Phlegmatic

I saw this pointed out the other day. It had never occurred to me before, but it is a bit odd:

Nobody in The Big Bang Theory ever seems to read a book.

Well yes, the four boys read comics, but that's about it. Wouldn't they read books too?

Surely Sheldon would read hard SF - Arthur C. Clarke for example. I could see Leonard liking classic SF, but nothing too political - Asimov rather than Heinlein say. Raj is girly enough to go for Twilight, while I reckon Howard would have all of the Gor books. It seems really odd to me that very clever geeks don't read SF or Fantasy. Even when things like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings are mentioned, it's the films or TV series rather than the original novels.

And while we're thinking about it, wouldn't Penny read chick lit?

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One of the few advantages of working away from home so often is that I rack up the frequent stayer points on various hotel loyalty schemes. I've stayed at Intercontinental hotels enough in the last couple of years to accumulate enough points for £50 of Waterstones vouchers. And this morning I spent them.

This is what I bought:

Joe Abercrombie's most recent novel 'The Heroes', a sort of sequel to the 'Book of the First Law' trilogy, which longstanding readers will remember me praising in the past.

A couple of SF classics (both in their SF Masterworks editions) - Greg Bear's 'Eon' and Dan Simmons's 'Hyperion'.

'Rule 34', the sequel to 'Halting State', by Charles Stross's. Again, long term readers of this blog will remember that I liked that novel a lot.

'Yellow Blue Tibia', by Adam Roberts, which struck me as a fun premise (Soviet SF writers called on by Stalin to create a convincing alien threat to unite the people, then disappear, then one reappears after Chernobyl and Challenger and says the plan is coming true).

'Moneyball' by Michael Lewis, which is a book about how the Oakland Athletics, despite being one of Major League Baseball's poorest franchises were able to compete with much richer clubs. Lewis is the author of 'The Big Short', which I recommend to anyone who wants to know how the credit crunch happened.

Robin Lane-Fox's 'The Classical World - An Epic History of Greece and Rome', which I think (hope) does exactly what it says on the tin.

'Peace and War', an omnibus edition of the trilogy which starts with 'The Forever War' by Joe Haldeman. 'The best military SF ever written.'

If anyone has ever read any of these, feel free to comment...

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