey's Story Duma Key Cell Blaze The Stand (x2)

*Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover Kiss of the Night Night Pleasures Night Embrace One Silent Night Sins of the Night Seize the Night Dance with the Devil Unleash the Night Night Play Devil May Cry Acheron The Dream-Hunter Upon the Midnight Clear Dream Warrior

*Anne Rice Cry to Heaven

*Linda Howard Death Angel

*Stephenie Meyer The Host Twilight New Moon Eclipse Breaking Dawn

I work at a hotel, and the stuff I read there is mostly fluff- nothing so interesting that I ignore people. I have to be able to stop, put it down, and then pick it up and hour later with minimum effort.

Wait wait stop the meeping presses,

Currently reading 'Factoring Humanity' by Robert J Sawyer.

excellent read so far.

This book was so meep good.

As some of you may have noticed, I've got a big brainboner for Clay Shirky.

This book is an attempt to throw down a gauntlet and just come right out and say a real revolution is taking place which will one day be referenced by history books as a time when everything changed akin to when the printing press/car/telephone/computer become part of daily life for much of the world.

The central theme is how transaction costs for certain human activities have dropped close to zero thanks to the organizing power provided by the Internet. As a result, many familiar institutions are no longer needed and will evaporate.

After the first chapter I started taking notes and ended up filling a legal pad.

Here are some of the notes:

"The overall difficulty of organizing is small, but that doesn't matter. Human group behavior is the problem. You couldn't expend the same amount of effort as it took to get men on the moon and get a Flickr group and vice versa."

"When the printing press was invented, scribes spent decades trying to convince those who used their services that they were still needed and important. It took a century or so, but eventually the profession of scribe became the act of calligraphy. The same shift is taking place now between journalists and unlimited perfect copies with instant distribution. Journalism is no longer a profession, but an act. While engaged in the act, one is a journalist. As computer literacy spreads, the professional class of journalism will disappear."

"Social tools don't improve society, they threaten it by fundamentally altering and often destroying the status quo. What was previously impossible becomes possible, which leads to revolution. Technology removes barriers to human behavior which would have blossomed and thrived if been given the opportunity in the past. Social tools do not create collective action, only remove barriers toward it."

"Modern life has raised transaction costs so high that ancient habits of congregation have been defeated. Things that used to happen as a side effect of normal life now take coordination which was difficult until mass acceptance and use of the Internet."

meeping great.

It's pretty simple. It's 10 years after the apocalypse, which is never specified, and there's nothing left to eat.

A man and his son are trying to get to the coast because it has become too cold where they have been scavenging.

meeped up meep ensues.

Cider House Rules I liked but the abortion scene did not deliver. /pun

Just finished Liar's Club and now my family seems very sane A++.

Currently consuming When Rabbit Howls.

Next is Exile

Current

I really have to stop starting new books... I have the rest of the year to finish the 4 I'm reading...

Lownotes: meeping great.

2nd'd

i love his terse writing style. in several of the novel's best segments it seems like he is merely listing images, yet he is able to go into incredible depth.

if you could imagine an author who could speak images --via some sort of sixthsense technology-- this would be the guy.

dae_su: after finishing 'the savage detectives' (referenced above) ive started reading this behemoth: i'm only 100 pages deep and already loving it. bolano seems to be the type of literary elitist who takes his art work very seriously and yet simultaneously realizes how ridiculous he and all of the rest of the literary establishment can be. again, highly recommended.

never followed up on this. finished it in september and i while i truly enjoyed it i can't recommend it to just anyone.

savage detectives was much more concise (although here we are comparing pots and kettles really) and on the whole much more fun to read.

i recommend reading some of bolano's other works like detectives and if you enjoy those and you want to explore the depths of the human soul (lynchian carnival sideshow freaks and all) for 900 pages, then give this one a whirl.

Playboy

This was a great book which touched on dozens of scientific and philosophical principles in order to make its case. The tone is literary and poetic, but with a big swath of subversive and scientific swagger.

As the title suggests, the central theme in the book is how human desires have driven evolution through artificial selection - but plants have had an equal say in this process as humans have, because for both parties the process has been unconscious.

Four desires are focused on - sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control. In turn, four plants are offered up as examples of those qualities embodied - apple trees, tulips, cannabis and potato bushes.

He argues that artificial selection in these four cases was as unconscious on our part as the flitting from flower to flower by bumblebees. So, as plants altered their form and function to meet the new selective pressures of unconscious human desires, they have in turn affected our culture and behavior to better survive.

At this point, thousands of years into the process, we can't tell whether the apple has changed us more or we the apple.

The other theme, is Dionysian chaos versus Apollonian control, which he approaches from every possible angle. Apollonian control is about homogenization, order, prediction, archetypes, reduction, artifice. Dionysian chaos is about disorder, random chance, mutations, diversity, abandon, indulgence, nature, the present.

He argues any attempt to bring control to a single variable in a natural system only results in more variables to which disorder and entropy will reign. Thus, all control is partial, temporary and largely illusory. Some farmers accept this and use strategies like crop rotation, variety and secondary crops which complement their main crops with beneficial insects and such. Other farmers try to sustain monocultures, which is the ultimate attempt at order among chaos, and must depend on chemicals or genetic tampering to defend encroaching disorder. Farmers who embrace the chaos are usually far more successful and less beholding to corporations, but can't match the production or homogeny necessary to supply McDonald's.

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2009-12-28 at 15:55:14, Lownotes asked to smell your meep</span>

dae_su:

Lownotes: meeping great.

2nd'd

i love his terse writing style. in several of the novel's best segments it seems like he is merely listing images, yet he is able to go into incredible depth.

if you could imagine an author who could speak images --via some sort of sixthsense technology-- this would be the guy.

I just ordered this based on linkswarm recommendations.

Just remembered Clifford Simak's City -- one of the best scifi books I've ever read. Starts off slow and a bit unmomentous, but give it your time.

Lownotes: meeping great.

Read this today. ''meeping great'' is a pretty damned good description. I couldn't put it down and I'm kind of bummed that it was so short.

Wotak:

Lownotes: meeping great.

Read this today. ''meeping great'' is a pretty damned good description. I couldn't put it down and I'm kind of bummed that it was so short.

I found it lacking. It was on a three month waiting list at my local biblio, so I bought a copy at Costco for 8 bones. I liked the story, but it needed much more meat for the tooth.

Yep. Never read it, but had absorbed all the references through cultural osmosis. Sure enough, this is the book which launched cyberpunk and all that followed. Oddly, after being compelled to read it, I learned they are in preproduction for the film.

inspired by the lengthy cyberpunk discussion in this forum, i decided to pick this one up. previously the only gibson i had read was johnny mnemonic way back in eng. 101 and i was enthused to see molly millions carried over from the short story to the novel.

nueromancer definitely delivers, but as amazingly prophetic as this book was, i'm not sure i'll be returning to the genre anytime soon. my personal reading queue is too long to warrant any further adventures in cyberpunk. however, i have heard that stephenson's most recent work anathem is incredible.

I read a couple of books late last year:

(I'm a huge Kevin Smith meep)

I just finished re-reading these books. It's something I like to do every so often.

And I am currently reading the latest from Brown. So far, so good.

_{On 2010-01-05 at 20:09:00, dent asked to smell your meep}

dae_su: nueromancer definitely delivers, but as amazingly prophetic as this book was, i'm not sure i'll be returning to the genre anytime soon. my personal reading queue is too long to warrant any further adventures in cyberpunk. however, i have heard that stephenson's most recent work anathem is incredible.

As a genre, cyberpunk tends to be a bit cute, as opposed to rigorous, which always surprises me, since it's supposed to be all about science. It often ends up being more like science-fantasy. On the other hand, doing a hard-science cyberpunk might read like a manual from the year 2025.

Gibson, though, is usually awesome, regardless of his subject.

Three Cups Of Tea was probably my favorite read. I read 3-4 books per week, but most don't stand out.

vasudeva: It often ends up being more like science-fantasy. On the other hand, doing a hard-science cyberpunk might read like a manual from the year 2025.

agreed but hey, why not?

Don't read as much as I used to.
Last three all historical novels.
"Pulitzer Prize winning Epic Masterpiece"
Who the meep proofread and edited this thing?
And found a book by a woman author that was at least readable:

i like this thread, it has yielded many fruits for me - so is it time to start a 2010 forum or just time to retitle this one?