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

Running books in parallel again -

The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson,
Pooh and the Philosophers,
and Homer's Odyssey, waiting to be picked up.

Just finished "Gods Behaving Badly". It was cute and was worth what I paid for it used.

I guess I'll start "Brideshead Revisited" next.

I must re-read Brideshead (revisit it you might say) It was the first Waugh I read and I had the preconception that it would be serious, dramatic &c. It is those things but, having now read some of Waugh's earlier works, I wonder if I missed a whole lot of humour in Brideshead. Maybe I didn't but I must read it again. Let me know what you think about it PC

Having caught bits of Brideshead on TV, I must get the book - and the DVDs! But I've already got over 200 books waiting to be read!

Note to self: Read more and spend less time on the computer!

Well I'm continuing with Crap at the Environment, which is interesting and amusing, but not world-changingly great. Also reading a bridge book, which no-one else here is likely to be interested in.

I wish I knew how to play bridge. Would reading a book about it help me learn to play? I'd be interested in it then.

I've never seen "Brideshead" but if I like the book enough maybe I'll check it out at some point. The only thing that's stopped me from buying the book till now was that I'm funny about buying movie tie-ins (I normally won't) and I couldn't find any other edition that didn't cost a fortune. I've settled for the tie-in edition because it was only $4.50.

My unread books pile is catching up to yours, Cheerful Dragon. 64 books I've bought for myself, plus at least three dozen belonging to my better half that I haven't gotten to read yet.

It's not a beginner's book, sorry. Reading a book could help you learn to play, but there's no substitute for actually playing it.

Maybe I should give bridge a go sometime, I've a number of friends who play quite seriously but I've never tried to learn. I generally prefer board games to card games.

We've just put up a new bookcase and I discovered lots of books I've not read as we loaded it from the piles of books lying around. So I'm just starting Laurie Lee's "Cider with Rosie" - must have been hidden in a pile for years and I'd completely forgotten about it.

I'm working my way through the Bolitho books I inherited. I know I've read a few of them, but I can't remember which so I'll have to read them all from the start. Just finishing Stand Into Danger, then I'll start In Gallant Company.

Usborne book of Polar Explorations so its a children's book but they make good reads.

The Sea for Breakfast by Lilian Beckwith. It's an ancient tome (mine is from 1977 but it was published at the beginning of the 60s I think)

About life in a croft on a Scottish isle (not sure which one). I think this is the 2nd of a series, but it's hilarious. Puts me in mind of One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens.

At the present, I'm reading The Butt by Will Self & also thumbing through Using Microsoft Office, Home & Student by Bott & Leonhard.

I iz mostly reading "Necrosphere" by Robert Rankin, having finished "Blood sucking Fiends" by Christopher Moore.

I appear to be on a humour book trip. I wonder if Stephen Walker has put anything out lately.

Not according to google he doesn't, but there is another installment from the Accomplice series by Steve Aylett I haven't read - must get that.

I've been reading 'Matter', SF by Iain M Banks. It's ok, but no more than that. The guy really is on auto-pilot these days.

Also have two Aubrey/Maturin novels waiting to be read. I think there are only two more after these ones. They really are wonderful books. Apart from writing like an expert on history, sailing ships and tactics, and espionage and politics, Patrick O'Brian also is an expert on people. The blurbs say they're the best historical novels of all time, and I'd love to read better.

I'm on the sci-fi too: Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton. I'm impressed at the believable universe of the nearish future (a couple of hundred years hence) and characters. The book's huge so the plot's only just beginning, but I'm intrigued as to how the different strands will fit together.

>> 've been reading 'Matter', SF by Iain M Banks. It's ok, but no more than that. The guy really is on auto-pilot these days. <<

Yeah, I agree, I'm gonna stop buying his books the minute they're published. The last few (well, going back to Dead Air and Look To Windward) have been disappointing.

I just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. A lot of stuff happens, without anything ever really happening. Much is left unresolved or unexplained. Yes, it's atmospheric, and I'm sure well-researched...but it doesn't really add up.

I'm not really sure what to make of Kazuo Ishiguro. The only book that I've really understood ("enjoyed" would be the wrong description, I think) is Never Let Me Go. What do others think?

RF

Never read any of his - but I have one somewhere way down in the "to be read pile" (oh yes, Never Let Me Go - did he win a prize for that?)

I've just started Redcoat by Bernard Cornwell. It seems it's a standalone - amazing.

Cornwell had planned a Butlins series but the interest wasn't there! Sorry, couldn't resist

Buried For Pleasure- Edmund Crispin

Butlins

Bagpuss :

"I'm on the sci-fi too: Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton. I'm impressed at the believable universe of the nearish future (a couple of hundred years hence) and characters. The book's huge so the plot's only just beginning, but I'm intrigued as to how the different strands will fit together."

Pandora's Star is only the first half of the story. The second half is "Judas Unchained" All in it's a good story.

I've not long finished "The Dreaming Void" by the same author, set in the same universe a couple of thousand years later.