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I enjoyed Rivers Of London & have Moon over Soho to read as well so i look forward to reading your thoughts on these two. Train journeys are a great opportunity to get a sizable chunk of reading done aren't they i always take my book with me if i have an appointment so never mind having to wait :smile:

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They are both pretty easy reads and I like the characters and the amount of detail Aaronovitch puts into the books.

 

Also, without giving anything away, I think I'd say Moon Over Soho is a better plotted book than Rivers of London.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Two down, this man's on a roll . . .

 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Volume 1, by Hayao Miyazaki. I've been meaning to buy and read this for years, but as I feared I now want to get the other six volumes . . . So much for saving money in 2013.

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Two down, this man's on a roll . . .

 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Volume 1, by Hayao Miyazaki. I've been meaning to buy and read this for years, but as I feared I now want to get the other six volumes . . . So much for saving money in 2013.

This sounds good! I assume you have seen the film? I really like the film, is the book following the same storyline?

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I have seen the film, several times, and I got the Blu-ray version for Christmas.

 

This first graphic novel does stick quite closely to the film, but there are some differences (Nausicaä can hear the ohmu in her mind, for example). It get's quite a way through though, so I'm guessing there may be more content in later volumes that isn't in the film.

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I've asked my boyfriend if he knew the books and it turns out he's got them all XD (he may have told me about them before but I may have forgotten :blush2:). He likes them, so I'm definately going to borrow them too :). He says there is indeed content in later volumes that isn't in the film.

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I started The Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling this evening; steam-punk computers in ole London Town. Could be interesting . . .

 

This book does look interesting! I can't wait to hear what you think of it.

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^ I'm struggling with this at the moment. I'm about 40/50 pages in and every time I pick it up and start reading I feel very tired very quickly. It could be the small print size, it could be that I need to get to bed earlier, but I'd put my money on it being dishwater dull at the moment!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just under a quarter of the way through this now. I've been a bit busy over the last couple of weeks, but I've also had no enthusiasm for this as well. The first chapter (or Iteration as they are called) dragged by, with no discernible plot being developed, but the second chapter did start to build a plot and has proved to be more interesting.

 

I've been tempted to put this down and read something else, but I know that if I do that I probably won't pick it up again so I'm making myself stick with it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Still slogging my way through The Difference Engine; it's getting a bit daft now (my reading, not the book) but I refuse to give in despite having little mojo to finish it!

A golden opportunity to get through a section of it was lost yesterday when 2 hours of prime train travel reading time was lost talking to a colleague about a customer we had just been to visit.

 

I will read more tonight, but I think a weekend of reading is in order to clear this and get me on to something more interesting.

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The Difference Engine
by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling


London, 1855; the dawn of the computer age. Steam-driven Babbage Engines power an industrial revolution that is governed by industrial radicals and scientists, but these are uncertain times.  Dissident groups looking to overthrow the government of The Great Orator, Lord Byron conspire with foreign powers to bring about social revolution. Arrayed against the forces of skulduggery are Edward Mallory, palaeontologist and part time pugilist; Sybil Gerard, a fallen woman brought low by a bounder and Laurence Oliphant, a syphilitic journalist come secret agent.
 

(Ha! I think I may just have managed to make the book sound a dozen times more interesting than it actually is!).
 

Playing fast and loose with historical fact, Gibson and Sterling paint a vivid portrait of a Steampunk Victorian London that never was, where giant mechanical computers govern the lives of all. Over three interconnecting stories the plotting of a group of dissidents unfolds, told through the eyes of three very different but colourfully written people.
 

I really like books that paint a different view of the world we live in, whether they be alternate histories or end of the world stories, but this one failed to grab me from the outset. The book is well written; the society it describes could have rolled straight off the pages of a H G Well’s novel; interesting characters and creations abound and yet, for all of this, the book is an empty shell because you never really have a clear idea of what is going on or why. Characters lurch from one event to another, but you never really feel you have a handle on what is going on and I can't help but feel that what could have been a really good allegory for the world we live in today falls flat in the face of a plot that struggles to ever really get going.
 

Had it been more cohesive as a story I think it would have been a truly great book but as it is, it is distinctly less than the sum of its parts, which is a pity.
 

Not one I can recommend.
 

if you are after an alternate history novel though, try the much better Pavane, by Keith Roberts, or Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore.

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Neuromancer is the first one I tried because it was a semi-cult classic at the time, so I figured it must be good. I gave up on it, and fast forward a few years and I attempted Spook Country, but nope, I had no joy with that one either. The premise sounds interesting, but it's just too much of a slog to get through.

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Neuromancer is the first one I tried because it was a semi-cult classic at the time, so I figured it must be good. I gave up on it, and fast forward a few years and I attempted Spook Country, but nope, I had no joy with that one either. The premise sounds interesting, but it's just too much of a slog to get through.

 

I must admit that I've been meaning to read Neuromancer for a number of years now, but this has put me off!

 

It's a few years since I read Neuromancer, but I loved it and it is one of my favourite books - I have read it several times and hope to get round to reading it again!  I liked the sound of The Difference Engine, I will have to decide whether to give it a go too. :)

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