What are you reading?

[Sibling Chatty]

Jasper Fforde's The Fourth Bear, from the Nursery Crimes series.

Fforde has been posited as the presumed heir of the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett fan base. I just want it to take a long time before he inherits in full...

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I've read the first one. Couldn't get into it.

[Sibling Chatty]

I think I am going to like the Thursday Next series better, if I can ever find the first books. Well of Lost Plots finally caught my interest about a third of the way in, but then I had no background for it.

Interesting concepts in that series.

[Swatopluk]

I think I will be finished with Pompeii in the afternoon.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Kamer's Ergot
Random little comic series.

[Swatopluk]

Maybe I should start at last that monstrous Mao biography I got last Xmas.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

After finishing The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The robots of dawn, I am starting Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Bernhard Dotzler (editor), Babbages Rechen-Automate (1995)
Except for the introduction the texts are contemporary (by Babbage, his son etc.)
I bought it cheaply when a great bookstore (with a very long tradition) went bankrupt a few years ago.

Sounds neat, but hard-to-find here.

Not sure if you've seen it already, but in case you haven't, you might want to check out The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.  The book takes place in a Victorian England where Babbage's mechanical computers launched a revolution in the 19th Century like electronic computing launched a revolution in the 20th.  It's been years since I read it, but I thought it was good at the time.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

The Ghost Rider: Trail of Tears series my friend lent me.

[Swatopluk]

Bernhard Dotzler (editor), Babbages Rechen-Automate (1995)
Except for the introduction the texts are contemporary (by Babbage, his son etc.)
I bought it cheaply when a great bookstore (with a very long tradition) went bankrupt a few years ago.

Sounds neat, but hard-to-find here.

Not sure if you've seen it already, but in case you haven't, you might want to check out The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.  The book takes place in a Victorian England where Babbage's mechanical computers launched a revolution in the 19th Century like electronic computing launched a revolution in the 20th.  It's been years since I read it, but I thought it was good at the time.

I read it in translation. I heard of it in a university course (department: history of science) on the history of informatics/calculating devices. Since it was available cheaply as a paperback, I purchased it. Interesting.

[beagle]

Helena Kennedy QC - Just Law

[anthrobabe]

Maus (holocaust through the eyes of a mouse family in cartoon form-- sorry graphic novel form) very moving--- based on Art Speiglmans fathers accounts of his survival as a Polish jew

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

and seriously amazing. If you like that one, try "In the Shadow of No Towers," by the same guy. Really amazing.

A 'graphic adaption' of the 9/11 Commission report.
Almost comic at times, but sickening more frequently than not.

[Swatopluk]

Frank Schätzing, Der Schwarm

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

After finishing a book that uncovers how the drug cartels gave gifts in the form of models, beauty pageant participants and female TV anchors to politicians and the military in Colombia, I'm starting Relativity by Albert Einstein (1920). A book for those "...interested in the theory but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus." I'm happy I took all those semesters on math and physics in college, otherwise...