The Reading Corner.

[Sensor Osden]

Use large print and the Reader's Digest.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, and get your extreme right-wing politics quota in the process?

[Sensor Osden]

If it floats your boat. 

Me, I'd rather reread 'The Communist Manifesto'. Or even 'The Wealth of Nations'- there's a lot to be said for the clarity and beauty of 18th Century English prose.

[Buster's Uncle]

Thirteen years now since I read The Communist Manifesto - honestly, I didn't take much away that I didn't already know about Communism; noble ideas, but not workable without an entirely different people/ethical culture already in place.

[Sensor Osden]

True enough, but the fun is in trying to achieve the impossible dream.

You should read (if you haven't) U. K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed' and Cecelia Holland's 'Floating Worlds'- two different ways of looking at anarchist societies.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've been through The Left Hand of Darkness several times for general excellence, (LeGuin can't be beat for stories about cultures and people,) but the work always mentioned next in the same breath, The Dispossessed, I've never stumbled over a copy of.

It's one of those great SF works like The Forever War that you hear about forever, but that's dismayingly hard to find.

[Lord Avalon]

The Bloody Crown of Conan - Robert E. Howard. Volume 2 of the Complete Conan of Cimmeria, from Del Rey Books' Fully Illustrated Robert E. Howard Library

[Buster's Uncle]

Spock's World by Diane Duane.  On the strength of Duane's previous The Romulan Way, which was magnificent until a crap ending, and Valka's recommendation, Mylochka picked this up.  I keep falling asleep without making it many pages, sometimes less than one, but that reflects my current circumstances, not the quality of the work so far.

I didn't agree with every single little thing in there about the Vulcans, but this is basically the way I see them - some work harder at the logic-and-self-control stuff than others.  (Kirk called Spock "more Vulcan than the Vulcans" at one point.)  They have a regard for ceremony and tradition that may not be entirely logical, but it IS there and a thing.

Possibly Dr. McCoy's finest hour, playing against expectations nicely , even straining credulity.

A decent yarn.  It was no (most of) The Romulan Way, alas, but still recommended.

---

Deeper than the Darkness by Greg Benford.  I've read this one twice already over the years (published 1970, so a very early Beford work), but don't recall how it ends, or it sucking...

[Geo]

A darker geometry - by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford
Set in Larry Niven's outside-writer opened Man-Kzin Wars time frame.

[Buster's Uncle]

That one's soooo incredibly not cannon...

[Geo]

Why are you spoiling my read?
Enjoy that!

[Buster's Uncle]

[Geo]

If you really want to be a rundowner, talk about the "Colonel's Vauhn Tigerman" then.

[Buster's Uncle]

What about it?  That one didn't break the toys...

Mind you A Darker Geometry IS good...

[Geo]

Oh well, I switched to "The Wunder War" now. Caves galore there.