What I have been reading in 2009 >>>

Alasdair Gray – Lanark (just setting off on my second circumnavigation after ordering a smart new paperback edition that took months to arrive)

China Mieville – The City and the City (Bamboozling and brilliant)

Haruki Murakami – South of the Border, West of the Sun (followed quickly by Underground. It took me far too long to read this guy)

Brian Aldiss – Hothouse (a weirdly compelling hybrid of Dan Dare cartoon and catastrophic-surrealistic science fantasy)

Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody (Readable state of the play account from social media expert)

Malcolm Gladwell – Blink (interesting)

Brian Greene – The Fabric of the Cosmos (even simplified accounts of quantum physics are hard going.)

Lonely Planet USA and India (armchair travelling . . .)

Russell Hoban – The Lion of Boaz Jachin and Jachin Boaz (another magical fable from a favourite author)

William Gibson – Count Zero (second time around)

Kiwi Companeros – edited Mark Derby (fascinating accounts of New Zealanders in the Spanish Civil War)

Tom Paine – Rights of Man/Common Sense (Just started)

H. G. Wells – War of the Worlds (Strange combination of nineteenth century morals with a contemporary feel for complete disaster)

Nick Harkaway – The Gone Away World (Frustrating, goofy, tangential, amazing, touching and eccentric)

J. G . Ballard – The Drought (Dreamlike)

Bertrand Russell – History of Western Philosophy (a ten year project)

John Wyndham – The Chrysalids (Curious ending in futuristic New Zealand)

Paulette Jiles – The Color of Lightning (Otago Daily Times review)

Karl Marx – Capital (another ten year project)