What are you reading?

Fantastic list Dustin. Any of those highly recommended? the Windup Girl sounds like an interesting premise. Slaughterhouse has always been a must that I have somehow missed. Thanks for the reminder. What's so taboo in it? (without spoiling)

Not much spoiling necessary there, it's mentioned in the first few paragraphs what the book is about. Slaughterhouse-Five's 'taboo' was to depict an American protagonist (Vonnegut's alter-ego) on ground zero. One of the good guys is witnessing first hand how the other good guys fight 'pure evil' - by boiling a bunch of little girls to death, by unleashing forces roughly in the Hiroshima league on a city mostly filled with refugees and other civilians and a few ragamuffin Volkssturm 'soldiers'.

At the time (1969) the book was one of the few works in English to pick up the raid on Dresden. Funnily enough it doesn't at all take sides or condemn the raid. Vonnegut merely recalls his own experiences in German war captivity, and he doesn't let the Germans off the hook either. What probably spurred the controversity about this book is the implication that all war is a crime. Such ideas were not very welcome at a time when the US were busy losing another - never declared, so the [censored]

up doesn't count as a lost war - "conflict with extreme prejudice". It still doesn't sit well with the usual suspects and was banned as late as 2011 at a school in Missouri; perhaps not exactly surprising.

Would I recommend it? It's not a long read, just a bit over 200 pages. It is a most interesting take on existential questions of the human mind, easily declassing all the pompous bigoted babble armchair patriots usually pour over the topic. Because it's by somebody who actually was there and has seen what it means when flesh and bones and innards are strewn across the landscape and some poor sod finally realises its his own substance littering the scenery. War isn't fun, killing isn't fun, dying isn't fun. A truism, and yet some feel threatened by it and would rather see the very notion forbidden.

Any target of censorship - attempted or de facto - should be checked out by us. See for yourself and make up your own mind.

'The Windup Girl' attracts with an interesting premise. It seems to fit into a bigger picture drawn by Bacigalupi in a number of short stories I haven't read as yet. From what I've read so far, 160 pages, it's not possible to pin down the actual year of events. At a guess it would seem to be three to four generations from today, so it might be a world somewhere in its 22nd century. There are numerous intriguing details that give the fiction an interesting credibility. While fuel is mostly absent spring mechanisms have developed into a fairly high tech league, driving boats and other devices. Bicycles are of course a mode of transport. And while the economy apparently crashed beyond easy repair computers still are a necessary tool of the post-growth industry, only now they are connected to spinning wheels and desk jockeys run little risk of becoming obese invalids. Gen-design is obviously an important element of this world, having made a quantum leap from our current state of the art. Going so far as to have developed human clones for particular purposes, sex, soldiers, workers. But I can't as yet tell if the book's living up to the fine start.

A definite recommendation? One of the works I can wholeheartedly recommend is Stephen Fry's 'The Star's Tennis Balls'. It's of course a modern take on 'The Count of Monte Cristo', so a lot of the plot is not a surprise as such. The intriguing quality comes from the way in which it's translated to modern times. Well, 1980 to 2000, which probably already qualifies as 'period'. Younger people may not be able to relate to a world where a twit's imbecility not immediately becomes a topic for newspapers and other media. Fry's book is a nasty, tight little thriller, not so far away from Bond's world. An additional quality is achieved by the ending, that in my view depicts the true tragic of the tale even better than the original. An awesome, touching book.

David Cox - The Dark Knight Rises (novelization). As far as novelizations go there is not much here. It served it's purpose of laying out the whole story better than the movie did. Not much in additional details. The Joker's fate is discussed, what happens to the prisoners, etc.

Charles Sheffeild - The Mind Pool. Sci-fi story, set mostly in space on ships and space stations. A couple interesting alien species and a threat that drives the plot created by the humans to expand their empire. I really like the technology too. They have these probes that go out, explore and claim space for humans. The probes can communicate and have this crazy transporter technology that can pretty much get anything anywhere in the known universe. http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/0671721658

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