Now reading The Sound of Laughter by Peter Kay

Took me a while but I finished A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin at the end of April, thats me all up to date with A Song of Ice and Fire until book 5 comes out next month.

Read the three Dunk & Egg short stories, The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight, set in the same universe as A Song of Ice and Fire but about 100 years before A Game of Thrones. Nice to see the world of Westeros at a time the Targaryen family were in power.

Re-read Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, I enjoyed it better second time round. Always looked at it as weaker than the First Law trilogy, and not a patch on The Heroes. My opinion has changed though.

Just finishing off Wild Cards book 1. This is what is called a mosaic novel, a dozen or more short stories, by different authors, all set in the same universe. The series has been going a while now (book 20 is about to be published). Its a re-telling of modern history from 1946 to today, but here an alien virus (called the Wild Card Virus) was released worldwide in 1946 causing countless deaths and creating "wild cards" dubbed Jokers and Aces. The Jokers are deformed humans with abnormal human, animal, demonic attributes. The Aces are superpowered humans. Well recommended.

Feast for Crows is a tough read but, fingers crossed, worth it when combined with Dance for Dragons.

Currently re-reading Clash of Kings, second book in Song of Ice & Fire. Trying to speed through them in time before the new novel comes out next month but I fear there is not enough time!!

The Wertzone blog is very helpfully putting together the story so far, starting with the history of events from before the books start -

Part 1

Part 2

Just realised I hadn't posting book reads here for a couple of months, so since the end of March I've read

Destroyer of Worlds - Mark Chadbourn

Worlds Enough and Time - Dan Simmons

Xenopath - Eric Brown

Pieces Of Midnight - Gary McMahon

The City Beyond Play - Philip José Farmer & Danny Adams

Nova Swing - M John Harrison

The Game Players Of Titan - Philip K Dick

I've recently read Doctor Who: Made of Steel by Terrance Dicks and just started Kraken by China Miéville

edash wrote:


I'd second this, The Wertzone is a brilliant blog, and the only one from which I take recommendations and actually buy books he's reviewed.

Through him I've been introduced to Joe Abercrombie, Peter F Hamilton, Richard Morgan, Chris Wooding, Scott Lynch and GRRM.

I've just finished the new edition of Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. He's done a small amount of tinkering with it, but it's been so many years since I read it last that I didn't notice what was changed. Still a cracking read and it contains the most horrible, filthy and degenerate Dracula of all time. Fang-frakking-tastic.

One of the coolest thing about this new edition is the appendicies. Newman has included some annotations (written especially for this edition), the ending to the original short story version that was published in The Mammoth Book of Vampires (which ends rather differently), excerpts from the aborted screenplay version he wrote, an essay about Dracula as Jack the Ripper that was first published in The Ripperologist zinein 2005 AND a short story called "The Dead Travel Fast" which follows Dracula's visit to a railway works and is set in the original novel.

If you have any interest in Dracula, vampires, alternate-history or meta-fiction, get hold of this book asap. You won't regret it.

Recently finished Doctor Who: Original Sin by Andy Lane and I've just started One Hit Wonderland by Tony Hawks

It's very quiet in here, must be all the reading. Over the last 6 months of 2011 I cleared -

Gravity Dreams - Stephen Baxter
The Restoration Game - Ken MacLeod
Jigsaw Men - Gary Greenwood
Silversands - Gareth L Powell
Blood Follows, The Lees of Laughter's End and The Healthy Dead - Steven Erikson
Cosmopath - Eric Brown
Mesmer - Tim Lebbon
Empire Of Light - Gary Gibson
The White Hands and Other Weird Tales - Mark Samuels
The Last Colony - John Scalzi
The Heavenly Fox - Richard Parks
Pretty Little Dead Things - Gary McMahon
The Terminal State - Jeff Somers
The Uglimen - Mark Morris
The Broken Man - Michael Byers