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

Well I've only read Idoru and I thoroughly enjoyed that. I took it to read on a holiday once and had finished it by the time I stepped off the plane at my arrival airport! Just couldn't stop until I'd got to the end. Should I have read Neuromancer first? I must get round to it since so many people recommend it.

*Gets to the end of the thread, squirms around awkwardly while trying to restrict list of desert island books, spills coffee and spreads donut crumbs all over the sofa. Oops *
Oh and that list of books (but it'd be different tomorrow!)
1. H2G2 (goes without saying)
2. Lord of the Rings (ditto)
3. Ursula Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
4. Pratchett - can I only have one? Make it Wyrd Sisters
5. Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
6. Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
7. Boccaccio - Decameron
8. Robert Graves - Selected Poems
9. Beowulf - preferably Seamus Heaney's new translation
10. James Joyce - Ulysses

Oh and I'd almost certainly have included Vonnegut's 'Sirens of Titan' if Eulogy hadn't brought it already (hey nobody said we weren't all stranded on this desert island together !)

Read Neuromanceror you will die. This is the book that brought
the term "cyberspace" into existence.

I vote that we have a copy of each book listed on the book nook communal shelves, plus the full OED, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
and a nice illuminated globe.

Lil

wow ... great answers -- okay, here is my list ...

1. Football: its a funny ol' game. By Kevin Keagan
2. Loving Luke! (about Luke Perry)- by Tiffy and Bonnie Jones
3. My Amazingly Incredible Life by Richard Branson
4. The Dead Birds in the Stagnant Pond - by Paula Nanct Milstone Jennings
5. The Big Book of Genital Electrocution - by Red Peter
6. The Junior Colour Encyclopeadia of Space - by I. M. Thick
7. The Cliff Notes 81 page Ultra Complete Works of Bill Shakespeare
8. Pilgram's Progress by Paul Bunyan
9. The Dennis the Menace Anthology
10. 42 Different Ways to Cook Other Guide Researchers - by Ford Prefect

Phew!! At least you didn't go for:
*How to skin a Post.Researcher.Managing.Editor*
thanx
shazzPRME

Beeble, how could you forget the autobiography of
Donald Trump?

You sick and twisted man.

Just... no self-help books. Please.

Lil

Hee Hee.

Hi. I need Coffee! I am so glad to find the Cafe. Who is the artist? Very nice work.

Sits back with a large double double.
I'm not reading anything at the moment. Any suggestions? I will read just about anything but am partial to supernatural thrillers and historical fiction or anything that challenges the mind. I'm so desperate for reading material that I borrowed a book from a friend's 12 year old daughter. It was a cute little story about a rather mischievous Scottish spirit called "The Boggart".

Little Grey Men?..Can't remember the author though ;-(
shazzPRME

Thanks, I'll look for it.

shazzPRME

The coffee was great. Gotta go.

Check the thread in this forum called "A Note from the
Interior Decorator" .

Lil

MY thoughts on the whole Willy Gibson book type situation:

Neuromancer - must read ! drop all other books and read it.
i'v just finished Virtual Light, it was ok, but no where near as good as Neuro. And i'm half way through Idoru, again as good VL, but not as good as Neuro. and then there is Count Zero, which is almost as good as Neuro but not quite!
Is that clear? Good, good.

I was going to update the "what I've read recently" list, but a quick look shows that the new additions are "Programmers Guide to the Win32 API" and a Polish-English (and v.v.) dictionary.

I recommend both but only if you have a very specific need

*chokes on donut*

Well, that's what you call a vertical market, innit.

You can't just drop that thought in passing, Duncan. Why are you writing Windows apps in Polish?

*stage aside* Beeble, quick, start Book Club 6!

Actually, my work-related reading might seem pretty strange to some...

Lil

I've just finished a few books over Christmas. I bought a four book compilation of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Quartet. I'm glas I bought it as four books because only two of the were really good the first one (A Wizard of Earthsea, I think) and the Third (The Farthest Shore). Also Betrayal at Krondor by Feist and Fifth Elephant by Pratchett

I got a compilation book a few years ago with the intention of expanding my fantasy and sci-fi reading. Le Guin was one of the authors but the next one I'm thinking of is Steven Donaldson. Are there any reccomendations to others in a similar vein?

I have discovered that my Polish dictionary doesn't have the equivalent of "database" in it. I can only hope my Polish users (who I am going out to see the week after next, hence the odd reading matter) speak better English than I do Polish. I therefore downgrade it from "recommended" to "occaisionally useful".

I think the book club needs to have categories. I'm not an avid SF fan as a rule - only the more humourous side - hence HH etc. Perhaps a clever net person could mix this with the "Dewey decimal" forum entry and give us a library of recomendations?

As an interesting ("I'll be the judge of that", I hear you cry) aside, a quick sum shows that Polish has 144 times as many words which start with Z than English does...I must remember not to play them at scrabble.

Halt!

Cease you forum entering activities and procede orderly to the new forum!!

http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?forum=29359&thread=35254

That will be all.