A Covenant with Death by John Harris. A excellent book about a group of young British men who volunteer for the army at the start of WWI. It follows their experiences, through first person narrative, from there to the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Much like All Quiet on the Western Front, only from the perspective of the English.

I also finally got around to reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. These novels have their problems, the first was a slow start and in both the Lisbeth Salander is implausibly capable and invincible (almost a super hero), but it is page turner reading. So I am eager to read number three, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, to find out the conclusions of the adventures of super hero zombie Lisbeth.

I also got around to reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. A nice presentation of some of the latest thinking in quantum mechanics and astrophysics in a way that most will be able to follow.

This has been mixed in with a lot of older Sci-Fi, Larry Niven, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin. The Golden Age