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A cold three-day weekend here in Britain, so I did a lot of reading:
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin. I was expecting this one to be a bit slower-paced than my earlier reading this month, and it did take me a while to get going, but then I read more than half the book in one night, although it's under 200 pages, so that wasn't really a lot. It's quite an interesting story about a man whose dreams can change reality, and his shrink who tries to make use of that. Also notable to me for starting off in a world suffering from the Greenhouse Effect. The book was written in 1971, which I thought was earlier than popular awareness of the Greenhouse Effect.
Stealing Speed by Mat Oxley. A non-fiction book about motorcycle racing, but what a story. It's about a racer, Ernst Degner, who defected from East Germany in 1961, taking the secrets of high-performance 2-stroke engine technology to Suzuki. The East German MZ factory never competed internationally again, while the technology they invented went on to dominate motorcycle GP racing for decades.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This was a big seller at the time, and I thought it was great. It's about the consequences of a young girl's murder on all those affected by it, particularly her family. It's unusual in that it is narrated by the dead girl.
And I've just started Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Another short SF Masterwork. I'm enjoying it so far.
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