Kayleigh said:

I love his books , but my favorites are mostly SF books or cultural stories.

Whateva said:

Well, I haven't read much SF lately, don't know why. I used to read a lot of SF when I was younger.

Now I'm totally hooked on George R. R. Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire'-books.

In the autumn I read a book of the history of Blackfeet, it was very good one too.

Angels & Demons - Dan Brown

Amazon.com:

It takes guts to write a novel that combines an ancient secret brotherhood, the Swiss Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, a papal conclave, mysterious ambigrams, a plot against the Vatican, a mad scientist in a wheelchair, particles of antimatter, jets that can travel 15,000 miles per hour, crafty assassins, a beautiful Italian physicist, and a Harvard professor of religious iconology. It takes talent to make that novel anything but ridiculous. Kudos to Dan Brown (Digital Fortress) for achieving the nearly impossible. Angels & Demons is a no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops, breathless tangle of a thriller--think Katherine Neville's The Eight (but cleverer) or Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (but more accessible).
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati--dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism--is alive, well, and murderously active. Brilliant physicist Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, his eyes plucked out, and the society's ancient symbol branded upon his chest. His final discovery, antimatter, the most powerful and dangerous energy source known to man, has disappeared--only to be hidden somewhere beneath Vatican City on the eve of the election of a new pope. Langdon and Vittoria, Vetra's daughter and colleague, embark on a frantic hunt through the streets, churches, and catacombs of Rome, following a 400-year-old trail to the lair of the Illuminati, to prevent the incineration of civilization.

Brown seems as much juggler as author--there are lots and lots of balls in the air in this novel, yet Brown manages to hurl the reader headlong into an almost surreal suspension of disbelief. While the reader might wish for a little more sardonic humor from Langdon, and a little less bombastic philosophizing on the eternal conflict between religion and science, these are less fatal flaws than niggling annoyances--readers should have no trouble skimming past them and immersing themselves in a heck of a good read. "Brain candy" it may be, but my! It's tasty. --Kelly Flynn--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Whateva said:

Would you be angry if I told you I wrote a bad review about his latest?

Kayleigh said:

An old fantasy buf here, but I am really picky about what is GOOD fantasy. Too many writers just think the inclusion of dwarves, elves and dragons is good enough to cover up for the lack of a good story.

I love people who just incorporate the word [fantasy] into their fiction and who do not follow the unwritten rules of fantasy.

I'm reading a few books at the mo.

Stephen King - Needful Things. (Still!)
Paul N. Siegel - The Meek & The Militant / Religion & Power Across The World. (Again!)
Colin & Damon Wilson - World Famous Cults & Fanatics.
Barbara Thiering - Jesus The Man.
Nicholas Pegg - The Complete David Bowie.
John Mendelssohn - Waiting For Kate Bush. (Quite!)

If you want reviews then look them up for yourselves. I have more important things to do.

Cloudbuster said:

Like categorizing his cigar bands...

HamsterHuey said:

You know me.

Cloudbuster said:

You should not play with them the way you do. They might snap.

HamsterHuey said:

I like breaking things.

HamsterHuey said:

Nope, haven't read it yet so I can't judge

HamsterHuey said:

I know, I don't read e.g. Salvatore at all, good fantasy is hard to find. I think like you with this.

Lord of the rings - Tolkien (again) : Power of the written word :amazed:


Next on the list are :

Clive Barker - Abarat


Peter F Hamilton - Mindstar rising


Peter F Hamilton - A quantum murder


Neal Stephenson - Snow crash




forgot the amazon-thingy edit
[Edited 1/3/05 12:50pm]

The time Traveler's Wife


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This clever and inventive tale works on three levels: as an intriguing science fiction concept, a realistic character study and a touching love story. Henry De Tamble is a Chicago librarian with "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met his wife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she'd known him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his 40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time travelling to Clare's childhood and meeting her as a six-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's points of view, and so does the narration. Reed ably expresses the longing of the one always left behind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love for Henry. Likewise, Burns evokes the fear of a man who never knows where or when he'll turn up, and his gratitude at having Clare, whose love is his anchor. The expressive, evocative performances of both actors convey the protagonists' intense relationship, their personal quirks and their reminiscences, making this a fascinating audio.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description:

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.


loved it!!!

still reading

Henry and June
Editorial Reviews

This bestseller covers a single momentous year during Nin’s life in Paris, when she met Henry Miller and his wife, June. “Closer to what many sexually adventuresome women experience than almost anything I’ve ever read....I found it a very erotic book and profoundly liberating” (Alice Walker). The source of a major motion picture from Universal. Preface by Rupert Pole; Index.


also just read
Prodigal Summer
Editorial Reviews


There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.
Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:

The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.
The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story."
Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description:


Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.

Being Nobody, Going Nowhere: Meditations on the Buddhist Path- by Ayya Khema

Its not giving me any description on this book..Its a basic guide to meditation and Buddhisim

In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son's Journey to Understand His Father's Legacy
by KEN WIWA

From Publishers Weekly:
The daunting emotional challenge of living up to an almost mythically famous parent is the subject of Wiwa's brutally candid memoir, which explores his psychological tug-of-war with his father, Nigerian writer and human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Asking "My father. Where does he end and where do I begin?" Wiwa recalls his troubled childhood growing up in the shadow of a world-renowned man who simultaneously took on a powerful military regime and the mighty Shell Oil conglomerate, only to be executed by the Nigerian dictatorship in November 1995. Writing this book, according to Wiwa, who is now a journalist in Canada, was an attempt to understand the complex bond between his father and himself, a relationship so difficult at times that it compelled him to legally change his name. Resentful at his father's mood swings, absences and infidelities, he was angry at being pressured to continue the older Wiwa's work and legacy until he fully reassessed the man's untiring fight against tyranny. Wiwa's impassioned and detailed memoir provides a superb overview of the Nigerian political landscape, as well as an excellent behind-the-scenes look at his father. In addition to his own story, the concluding segments about other children of prominent human rights heroes Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Bogoyoke Aung San are revealing and informative.
This book is almost certain to attract media attention, given the international celebrity of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the irresistible family angle. Its eloquence promises a wide readership among those who care about international human rights and those who love family memoirs.

More about it here

Customer Reviews
Avg. Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other shoppers!
The Best Post WW2 book ever, July 12, 2004
Reviewer: S J Fenton-Neale from Worcester, Worcestershire United Kingdom
This has to be amongst my top three books of all time. I am reading it for the fifth time at the moment.

It covers the end of WW2 and the attempt of the nazis to rescue Hitler from the clutches of the Russians. The book tracks three stories, the hunted, the hunters and a random American following a different trail.

It is superbly written with very believable characters and very good attention to detail. It would make a great film if anyone had the guts to do it true to the story.

The book is compelling reading and even though I know the ending (and boy what an ending) I still turn each page with relish.

This is a book not to be missed!


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