2nded this. Angels and Demons is NOT what you'd call a good expository on the subject.Acidwell said:
It's hard to claim "I'm reading" something, since I read at the speed of about 500 pages a day (meaning most novels are a one- or maybe two-day endeavor), but the book series I'm really into right now, and just started my boyfriend reading is the Frank Compton series by Timothy Zahn, a sci-fi writer who's been often called the spiritual successor to Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. It's a hardboiled noir detective story... in space.
The first book is Night Train to Rigel, the second is called The Third Lynx, the third is Odd Girl Out and the fourth (which I haven't read yet, owing to its not being available in paperback yet - my tendency to read in the bathtub necessitates owning books I can hold with one dry hand) is called The Domino Pattern. They're incredible marriages of detective noir and the approachable, readable sci-fi of the past.
If you like sci-fi and have always wanted to see what this "nwar" stuff people were talking about was, or if you like noir and can tolerate imaginative sci-fi, read these books. The link above is to the Google Books site - it's not complete, but the first couple chapters at least will give you a good taste.
Other than that, I just finished Avalon by Stephen Lawhead, who's clearly a religious man and can get a little preachy in his books (though for the most part, he's equitable - he features believers, nonbelievers, and the undecided in an unusually unprejudiced way), but what really drew me in on this book was that about half the scenes take place in Parliament. The way the British government works has always fascinated me, a yank myself, and while you'd think CSPAN-esque proceedings in a book would be dry and boring, but the author manages to make them MORE gripping than the action sequences in the book - bizarre, I know. Now I'm off to do some reading on the specifics of how Parliamentary procedure works.
