5:26pm, Friday 4 August 2006
A quick buzz down what I've been reading recently...
- The Moon-Voyage, Jules Verne
- Northern Lights / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
- Mr Pullman is a master of misery. Engrossing stories though.
- The Magic Spring, Richard Lewis
- This was very funny indeed, and particularly wonderful because I knew some of the people and places mentioned.
- Someone comes to town, someone leaves town, Cory Doctorow
- Weird, slightly icky, but thoroughly enjoyable.
- Secrets and Lies, Bruce Schneier
- You're not paranoid enough. 'Nuff said.
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
- Funny, but the author comes across as more "smug" than "stickler".
- Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, E.G. Richards
- Fascinating subject, woefully large number of errors.
- Great Lies to Tell Small Kids, Andy Riley
- "Wine makes Mummy clever." And it's downhill from there... great book.
- The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, Tom Baker
- Surreal, mildly horrible, and impossible to put down.
- The Problem of Cell 13, Jacques Futrelle
- Move over, Sherlock Holmes. These are great "whodunnit" stories - and also "how-dunnit". They're all out of copyright and on the web.
- The Common But Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays, Keith Stewart Thomson
- Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist, John Brockman
- Plenty of anecdotes but disappointingly thin on the underlying analysis.
- The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Gaston Leroux
- Windmills: A Pictoral History of Their Technology, Richard Hills
- I've been inside some of the windmills in this book. It was amazing to read about all the different styles and designs of windmill.
- The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin, Francis Spufford
- Very enjoyable stories of British wonderfulness - but not all boffins, really.
- Accelerando, Charles Stross
- I want an exocortex.