My previous fiction reading list

4/16/99: I added some books to this list with the 1 paragraph summaries from when they were on my recently read page.

Bombardiers, and The First $20 Million is always the hardest, by Po Bronson

Bombardiers is a dark satire about the high-stakes financial world of Wall Street junk bonds. The best description I've come up with for it is Catch-22-esque. The First $20 Million is a more light-hearted novel about the perils of running a Silicon Valley startup - this was especially fun for me since I recognized most of the places mentioned in this novel.

Penn and Teller's How to Play with your Food

Penn and Teller are these really goof magician dudes who are just incredibly cool. They're the ones with attitude, they mock David Copperfield, and a good portion of the time, they reveal how other people do tricks just to annoy them. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I pretty much worship them. I finally got their book on how to play with food when I saw it on mega-sale at Barnes and Noble. 49 different tricks to play with your food, including all sorts of sick things like sticking a fork in your eye, and making a bleeding heart Jello(tm) dessert.

Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny

This is a book I'd picked up once in a used bookstore, read the first 10 pages, thought it was cool but that I already had too many books at that point, put down, and then promptly forgot the title. I saw a description of it recently on the web at Doug Ingram's Library and picked it up. It centers around a guy who likes to climb on roofs, and refuses to graduate from college since due to the will of his uncle, he gets a stipend as long as he's a full time student (this was the cool first 10 pages I read).

Weaveworld, by Clive Barker

This is actually pretty similar to the other Clive Barker books I have read - there's another mystical world which intersects ours in a few places. There's a protagonist who bewilderingly starts to explore it and eventually becomes a savior of it somehow (Imajica, Sacrament, Great and Secret Show and Everville all seem to follow this general pattern). But regardless, Barker spins a good tale.

+ Mindplayers, by Pat Cadigan

++ Bug Jack Barron, by Norman Spinrad

+ The Void Captain's Tale, by Norman Spinrad

++ Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

++ Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead/Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

++ Flux/Cruel Miracles/Monkey Sonatas/The Hanged Man, by Orson Scott Card

+ Wyrms, by Orson Scott Card

0 The Memory of Earth, by Orson Scott Card

-- Virtual Light, by William Gibson

0 This is the Way the World Ends, by James Morris

+ The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson

+ The Forge of God/Anvil of Stars, by Greg Bear

+ Moving Mars, by Greg Bear

0 The World at the End of Time, by Frederik Pohl

0 Dayworld, by Philip Jose Farmer

- Jesus on Mars, by Philip Jose Farmer

+ Lords and Ladies/Small Gods/Men at Arms/Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett

+ To Green Angel Tower, by Tad Williams

0 Firefox, by Craig Thomas

+ Julian May series (The Many-Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Non-born King, The Adversary, Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask)

+ Without Remorse/Debt of Honor, by Tom Clancy

++ Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner

+ The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner

++ Magician, by Raymond Feist

+ Prince of the Blood/Shadow of the Dark Queen, by Raymond Feist

+ Drawing of the Three/The Waste Lands, by Stephen King

0 The Bourne Identity/Ultimatum/Supremacy, by Robert Ludlum

0 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

+ Grass, by Sheri Tepper

0 Mind of my Mind, by Octavia Butler

- The Black Company, by Glen Cook

+ Heir to the Empire/Dark Force Rising/The Last Command, by Timothy Zahn