That sounds excellent. He certainly led an intersting life.

Gnosticism, Gnosticism and more Gnosticism (research for a novel I am writing). Also I find the ideas most interesting and quite enlightening. 2nd century philosophy and ideas still seem relevant today, nearly 2000 years later. Mind you some people might say that of Christianity - but these ideas transcent moralising obvious behavior pointers.

Just read Paulo Coelho's ELEVEN MINUTES and before that a book of short stories by Julio Cortezar - one of them being Blow Up, which of course was expanded upon by Antonioni and made into the wonderful 1966 film.
Before that I read at the suggestion of a friend the Philip Pullman novels (the "His Dark Materials" books). Now normally I would avoid anything tied in with a film and especially books which apparantly aimed at kids (I loathe Harry Potter for example!) but these were really good, full of interesting viewpoints and ideas and certainly lots of atmosphere as well.

His Dark Materials had some cracking concepts but that last book was gawd awful. Dude needs to get off his soapbox as well.

I'm reading Shirine Of Stars, the final book in The Confluence trilogy by Paul J. McAuley. Its already my fave of the series and I've already forgiven Paul for an atrocious second book. Looks like this whole saga was one really long book but his publishers insisted he whore it out over 3.

Sublime peice of sci fi awesomeness. Actuallly the first book is more fantasy based and the series moves towards pure hard si fi as it progresses.

I have just started reading LES FOURMIS (trans. The Ants) by Bernard Werber - at teh suggestion of one of my friends Stéphane. 50 pages into it, an interesting concept and idea, and very well written, if not from a somewhat unusual standpoint. Looking on Amazon I see that it is also available in English as "The Empire of the Ants" (I'm reading it in French) and apparantly the translation is good as well.

Now reading A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and Stephen King's RAGE (under Richard Bachman).

I'm just about to Finish Upton Sinclairs Oil! Its absolutely nothing like There Will Blood, but I can see why they would whore It the way they did with DDL all over the cover and everything in 'that' font.

Anyway, awesome book with an immense and epic scope covering everything from goverment corruption, rampant capitilism, ww1, socialism/communism, the corruption of unions, nut job preachers, birth of Hollywood.....Its mind blowing actually.

Well wrtten and memroble characters too.

I highly recommend it, but be warned - PT Anderson did his own thing with the source!