A thread for people to post whatever books or comics they're, well... currently reading!

I'm currently reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and greatly impressed by it! I love series' premise of mass psychology/sociology (or psychohistory as they call it) and the idea that you can make accurate predictions based upon it even for centuries in the future. Plus, it's got some pretty interesting (pretty Prowl-like) characters...

Also decided to re-read Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, which is still as good as I remember!

And does anyone know the one-shot graphic novel Off Road? (originally published by Oni Press, recently republished by IDW) It could basically be summoned up in one line: "three guys get their jeep stuck in a swamp" but it's so funny! Really cool art too (I'm a sucker for good black & white art). Has a bit of a Bill Watterson-vibe to it.

Currently reading James May's "How To Land An A330 Airbus And Other Vital Skills For The Modern Man", which isn't Sci-Fi but is excellent. I feel I could confidently land an A330, drive a steam train, fight a duel, deliver twins and escape Butlins.

The Foundation Trilogy has been in my ever increasing pile of books to read for a while, I really should get round to it one of these days. I've read a lot of Asimov's stuff and really enjoyed all of it. Particularly the collections of short stories.

No sci-fi books at the moment for me either although I have a massive "to read" pile of about 100 Star Trek novels that I've accumulated over the years, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, some TF graphic novels and all of the movie adaptations and some other bits.

The stuff I am reading right now are a few manuals and guides to using WordPress, a reference guide to HTML and biographies for Mick Foley and Aleksandr Orlov!

Currently reading Simon Pegg's autobiography Nerd Do Well. After this is dome I need to catch up on Full Metal Panic! book 4 Ending Day By Day and The Rampage Of Haruhi Suzumiya. Intend to later pick up The Wavering Of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor. And of course, one day I will manage to get more than a few pages in to Eugenesis. I hate having to read on my monitor...

The Foundation Trilogy are great. I remember first reading them at high school and being absolutely fascinated by the premise and loving the way some of it developed - the first three novellas (first book and a half) are probably my favourite part of the trilogy - an object lesson in social manipulation in three parts. (Salvor Hardin's maxim about "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" stood me in good stead at school).

I've just finished reading "Too Big to Fail" an account of the fall of Lehman brothers and the start of the most recent Great Wall Street Crash. Mesmeric reading, and a bit terrifying too. Surprisingly accessible for someone like me who has little or no grasp of high finance. I came away feeling that it was alright if I didn't understand the ins-and-outs of derivaties, because neither did the folk who were trading in them!

Karl

I've finished Asimov's Foundation trilogy and am currently reading his Robot stories. Only a few in and already am impressed by his take on them. Guy sure had some innovative and interesting ideas!

The sword and song series by Elaine Cunningham.


Just started book three and really enjoyin it

That's Forgotten Realms, right? Them's good books.

Just finished reading Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt. Gotta love that Grosvenor character...

Interesting quote in one of Asimov's robot stories: "There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state."

Now why does this sound familiar?

One thing I'm starting to get back into are the old Fighting Fantasy series of adventure game books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I used to have loads of these as a kid and when I was volunteering at Oxfam (I'm having to have an unofficial break from there at the moment because of my health), we had a few of them come in so I thought I'd grab them and I've decided to revisit my youth and start collecting them again!

There was something fun about them and they bridged the gap for newer readers between novels and traditional RPGs as a great introduction to the genre (although they weren't the first ones to do it although they did have a more complex character system than the American range that preceeded them) and even now there are similar books being released (the Doctor Who titles spring to mind, although they are somewhat basic by comparison.

Good fun although some of the earlier ones seem to be changing hands for a small fortune!

Are these like a "choose your own adventure" book? Where you have to pick an option from a variety of choices and follow it to the relating page? I only ever had a couple of Famous Five books of those, but I borrowed a few from the library... I thought they were pretty cool.

Yeah, that's the sort but they have character sheets at the start so you have to keep track of stamina, , health, strength etc as you go through the book, any items that you decide to pick up and when you attack creatures there is a basic combat system so it's possible to die in the book either by making the wrong choices or even through combat!

Wow, that's pretty elaborate... almost like a D&D solo adventure! Wonder if the D&D adventure books went this far - probably not... Do you have to roll dice, too? I think my Famous Five books had dice rolls, or something similar.

Yeah they involved dice too, but if you didn't have any to hand all of the pages had random dice rolls printed on the bottom of every pages so if you needed to, all you had to do was flick to a page in the book at random and look to the bottom of the page and there was the dice roll ready for you!

Currently re trolling through the various creative works of Dan Abnett, good god that man can write.