Category: Reading List Page 2 of 8

In the course of following the revival of Doctor Who series (well, that kind of happened a few years ago back in 2005…), it’s wonderful that I keep discovering new resources which help to rekindle my interests in all things related to Doctor Who!

Here are the links I found recently about the Doctor Who novels – originally serialisation of the TV episodes, but apparently due to the long hiatus until a restart of the series with Christopher Eccelston. Well here are the book series that have been published over the years and I have been slowly going through the original Target series at the moment. 🙂

• The Target Series: the original series I read during my childhood, basically novelisations of the TV episodes, many by Terrance Dicks.
• The Missing Adventures by Virgin Publishing
• The New Adventures by Virgin Publishing
• The Eighth Doctor Adventures: published by BBC, after the telemovie of the Eighth Doctor.
• The Past Doctor Adventures: from BBC and published alongside the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
• New Series Adventures: novelisations of the “modern” series.

Recently came across a story set in the Medieval town of Carcassone – which was recently made into a TV mini-series – called “Labyrinth” by Kate Mosse. What is the significance of this place you may ask? For starters this was was the setting for the extermination of Cathars in the so-called Albigensian Crusade (which incidentally led to the Inquisition eventually). I first heard of this place in the by-now well-known “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, in connection with the treasures and the Grail brought to France from Jerusalem many decades previously. An interesting story – a fiction – in itself but the historical backdrop gives a sense of silliness which took place all in the name of religion.

Now that I have just finished “A Dance with Dragons”, the last book of A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series by American novelist George R. R. Martin (which incidentally has been on TV since last year), I am not sure if I can live with the cliffhangers for another 3-4 years before the next book comes out!? This is a fantasy series comprising of numerous characters (whom the author is unafraid to kill off, I might add – even the likable ones!) and in my opinion rivals in its breadth with Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” which I didn’t manage to get through even one third of Book 1… However, given that the first three books were published in a 5-year span (1996-2000) and the next two in the following decade, I hope for his sake that Mr Martin remains in good health to complete the remaining two books he has promised.

A couple of months ago, while tidying up my bookshelf, the sight of yellow and spotty pages on some of my precious books really caused me some distress 🙁 . Well, I suppose this an unavoidable consequence of living inSingapore’s humid weather?

With the release of ebook readers such as Amazon’s Kindle 2 (all thanks to the e-Ink technology), my desire in getting a dedicated ebook reader is “re-kindled”, so to speak 😉 . In fact, I am already familiar with a few candidates on the market:

1. Amazon’s Kindle. Cons: does not support many formats natively. Can’t expand memory by adding external memory card. The EVDO mobile wireless is useless outside of US.
2. Sony ebook reader PRS-505. Cons: kind of expensive and apparently slow to turn.
3. Hanlin V3. Cons: poor software as far as I can tell, but best supported by the open-source OpenInkPot which I intend to use) and one of the most rebranded product in this space.
4. Irex. Cons: pricey European product and, according to some reviews, slow response time.

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