{"id":2114,"date":"2010-05-01T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/05\/01\/books-read-april-2\/"},"modified":"2010-06-11T18:24:23","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T23:24:23","slug":"books-read-april-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/05\/01\/books-read-april-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Books read April"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI’m still reading nowhere near as much as I read last year<\/a> or the year before<\/a>. Because I bought a lot of science fiction this month I also read a lot of science fiction.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Raw Shark Texts<\/a><\/cite> — Steven Hall
\nWhat if books and words contained a whole ecosystem and somewhere out there a great word shark is hunting you?\n<\/p>\n

The Night Sessions<\/a><\/cite> — Ken MacLeod
\nA thematic sequel to The Execution Channel<\/a><\/cite>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy<\/cite> — Avram Davidson
\nA not quite serious collection of Ruritarian mystery stories. Somewhat slight perhaps, but a pleasure to read if only for Davidson’s writing voice. Because he clearly had fun writing these stories, you the reader have almost as much fun reading them.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Gate of Worlds<\/cite> — Robert Silverberg
\nAn unknown to me and minor Silverberg novel, telling the adventures of a young English adventurer in the Americas of a world where the Black Plague was much lethal than our own and England has only recently thrown off the Ottoman yoke. Not very interesting, partially because of its meandering plot.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis Is Not a Game<\/cite> — Walter Jon Williams
\nI’ve already talked about this novel<\/a> before. This is a great novel and recommended to anybody who liked Charlie Stross’ Halting State<\/cite>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Legion of Time<\/cite> — Jack Williamson
\nOne of the classic time travel\/alternate world stories, which introduced the concept of “Jonbar points”, where a decision made one way or another (will a small boy pick up a magnet or a pebble) has huge consequences for how future history plays out. I wanted to say that this was a good story, but unfortunately I can’t; of historical interest only.\n<\/p>\n

\nAfter World’s End<\/cite> — Jack Williamson
\nThough the cover doesn’t mention it, The Legion of Time<\/cite> came bound with a second novel, the hero of which is a contemporary rocket explorer who manages to get stuck in cold sleep in a cometary orbit in the Solar System for a million years. This enables him to play a leading role in the uprising of humans against their robot masters.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Legion of Space<\/cite> — Jack Williamson
\nI couldn’t not read this after The Legion of Time<\/cite>. It’s much better, the Three Musketeers in Space! Because it moves much quicker the stereotyping and flat characterisation didn’t have as much time to annoy me.\n<\/p>\n

\nDawn of the Dumb<\/cite> — Charlie Brooker
\nA collection of Brooker’s television criticism and other columns. If you like his writing, this is like a box of candy and it takes discipline not to gobble them all up in one go.\n<\/p>\n

\nWorld War Z<\/cite> — Max Brooks
\nA cult hit a few years ago (show you how “hip” and “with it” I am), this is an oral history of a worldwide, Night of the Living Death<\/cite> style zombie outbreak. It was good enough and scary enough to keep me up till 2:30 AM reading it, then caused me trouble sleeping.\n<\/p>\n

\nAlso read, but not finished: the second book in Steph Swainston’s Castle trilogy, as well as Richard Fortey’s Life<\/cite>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still reading nowhere near as much as I read last year or the year before. Because I bought a lot of science fiction this month I also read a lot of science fiction. The Raw Shark Texts — Steven Hall What if books and words contained a whole ecosystem and somewhere out there a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[959,963,958,962,961,960],"class_list":["post-2114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-posts-interesting-only-to-me","tag-avram-davidson","tag-charlie-brooker","tag-jack-williamson","tag-max-brooks","tag-robert-silverberg","tag-walter-jon-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2245,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions\/2245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}