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

Reading "Spoken Here" by Mark Abley, subtitled something like travels among threatened languages. He discusses the range and diversity of languages around the world, reflecting the cultures that spawned them and now hanging on to varying extent among communities living very different lives to their ancestors, surrounded by majority languages. A mostly unsentimental, thought-provoking book that makes me wish I'd paid more attention to the Irish my father tried to teach me as a child.

Edward, thanks for the tip off about the Kurt Vonnegut interview last night. Made me want to look out my copy of Slaughterhouse 5, if only I could remember which box it's in. So it goes.

I need to get "Spoken here"! It was on my list last year, what happened? I am glad it is good...

Finally got my mitts on an Ian M Banks book. Now reading Look to Windward

Ian M Banks books, great stuff. Though it seems to take me longer to get through his books than anyone else I've read.

Is the meaning of Liff any good!!!

please try not to be too biased

The Meaning of Liff is good fun. More a book to dip in to than read from cover to cover, though.

hehehe!!! a reply from his holiness!!

I feel so honoured!!

Currently reading The great and secret show by Clive Barker

>> The Meaning of Liff is good fun. More a book to dip in to than read from cover to cover, though. <<

Actually, I found it more or less unputdownable! I *had* to get to the end! Then read the index!!!

Finished one Tom Holt (Little People) and almost finished another (The Portable Door). I've had some long train journeys this weekend! . Both very, er, Holtish, I guess. Which is a good thing, but it's the same as reading lots of Pratchett in a row...

RF

I am currently also reading Sun Tzu's "Art of War" this is a kinda motivational excerise in work.....

i work in a bank..... I won't tell you which one.. but all the operational units have been set this book to read.............

a few of us recently got samurai swords........................

happy banking

I have just finished "The Floating Book" by Michelle Lovric. If the acknowledgements are anything to go by, she did loads of research, and her description of Speyer is certainly authentic. She spent a long time in Speyer (used to be my home town, I still live near) and writes very warmly of it.

Most people may know Venice better, which is where most of the story takes place. The atmosphere is captured and you can imagine Donna Leon (who, like Michelle Lovric, actually lives there) really relishing the detail in this book.

I recommend the book therefore for its historical authenticity, its insight into Venetian life in the 15th Century, for the details of the characters, and its readability. As well as for a little bit of mystery, and some Roman history. Not necessarily for the unsavoury bits, but that was everyday stuff in those days (torture, prostitution, public executions). She vividly describes smells - which is something that is not touched on so often, and would probably be what hit us most if we were transported to the Middle Ages.



And before that I read Anne Tyler's "The Amateur Marriage". She is so brilliant, you wonder how she can portray so many characters in such depth - as well as catching various microcosms created within certain eras and communities (Baptist 60s community in Saint Maybe; Polish Catholic community here - from just before the war to the present day)

Just picked up both of those books when I was in England, not really knowing where to start when it came to buying books. Except that I already knew and loved Anne Tyler.

I enjoy Dan Brown, just for the hell of it. His men are real machos, though, think a lot of themselves - you're right, Lochangel! Did you know that you could do a guided tour in Paris, following the plot of the Da Vinci code? You can probably follow the Angels and Demons plot in Rome, too. (This was called "Illuminati" in Germany and, if anything, did even better - maybe because of the name. It certainly had me riveted, even though I read it in the German translation, because my husband had got it for holiday reading.)

I am reading "The Trouble with Science" by Robin Dunbar. Despite the title, it is more of an affirmation of science. It covers some of the difficulties of gaining knowledge about things and common misconceptions about science. It is a scholarly book, definitely not light reading.

>> I enjoy Dan Brown, just for the hell of it. His men are real machos, though, think a lot of themselves <<

Are you claiming to actually be able to spot a character trait in a Dan Brown character???

RF

The "Kapellekensbaan" by the Flemish writer Louis Paul Boon. He wrote the book in 1954 in dialect and without using interpunction or capital letters for names, like fangog (Van Gogh) tministerie (tministery) etc.
It's a book about a little girl, Ondine, who grows up at a hamlet called 'termuren', intheyeareigteenhunderdandsomany. It's also about writing the book and discussing it with his neighbours, janjanssen, dagbladdichter (poetandjournalist), monsieur colson of tministery, tippetootje, artist, etc.

Does anyone know it?

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card from the wonderful Ender's series

I'm currently starting William Gibson's latest (I think!), "Pattern Recognition", about a "coolhunter", a woman who spots culture trends, and is obsessed with a filmmaker who posts snippets of a film on the internet which has snared the netizens' attention (think video version of blogging, in a way ) Pretty good, so far!

Also, am about to start Michael Shermer's "Science Friction", a book about science, what it is and isn't, and how it gets twisted in presentation by fiction writers (think Dan Brown; also, Intelligent Design as a plot device parading as fact...)

SC

I just found out today, my reserve on 'Spoken Here' has come in - to another branch. In record time, two days!

I'm really enjoying Deep Secret by Diane Wynne Jones just now. Comedy fantasy is great!

>>I am currently also reading Sun Tzu's "Art of War" this is a kinda motivational excerise in work.....i work in a bank.....

What a wunch of....

I know this isn't really the place to ask, but I'm sure I saw discussion of it here...

looking for the title and author of a book about a time traveller who went back, stepped on a bug and changed the course of history.

for anyone who can help...

since I'm here: The Adventure of English is fab, but going slowly (bedtime book and I'm ill and too tired to read in bed)

Lady Chatterley's Lover is as fantastic as I remembered. But more depressing than I remembered. And I certainly didn't remember that the gamekeeper's name is Oliver. I should pay more attention, obviously