Visions of Paradise

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Essential Reading

School’s out for summer ... School’s out forever!!! While there are certainly negatives to this fact, one positive about it is that now I can spend a lot more time reading. Considering that my Books-to-be-Read list include 298 works of fiction and 45 works of nonfiction, as well as the bundle of Hugo nominees which I recently downloaded from Aussiecon (which all supporting members get free as part of their $50 membership fee; I recommend doing so very highly), that’s a lot of reading to do.

I’ve scanned the unread books and made the following list of Essential Reading which I hope to tackle first:

Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Vacuum Diagrams / Stephen Baxter
Sea-Kings of Mars / Leigh Brackett
Stories of Your Life / Ted Chiang
Year’s Best SF 26 / Gardner Dozois
Best SF #13, 15 / David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Time Travelers Never Die / Jack McDevitt
Cauldron / Jack McDevitt
Northwest Smith / C. L. Moore
Federation / L. Beam Piper
Galileo’s Dream / Kim Stanley Robinson
Julian Comstock / Robert Charles Wilson
Anathem / Neal Stephenson

Historical Fiction:
Jerusalem / Cecelia Holland
Cider House Rules / John Irving
The Last Witchfinder / James Morrow
Empress / Shan Sa
Ivanhoe / Sir Walter Scott

Nonfiction:
The Creators / Daniel Boorstin
From Stonehenge to Samarkand / Brian Fagan
Terry Jones’ Barbarians
Under the Tuscan Sun / Frances Mayes
Full Circle / Michael Palin
The Search For Modern China / Jonathan Spence
The Italian 100 / Stephen Stignesi
The Distant Mirror / Barbara W. Tuchman

Any suggestions where I should begin?

1 Comments:

  • If you are in the mood for classic SF, I would go with C.L.Moore's "Northwest Smith". For a more modern writer, I have become a big Robert Charles Wilson fan. I have not read "Julian Comstock" but have read many good things about it.

    By Blogger Jim Black, At 4:37 AM  

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