{"id":119,"date":"2005-11-30T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=119"},"modified":"2011-07-06T23:38:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T22:38:05","slug":"recent-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"Recent reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just finished The Algebraist<\/a> by Iain M. Banks. Not quite as sharp as most of his other books but the concepts and storytelling still made it a page turner. 4\/5<\/p>\n

I also got half-way through If Only<\/a> by Geri Halliwell. OK so I needed a break from the heavy sci-fi and I usually dip into biographies for this. I found her early life interesting – upbringing, trying out different careers and wanting to make it big. After the Spice Girls signed their first record deal it seemed to be getting predictably celeb infested. 3\/5 for the first half and 1\/5 for the second half.<\/p>\n

I’m now just beginning Newton’s Wake<\/a> by Ken Macleod. Although the concepts are good I often find his narrative can be a bit plodding. Here’s hoping for something better.<\/p>\n

Other stuff I want to read:
\nPandoras Star<\/a> and Judas Unchained<\/a> by Peter F. Hamilton. These look much better than the disappoiting follow-ups to the Night’s Dawn Trilogy, which in any case suffered from a dodgy ending.
\nDark Light<\/a> and Engine City<\/a> by Ken Macleod. I read all but the last couple of pages of Dark Light but lost the book!
\nSome recent books by Larry Niven, which seem to have passed me by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just finished The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. Not quite as sharp as most of his other books but the concepts and storytelling still made it a page turner. 4\/5 I also got half-way through If Only by Geri Halliwell. OK so I needed a break from the heavy sci-fi and I usually dip into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6dbnw-1V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}