Books

[Kolbex]

Holy shit, you guys, I am rereading Declare, and it's even better than I remembered. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and do so.

[biffpow]

Library only has it as an audio book, so I'll have to look for that one at the book stores. Sounds great, though--thanks for the recommendation. Looks like Powers has a newish one out too that sounds intriguing. Medusa's Web http://www.amazon.com/Medusas-Web-Novel ... B00WQZG44I

Hmm, no idea how to embed that link within the title words. I suck.

Currently reading The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrck Ness and liking it. While the apocalypse is being fought against by the hipster kids, the regular kids get to be the main characters and deal with their sort of normal lives. I'm describing it badly. It's a neat book so far.

[OBollocks]

Medusa's Web is really quite good, and it's connected to the rest of Powers' mythos, so it's even better if you've read his other connected works.

[SpiceTheCat]

For some reason (*) I've just - as in in the last month - ploughed through 90% of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. I originally read Cryoburn when it was part of the Hugo pack and wasn't especially taken with it, but I've enjoyed the backlist binge. It's a huge series of interlinked books with a range of styles, from full-on space opera, to whodunnits (the one in future London is notable), to essentially romance novels with a bit of SF, and tones from surprisingly bleak to remarkably funny. I think I've binged sufficiently to stop for now without needing to complete the series.

*because Jo Walton writes about them brilliantly in What Makes This Book So Good?

[OBollocks]

Europe at Midnight, Dave Hutchinson. Pocket universes by way of le Carre, a companion work to Europe in Autumn. The Campus, a university-country weakened by revolution, discovers it has a strange semipermeable border with a fragmented Europe ravaged by disease. Sparsely written, doesn't hold your hand.

[Sjeng]

Declare seems down my alley.
Thanks for the tip, Kolbex.

I ordered it in dutch and gonna start it as soon as I finish the trilogy I am currently reading, which is Antony Ryan's "Raven's Shadow" Only finished the first one, but is quite good.

[Kolbex]

Finished Declare, mmm, so good.

Currently reading Celestial Matters. Writing is pretty workmanlike, but the premise (Aristotelian physics is the way things really are) is interesting enough to keep me going for now.

Can't remember if I mentioned KOP in the previous incarnation of this thread, but it's been on my mind a lot even if I'm not currently (re)reading it. I visited the island of Roatan with my girlfriend last year (for reasons), and man, this book was foremost in my mind most of the trip, especially when the cruise ships came to town. Good hardboiled SF. The sequels are less good, but don't miss this one.

[OBollocks]

Natural History, Justina Robson. Some nice hard SF from a great writer who doesn't write enough to suit me. Unrest amongst biologically engineered life, standard humans viewed as anachronisms by same, uncomfortable race relations, Form versus Function debates, and the tipping point in the form of an alien substance that promises everything to everyone.

[OBollocks]

https://storybundle.com/games - there's a fairly ridiculous deal on for Boss Fight Books. You can get their entire first season of titles for $15. They cover Baldur's Gate II, Metal Gear Solid, Jagged Alliance 2, Galaga, Earthbound, Shadow of the Colossus, and several others. Well worth it.

[SpiceTheCat]

A Burglar's Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame, about the peculiar intersection of crime and architecture.The book's central thesis is that cities and architecture spawn new and ingenious crimes which use buldings and their quirks in unexpected ways. The individual chapters - with the LA police helicopter divsion, with hobbyist lockpickers, and the builder of panic rooms, for example, don't quite tie into this, but it's well worth reading, especially for the thoughts of a professional burglar and the musings on the heist movie genre as the most architectural of films. There's a nice chapter on building design in games.

In a happy coincidence, I was playing Invisible Inc while reading the part about a thief who monitored, and ultimately influenced, the routine movements of the staff and security in a store to produce the space and time to pull off a theft, just as I was doing more or less exactly that in the final level. Worth a read, if only for the different view you'll take of the building next time you walk down the street.