vodkafan

Ah goody

Is it Ok to jump in? It seems like a good idea as my pedestrian career started last week. These first 2/3 weeks I am just getting my body used to the workload , the distance is fixed (the distance from work to home) so my target will be eventually to cut down the time and advance from walking to running. Week 1 tuesday 13 walk 5 miles 60 press ups 60 situp full of energy wednesday 14 walk 5 miles Thursday 15 walk 5 miles Tired feet hurt Friday 16 walk 5 miles Raining. Somebody threw an orange at me from a car Saturday 17 walk 5 miles Time taken is between 1 hour 15 minutes and 1 hour 25 (on my tired day)

Is that a comedy?

Hi Tim no. But if I like this one I will as they are easily found secondhand

Hi all I am back but not getting much forum time. Still reading. Not bought any more books this week at least!

I am definitely a Gaiman fan! I have read Stardust, American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard Book so far. I do like the fact he seems a nice guy and approachable too.

I learned Bildungsroman . It means a Coming of age novel like Jane Eyre or Great Expectations. What a lovely word! just wondering how I can incorporate that into my speech somehow every day at least once.

Finished A Plague Of Angels and started The Martians but have given it up after reading 3 stories . Don't think I would be interested in the original trilogy.

I am very much enjoying the Sheri S. Tepper book A Plague Of Angels . It is the sort of fantasy I like, which is to say, actually SF in disguise; although it has dragons, trolls and ogres I suspect these are mutations, and it also has robots, and the wicked witch and her minions are actually rebuilding a spaceship. About half way through so far...

I have been buying books again. I have no excuse. My TBR is completely out of control. The latest: (these all from charity shops) Hayfever (Parragon health guide) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins Sharpe's Company Bernard Cornwell Two Eggs On My Plate Oluf Reed Olsen A Plague Of Angels Sheri S. Tepper Slavery A New Global History Jeremy Black New On Kindle: Tales From The Workhouse (Mary Higgs, James Greenwood etc) The Martian Emperor (Chronological Man book 2) Andrew Mayne The Fall Of The Towers trilogy Samuel R. Delaney ( plus a load of freebie short books that probably aren't worth mentioning; but if any are I will review them) Just added these to the list on the first page of my blog....it has shocked me that in just over 6 months I have spent £86.18 on books....as it happens it amounts to 86 books. Some of that includes postage.

Up The Line 5/6 Robert Silverberg This is a re-read for me although it has been 25 years . It is a well thought out, very funny and irreverent look at time travel. Jud Elliot III is a citizen of 2059 who enrols as a Time Courier to take groups of tourists up the line - back in time - to famous events in history. His fellow Time Couriers are all quite mad and run their own private scams and dodges, from smuggling artifacts down the line to the future, to one person compiling a family tree and sleeping with all his female ancestors starting with his grandmother (when they are in their prime). Jud soon finds the temptation of having Time as his playground irresistible and he starts a scheme of his own which soon lands him in trouble with the Time Patrol - implacable, incorruptible policemen. (imagine Judge Dredd but in period costumes to blend in) Along the way Jud beaks the rules and creates every paradox that scientists have thought of, and a few that the author thought out and invented on his own. For anyone who is interested in the theory of time travel and the things that can in theory go wrong, this is a must read.

Thank you cosimo and bobblybear! Hmm interesting... placid and lukewarm seems to sum up the way most folks are reviewing the story so far. I must admit I always thought it was a"small" story, I mean not huge in scope , but it gave me a little warm glow when I read it the way some books do....but afterwards it wore off quickly when you start dissecting the characters and the plot.

Hi Cosimo welcome to the forum and the Reading Circle! I hope to read your comments about the book too!

I found Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep interesting and messy but the film Blade Runner has completely overlaid it in my mind now, having seen it many times. I really liked A Scanner Darkly that book is awesome, and there is no confusion as to what it is about at the end.

The Rituals Of Infinity 2/6 Michael Moorcock Not a very well thought out story. It seemed as though Mr Moorcock had this plot presented to him as a dream then wrote it hastily down and worked it up into a story without worrying about working out any details. Basically in the quest for Faster Than Light space travel the human race finds several alternate earths in parallel dimensions but almost as soon as it makes this discovery it finds out that they are being destroyed systematically . Not knowing why this is or who is behind it, Earth uses its new technology to intervene and try to stabilize these alternate worlds with varying success. Then a new alternate Earth appears and it appears the whole human race may be the experiment of some higher power and our own Earth is due to be destroyed as a failed experiment... I have made the story a lot more interesting than it is to actually read . It touches on so many great concepts (creation, God(s), everything being an illusion) but frustratingly does not deliver. It starts to get very silly near the end and the ending is ridiculous .

The Mad God's Amulet 2/6 Sword Of The Dawn 2/6 The Runestaff 4/6 Michael Moorcock These are the remaining 3 of the History Of The Runestaff series. The first one (The Jewel In The Skull) I read earlier and I enjoyed that very much. It was bursting with original and exciting ideas and seemed somewhere in between traditional sword and sorcery fantasy and SF. The next two though were very mundane and ordinary fantasy stories and turned into a quest for certain objects of power (yawn). Thankfully the last one The Runestaff picked it up a bit again. Not all the principal characters survived to the end which is always refreshing. The first one will stick in my mind but overall for me the series is not a keeper.

Thanks Karsa and Athena. I might look for some more Baldacci .

World War II Blitz Diary Vol.3 5/6 Ruby Alice Side Thompson I still have to give this almost top marks because it is real . The war advances on through 1942 into 43. Material and food shortages are really starting to bite. All the news is bad as the Allies have not yet started winning any battles. One of Ruby's sons is already a POW and another is badly wounded and comes home to live with them for a while which causes problems. I saw another side to Ruby in this volume. In her own way she can be just as narrow minded as her religiously obsessed husband. With her it is about the class divide. She sees herself as a cut above the working class people around her. At first I saw this as merely having high standards for herself but she can be both racist and judgemental at times, although she is never patronizing.

Saving Faith 5/6 David Baldacci One of a box set of books my son bought me for Chrimbo. Not one I would ever have picked for myself, but this book was great! A very fast paced thriller with all the elements I liked out of the Bourne films (not the very dated and inferior book) and the last book of the Millenium trilogy (Hornet's nest) . Very much a blend of those two, set in contemporary times. the "Faith " of the title is actually a woman who is under protection of the FBI as a witness but other people need her dead. Enough said. The action never sags, there is a bit of a love story and all the characters are quite believable. Some strong female characters so I think women readers would like this as much as men.

The Sexual Life Of Catherine M 2/6 Catherine Millet I read this as an antidote to Doris Day's insipid biography. Catherine Millet is a French art critic. Therefore she presents her sex life here as a sort of Performance Art. I am not going to attempt an in depth review. Suffice to say she is not a woman who just likes to do it now and then. However, I could not draw anything very noble out of the book . It seemed to me the literary equivalent of a woman flashing naked under her fur coat on the London Underground . Sorry Catherine, but you are not special. We can all have sex and we can all be art critics too.

Hi Julie hope you get the good news you need and then your surgery. You have so much piled on your plate you are doing a marvellous thing keeping yourself serene. Keeping everything crossed for you.

I only have the book of short stories. Wonder if it will make any sense without the main books?

Flowers For Algernon was great. Have started Up The Line by Robert Silverberg but probably won't read much today. Sun is shining must get outside!

The Blue World Jack Vance.

Amazing but true, I have read 6 books in the last 6 days! Don't know how long I can keep this up....also it is giving me no time to write reviews or look at anybody else's posts and reading logs...but it is fun. Flowers for Algernon is about to be started.