I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It was completely different from the sort of stuff I usually read, but a really good time. I'll let its TV Tropes page sum it up for me:
"Possibly the best known book by Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash is basically the tale of a sword-slinging hacker who teams up with a badass Kourier in a post-Cyper Punk, disincorporated USA to fight "Snow Crash" - a computer virus for the brain. Oh, and there's a badass biker with glass knives and a nuclear bomb strapped to his motorbike, too."
That about sums it up. The book was apparently the inspiration for both Second Life and Google Earth, and was the first thing to use the term 'avatar' in a computer-related sense. So that's neat.
I loved all the pizza delivery stuff. Just the idea of having to go through four year of university with the Mafia to learn to be a pizza deliverer is so amusing.
I found most of the book really amusing, actually. I also love ancient middle eastern mythology, and so I was pleasantly surprised when Sumerian mythology popped up. And everybody was just so badass.
Also, if you want to convert stuff easily to mobi format (from epub, lit, pdf, etc) download a program called Calibre. Then just copy files to your kindle!
Rayne, I haven't tried this yet, but thanks for the info.
Can someone please tell Ms. Rowlings that I FINALLY have enough downtime that I can read Harry Potter and that she needs to authorize it for e-readers?? I can't lug around those books. I even actually have a sad old lady reason now - chronic bursitis in my rotator cuff. :(
HP isn't available for the Kindle? That's ridonkulous.
HP isn't available in any ebook format officially (you can find unauthorized versions if you look though). JK Rowling has been against them, but it sounds like she's rethinking it. (Hmmm.... more money, yes please!)
That's when ebooks start making me cranky. When I consider buying ebooks that I already own in actual book format.
I am a big fan of legal copies of everything. I can wait. I've already waited years.
I'm also a big fan of legal copies. I just wish there were digital copies of books available when you buy a book. Kind of like when you buy a Blu Ray these days. You get a Blu Ray, sometimes a DVD and a digital copy. It would be cool if books could do the same things. Buy the books, get a free ebook version.
Buy the books, get a free ebook version.
that's what Baen did with the latest Bujold: the book came with a CD loaded with RTF versions of nearly every Vorkosigan book in the franchise.
