www.gamingtavern.eu

[Guvnor]

Venice by Jan Morris. Half travel book, half poem, lovely book, summed up why loved Venice so much.
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neither god nor master

[dpmcalister]

Currently reading The Brits Guide to Orlando ready for my holiday in 9 days
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[Guvnor]

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories which has some great nuggets (Ken McLeod's multiverse hopping including a Socialist Scotland as far south as Marble Arch) and reminds me a multiverse hopping game would be so easy with Traveller.
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neither god nor master

[Dom]

Recently, I have finished Black Man by Richard Morgan, which was a good take on eugenics in a near future world, reminding me a little of his first books. Perhaps it tried a little too hard to differentiate how the 'thirteen', a genetic variant of humanity, varied from the norm, but it had good plot, strong execution and a suitably ambivalent ending. If you're in the US I think you may find that this was renamed Thirteen to avoid offence.

I followed this up with The Angel's Game, a break from SF and revisiting Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Spanish stories set in Barcelona. It's a tale of an author who makes an agreement which is somewhat suspect, and it links nicely to his first book published in the UK, The Shadow of the Window. A pretty dark streak in this, but more of a thriller than a horror.

Next up was a small collection of Westcountry tales of the restless dead, by Laurence Green, that I picked up in Looe when I visited on holiday. A collection of shorts, this has some quite fun and quite nasty horror stories. There are some ideas that could be mined for RPGs like CoC if you wanted to run some games in Devon and the surrounds.

Charlie Stross' The Fuller Memorandum came next, a large chunk of which successfully distracted me from a train journey between London and Leeds where I got to sit on the floor as it was full. Excellent stuff, and it leaves me hungry for the Laundry RPG that Cubicle 7 have coming soon. If you haven't read this series, go out and buy The Atrocity Archive now! I can't say much more as it would trash the plot!

I returned to SF after this with Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake. Now, this isn't necessarily considered one of his best books, but I decided to read it again some 5 years on. My previous copy is somewhere in Australia with my second cousin if they still have it. It's slightly tongue in cheek (as it features Glasgow Gangs in space as one of the protagonists) but it does a great take on a post-Singularity universe.

The 'Hard Rapture' happened with a conflict between the rest of the world and the USA (mainly to try and stop it) and humanity was fleeing from Earth to escape death or incorporation into the AI post-human singularity. However, the singularity burned out before humanity was wiped out, as the AI became bored and moved on. Humanity rebuilt, and a number of factions exist, with three main power blocks. One of the power blocks discovers a lost human colony and events ensue.

I really enjoyed it, and there are elements that make me smile; if I dared add the idea to Singularities then I could have a character profession of "Rapture F***er", the term used in the book for people obsessed with coming as close to the Singularity as possible, thrill-seekers who risk possession, overwriting or at best death by investigating post-human tech with minimal precautions. Lovely.
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"We live in a nuclear powered universe. We're the oddballs by getting energy from burning carbon."
James Lovelock

[Dom]

[dr_mitch]

I also fancy the Mammoth Book of Alternative Histories. Anyway, things I have read recently are:

Dead Beat and Proven Guilty (Jim Butcher). Yes, more Dresden Files. I'd read Dead Beat out of sequence last year (and it got me back into the series after reading the first couple of books and stopping). Much better this time around- especially as much of it is about consequences from the last couple of books in the series.

Flashman and the Great Game (George McDonald Fraser). I like the Flashman books on occasion- they're a brilliant subversion of the ideals of 19th century adventure and heroism. That said, I found this one rather heavy going. Maybe it was the rather serious subject matter of the Indian Mutiny.

Mr. Punch (Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean)
Graphic novel I've read before a few years back. Anyway, this is one of those things where I can't work out whether I'm impressed or not. I suspect it depends on my mood.
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[Guvnor]

[Kultist]

having read Storm Front & Fool Moon ages ago I finally got round to reading The Dresden Files right up to date (with thanks to Joolz for lending me Changes). The later books are so much better then the early ones, and I am very much enjoying the long game plot-arc - can't wait now for the release of Side Jobs & Ghost Story next year.

Is it just me or do American books have really crappy covers compared to UK books? The US editions of The Dresden Files have these fairly dire moody fantasy bloke in a big coat with staff and hat (which at no point does Harry ever wear) as opposed to the rather stylish abstract images on the UK ones.

Not as bad mind you as those for the US editions of the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood books which until they started to use portraits from the TV show (which I love!) looked like childrens drawings! Interesting how the two entities are starting to seperate as True Blood uses elements from the books, but is very much cutting its own line.

From Wizard-For-Hire to Exorcist-For-Hire, as the publisher saw fit to add a chapter of the first of the Felix Castor novels which ironically I had read prior to going back to The Dresden Files! Still, all five are a good read read, and I always enjoy stuff set in London.
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O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm,
That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love, Does thy life destroy.
[William Blake]

[ElaineM]

[Kultist]

Having seen Penn & Teller perform recently I was put in mind to go back and read The Prestige - I'd picked it up having been really impressed with the movie but found them to be such different beasts that I only read the first couple of chapters and went off to read something else!

With the memory of the film now rather less vivid I'm quite enjoying it!
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O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm,
That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love, Does thy life destroy.
[William Blake]

[Loz]

Chris Priest's books are always excellent. If you enjoy 'The Prestige', 'The Glamour' and 'The Separation' will seriously mess with your mind.

He's one of our most underrated literary talents.
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One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel
And the next its rolling over me

Rush. 'Far Cry'

[Kultist]

I'll let you know what I think about them at some point.

In a hurry going out of the door the other morning I grabbed one of the missus books off the shelf to read, an interestingly subtle slice of sci-fi called The City & The City by China Miéville.

The concept is that a murder as occured against a bizarre backdrop of an unspeciffied eastern european country where two very different cities and cultures, Besźel and Ul Qoma, have developed in the same space at right-angles to each other, each effectively ignoring the presence of other as if it doesn't exist. The trouble Inspector Borlú of the Beszél Extreme Crime Squad is that his victim is from Ul Qoma and therefore officially cannot be there!

Very weird, and certainly one to read if A/state is a game that grabs you.
_________________
O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm,
That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love, Does thy life destroy.
[William Blake]

[Guvnor]

Here is an interview with China about his influences:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/aug/04/books-that-made-me-china-mieville
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neither god nor master

[Loz]

I enjoyed Mieville's 'The Scar' although I thought it petered out a little towards the end and was far too long to sustain its premise. Some very neat ideas in there, though, not least Armada, which is very Moorcockian.

Whilst not fantasy or SF, I've just finished 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'. Very good mystery-thriller with a well structured plot and some excellent characters. Shame that the author allows his middle-aged wish fulfilment to creep into the story just a little too often!
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One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel
And the next its rolling over me

Rush. 'Far Cry'

[Al]

Oh the joy of number one son now being confident enough to choose his own books from the local library and thence to read them with little or no input from Dad. Coupled with some train journeys for work I've now been able to get stuck back in to my own reading again.

Most recently


Dresden Files - White Night
I love hardboiled and noir as genres and I likes me some fantasy (probably not a big surprise for someone haunting a gaming forum) but have never been a huge fan of post-Rice vampires. So I may not be the target for this series. Maybe White Night is a dud and the rest are all fantastic. It was all pretty workmanlike and I am certain that many people will love it but I couldn't help feeling that the author could have benefited from exposure to minimalism; the book would have been twice as good with half as many fight scenes.


The end of Mister Y
Billed as a thought experiment and certainly thought provoking. I cannot make my mind up as to whether this is the best book what I've ever read or a load of self-indulgent tosh. It certainly did make me think but some of the thoughts were 'this is the kind of stuff I blather when drunk' or even worse in a couple of cases 'this is the kind of stuff I used to blather when I first discovered booze and philosophy'


The Vesuvius Club
The League of Gentlemen does steam punk (sort of)

Even for a short book (and it is short) this one did rather drag for me right at the end. Up until then though it is all very readable and chock full of RPG ideas. The characters were all 'deliciously decadent' as I am sure the PR people would put it but the plot was a bit humdrum. I got the feeling that having created his literary monsters Gatis didn't really know what to do with them.


The Somnambulist
I tend to keep two books on the go at the same time and this may colour my feelings of this one somewhat. I read it alongside The Vesuvius Club and certainly found myself having to double check which protagonist was frequenting which grotesque whorehouse. Again some genuinely interesting characters stuck in a bit of a nothing plot. I did get the feeling that the author was leading up to some groundbreaking analogy with real land but he either did not quite pull it off or I am too thick to have picked up on what he was saying.[/b]