Episode 398: Ten Minutes with Paul McAuley

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Gary chats for ten minutes (okay, more like 17 minutes) with Paul McAuley, author of some of the most engaging and provocative series of the past few decades, including the Confluence, Quiet War, and "Jackaroo novels and stories, and whose newest novel is the epic War of the Maps, which combines hard-SF ideas with a classic quest narrative.

Books mentioned include:

• War of the Maps by Paul McAuley
• Bone Silence  by Alastair Reynolds
• By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• I Have Waited, and You Have Come by Martine McDonagh
• The Long Drop by Denise Mina
• The Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
• Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown
• The Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly
• Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot
• An Ecotopian Lexicon edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson & Brent Ryan Bellamy

And not mentioned, but advised: If you can, try to find the time and space to read a little poetry every day.