Yep, it’s books catchup time again. Since I last mentioned books, I finished the Michael J. Fox autobiography: Lucky Man which I really enjoyed. It was quite moving in parts, but without being too sentimental. Recommended. Since then I have read a couple of Jamie‘s books: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer; Very, very, good. Great characters. Some really nice touches of humour. Recommended. I can’t wait to read the next one in the series; and Riotous Robots by Mike Goldsmith (edited by Clive Goddard) part of “The Knowledge” series. This was pretty good, informative without being too technical. Quite well balanced too, no bias at all. A good book.
Finally, I’m now reading Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson which is remarkably good for what is essentially a short dictionary.

Over the last few days, I have read Barb Wire the novelisation of the movie by Neal Barrett Jr. It was very light reading, but I quite enjoyed this. I haven’t seen the movie so I cannot compare them. I’ve also read Buried Alive! and Cliffhanger both by Jacqueline Wilson. I’d borrowed these kid’s books from Jamie. Very enjoyable, quite funny, I especially liked the two main characters, Tim and Biscuits. Great!

I spent most of my book tokens at the weekend. I ended up getting MySQL Cookbook by Paul DuBois, PHP Cookbook by David Sklar and Adam Trachtenberg, and Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 (Programmer’s Reference) by Eric Meyer. All pretty hardcore geek fodder. I shall enjoy dipping in to them!!

I’ve gotten behind with reviewing the books I read again:
I finished Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson a week ago now. I have to say I was not impressed. I really struggled to finish the book. It wasn’t that it was particularly bad, or at least the plot wasn’t too bad. It just seemed to be told in a very lack lustre way. The Characters too, had little going for them. Not recommended!
After that I moved on to Rewired: An Opinionated Net Historyby David Hudson. This was OK, showing it’s age (it was written in 1997) in some of the predictions, and anticipated trends. There were some completely wrong ‘facts’ too, I know it is written from a non-technical viewpoint for non-technical readers, but still completely wrong is still wrong. I’ve not finished that one yet, but I got distracted by one of my birthday books: Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody by Michael Gerber. Very, very funny. Juvenile in places, good puns, witty plays on words, not for kids! Recommended.
Finally I’m on to The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver. I’ve just started that tonight.

I forgot to mention, the last time I posted a books catch up, that I had read Tik-Tok by John Sladek. This was a book that reminded me of old style Sci Fi books, from back when I first started buying books. Though it was published in the 1980’s. Sladek writes with a wicked sense of humour, (I also read Roderick many years ago), and his satirical stories are very enjoyable. Recommended.

More recently I finished Escape from Kathmandu by Kim Stanley Robinson, of which, the cover claims, the Washington Post said “laugh-out-loud funny”. I thought there were some amusing parts to what amounts to four short-ish stories based around the same characters. But not laugh-out-load, not even chuckle-to-myself. Still, the stories were interesting if not what I was expecting.
I’m now reading Memory of Whiteness also by Kim Stanley Robinson. More on this when I’ve finished it.

I’ve just finished The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver. Another great Lincoln Rhyme book. I found the feel of this one to be considerably less ‘dark’ than the earlier ones. Somehow, despite the villain being as bad or worse than earlier villains, the book just didn’t seem as scary.
Having said that though, it was a good read.
I love the attention to detail you get in this type of story (essentially a forensic science detective novel in the tradition of many other from Sherlock Holmes onwards), although some of the brilliant insights/leaps of logic were presented in the ‘wrong’ order: Lincoln studies evidence, Lincoln says “Oh! Wait a minute…”, cut to Amelia about to walk into danger, there’s a phone call or another detective turns up to save the day, followed by explanation of how Lincoln figured it out. This happened at least three times in this book, and to me it came across as it bit too formula.
Not as good as the earlier books, but still recommended.

I finished The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver yesterday. It is another in the Lincoln Rhyme series. It was absolutely brilliant! A really good thriller with a breath taking twist at the end.
Recommended.

I’ve now finished The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver. It was fantastic. Much better than the movie. In fact they made some significant changes to the story for the movie. The book was much better. Highly recommended.