Time to Toss The Golden Age

Well, I've been reading it on and off for more than a month now but despite all this time elapsing, I'm still only on page 54 of this book; not a good sign.

It probably doesn't help that I've abandoned my traditional bedtime reading in favour of watching old episodes of the X Files. I'm up to Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" so far. The Golden Age is no competition to watching these classic X Files Episodes. I keep sitting in bed late at night and LOLLing out loud at all the Mulderisms.

As for reviewing the Golden Age, I just can't seem to get into it. It's probably a fine book if I gave it the time - but some of the concepts of the Golden Occenome are very difficult to follow - neural consciouses/people in a permanent switched on in the 'net state. Well - that's about as much as I've been able to make out. The only time I've acutally made any progress reading it is in my lunch hours or if I'm waiting for food to arrive in a pub or restaurant. Now I've decided to give it the heave ho, it actually feels a relief now to be able to "toss it" and give it back to the Library.

January's book of the month for the Hard SF reading group was Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge - I tried ordering this from the library service - their catalog said that they had two copies available in the County of Cornwall - but apparently both have been lost and are unavailable - doh! I'm not going to bother buying it - imagine how peeved I'd be now if I'd had wasted good money on The Golden Age?

February's Book of the Month is Eon - by Greg Bear - I've read this in the past - good book - I enjoyed it and it's sequel Eternity - but I've got no desire at the moment to re-read it.

March's book of the month is Phoenix Exultant by John C Wright - the sequel to the Golden Age so I guess I won't be reading that one either! ;-)

On my laptop at the moment I'm listening (courtesy of Microsoft Reader's Text to Speech facility) to an Ebook: Robinson Crusoe, 1,000,000 AD. This is pretty good so far - I'm about halfway through the file. Alex wakes up in a gene tank complete with memories of the twentieth century, butt naked and has to learn to survive the Rippers (wolf/bear creatures) and thinks he's the only man on earth. For a time he is until he discovers other people emerging from other gene tanks including his old girlfriend.

It's good "reading" like this because I can get on and do my stitching at the same time as having my mind entertained, and I'm not missing anything like what usually happens if I'm trying to stitch while watching TV or a movie. I've made a policy now of only stitching while things are on that I've already seen: I miss too much otherwise. Audio Ebooks are the perfect compromise.