As I paged through your choices I got to the second to the last and thought to myself, "Why don't they pick something by Sheri Tepper." And there she was! As someone who has loved her for years, it was gratifying to find her mentioned on Salon. Her best works (Grass, The Awakeners,the Mavin series etc.) are revelations. I am a huge sci-fi fan and she is truly one of the best writers in the genre--not afraid to be dark, crazily imaginative, thoughtful, and the best culture and world builder out there. I love that another LW paired her up with Guy Gavriel Kay too. Another fantastic culture builder. Not quite so dark though--maybe better for summer reading--although I find Tepper a joy anytime during the year.

I recommend The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It has to be the best new Sci-Fi/Fantasy book I've read in ages. It's certainly up there with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in terms of intellegence and engaging writing.

And it sounds nothing like the beginning of 28 Days Later. They could not be more different.

They're really cute. They don't appear to come from the book cover of "Three Bags Full." They look so inquisitive, just like you'd expect sheep detectives to look (not that I'd devoted much thought to this topic prior to today).

If you've got nerves of steel, a strong stomach, a more than slightly skewed sense of humour, a graphic tolerance, and like clear liquids (you'll understand the reference if you read the book), then read the roller-coaster ride that is _Nightmare Therapy_ by Kevin McCaffrey.

I recommend these recently re-published works by Bryher (a highly regarded historical novelist during the 1950s and 1960s; now known mainly -- and insufficiently -- as H.D.'s inamorata):

_Visa for Avalon_ (her only SF novel)

_The Player's Boy_ (theatrical life as Elizabethan became dangerously Jacobean)

_The Heart to Artemis: A Writer's Memoirs_

I'd recommend Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge, which I"m finding totally fascinating. At the risk of coining a phrase: it is balanced and fair. And-- uncharacteristic for Bernstein -- very disciplined. Certainly not the last biography of Ms. Clinton, but also certainly the best to date.

I'm so out of touch with sci fi. It's nice to see what's current.

After devouring Harry Potter 7, I will take just as much zeal to the new Jasper Fforde book in the Thursday Next series. It's fun reading that should yet be required!

It's summer and my library has the new Sheri Tepper, joy! I will probably finish it tonight. It's good.

It's not new but most people in the west have never heard of it. Romance of the 3 kingdoms is a Chinease Historical fiction (heave on the fiction). It covers the period in which the Hahn Dynasty was brought down and the power struggles that ensue. Complete with magic, war, iand ntreague but no Romance It's 15 hundred pages of pure pleasure.

The Chicago Manual of Style has, unfortunately, been 'out of vogue' for some time now, both here and most everywhere else.

Wow! Pennywhoever, thank you. I had no idea the "click on print" thing did what it does. What a neat help. Now, just one comment from one mystry fan who never reads....well, those books that include science with fiction. The originators of terms and clever phrases just don't always get to decide how they're going to be used; language takes off in surprising directions from popular use, no matter what--as everyone here knows, of course. When those authors of old created "SF" and "Sci-Fi", didn't they have a clue that the latter term is far more interesting and fun to use than the first one? Guys, it rhymes! It sounds cool. Ess eff is nothing compared to it. So, I shall blissfully continue to refer to the genre I never read anyway as Sci-Fi. And you can call my "cozies" whatever you like in return.

Jeez Louise, Tomm. For someone so busy and so hungry, you sure type a lot!

Don't want to click so much? Try going down to "Print". Click it once. Read that. And don't get food in your keyboard.

My book Cyberchild is a good read, if I do say so myself. You can read the first chapters for free at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild.

It's about a young girl who encounters a stray lab ape from a facility destroyed by animal activists and gets infected with the technology the animal carries.

Cyberchild is hard SF with a human perspective exploring how people react in the face of advanced technology, animal rights, terrorism, and the information society.

Is there some practical reason why it was necessary to click multiple times to find out what the books were that were being reviewed? Most everyone with multiple reviews to offer provides a list up front so that no one needs to waste their time on stuff they don't want just because they have to go page after page after page even to find out the titles and authors to be discussed.

Similarly, was it just impossible to put each tiny review together with others so that, just as with every other article, there was a full page of content before clicking and waiting for the next page to load? The way you did this, every separate review was given its own separate page. If you're going to consolidate reviews into a single column or collection, then bloody well consolidate them.

What I wanted when I ran into this item this morning before breakfast, before work, was to know what the topic was, and that meant lots of unnecessary fiddling around because apparently it was a secret. Now that I've found out, I'm ticked off that you wasted so much of my time. Maybe every clutch of Salon reviews is the same and this only stood out because the items were often quite short. Maybe your film reviews are treated just the same and I was either too absorbed to notice or too oblivious to the format and presentation because I was too focused on paging through to get to the one in the headers that attracted my attention.

But there have to be people hungrier than me, busier than me, and I'll betcha that a handy list of what's under discussion would save a world of time for everything from your non-mainstream movie reviews to this multi-author selection of book reviews. Or would that be too much consideration to request and too practical to be provided?

Meanwhile, having used up the available time, the reviews themselves may still get read, but it won't be this morning.