I’ve been on a reading tear over the summer, mostly all good books, and I thought I’d be a little self-indulgent and list what I’ve read with some comments.
- Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. It clocks in at something like 3,000 pages total, but it was by far the best thing I read this year. Maybe several years.
- Virtual Light, by William Gibson.
- Spam Kings, by Brian McWilliams.
- Gray Lensman and Second Stage Lensmen by E.E. Smith. Two middle volumes of what is often considered to be the “best space opera series of all time.” Written in the ’40s, so they’re somewhat dated, but pretty good. I don’t know about Best of All Time good, but worth a read nonetheless.
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein.
- A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr. Different from what I was expecting from the description on the back cover.
- Still slogging through Gödel, Escher, Bach. Unfinished.
- Across the River and Into the Trees, by Hemingway. Tough to get excited about this one.
- Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. I’m reading this one now, it’s very good.
Yo. That was weird. You commented within minutes of my publishing that post.
By the way I read heinlein too. the early stuff.
Heinlein- so far I’ve liked his earlier stuff better… though I can’t claim to be a comprehensive Heinlein reader. The first book of his I read was one of his later ones: "The Number of the Beast." It was so-so.
"Stranger in a Strange Land"? Loved it. As I did "Starship Troopers." "Moon" was good, too.