Books To Read

This is a virtual version of that huge pile of books that most people have. I'm so disorganised, not only do i not get round to reading the books, i don't even get round to buying them, so i don't have such a pile. This is mostly an aide-memoire to myself. I'd be happy to hear comments or suggestions, though (especially comments or suggestions which allow me to remove books from the list).

For now, i'm breaking the list down by author, alphabetically. Dates are of addition to the list. Books read are logged at the end.

• Marcus Gavius Apicius
  • De re coquinaria - the oldest extant cookbook, i believe; the translation by Flower and Rosenbaum is apparently the best. [2005-07-06]
• Francis Bacon
  • The New Atlantis - classic work of Utopianism [2005-04-22]
• John Brunner - everyone always mentions these as amazing ahead-of-their time works of proto-cyberpunk or something (particularly Stand, and Rider), so i'd really like to actually get round to reading them.
  • The Sheep Look Up [2005-04-22]
  • The Jagged Orbit [2005-04-22]
  • Stand on Zanzibar [2005-04-22]
• Italo Calvino
  • Invisible Cities - obviously! [2005-04-22]
  • If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - "possibly the best book about reading that I've ever read", according to Mike. Oh, and written by aliens, apparently. [2005-04-22]
  • The Castle of Crossed Destinies - a sort of tarot-based novel or something. Mike suggested i read this since "once you have lots of pictures of tarot cards and the rest there's not much reading to be done [...] reckon it'd only take a few hours of determined work"; can't decide if he's taking the piss or not. [2005-04-22]
• Paul Gayler
  • Flavours [2005-11-08]
• Philip Harben
  • One of his books. [2005-11-07]
• Iain Sinclair
  • Lights Out For The Territory - i've got it, so i might as well read it. [2005-04-22]
  • Slow Chocolate Autopsy - Mike liked this more than Sinclair's other stuff, which he didn't like too much; not sure if this means i'll like it, since i do like his other stuff. Hopefully, i'll like it extra. [2005-04-22]
• Ian McDonald
  • River of Gods - if i don't read it, Niall will kill me. And it's apparently quite good. [2005-04-22]
• Harold McGee
  • On Food and Cooking - one of the founding works of molecular gastronomy. [2005-11-07]
• William Morris
  • News from Nowhere - the classic of 19th century English socialist utopian writing [2005-09-08]
• Haruki Murakami
  • The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - started it, really liked it, should finish it [2005-04-22]
• Todd Shimoda
  • 365 Views of Mount Fuji:- Algorithms of the Floating World - sounds proper bonkers, and highly interesting [2006-02-19]
• John Varley
  • The Ophiuchi Hotline - John Varley's not too bad, and this one sounds rather like Schismatrix but a few years earlier; not a super high priority, but i'd like to read it one day (his Rama/Ringworld-alike Gaea series look interesting too) [2006-02-12]

Read

• David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas [2005-04-22; 2005-11-01ish]; unsurprisingly, doesn't live up to the hype, but i was surprised by by just how much.
• John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider [2005-04-22; 2005-10-25]; decent, and despite some moments of incredible prescience, crippled by the towering wrongness of Alvin Toffler.
• Thomas More - Utopia [?; ?]; great, and quite surprising in places.
• The Persistence of Vision - John Varley [2006-02-12]; a collection of shorts, and quite a mixed bag: 'Air Raid' seems to be the basis of the movie 'Millennium' - yes, IMDB agrees; 'The Persistence of Vision' is, well, i can't really find the words to describe it; the rest are interesting explorations of the limits of human identity, but not stunningly exciting.