My current obsession in reading

I don't know how I found out about this author or exactly when (probably from wikipedia or what not) but whenever it was I was hooked on the spot.
Iain M Banks
first read

Many people who know the Culture novel series/collections by M Banks believe you shouldn't read this novel first (found this out after the fact). I don't agree with them though.

The story is told from the viewpoint of its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul who is actually an enemy of the Culture.

Author Banks said in an interview:

'There's a big war going on in [Consider Phlebas], and various individuals and groups manage to influence its outcome. But even being able to do that doesn't ultimately change things very much. At the book's end, I have a section pointing this out by telling what happened after the war, which was an attempt to pose the question, 'What was it all for?' I guess this approach has to do with my reacting to the cliché of SF's 'lone protagonist.' You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It's very, very hard for a lone person to do that. And it sets you thinking what difference, if any, it would have made if Jesus Christ, or Karl Marx or Charles Darwin had never been. We just don't know.'

Hope you read it or have read it.

Nomad