The Reading Corner.

[Buster's Uncle]

Year's Best Fantasy 4 edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

[Lord Avalon]

Having recently seen "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," I re-read "The Girl who Played with Fire" and am re-reading "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland.

[Buster's Uncle]

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Did anyone not spot that the "End is Nigh" guy was Rorschach the very first time he appeared?   Am I the only one who spotted that Ozymandias was the guy behind everything early on?

[Buster's Uncle]

Years of the City by Frederick Pohl.

[Geo]

Continuing Comet...

[sisko]

Dune - House Corrino

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm sorry.

[sisko]

me too.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's a pity - I think the authors read a different Dune series than everyone else; they REALLY didn't understand the books I've read so many times.

[sisko]

what should i read next? SF, of course..
any suggestion?

[Buster's Uncle]

The real Dune books?

[sisko]

did that long time ago.

[gwillybj]

@sisko, suggestion: William C. Dietz's duology "Deathday" (2001) and "Earthrise" (2002). An invasion/repulsion story, well-received.

[Rymdolov]

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Card still pisses me off, not least for a hypocritical afterword from a man too smart to be such a hypocrite and not know it, but gosh, when he's good, he's the best.  Recommended if you think you can stomach the politics - he clearly bent over backwards to try to be fair, and just as clearly doesn't know how badly he failed.  But still, I already finished it, because it worked so well as a story that my need to throw the book across the room in discust lost out to my need to turn the page and read more 355 times in a row.

/.../

But yes, not very science-fictiony, and no one less conservative than me, let alone less American, will understand the book at all.  It's still really good. Caveat emptor.

Hey, I've read that book and I think I understood it, in spite of being considerably less American and, well, maybe equally non-conservative. It was fascinating to see how little of the world Card understands, though. And while it's a good yarn (Card is an amazing story-teller - in that way he's probably the most worthy successor of Heinlein) I wouldn't really recommend it, if only because there are so many other books that are more rewarding, not the least many of Card's other books; even the shadow novels, the ones that retell the Ender story from another perspective, are a lot better.

I wonder what you mean when you say that Card is a hypocrite. In my view, the scary thing about him has always been that he seems to believe in what he says. 

[Rymdolov]

I've read China Miéville's collection of shorter fiction, Looking for Jake, which was long overdue. Some of those short stories are just brilliant. Others are more average, perhaps, but his prose and his ability to create an atmosphere is bloody amazing. I still have the novella Tain left to read. I want to save something for later, I guess.