Third in the Clarke trilogy. Discover the ultimate purpose of the monolith's...

Review: Clarke returns to the universe of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the fourth and last novel, this time focusing on Frank Poole, the astronaut murdered by Hal in 2001. A thousand years later, Poole's frozen corpse is retrieved and revived by a society that regards him as a hero and a living national treasure. At first he's fully occupied with learning to live in an alien society and providing information to historians. But as boredom sets in, he finds himself drawn back to space and the Jupiter system... and the possibility ...

 

From the big bang to the rise of civilisation, it's described here...

Synopsis: From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive p...

 

Synopsis: Regardless of how you feel about investment banking ("It's a complete scam!"; "It's a great way to make a killing!"), this non-stop novelistic indictment of the shark-infested financial world--and by extension, much of the corporate world--is bound to make you laugh uproariously--and think deeply. As fast-paced and frenetic as the stock exchange on a Monday morning.

Review: This book provides a hilariously exaggerated view of the bond markets in which I work every day. Likely to be appreciated by others with firsthand experience as the funniest aspect is the grain of truth behind even the seemingly abs...

 

The evil GW Bush described...

Review: Let's hold a contest. Which man should be awarded the title of "Greatest Hater of America"? Bin Laden? Khaddaffi? Chirac? Sorry, none of the above. The man who hates Americans the most, and shows it in his actions, is the incumbent president, George W. Bush. According to Ivins and Dubose, Bush has no equal in the damage he's done to education, the environment, food safety . . . the list seems endless. The authors have produced a catalog of social and economic transgressions attributable to Bush and his cronies. More than six thousand people, twice the toll of...

Clarke describes discovery of humanity's existence

Review: Well, on reading this book, I can say that it is not like the Arthur Clarke I have come to know. You wouldn't normally find the f-word and sex in any Clarke novel. Nonetheless, it is an interesting and reasonably original idea, developed well, and with a truly inspiring ending which we should all take into our hearts. A good, readable yarn.

Review: The story looked promising, the reading wasn't. In my opinion, too much attention was given to all kinds of details that didn't seem to have any importance...

 

Thriller, British intelligence story...

Review: If James Bond were a masochist his name would be Nick Stone.

Nick Stone lives in an old dump of a house with a hole in the roof. He eats junk food and sleeps in seedy hotels and drives around in an old wreck of a car. He acts subservient to idiots and endures his boss who puts him on ice and insults him. He gets involved in one "mission impossible" after another, all of which end in fiasco. He gets beaten up repeatedly and eats aspirin like candy to keep the pain down. He trudges for hours through snowstorms and freezing weather and almost dies of exposure...

 

WWII documentary of spitfire pilots

Review: This book is as easy and enjoyable to read as a novel, and draws together the experiences of those that were involved in the Battle Of Britain. It is a very well written book and presents a clear picture of what happened in 1940.

Review: Patrick Bishop has written a detailed and poignant account of the dark days of 1940, and the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots who stood between us and the dreaded Nazis!

Many memoir and diary entries are quoted to give us a real impression for the feelings of these young men...

 

Synopsis: As his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry approaches, 15-year-old Harry Potter is in full-blown adolescence, complete with regular outbursts of rage, a nearly debilitating crush, and the blooming of a powerful sense of rebellion. It's been yet another infuriating and boring summer with the despicable Dursleys, this time with minimal contact from our hero's non-Muggle friends from school. Harry is feeling especially edgy at the lack of news from the magic world, wondering when the freshly revived evil Lord Voldemort will strike. Returning to Hogwarts will be a relief... or will it? The fifth book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter...

Sci-fi series of stories

 

Pleasing story of a ship wreck survivor

Synopsis: Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean,...