Rui CarmoI’ve been spending far too much time at work on a particular assignment that happens to be both draining and repetitive, so I’ve been feeling the need to sit down with a good book when I get home.
Here’s the current batch:
| “Perdido Street Station”:ISBN:0330392891 | “Iron Sunrise”:ISBN:1841493368 | “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”:ISBN:0552772542 |
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| This was one of the suggestions I got last year, and it had been sitting in my pile for a good while waiting for the right time to be read (which came last week as I nursed a touch of the flu). If you ever wondered what the backstory for a “Hieronymus Bosch”:Wikipedia:Hieronymus_Bosch painting would be like, look no further. “Miéville’s”:Wikipedia:China_Mieville writing is dense, evocative, and packed with the kind of descriptions that give a palpable feel to the overall darkness of the world he portrays – and, as such, best read in a warm, sun-filled room. | I picked this and “Singularity Sky”:ISBN:1841493341 up on a whim after “Accelerando”:ISBN:0441014151, and have found them all to be fascinating in their own right – although I’m getting weary of most variants of science fiction, “Stross’s”:Wikipedia:Charles_Stross writing has the sort of little twists that make it engrossing, even though portions of the plot are distinctly odd at times. | In retrospect, reading this soon after the utterly, utterly brilliant “Made In America”:ISBN:0552998052 might have been a bad idea, since “Bryson”:Wikipedia:Bill_Bryson occasionally re-uses some of his own writing, and I have the kind of memory that is easily jogged by such things. But don’t let that put you off – it is a genuinely fun and witty book, especially given the poignant yarns he spins around his own childhood in America from the fifties onwards, and the warm fuzzy feeling he instills on the reader. |
Feel free to drop me a note with more book suggestions (do check out my wishlist beforehand, just in case).