Books
I remain unconvinced that there is currently a better format for reading novels than the book. Early in my career I worked on a system for selling books online and my personal conclusions from that experience are that general reading is not well suited to a computer. I can read a book pretty much anywhere as long as there's sufficient light, the form factor of a laptop and additional overhead and constraints can't compare. I've tried electronic books from Amazon on a PDA and that was painful. Reading a paragraph at a time is just too disjointed. I'm not sure...
Perth has to my knowledge two specialist fantasy bookstores: Fantastic Planet and White Dwarf Books. I've been endeavouring to give my business to these stores in preference to the chain stores or online retailers. I'm not sure how they compare on price, but this doesn't really factor into my decision making here. Certainly any discrepancies have not been enough to notice. Even if they were to be more expensive (and I don't believe they are) having these stores available provides value that isn't available from general retailers or indeed the Internet. Specialist stores win here because they have range and...
I've just looked back at the previous reading list and found that most of them remain unfinished. However in that time I've read a number of other books some of which were very good. However the list of books I'm yet to finish seems to be growing:
Dark Light by Ken MacLead
The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod
Matter by Iain M. Banks
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The Night Watch by Sergei Luyyanenko
...
One of the reasons I'm running out of shelf space is the number of books I buy, which I like to think of as more than the average. One hazard of buy a lot of books is that I tend to fail to finish some (or in extreme cases not even start them). This is the list of books that are currently on my list to read.
Books to get around to finishing:
The Night Watch by Sergei Luyyanenko
Emperor: Time's Tapestry Book One by Stephen Baxter
Emissary (Percheron Book Two) by Fiona McIntosh
World's End (Sandman, Book 8) by Neil Gaiman...