h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Both sound very interesting, psychocandy...

The rankin book sounds great! My son likes him...

The Illiad.

I wonder why they bothered with the armies and didn't just stage a competition to see who was the mightiest in prayer since the gods control everything anyway.

Just finished Deathstalker Coda by Simon Green
Now reading Myth-ing Link by Robert Aspirin

Bridge for complete beginners by Paul Mendelson.

"Link" by Walt Becker - about paleontologists who find out that homo sapiens comes from aliens who mated with the local homo erectus.

Apparently this theory would solve a lot of mysteries, but the book misses the mark. Was obviously written with the sole intent of making a film of it.

And the protagonists are called Jack and Samantha - what a pathetic attempt at an allusion.

The whole thing doesn't come off - you know right from the start that somehow at the end all the proof is going to have to blow up and disappear for good, leaving the world as it was.

Mao Tse-Tung on Guerilla Warfare by Samuel B. Griffith.
I read it cause I was doing an essay on why he won the Chinese Civil War in 1949. If your interested in the history of guerilla warfare then this book is a good summary and also is an insight into Mao starting vision of China was.

The Magus by John Fowles

hmm, someone explained it to me, as I kinda half guess/assummed, it was a crappy mathmatical referenece to pieces of eight. FFS terry, why make a simple joke so complex?

Just finished rereading 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthrophists', still 1 of my favourites and started on 'Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia' by Orlando Figes, but not getting on with it so far. The author makes some big generalisations which I keep wanting to check up on.

What did you think of 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists', Blackberry? We 'did' it at University, but I don't remember it very well...

The Russian book sounds interesting.
I've just finished (re)reading Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic (a cheap knock-off omnibus edition full of regrettable typos. )

its still 1 of my favourite books
very funny and moving in parts IMO

The book on Russia contains some dodgey claims

eg 'In every Russian aristocrat, however European he may have become, there was a discreet and instinctive empathy with the customs and beliefs, the habits and the rythems of Russian peasant life.'

that must be why whenever there was a peasant revolt they used to torch the nobles estates

"All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye" by Chris Brookmyre. Fantastic, as expected. It has interrupted 'Backroom Boys' by Francis Spufford which is also excellent but has fewer guns.

Mao Tse-Tung: I've just pre-ordered the new biography by Jung Chang for my wife, out early June (we both read and loved Wild Swans recently - and she's got heavily into Chinese history).

For more on guerilla warfare - Che Guevara's diaries are worth a read. He was big into 'self criticism' and his African Diaries are an object lesson in how *not* to stage a revolution.

I'm currently reading 'The Best Awful' by Carrie Fisher. I think she's a talented writer - very witty and perceptive. I recently read a comment about Star Wars bemoaning the fact that the dialogue was so awful "...a pity, because it turned out that they had a good writer on the set." (Harrison Ford said "You can type this s**t, George, but you sure as hell can't say it!")

"A Monk Swimming" by Malachy McCourt an Irish person who moved to New York and who seemed to have become a minor celebrity there(around late 1950s). No guns (yet). Seems to be a long string of recollections about just how amazingly drunk he got, where, with whom but never really why. All of this told in a strange relaxed PG Wodehousian kind of style. Some of the anecdotes and turns of phrase are quite hilarious.

The "no guns" bit was reference to Jim Lynn's post above.

<>

I must add it to my list, and re-read it, Blackberry...

The list is getting long!

"KOKODA" By Peter Fitzsimmons
an awe inspiring book if thier ever was one,
accurately tells the story of the defence of Australia in New Guinea
during WW2 from ythe Japanese even though the Aussies were out numbered
6 - 1 and were mostly made up of untrained reservists.

Cheers

Iain Banks - A Song of Stone.

One of his least good ones, is it not? Although granted that it's better than The Business, Dead Air...or the mis-spellt Whit (the initial letter is a typo, surely?).

Some years, Banks just dashes off a piece of pap to meet his deadline. I don't think that's quite the case with Song of Stone. I get the feeling it was a failed attempt to do something more literary. Which he *can* do: The Wasp Factory is a brilliant novel, and The Bridge was quite a daring experiment.

On the whole though - I'm not sure why I keep reading him.

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