Reading

What I have been Reading

Well I have just read another book which is by an author called Alastair Reynolds. The book is called "Terminal World" now don't get me wrong, as a story goes, it's good, but I when I completed reading the book I was left disappointed by it, I think somehow the book was brought to an end with too many story threads not brought to a nice ending.

I am after all reading the book to be entertained and as I have said before I expect the author of the book to play fair with me the reader, and provide me wuth a story that comes to some sort of ending that allows me as the reader to have closure with the characters in the book, which I have come to know and have spent some time with, and so I do want to know what mostly happens to them next or that their story is complete ect.


Anyway back to the book, so like I said eariler in this book that does not happen, lots of the characters are left in mid air so to speak, and that's what has left a bad taste in the mouth.

Alastair's writing is good and the ideas in the book are good and so is the plot and all that stuff that makes for an intresting read and they all do work and do the job, its just that the ending is, well it sucks.

If I did not know better, I would say that the publisher has told the author to end the book in such a way that a second book could be written if needs be. There could aslo be a word or page count limit and that as written the book was too long and Alastair had to edit the book down to a certian size on page lenght or works. I dont know if its this or that the ending is how he wanted it and that I am just looking for the story to end in a particular way and this time its not what I wanted or got.

I think I shall look out for more books by him but if he keeps gining me stories that end like this one, then perhaps I shall have to look else where for my entertianment.

Reading

Another book that I read a little while ago, but have not had the time for some reason to record it here is by John O'Farrell and it's called An utterly exasperated history of modern Britain.

I think I can say that I did not enjoy this book too much, don't get me wrong I did read it cover to cover but, and this is the but some how or other the author tone, voice? got under my skin and I was left with a bad test in my mouth.

So this is one of those books that to me was a bit of a let down, I think partly because the author appears to have gone out of his way to show how clever he is with hindsight and complete knowledge of events, while the people and events that he is talking about are of course unable to see everything.

Reading

Just finished reading that Stephen Baxter book that I spoke about a little while ago. The name of the book is Stone Spring I must say here that it was a good read and it kept me entertained.

The ideas that Stephen presents in the book are such that I even did a bit of a search on the internet just to confirm what he said was real and what he had made up.

I have no idea where book to in this series is going to take use, but I do know that I do look forward to seeing where the story goes.

On a side note this book would I think make a great radio show, as there is plenty of scope for some good acting and the use of some good and well chosen sound effects.

It's sad that such a radio show will never see the light of day on say the BBC as that's not the sort of thing they are into any-more, in fact just looking the other day at the radio Times the number of plays seems to have been cut such that at the rate they are disappearing a radio play once a week will be a treat.

Stephen Baxter

I am reading the very latest book by Stephen Baxter that has been published in hardback. Called Stone Spring and it's so I am told part 1 of a trilogy, I am wondering what the other books in the series are going to be called.

Now knowing just how long the publishing pipeline is has Stephen already written part 3?

I notice that a lot of his books now days feature things going badly wrong for the main characters in the books, I wonder why this change.

I know that authors move on, but some times I wonder if the books that they are having to write are being dictated to by the publisher and not what the authors muse wants.

It would I think be interesting to find out from more than one author if this is indeed true, I think personally that the answer will be more towards the fact that the publisher has to make a profit to stay in business and so an author like Stephen Baxter will have to be more flexible and open to the idea that commercial books are the way to go if he still wants to be published, with the coming of e books there may be a way of having some stories published that way that would not have been published in paper form.

It goes without saying that paper books will never go away and that there will always be a need for books in paper form. E books are going to be there in the market place but they will not take over the whole of the book publishing business.

Anyway I got off the track just a bit I just wonder if Stephen Baxter is ever going to do any hi science fiction stories in his Xeee universe? or has he moved on to other things that now get his writing muse more interested.

BBQ

So today we are having a BBQ for Chaz, so you can guess what the weather is going to do! yep wet or so it looks.

I don't know how all the folks that are coming are going to cope sitting in the rain!

Dirk Maggs Website

Good news the following pages are now apart from photo's all now working again on the Dirk Maggs Productions Website radio productions from 1988 to 2006.

Yes I know lots of work....The website appears to have backup itself ( which is I think a very good idea) can't think why that is but hey its doing it.

So in the grand scheme of things that only leaves all the work that Dirk has done that is not radio from 1988 to 2010.. There is a lot of work, then there is the small mater of sorting out the photo's.

Photo's of actors that do mainly radio are by their very nature not easy to get at, so it goes without saying that I will beg steal and borrow to get them, Why? you may ask?

The answer is that I think its great so see who theses voices belong to, as some times the voice does not match the face, if that's a nice way of putting it ( I am sure there is a better way but I don't have a clue how to put it)

I have found that it also makes each page about tone of Dirk's radio productions far more interesting.

Itouch

I have a 2nd Gen itouch which I have to admit gets very heavy used, well just lately in fact since itunes was last updated I have found that the backup side of things is talking hours.

Why?


I do have a 32 GB touch but only about 12 GB is in use, backing up used to take only some 5 to 10 minutes. I wonder if Apple have some how broken something in the update of itunes.

I would do a Goggle search, but I have noticed lately that Goggle is returning more and more results that are very out of date, in some cases stuff from 2 years ago that clearly has nothing to do with what I have searched for, why is this?

Website Updating

Work continues on the Dirk Maggs website, the good news is that most of the reference section is now done, in the sense that all the page content is there, the only missing bits being the images, which for some reason or other I find myself leaving to the last thing to do, perhaps because it takes so long to find each images and insert it in to the page in the right place, and then to make sure the links and all that stuff work with it.

The website as a whole is I now suppose some 60 percent complete, so as the rate of progress slows I still think it will not be complete until December of 2010.

The page count now stands at 195 ! which was a bit of a surprise, I did not think the website was that large.

On another note the backup of the website all appears to be working as it should this time, so that's good news.

Dirk Maggs Website

The good news is that the rebuild of the Dirk Maggs website is going well. Years 1987-2003 have now been done (a part from images) all the main text content is in place, so I only have years 2004-2009 to do on radio productions.