Chain Reading

Ishmael tells the story of his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and in doing so does a good job of illustrating how normal life was before the civil war broke out, and how people changed as a result.

Ishmael is a natural storyteller, telling a very important story - This is one of those books that everyone should read.

I enjoyed this book but be warned, it's gritty and raw. Written from the perspective of a 19 year old drug addicts diary while his family is falling apart on an african safari, writen as if it was a private diary.

Very different in setting from Gibson's other works, this is set in the current day rather than a cyberpunk future world. It's very obviously still Gibson though, and he paints an interesting portrait of our society, in all it's corporate and consumeristic glory.

The plot of the book is essentialy the protaganist, Cayce, tracking down of the author to peices of 'footage' which are seemingly unordered video clips that are part of a greater whole, being released one by one anonymously on the internet. Gibson comes up with some interesting observations about where the lines between art, business, and marketing are drawn, and where they are disappearing or merging in today's culture.

I grabbed this book on a ferry because I had nothing else to do, and it looked interesting...

I was very pleasantly surprised. The Stowaway is a mix of fact and fiction, and is well researched in both. It brings Filipino sailors in contact with a Romanian stowaway, after making the reader aware of the kind of things that can happen to a stowaway discovered once a ship has put to sea. Although the stowaway and the Filipino can not speak a common tounge, Hough does an excellent job of depicting the communication between them. This book leaves a lasting impact, and perhaps the most startling part of this book is explained in the afterword when Hough explains where his information comes from and which parts of it are real.

Perhaps one of the most bizzare books you will ever read, Before & After is a story about Nostradamus in the modern world. The book starts with exploding sheep and then starts to get strange. Matthew Thomas is either insane, brilliant, or both.

If you are a fan of monty python, douglas adams, or other such oddball humour, you'll probably get a kick out of this. I got some odd looks for laughing out loud on a bus with this book.

This is a great book. Yann Martel jumps in and weaves a wonderful story, humourous and tragic at the same time, and the book leaves you with some interesting things to think about. The end of the book leaves you skimming through the whole novel in your memory, putting things together as you go.

The book takes numerous unexpected turns, perhaps most of all at the very end. Worth reading, but not worth spoiling, so I won't go into any details!

Great read.

It's not exactly breaking any new ground, but that's not the intention. What it does do is lay out concepts and rules that the are important in the Real World (tm). It gets you thinking and provides interesting angles on things that programmers encounter on a day to day basis.

If you are a programmer you should read this book, it will probably make you a better programmer.