For the last two years my family's been invited to vacation with our friends at their cabin on Lake Champlain, a cabin with an outhouse, battery-powered appliances, minimal internet connectivity and a hammock. It is, in short, the perfect place to read. And that, of course, means its time to put together my Summer Reading List for 2010.
It's almost summer again, which means it's time for me to start assembling that long-running Nuketown tradition: the Summer Reading List. (check out Radio Active #50 for my 2007 reading list, and Radio Active #69 for my 2008 one).
The reading list is my chance to catch up on stuff I missed during the rest of the year, as well as to read some books I've meant to get, but never did. This time around, I'm sticking mostly to science fiction in general and space opera in particular. I've got a few books already lined up, but I'm looking for suggestions: send me yours by posting a comment or emailing me at nuketown@gmail.com. I'd also love to know what's on your summer reading list, so post those books as well!
After a long, hard-fought autumn spent coding, organizing projects and reviewing way, way too many video games, I've got the urge to read. It's a compulsion really, a strong desire to find a quiet corner of the house (or even a noisy, chaotic corner of the house) and lose myself in a good paperback.
I'm also looking for some good inspirational material for my Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign; not necessarily things I want lift to include in the story, but rather ideas that can serve as a spring board for my own creative wanderings.
I'm particularly interested in reading newer space opera, stuff published since the turn of the century (that would be the turn of the 21st century, for those who forget which one we're living in ... which happens to me from time to time). I'm also interested in some current hard SF, but with an emphasis on Thinking Big; give me super-sized space structures, transhuman wars or encounters with alien civilizations; anything but another round of grim, near-future cyberpunk derivatives. Yeah, I like that stuff too ... but it's not what I'm shooting for right now.