I've said that I don't 'comfort read' (reread particular books frequently, as 'old friends'), but that's not strictly true. I'm not sure how many times I've returned to 'The Brothel in Rosenstrasse' over the past two decades. Okay; I doubt it's more than five, but that's probably more often than I've reread any other book.

I think I'll make it six this evening.

'The Wasp Factory' isn't my favourite book from a novelist who has been amongst my favourite authors for over 15 years – I can't decide whether it depicts a profoundly disturbed personality well or merely tries too hard to shock. I could offer much the same criticism of other Banks novels, some of which have been pretentiously over-literate or have poorly integrated hyperviolent scenes into their plots – it's been a long time since I regarded Banks as my absolute favourite author.
I suppose I'm saying I would recommend trying 'The Wasp Factory', but I'd be reluctant to suggest it as the starting point for someone new to Banks' writing; 'The Crow Road' was my first (read on the train to St. Andrews for a PhD interview in 1992) and is still my favourite. Avoid 'A Song Of Stone'.

Another cause for hesitation is that the Independent is offering the free audiobook via Audible (one needs to register, but fake IDs work), only in the proprietory '.aa' format. I'm not prepared to install new download managers/players on my PC, nor plugin applications for iTunes, so I'll give the audio book a miss, myself.

Those who do want to download the five files have until Friday 18 April to do so.

Visitors were given the opportunity to choose which one book would be made available, and after 26,551 votes, the unexpected (by Mr. G & the publishers) winner was 'American Gods', with 28% of the vote. It's now online.

Note that this isn't a free download – Harper Collins aren't insane – it's an opportunity to read the entire book online, via their website's 'browse inside' facility, and (initially) it's only available for a month. Bookmark it and get reading now or, even better, buy your own copy.

Meme rules: indicate those you've read in bold, those you started but couldn't finish in italics, and underline those on your to-read list. Add an asterisk (*) to those you've read more than once, or strikethrough those you couldn't stand.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods*
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver*
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum*
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune*
The Prince*
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon*
Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion*
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit*
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I've read 34 (10 more than once), failed to read four and plan to read four. Of those, I disliked three, coincidentally all by Jane Austen. I think I've read four more, but have no recollection of their content, so they plainly don't count.

It's strange that Volumes 1 and 2 of Neal Stephenson's 'The Baroque Cycle' are on the list, but not Volume 3 – did people read the end but not the beginning and middle, or didn't they bother with the third after failing to read the earlier two? Either way, I think they were mistaken: it has a very slow start and demands concentration, but by the end it's wonderful.

Okay; the title is unfair hyperbole, and it's not a 'bad' book, merely not one I'd choose to re-read. As I've said, pretty much the only variety of sci-fi I like is cyberpunk set in a credible near-future. High-fantasy, epic, space opera simply annoys me.

If there's a point to this entry, it's to alert those who have read 'Century Rain' that 'Revelation Space' is very different; liking one is no indication of liking the other, and vice versa.
In a way, I'm glad 'Revelation Space' was unmemorable, as I might have missed the fairly good 'Century Rain'.

Somehow, I thought no more of it, so I was mildly though unjustifiably surprised to discover that the sequel, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling had been popular in 2005, as was The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists last year, and Amazon are already taking pre-orders for the fourth, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon over a year ahead of its release date.

I think I have some catching-up to do. Care to join me?

• I'm already 100% atheist, so Dawkins doesn't have to convince me of anything, and I don't seek the affirmation of other atheists.
• I don't regard religions with hostility (well, maybe a little for christianity, as that's the one which lied to me personally), so derive no enjoyment from Dawkin's systematic debunking.
• I intensely dislike evangelism, including atheist evangelism (which, incidentally, I'd never encountered before – atheism tends to be an individual choice, and incompatible with the concept of 'recruitment'). I'd never dream of engaging in it myself, so I don't need the ammunition provided by Dawkins, compelling as it is.

I'm not really sure what Dawkins has to say to a third group: those atheists who, like me, are already entirely happy and secure in our beliefs. Perhaps I should read the remaining 350 pages after all, and find out.

For example, here are books with 40% off the RRP, further sorted by reviews and 'bestselling' status. Use the 'Sort' option on the results page to find books in your chosen price range.

To save myself, and perhaps you, a little time, here are the direct links for the categories most relevant to me:

Books: 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%
DVD: 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%
Music: 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

You get the idea; I won't go on to itemise the other categories, but the same applies to 'Electronics & Photo', 'Gadgets', 'Home & Garden', 'PC & Video Games', 'Software', 'Toys & Kids' (Amazon sells goats?) and 'Travel'.

These links are to Amazon UK, of course; see 'Brand Name Coupons' for the Amazon US equivalents.

My mother gave me a meta-book for my birthday: '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die'. I think it was intended as reinforcement, and she expected me to flick though and (metaphorically) tick off the dozens I'd read. Not the case – I've read a tiny minority of those I'm 'supposed' to have experienced.

Similarly, Tim published another meme questionnaire a few weeks ago which involved identifying those sci-fi/fantasy novels one has read from a 'top 50' list. It wasn't really worth my completing it in detail, as I've only read twelve. That may be a special case, as I don't really like the 'fantasy' genre and only the hard-tech, near-real-world type of sci-fi which features realistic people interacting with a realistic environment in a credible way – as I've said, interstellar travel and aliens aren't my thing.

Don't misunderstand; I do read a lot of books, but not so wide a range as might be expected. Once I've found an author I like, I tend to read everything he/she has written, rather than reading one book by each of numerous authors. Seven of my favourite authors probably account for over 100 novels of my personal bibliography. One could summarise by saying I'm an intensive reader rather than extensive, though less charitably, that could be rephrased as saying I'm conservative in my tastes and a little unadventurous.

That wouldn't be entirely fair, but I can't deny a certain reluctance to invest time in the totally unknown or try something simply because the masses or intelligentsia rate it. I've been 'burned' a few times, having read books I really haven't enjoyed, and somehow resented the lost time. I don't only mean trashy mass-market or genre stuff; the attraction of certain 'acknowledged classics' has eluded me, too.
For example, I've always found the prose styles of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen insufferable (sorry, A.), irrespective of their characterisation and plotting. I don't disrespect their work, of course – that'd be perverse – I simply don't derive pleasure from it. It's a fine balance, but sometimes the authorial voice interposes a little too much and dilutes the conveyance of a book's ideas. It's the classic issue of 'show, don't tell'; I want to be presented with a situation and either interpret it myself or empathise with the characters. I suspect my ideal book would be rather stark...

As I've also mentioned before, I favour online retailers over high street bookshops (chains more than independents, but the general point holds), so I'm disinclined to browse and buy on the strength of a cover image or back-cover text (actually, I very rarely read the latter until after I've read the book, as I don't want a summary to define preconceptions). Hence, I suppose I have limited exposure to new material, requiring reviews, recommendations, or references in articles by/about authors I already recognise. It's a problem.

So; do I plan to do anything about it? No. For the past couple of years I've been making a deliberate effort to catch up on acknowledged 'must-see' films (as defined by the IMDb top 250), but at least at the time of writing, I don't feel an inclination to do the same with books. It may be a matter of time investment, but more fundamentally, I enjoy reading too much, and I couldn't imagine artificially treating it as a chore.

A standard feature of web stores is the little suggestion applet which informs the visitor that 'if you like x, you might like to try y' or 'other customers who bought x also bought y'. The UnSuggester is the reverse, searching the LibraryThing database (not that of Amazon or any other retailer) of 8 million books to establish those titles one is not likely to enjoy, based on books one already owns.

For example, if I like 'Snow Crash', by Neal Stephenson, it seems I'm unlikely to rush out and buy, nor to already own, any of 73 items of hardcore christian propaganda. Extremely true, though there's nothing anti-christian about 'Snow Crash'.

It didn't immediately occur to me, but this can be used the other way round: insert the details of a book one doesn't like, and receive a suggestion for a potentially more satisfying alternative.

Today, though, I had the place almost entirely to myself. I could sit on the edge of the old bandstand with only a couple of dog-walkers in the distance. I wonder why....
[In a few months that'll be too cryptic, so I'll answer my rhetorical question: today was the semi-final (or something) of the football World Cup, in which England played... some other national (not that 'England' is a true 'nation') team.]

As if I had the slightest interest: have the English been kicked out of the World Cup yet?

*: 'Century Rain', by Alistair Reynolds. On the strength of books (by other authors) I've ordered from Amazon, the matching algorithms keep recommending Reynolds', so I'm trying one.
Two hours only covered the first 167 pages, so it's a little early to make conclusions, but it seems okay, if not as 'good' as the novels which triggered the recommendation. We'll see.

[Update 18:55: Not penalties again! As I said, football doesn't interest me, but I wouldn't have wished that déjà vu ending on anyone.]

A visitor observed/asked:

Though I have turned to novels for distraction during bad episodes in my life, ordinarily I'm not a 'comfort reader', who frequently re-reads a small number of favourites*. I tend to read most books only once, and particularly good ones a second time after a couple of years. True favourites might be read again every five years or so thereafter; I don't think I've read any book more than 5-6 times.

That said, I strongly identify with the idea that books can improve with age and experience – my age, I mean. A term or reference might seem so meaningless as to even evade my awareness first time, but having learned a new word or concept in the intervening period, the same reference could change the emphasis and entertainment value of a book when re-reading.

*: I've, er, read that this is a fundamental distinction in the way male and female readers approach books.

According to The Times (okay, not the most reliable or unbiased of sources), 'seventy per cent of promotional budgets go on furtive payments to bookshops'. £50,000 renders a book W.H.Smith’s 'book of the week', whilst Waterstone’s charges £10,000 for the same status. That a book is indicated to be a 'fiction buyer’s favourite' at Borders is no indication that a buyer has even seen the front cover.

It could be argued that this practice will only exist so long as customers and reviewers remain fooled by artificial hype, so spread the word and burst the bubble. Even better, tell a friend about a genuinely good book.

Internet-based music retailing seems so much further ahead on this issue. I'm certainly aware that professional marketing is just as insidious in that field, and several 'word of mouth' hits are anything but (c.f. Sandi Thom), but it does seem bands can reach audiences without massive promotional budgets or marketing agencies in a way unknown novelists simply can't. I'm afraid I can't think of a solution.

[Via Neil Gaiman.]

And that's the key point. Good independent bookshops aren't inherently obsolete, and can provide added value that chains can't, including specialist expertise, individual service and atmosphere.

Some attempt to replicate the national chains' homogenous retail units and promotional tactics without the backing of national distribution networks, influence with publishers and economies of scale. Understandably, they struggle, relying on people 'doing the right thing' by artificially supporting their local bookshops. So far as I'm concerned, merely being small and local is insufficient justification for existence, and relying on customers' charity is an awful business model. Such shops fail.

However, as Stephen Moss, writing in the Guardian, found, bookshops which focus on their strengths and offer a unique environment are surviving, even thriving.

It can't be easy, and wouldn't work for everyone. Specialist is rarely ubiquitous, and it's logical to presume that the days of there being an independent bookshop on every high street are gone. In researching his article, Moss couldn't find a single independent bookshop in central Manchester, and I can't think of one in Lancaster (not counting the specialist sci-fi one, and the less said about that, the better). I don't have a problem with that.

'The Difference Engine' is credited as being the defining, though not the first, mainstream 'steampunk' sci-fi novel, introducing information technology to a historical setting. As such, it is frequently cited as an 'important' book, and not only because the authors are key figures in the cyberpunk genre. However, calling it 'important' isn't quite the same as saying it's a particularly 'good' book, or worth actually reading.

The central premise is that in the novel's alternative history, Charles Babbage succeeded in refining and manufacturing his Analytical Engine (not his Difference Engine, but the latter makes a more apt title), revolutionising the British Empire though the application of mass-produced computing.
In theory, the book's three interlinked stories explore this alternative Victorian London, but though I'm sure it was meticulously researched and thought-through, it fails to capture the feel of the age, coming across as too dry and ultimately superficial. One would hope and expect to be immersed in the fictional culture, but that never happens, and one is kept at a distance.

Having glanced though customer reviews at Amazon, it seems that though few rated the narrative, several thought the book to be an excellent description of Victorian Britain. I don't remotely agree. I can only presume those reviewers are non-Brits who have read few genuine Victorian novels and have limited knowledge of the era. Perhaps the novel provides an adequate semblance for (stereo)typical sci-fi readers, but the wider-read will be less impressed.

The characters are poorly-developed and their actions lack internal consistency; some seem to have been included merely to represent 'types' the authors wished to illustrate. Some of the dialogue is awful. Just as Dick Van Dyke spectacularly failed to capture working-class Cockney in 'Mary Poppins', the novel's characters emit bizarre parodies of Victorian English.

The single element linking the three stories is ultimately tangential and, at the risk of revealing a plot spoiler, is less than thrilling when it's finally explained. If that one factor is ignored (and I found that too easy), one is left with three standalone stories set in a theoretically interesting (but, as I said, under-realised) world. That needn't be a problem, but it means each individual 'novella' needs to be particularly compelling, to draw-in a reader afresh. I don't think that's achieved.

Only for Gibson & Sterling fans, I think, and perhaps for those tempted to make a better attempt at the concept.

I've been reading 'The Science of Discworld' (Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, 1999) this week, which alternates chapters of a Discworld story with chapters on corresponding topics of popular science. Following the 'narrative' from the Big Bang to the evolution of the Earth and life upon it, it's a very readable introduction to key scientific concepts. It has no patience with creationism, but isn't strident about that; arguments are clearly made explaining that there's no reason to think external intervention was ever necessary – not saying that intervention was impossible, but that the outcome can be fully explained without it. There are no gaps where the religious could cry "Aha! That has to have been consciously designed!"
Conversely, comparison of 'Roundworld' (us), which functions according to scientific 'rules', with Discworld, which runs on narrative imperative, highlights humanity's need for stories.

Somewhere in the book there's a good analogy which makes the idea of a soul, able to transcend physical death, faintly ridiculous, but without the ability to seach for the word 'eggbeater' I don't have much chance of finding it again.

Hang on; I have a slightly photographic memory, and remember the passage's relative location: top of a left-hand page, itself the final page of a 'science' chapter... found it!

On the strength of Stephenson's earlier books, I bought the second volume, 'The Confusion' a little after that was released in paperback, but I wasn't quite so eager to start that, and it languished in my 'to read' pile for eight months. I didn't begin it until visiting my mother in December, a period of enforced separation from work & my computer and an opportunity to address something I (then) thought 'heavy'.
That made all the difference. I think I must have read 'Quicksilver' a few pages at a time in the minutes between going to bed (tired) and putting out the light; it didn't really receive my full attention, at a time of night when my mind wasn't exactly receptive, and I wasn't reading enough per 'sitting' to be drawn into the 17th Century world. 'The Confusion' did receive my full attention, whilst I was fully awake, and I was able to devote whole hours to it.

And I loved it. Stephenson's command of language and wordplay was just right, incorporating elements of 18th Century (yes, the century had turned) English in a way accessible to 21st Century readers, yet demonstrating the 18th Century meanings of certain words – I've gained a richer understanding of my own language. The characters seemed to come alive much more than in 'Quicksilver', and I began to care about them, whether heroes, anti-heroes or villains.

Though sold in three volumes, one could divide the 2616-page Baroque Cycle into about a dozen episodes, each containing overlapping threads. Some of these episodes, particularly those focusing on courtly European politics, were rather dry, but others were thrilling action yarns, incorporating street battles in world capitals, acts of maritime piracy and capture of mediaeval fortresses. Some of the set-pieces were as delicious as the opening pages of Stephenson's 'Snow Crash', though a little more subtle than that novel's ninja pizza delivery man.

As soon as I returned to Lancaster, I ordered the final volume, 'The System Of The World'. I finished it this 'morning' (at 03:20...), but I wish I hadn't. More, please!

Most of the lead characters in the Cycle were fictional. Some were ancestors of characters in Stephenson's previous novel 'Cryptonomicon', which was set in the 1940s and the present day. However, more so than in 'Cryptonomicon', several secondary characters were genuine historical figures, and it was fascinating to view Sir Isaac Newton, Louis XIV of France and Gottfried von Liebniz, amongst others, as people, in the context of their contemporary environments.

So far as I can tell (I'm no expert on the period), the books were well-researched. A lot of the events were fictional, but cleverly fit between factual ones. Some placed historical characters hundreds of miles from their recorded locations on certain dates, but in a way that made it clear they were travelling incognito, or that their activities credibly wouldn't have entered the historical record. In some cases, the known actions of genuine people in documented situations were used, but the wider context of the narrative absorbed them well, by introducing rather different interpretations of historical fact.

It was also fascinating to follow social change not in terms of the usual historical indices (monarchs and battles), but by following the motivators: the flows of money and information, including one of Stephenson's recurring themes, cryptography.

I definitely recommend reading the three volumes in reasonably rapid succession, as the events of one had consequences in the next, and it could be difficult to remember the past actions of certain characters, or even recognise a couple of characters at all, if they'd been out of the narrative for a while. The framing narrative of 'Quicksilver', in which Daniel Waterhouse travels from Boston, Mass., back to England, was continued in 'The System Of The World' i.e. all 815 pages of 'The Confusion' were interposed before the original timeline was continued.

Despite a less than promising start: highly recommended.

I certainly enjoyed it enough to try another by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and I've since read all of his books except 'neoAddix', which has been out of print for as long as I've been aware of JCG. That's a pity, as 'reMix' and 'redRobe' seem to be the second and third parts of a trilogy. Though the common elements in those I have read are peripheral, and each book adequately stands alone, it'd be good to have a clearer idea of the context and character evolution.

'Pashazade', 'Effendi' and 'Felaheen' form another trilogy, set in the North African city of El Iskandryia; not the real Egyptian city of that name (Alexandria, in English), but a fictionalised version. The Arabesk novels are nominally sci-fi, but that's secondary to the characters themselves, expressed with a markedly more mature style than earlier books. That said, I didn't find them quite as accessible as those earlier books. I suspect some readers would enjoy the earlier, overtly cyberpunk novels but not the El Isk ones, or vice versa.

The next, 'Stamping Butterflies', is somewhere between the two. It's neither a case of a fairly minimalist plot carrying the leisurely development of characters, nor of a fast-paced, wide-ranging plot somewhat overshadowing the characters (without wishing to overstate that distinction in the earlier books, either); characterisation and sense of place are major strengths, but less critical to one's enjoyment than before.

There are three distinct storylines, a chapter of the first followed by a chapter on each of the others before continuing the first, progressing that way until the threads resolve (ooh, nasty mixed metaphor) into one. It's a common style, particularly in cyberpunk, but this is one of the most subtle treatments of that interlacing process I've read: the threads don't run in parallel then merge, they almost bleed into one another and before the reader even notices, they've already combined.

The title is a hint to one overall theme: that tiny actions can have vast consequences in the future. That truism could be considered simplistic, but JCG takes it much further, even reversing it. It's all very quantum.... Also note that this isn't the beating of a butterfly's wings creating storms elsewhere, it's stamping butterflies – violence has consequences too.

I won't provide a synopsis, as I'd recommend you find that out for yourself by reading the book, but two brief points:
One of the interlinked stories has a North African setting, like the Arabesk series, but it's set in 1970s 'real world' Marrakech, and the associated socio-political environment, not the fictionalised El Isk, and there's no crossover to the earlier books.
Another thread could be considered a commentary (though not overtly a judgement) on Guantánamo Bay, Abu-Ghraib and the US practice of imprisoning suspects abroad for interrogation illegal on its own territory. Whilst I thought the confusion of torture, legal & psychiatric visits and bureaucracy exhibited seemed credible, the scrabble for legitimacy seemed less likely (but what do I know of the true situation?).

I found the ending a little anticlimactic. To be trite: the journey is better than the destination, and the resolution of the overarching plot isn't so satisfying as the reader might have been anticipating.

I finished reading the book and drafted most of this entry weeks ago, on 20 October, but was rudely interrupted by a phone call from Warszawa ;) and somehow haven't got back to it until now. Coincidentally, on that same day, I discovered that JCG's new novel, '9Tail Fox', which I hadn't even known was forthcoming, was published. The cover resembles that of 'Stamping Butterflies', but I'm pretty sure that's merely consistent graphic design, rather than an indication that it's the second of yet another trilogy. 'Stamping Butterflies' didn't seem to leave an opportunity for continuation, and felt 'right' as a self-contained, complete story.

It's marketed as a children's book, but that does seem to be mere marketing, and there's nothing simplistic or patronisingly childish about the writing. Whilst reading, I wasn't aware of it being aimed at children. I repeatedly forgot Tiffany is supposed to be eleven years old, which might have been a problem but not exactly a criticism, as it may reflect my own preconceptions more than Pratchett's ability to write a young lead character. Perhaps some of the philosophical subtexts were less 'sub-' than usual, but that's fine, and his usual 'stereotypes' trick* worked well.

'A Hat Full Of Sky' certainly is a Discworld novel, even if it isn't categorised as part of the main sequence. Despite Lancre not being mentioned, it's as much a 'Witches' novel as most, and the one character who appears in every Discworld book is in this one too.

*: Pratchett has a trick of encompassing several stereotypes, instantly imbuing a sense of familiarity: the reader immediately knows more about the characters than needs to be stated outright, and the reader therefore defines the characters in his/her own terms, according to his/her own perceptions. However, that's only half the trick – Pratchett goes on to challenge and subvert those stereotypes, saying something new about them.

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Yes, though I've always thought it extremely overrated, and I thought Adams ran out of worthwhile material after the first sequel. More recently, I've come to associate it with stereotypically smug middle class, middle English sensibilities.

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Yes, and I found it suitably powerful.

3. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
I think I was a bit too young to appreciate this when I read it in my mid-teens. Must try it again.

4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip Dick
I read this quite recently (within the last five years, anyway), and was underimpressed, considering it turned into 'Blade Runner'.

5. Neuromancer – William Gibson
Yes. As Tim said, it features one of the best opening lines of any book (one of only 2-3 I've memorised), and is a really good novel. I've always found the Villa Straylight section less than compelling, though. Dunno why.

6. Dune – Frank Herbert
Yes. Excellent. For creating an entire world and coherent society, I rate Herbert at least as highly as Tolkien.
Has anyone else noticed that the first, third and fifth Dune novels are better (whatever that means) than the second, fourth and sixth?

7. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
No. I did see the recent film, which was okay, considering I didn't expect much. I could appreciate a few thought-provoking concepts beneath the special effects, and if they were true to the book, it looks worth reading.

8. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
No. Never heard of it.

9. The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett
I've read all the Discworld books (and several of Pratchett's others), up to 'Going Postal', usually within a month of each paperback having been released i.e. I've liked them since the mid-Eighties, but not enough to rush out and buy in hardback.
Apart from 'Monstrous Regiment', 'The Colour Of Magic' and 'The Light Fantastic' are my least favourites. The coherence and characterisation of the setting and characters didn't seem to become properly established until later books (there's more about that here), so the first two seem a bit inconsistent and lightweight by comparison.

10. Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
Yes, and I reviewed it almost two years ago.

11. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
Yes! One of my favourite books, not only because of the first couple of pages (see the fourth paragraph here).

12. Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
No, but I intend to.

13. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
A little slow, but worth it. I'm afraid 'Quicksilver' failed to hold my attention to the same (limited) extent, and 'The Confusion' has been in my 'to read' pile since I bought it several months ago.

14. Consider Phlebas – Iain M Banks
Yes. Not my favourite Banks SF novel (that'd be 'Excession'), but still good.

15. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
I was going to say 'no', but the synopsis at Amazon seems familiar. I suspect I did read it in my teens, and have simply forgotten.

16. The Man in the High Castle – Philip K Dick
No. I don't recognise that title.

17. American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Yes. Excellent, and reviewed here.

18. The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
Yes. Another of my favourite books. I'd love to see Stephenson continue this story (the narrative is certainly wide open for that), but I suspect his interests have moved on from the overtly cyberpunk genre.

19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy – Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
Yes. It contains a couple of interesting ideas, but they were conveyed better in the 'Principia Discordia', and I really didn't rate the writing style.

20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham
Never heard of it!

Andrew Dickson:

I'm astonished. I certainly wouldn't claim to be a great intellect, but didn't find 'Life of Pi' remotely 'difficult', and enjoyed it. Similarly, 'Midnight's Children' is amongst my all-time favourite books, possibly because it's not merely frothy, throwaway light entertainment.
If the most a book provides is a reason to move one's eyes whilst sunbathing, or a means of merely killing time, why bother? Time is immensely valuable to me; I try to invest rather than just spend it. For me, entertainment isn't 'down time', nor a reason to disengage my brain.
I hope it's obvious that I don't go to the opposite extreme and actively seek 'challenging' books – life's too short for that, too.

Undeniably, one does take a few minutes to slip into a mindset receptive to Rushdie's written style. I remember finishing a very readable sci-fi novel once, then starting 'The Moor's Last Sigh' at the same pace – it was like sprinting into a stone wall. Rushdie's prose style and almost playful use of language can't be hurried, and I don't understand why anyone would wish to. Yet, even having said that, I wouldn't describe 'Midnight's Children' as linguistically challenging or inaccessible. To a patient reader, it flows wonderfully. For ****'s sake, it's fun!

I can't avoid the suspicion that the Guardian discussion is dominated by reverse snobbery, the participants attempting to distance themselves from the initial 'artificially high-brow' pretension by affecting disdain for anything perceived as elitist. To avoid association with one herd, they embrace another. The underlying intention is the same: asserting that "I'm special, me" whilst taking elaborate care to avoid alienating ones' peer group – the very definition of bourgeois.

I can honestly say I've never bought a book in order to display it on a bookshelf or to say anything about myself, not least because I don't give a **** about the opinions of (many) others, and certainly no-one so shallow as to consider books as mere status-symbols. That's certainly not to say I've completed every book I've ever bought – I've been on p.258 of 'Crime And Punishment' for 3-4 years –, but I bought it because I genuinely want(ed) to read it.

One thing the Guardian discussion doesn't mention is the converse. I wonder how many people who'd buy the latest award-winning novel with minimal expectation of even opening it would recoil from the very idea of reading anything perceived as populist, such as a Terry Pratchett book. Admittedly, I've gone-off the early Discworld novels, and 'Monstrous Regiments' was disappointing, but the snobs are missing out on quality literature in books such as 'The Fifth Elephant', merely because of empty reputation.

As I've said before, I'm totally opposed to the idea of artificially sustaining obsolete market sectors merely for the sake of sentimentality. If independent bookshops can't compete in the open market, or can't exploit some specialist niche, goodbye. To repeat myself: if the market doesn't support their existence, the obvious result shouldn't be postponed.

If he'd expressed it in terms of excessive commercialisation of the publishing industry, and an unwillingness of publishers to risk minority-interest books which mightn't sell well via mass-market outlets, I'd be rather more sympathetic. But he didn't.

Overall, I was a little disappointed, as I remember enjoying Chatwin's 'On The Black Hill' a few years ago, particularly for his understated, yet clear, understanding of the characters. I thought 'Utz' to be rather slight by comparison, almost an outline for a larger novel rather than itself a complete, developed book. Likewise with the characters. Plot twists revealing unsuspected aspects of the characters fell flat, as one hadn't already become accustomed to their normal behaviour. Never mind the unexpected, the expected hadn't been established.

Another factor was somewhat beyond the author's control. 'Utz' was set in Communist-era Prague, and that regime was central to the plot, in particular the perception that it would outlive the protagonist, Kaspar Utz. Perhaps the story would have greater impact if the Iron Curtain was still in place, but subsequent events have made it more difficult for at least me to identify with the unending (and partly self-inflicted) claustrophobia of Utz's life.

I don't want to sound too negative; it's not a 'bad' book and the quality of the writing is well above average. It's just not as good as I'd hoped, and as 'billed'. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, apparently – I don't think I'd put it in that league. In fact, I have a suspicion that it might have achieved that status by happy circumstance.
It was published in 1988; by the end of 1989 the Velvet Revolution had ousted the Communist government. Presumably at the time the Booker judges were considering their choices, Czechoslovakia was major news, so they may have been particularly drawn to a book set there.
The fact that 'Utz' is only 120 pages long might also have endeared it to fatigued judges!

In short: it's okay, but not great. I'd recommend 'On The Black Hill', though.

Actually, no. That skews things far too much towards prolific authors - it's only asking about authors who have written more than ten books, whereas some of my favourite authors have only written one or two. Hence, with apologies to the founder of the meme, I'm revising it to five. I've also restricted it to those on my bookshelves at present - I haven't mentioned those I read as a child, nor those in storage and therefore I haven't seen for over a decade.

Iain Banks (both with and without the 'M.')
Douglas Coupland
Sebastian Faulks
Neil Gaiman
William Gibson
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Frank Herbert
John Irving
Stephen King
David Lodge
Ken Macleod
Michael Moorcock
Jeff Noon
Terry Pratchett
Salman Rushdie
William Shakespeare
Neal Stephenson
Bruce Sterling
Irvine Welsh

Links are to my favourite book by each author.

That's dominated by sci-fi authors, but says more about the genre and my approach to it than reflecting my true reading habits. I've certainly read more 'non-genre' books than 'genre', but fewer than five by each author.

[Via Sarsparilla]

Sorry, conspiracy fans, but many of the provable glaring errors rather undermine the central idea. It's okay as thought-provoking fiction, but the problem is Brown assertion - which certainly boosted sales - that historical information in the book is all factually accurate.
I'm not going to question his interpretations (I'll leave that to Bart Ehrman), but based on the provable aspects (e.g. in Leonardo's 'Madonna Of The Rocks', John is plainly on the left, Jesus on the right, not the reverse, as Brown claims; or whilst Brown claims the Louvre's glass pyramid deliberately contains 666 panes, anyone can go there and count 673), it's unrealistic to claim the book to be substantively factual, or even well-researched.

These sessions could be the salvation of high-street bookshops. I rarely buy from such shops nowadays; in fact I found out about the signing whilst selecting a guidebook to New York City, but I've returned to the office to order it from Amazon. For one thing, it's £3.30 (30%) cheaper. For another I don't have to deal with shop staff.

The staff of the University shop seem okay, but as it's primarily an academic bookshop, the range of non-academic books is limited, so I rarely call in.
With one exception, the staff of the city centre Waterstones are useless. They seem to regard themselves as the cream of Lancaster's intelligentsia, too good for anything as mundane as dealing with customers. Their loss.

There is a branch of Ottakars, but since I tend to only use high street bookshops as a browsing resource, and Waterstones is convenient, I can't really comment on the Ottakars staff.

There's also a specialist sci-fi bookshop in Lancaster, but I won't promote it by quoting the name; I find the owner annoying, and avoid visiting.

Speaking for myself, that latter type is the one I go for (in sci-fi, anyway; the 'fantasy' genre just isn't to my taste). Whilst I enjoy 'cyberpunk' novels featuring realistic people interacting with a realistic environment in a credible way, interstellar travel and aliens aren't my thing. Yet the best of even that class of novel often approaches real-world issues by metaphor. For example, racism or xenophobia applies whether interracial or interspecies. There are many books (and in particular TV series) I mightn't enjoy, but I wouldn't dismiss them so casually (thoughtlessly?) as the Village Voice article suggests.

I may have digressed from Matthew's real point, so read his posting for yourself.

Katie.com used to house Jones' CV, pictures of her young son, and a link to her professional site. The increased attention, including "... the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people..." meant that content had to be removed for the safety of her business and family. Quoted by the Guardian in August 2000, Jones said:

This was bad enough in 2000, but the reason Neil G. mentioned it (also Boing Boing) was that more recently Katie J. has been contacted by an (allegedly) aggressive lawyer currently collaborating on a project with Katie T., effectively demanding that she surrender (sorry; 'donate') the domain name to them. Not only has the domain been hijacked by default (each time the book is mentioned in the media, unwelcome site traffic and e-mails peak again), there's now an attempt to formally take it from the rightful owner.

I can only sympathise with Katie Jones, and hope that negative publicity for the publisher and this lawyer might persuade them to act responsibly. After all, their cause is commendable; it's just their behaviour which is totally unreasonable.

See, yes, Katie.com for more details, an open letter to Katie Tarbox & Penguin, and updates.

Incidentally, I think it's safe to say the sequel is dispensible, unless only as a curiosity.

The main initial disappointment was the length. Having realised this is a novella, no problem, but it's a bit naughty of Amazon to sell this as "Paperback 208 pages", which certainly implies a full-length novel, whereas the volume contains two independent novellas by entirely unrelated authors - the MacLeod section is really only 90 pages of the 208. The rest of the volume is 'A Writer's Life' by Eric Brown, a story which could have been conceived by H.P.Lovecraft, if he'd been writing about contemporary Yorkshire.

I'm not criticising the quality of the writing; the prose read well without being either pretentious or simplistic, and the characterisations were okay. The problem was that the story describes an incestuous world that I neither occupy nor aspire to: the fashion industry (fashion design itself interests me, but not the people and lifestyle), style magazines, cliquey 'beautiful people' and indeed New York (sorry: Manhattan) itself. The locations and character motivations meant little to me; as good a satire as this may be, I have a limited understanding of what was being satirised.

I couldn't call this a failing of the book or author, but to gain the most from McInerney's apparent disdain for this world of empty celebrity, one has to have some knowledge or interest in it, whereas those of us who are genuinely uninterested in the world will have limited appreciation of the book.

This book was listed at Amazon as 'print on demand'. I'm not entirely sure what that means, and whether my copy was literally produced for me, in a print run of one. The cover price was certainly rather higher than that of a mass-market paperback.

A more significant question is whether this is a form of vanity publishing, whereby the author pays to have a book released rather than a publisher deciding to release a book purely on its literary/commercial merits. I don't think that was the case here, but 'Hallucinating' certainly seems to be under-edited. There are basic grammatic and even spelling errors throughout (for example 'alot' is used instead of 'a lot') and slang is used inappropriately (e.g. 'stylee' and 'choons' would be fine in dialogue, but aren't standard in third-person descriptive text) and inconsistently.
Particularly in the opening chapter, characters act with unnatural abruptness, which reads like work-in-progress, to be redrafted and filled-out before publication.
Conversely, the closing chapters suddenly explore, in depth, such abstract concepts as the nature of love and the purpose of laughter, which entirely ruins the pacing of the climactic scenes.
A decent editor could have suggested changes, and improved the result.

A central aspect of the book's marketing was that 'Hallucinating' features cameo appearences from musicians active in the 90s festival scene, such as Ed Wynne of the Ozric Tentacles, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and Richard Allen of Delerium Records. No doubt my cursory mention of those names here will be picked up by the search engines and generate a few hits on this page; the book relies on the same effect, and the name-checks are about as meaningful.

The book is set in the years following 2049, so all these musicians are elderly and their roles in the book bear no relevance to their earlier careers. For instance, a lead character meets a member of a Somerset resistance group (don't worry, that makes sense in context), who just happens to be Ed Wynne, but there's no real reason why it needs to be Wynne; had it been anyone else, the effect on the plot would have been identical.

Similarly, another lead character visits a mystic hermit living in a Cornish cave. This oracle could have been anyone, but for no apparent reason, it's Steven Wilson. Worse, this episode is barely mentioned afterwards, and has absolutely no effect on the plot - had these 2½ pages been simply omitted outright, the story wouldn't have been changed.

Richard Allen appears for three pages, again in a pointless digression lasting only for those three pages. Palmer's own website offers a draft of the first 63 pages of the book (try it, you might like it). At the same point in that version, the Richard Allen subplot isn't even mentioned, and the result is identical. Likewise Michael Dog: one page in the book, nothing in the web-published draft; no real difference between the two.

I can't decide whether this is all just self-indulgence or cynical marketing. Either way, it's counterproductive.

Try the sample chapters, and judge for yourself, but as someone who has read the whole thing, I can't recommend it.