The books that I read while on holiday last week are :

1) I brought with me short_mort's copy of Kerry Greenwood's Cocaine blues. This is the first of the novels featuring Phryne Fisher, the female private Investigator in 1920s Melbourne. Mort is a fan of Phryne.

It was light and a quick read, and the plot wasn't always believable, but the characters are well-drawn, and are likeable when they should be. The background of the time seemed believable to me. Phryne herself is a financially and sexually liberated woman, and that is an anachronism with which the modern reader can identify. I will read more of this series, since it's fun and they're in the house.

2) After that went rapidly, I bought a copy Charles Stross's Saturn's Children for 20 Euro from a bookshop in Galway in the rain. I have wanted to read Mr Stross's latest since it came out.

Stross doesn't fail to do his thing of raising uneasy ideas in an intriguing read (and is also a Heinleinesque adventure story). It's solar-system-travelling sci-fi, and the best tale of sex robots in space I've ever read.

Oddly, many of the reviews that don't like it get the basic details wrong - it's Solar System not galaxy spanning, and a few hundred years from now, not far-future. It's not as straightforward or satisfying a story as some, but it does have a gnarly, weird logic to it.

3) After I finished that, I decided that I needed something cheap to fill in the last few days, and stopped into a second-hand bookshop in Clifden. I got an old copy of Different Seasons by Stephen King for all of 3 Euros. I haven't read much Stephen King, but I do like the stories that I have read. The first story in this anthology is "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". You may have seen the movie of it, the story turned out to be quite good (the movie is quite close to it). As you know, it's a prison drama, not the horror and supernatural that King is famous for.

The second story, Apt Pupil, has also been made into a movie (which I have not seen). It's not supernatural but is quite chilling. I read most of it on the flight back home.

The other two short stories are yet to be read.

I am currently reading Glasshouse buy Charlie Stross. I was initially dubious by the premise - it seems to reference a panopticon TV show that I cordially loathe. Yet, stap me if it isn't gripping, and falls neatly between the hard-as-nails sci-fi of Accelerando and the post-cyberpunk space opera of Iron sunrise. I really want to know what happens next, and he had a really good grasp on the way that incarnation intersects bloody meat and structured data.

Oh, and Pir, re my repeated inebriated ramblings, I direct you to A Colder war. Well worth a read:

"We believe the Soviet control of Shoggoth technology is rudimentary at best. Their utility as weapons is limited -- but terrifying -- but they're not much of a problem. A greater issue is the temple in Basra. This contains an operational gateway and the Iraqi political secret police, the Mukhabarat, are trying to figure out how to manipulate it ..."