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?