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)
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