I have been reading and listening to quite a bit lately:

Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land.  One of the best books I have listened to / read in a long time.  The characters are just fantastic.  Considering when this book was written and looking back on the history of the following 10 years, you can see just how much influence this book had on the culture of the times.  It inspired me to pick up some more of Heinlein, an author who until now, I had previously ignored.  I am not sure why.  Maybe I was under the impression he was too stuffy or old school.  I don't know.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes the sci-fi genre.

Terry Brooks -- Sword of Shannara.  This was one of the first real fantasy novels I read as a kid.  Originally published in 1978, I spent almost the whole summer reading the book.  Yes, it is highly flawed and the writing is not the greatest in the world but the story does have good pacing and some semi-interesting fairly original points.

Michael A. Stackpole - The Dark Glory War.  This is a prelude novel that was written for his first (I think) fantasy trilogy.  He had done some Star Wars novels and such before this and I decided to give it a go.  It was pretty entertaining.  The character development was pretty good (better than the original trilogy at least so far) and it hooked me well enough that I have started reading the trilogy proper.  Fortress Draconis, When Dragons Rage, and The Grand Crusade are the names of the trilogy.  I have gotten through Fortress Draconis and half of When Dragons Rage so far.

Ben Bova - Titan.  Well he is another classic Sci-fi author and writing teacher.  I thought the characters were fairly well developed but I kept waiting for something dreadful to happen.  I mean in a catastrophic sense.  Pretty weird.  I guess that is a good sign of the author being able to influence the tension level being directed at the reader but at the end of the story I sort of felt let down.  It was a fun story, a little trite in some aspects, but all in all a decent book.

Artemis Fowl -  Don't remember the author's name.  I am reading this out loud to my son & daughter before bedtime.  It has some overly detailed terms in it for the intended reading level and the sentence structure isn't always the easiest to read.  The action keeps going though and it is keeping the kiddies attention too so I am happy.  I think our next book will be The Hobbit.  I have a nice illustrated oversized hard-cover edition that I think the kids would enjoy listening to.

JS

Just listen to:

Broken Angels - Richard K. Morgan
Wokken Furies - Richard K. Morgan

Both of these books continue the story started in Altered Carbon.

Broken Angels focuses on Takeshi Kovacs 30 years or so after Altered Carbon takes place on a colony world that is being torn apart by civil unrest.  The venture quickly turns to the real story which is the exploration of some Martian hyper-gate artifact that opens to a fixed point in space where an intact Martian starship can be found.  Getting a team together means K. and company having to deal with a Corporate which is the same thing as saying lots of intrigue.  Hidden pasts are revealed and betrayal is the name of the game from seemingly all parties involved.  Definitely a fun read.

Wokken Furries returns K. to his homeworld.  Here we learn that a copy of himself (before he left the envoy corp) has been sleeved and comissioned to erase him.  Tak. falls in with a Decom. team.  These are groups of mercenaries who travel to a continent that supports out of control nano-technology that was unleashed durning the unrest caused by the quellists last rebellion.  The story explores Kovacs as a character and delves deeply into the culture of his homeworld by means of its politics, religion, and history.  Another good read.

Reading now/in the queue:  Cell by Stephen King, Shadowmarch by Tad Williams, and The First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

Later for now.

JS

Dave, lent me his copy of Glory Road by Robert Heinlein.  It was a pretty decent book and a fun read.  As always, Heinlein's characters are so rich that they make the story very easy to read and enjoy.  The story seemed a bit strained near the end of the book but all-in-all it was an excellent read.

Just Finished reading Terry Brook's latest novel entitled: Armageddon’s Children.  What a treat.  If you are a fan of Mr. Brooks, you owe it to yourself to go out and get this book.

If you have ever read any Terry Brooks, you will undoubtedly remember the world's he has created.  His multitude of Shannara novels and trilogies is probably the best known of his settings and those books have certainly made him one of the most read Fantasy authors of the late 20th and the 21st centuries.  The world of these books is set on earth in a far distant future.  The world has experience some sort of cataclysm and centuries later has evolved into this quasi-magical realm.  The cataclysm his hinted at in most of his earlier books and some of the later books show off a brand of more directly surviving technological constructs.  Whenever I read one of these books there is always this somewhat nagging thought lingering in the back recesses of my mind that it would be really nice if he would get into more detail about the cataclysm that spawned this new world but he never does because the world of the Shannara novels is so far removed from that long ago event that it has passed into legend and myth and is no longer of any real importance or value to the current inhabitants.

Terry Brooks also did a more contemporary trilogy "The Word/Void Series" comprised of: "Running with the Demon", "A Knight of the Word", and concluding with: "Angel Fire East".  These books center around a character named Nest and each book focuses in on a different part of her life.  The books tell of an invisible war going on in our contemporary world between two entities or forces known as: "The Word" and "The Void" and how the destruction of mankind will come about by a breakdown in society and not some fantastic nuclear explosion.

So, Terry has now started a 4th major series (His second is a farcical set of novels called the Landover series), called "The Great Wars" and it finally explains both what happens next in the "The Word/Void Series" and what the great cataclysm was in the Shannara series.

It is an easy one or two day read and it leaves you in a lurch waiting for the second and third books coming out in Sept 2007 and Sept 2008 respectively but I am glad I decided to pick up this book.

I have some stuff that I have recently read but not had the time to write about so I just thought I would dump the information here while waiting for my computer update installations to finish.

Charlie Bone Series

Midnight for Charlie Bone
Charlie Bone and the Time Twister
Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy
Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors
Charlie Bone and the Hidden King

I originally started reading this series as a preview for my kids.  At first glance, they seem to be heavily Harry Potter influenced and Jenny Nimmo, the author, doesn't quite ever get away from that in my opinion but the Magicians and the magic in the book are more grounded in reality.  Rare is a "spell" cast.  Rather, the book focuses on a group of kids in Bloor's Academy where all the "special" kids go.  It is a school for individuals who are extremely gifted in the musical, artistic, or performing arts and the "special" kids, those with magical "talents" are pushed into attending the Academy as there is a whole deal worked out with the Mayor and everything.  The talented kids are called the "Children of the Red King"  and basically there were good kids of the Red King and some not so good ones.  The struggle between the original groups still goes on in their decendents up to the present time.  Charlie, unlike Harry Potter, has a relatively stable home with a supportive parent, gandma, and uncle.  His father's mother and his great Aunties make up the core of the antagonists along with the Bloor family who run the Academy.  There is an overarching plot line which is that Charlie wants to find his dad as in the first book we learn that his death occurred under very suspicious circumstances and Charlie believes he isn't dead.

I must say I enjoyed the character's and the stories enough to seek out and read the rest of the series and while I think the last book's ending is rushed, overall the books were an enjoyable easy read taking about 2 1/2 - 3 hours to finish.

Later for now,

JS

Yah that sucks.  It reminds me of the time in 6th grade when we had to write our favorite author via their publisher.  I chose to write to C.S. Lewis being a good Catholic school boy only to have the publisher write back that they were sorry to inform me that Mr Lewis passed away like 18 years ago or something like that...hmm I think I need to get more than 2 and a half hours of sleep....

Thanks for the info Dave, I will definitely get a hold of that book either in written or digital form.

Cheers,

JS