Raven

The plot and the characterisation, probably.

I say, it is a shade warm outside...

I haven't read these since I was a teenager. I don't really have a problem with counting them, but I still think I should have read more novels than the four I have so far this year. I have started another that I am reading in parallel with these, however!

Found my old Asterix books this weekend. Feels a bit of a cheat to list them, but they are books that I have read, so...

Really feels like the first day of Sprummer* today. *It's too late for the first day of Spring, too early for the first day of Summer.

^ And again.

^ And again.

I'm older than I was the last time I posted in this thread.

Read 7 books so far this year (a point I didn't reach until October last year!). For anyone who is interested, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is probably one of the best Haruki Murakami I've read! I might get around to doing a review at some point but, you know, life etc.

*Bump* xkcd

I re-read books quite regularly. Some, like The Day of the Triffids and The War of the Worlds, I have read over over ten times each over the last thirty years and I'm still finding things I missed the first time around.

If you think of the entire series as one story, then the opening two-parter is effectively the cold opening before the title credits roll. The second half of the series is undeniably better than the first, and the series as a whole definitely isn't perfect, but I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next.

A Brief History of Time is £1.99 in the UK at the mo (Kindle deal of the day). You have 85 minutes to get a copy!

Amazon have a Windows Kindle program you can read to read their e-books on a PC.

Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett

I finished re-reading Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters last night. I'm definitely of the opinion that early Pratchett is more enjoyable than his later works (good though they are). There's just something about their lack of polish that makes them more enjoyable.

Sad to see him go, but there was a great story doing the rounds today on Twitter... Hawking once did an interview for Newsnight and during the prep one of the producers, who was doing the setup, unplugged a lead only to see Hawking slump forward in his chair. Fearing he had disconnected something vital, the chap ran from the room only to return with help to find Hawking very much alive and laughing.

Factotum, by Charles Bukowski

Pff... You leave your thread alone for a week or so and look what riff-raff walks in... (Hullo!). In answer to your question, yes and no... The story is told through the eyes of a different character than the original, which allows Baxter to side-step having to replicate Wells writing style exactly. That works well for the most part, but it falls over when he drops in phrases/lines from the original novel not as quotes - because the original book is a published work within this story - but as part of the new character's narration. I found it rather jarring, to be honest, and a bit of an odd way of invoking the feel of the original (which I don't think this book does very well). Overall, I wasn't that taken with the book. It suffers from the same kind of escalation that very few sequels manage to carry off (to my mind this is more Independence Day 2 than Aliens, although that may be a bit of a harsh parallel to draw!). It's certainly from the "More is better!" school of story telling. Also, the way the narrator is kept at the center of the story is terribly contrived, and the book takes forever to get going. There are some good ideas in the book though, and the use of contemporary real life people (such as Churchill) is interesting. I also liked a section where events are told through the eyes of several different people around the world, but it's all too patchy and feels like a bag of ideas loosely held together by the main narrative. I re-read War of the Worlds in preparation for reading this and where Well's original is concise and beautifully written, this is almost the exact opposite. I did write up a review when I finished it, but wasn't happy with it so I didn't post it. Perhaps I should look at it again and have another go, but the above pretty much sums up my feelings about the book. If I were being charitable, I'd give it 3/5, and wouldn't really go out of my way to recommend it (my sister loved it, however, but she married a Scotsman and lives in Wales so, like, how good is her judgement?).

Another one for Thor Ragnarok. The humour was a little over-egged in places, but it was still an enjoyable ole romp. I've been falling for half an hour...

Next book, Lies Sleeping, is out on Nov. 6th! Hurrah!

Thankfully. Walked into town tonight and didn't slip once. Hurrah!

You rebel... Did you enjoy The Hanging Tree? Have you read more of the graphic novels?

Super 8 (or Stranger Things, The Movie). Abrams does a good job of ET goes to the Dark Side..

Just bought part three of Paul Cornell's Shadow Police series, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes, for £1.19 (it's one of the sci-fi fantasy novels on offer this month that I referred to above!).