one hundred book-like objects

[jazzfish]

Oh, fine, I seem to have nothing else worth talking about. NPR put out a list of 'the top 100 F/SF books as nominated by people on the internet and narrowed down by a panel of experts[1],' and like all lists it's become a meme.

Bold what you've read, italicise what you want to read, underline what you've read part of, commentary in parentheses.

1. The Lord Of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert (The first one, though the next two are on the shelf. I expect I'll stop there.)
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (The first three. I put off #4 until #5 was out because all the characters I cared about were in #5, and now it's been long enough that I don't care enough to reread them until he's bloody well done.)
6. 1984, by George Orwell (Read in eighth grade, where it hit one of my biggest triggers before I had the vocabulary to know what it was doing to me, so all I could say was 'this is a very good book and i never ever want to read it again.')
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov ("The increasingly inaptly named Foundation Trilogy")
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan (The first one, and the first ten pages of #2.)
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore (AND DAVE GIBBONS dammit.)
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov (I technically never read this particular collection, but I've read The Complete Robot, which includes all the stories in I, Robot.)
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (I enjoyed this until I realised that Billy Pilgrim's 'unstuck in time' can be read as his inability to deal with his life, and the unchangeability of time as his refusal to take any action. That sort of killed the enjoyment for me.)
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood (I would like to have read this, but see 1984.)
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King (The first four. I gave up when they changed the covers for 5-7, and no I'm not kidding.)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (Never could get into Bradbury, but I'd like to try this. I think my cousin Paul got Pop's copy.)
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman (AND VARIOUS ARTISTS dammit.)
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams (The Aeneid with bunnies!)
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys (Read the short story but not the novel.)
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny (There needed to be either more of these, or fewer.)
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (Seriously? I thought this was Gaiman's weakest work.)
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons (Unfortunately. I wish I'd stopped at the first one.)
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman (AND CHARLES VESS dammit, and I do not care that it's been republished without the illustrations.)
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (The book that soured me on Stephenson.)
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett (The book that soured me on Discworld, because it was so utterly not what I expected or wanted at the time. I badly need to reread this.)
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist (The first... five, at least.)
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks ("The increasingly inaptly named...")
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb (I liked the first two. Something changed in the third and I've never been able to satisfactorily describe what.)
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore (...seriously?)
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks (The first two, though at wildly different times. I need to read Use Of Weapons and then decide whether to continue on.)
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson (This, on the other hand, I enjoyed unreservedly.)
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock (The original six are very good sword-and-sorcery. Fortress of the Pearl is also very good sword-and-sorcery with a dream motif, but doesn't feel very Elric due to the lack of Stormbringer. Revenge of the Rose was a mess; it seems it was a mess that set up for another trilogy, which I've not read.)
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony (The first, um, fifteen or so. What? I was twelve.)
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis (Gave up halfway through Perelandra when I couldn't convince myself to keep reading.)

---

[1]"Where 'X' is an unknown quantity, and 'spurt' is a drip under pressure." --The Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show

Comments

[rbandrews]

You would probably like Something Wicked This Way Comes. You would also probably like Contact, and I'm really surprised you haven't read Doomsday Book.

I didn't know that you had read and liked Anathem though. Cool! I'm glad at least two of us liked it.

1984: this. See also, Ready, Okay!.

And don't you know, artists aren't an important part of comics; those pictures are just too distracting to people trying to read the story. :)

[jazzfish]

Something Wicked is kind of borderline on my list. If I hear how good it is from enough other people it'll probably get on there.

I'm reluctant to start reading Connie Willis, because I keep hearing that she's a great writer unless she's writing about something that you know anything about, and then she makes you want to throw things. (e.g., anthropologists and Doomsday Book, or UKers and Blackout/All Clear)

I thought I'd... yeah, I did mention Anathem. That was awhile ago, though. But yeah. It's very very good.

[rbandrews]

Sorry, missed that you had posted about Anathem.

Blackout / All Clear were terrible. Long-winded,repetitive, the actual point of the book gets spread out thinly over several hundred pages. I liked Doomsday Book a lot though.

[notyourwendy]

I didn't think Blackout / All Clear were terrible, but I did think they could have easily been condensed into one book and had all the slightly woo Time stuff left out and it would have been a much stronger book.

[rbandrews]

The first time they went looking for the Retrieval Team, sure, that's what you do, you look for the Retrieval Team.

The fourth time they went looking for the Retrieval Team, why not, hope springs eternal, maybe there will be a retrieval team after all.

The thirty-ninth time they went looking for the Retrieval Team it was just tedious. I don't care any more, they're not coming, move it along and either have someone else come or have a better idea.

Mostly I just wanted to know the answer to the central question of the book: why'd they all get stuck? And she finally answers it, and I thought the answer sort of even made sense, but by that far in I had lost interest completely. I just finished it out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

[notyourwendy]

I chalk a certain amount of that up to denial, but yeah, I did want to bash their heads up against this fact. I mean, hello, supposed to be highly intelligent grad students from the future, why are you not using your brainz?

[rbandrews]

That is actually one thing I think is cool about her universe: I like the idea that one day time-travel will be so commonplace that they let people this dumb use it. :)

[notyourwendy]

The parentheticals just make this post. :)

[jazzfish]

I try. :)

[silmaril]

If I hadn't had someone pushing me to finish the Lewis trilogy, I would have quit from extreme eye-rolling sometime in the middle of the last one. Perelandra at least had the occasional pretties, although the eye-rolling was pretty severe too.

You do need to reread Small Gods, or skip it and go to Hogfather, or The Truth, or even Going Postal.

If you were still close I would provide you with the Vorkosigan drug.

Speaking of, how should I get ICO back to you?

[jazzfish]

The thing is, my recollection of Small Gods is that it's actually something that I'd get along with pretty well, when I'm not specifically looking for something small and light and comfortable. Just need to find/make the time...

I have the Vorkosigans on my phone, awaiting my next plane trip. (Suggestions on where to start?)

And, right, ICO. Hm. Mailing address is in the sticky entry in my DW journal, that's probably best. Or you could hang onto it and plan on running into me in November, which is the next time I'll be in the DC area. Either works.

[desfido]

Random question: is the DCness in Nov proximate to any of the Dar Williams concerts at the Birchmere then, and if so, do you have any intention of going? I have yet to go to one of those, but was vaguely thinking of trying this year, but am not sure who I might drag to it, and am also not sure I want to go by myself. Also, seems like a reasonable excuse to see you again after far too long :P

[jazzfish]

*blink* *blink* What an excellent idea. Friday the 11th of November I think; Satyrday I'm likely to spend all day gaming. I shall have to see about dragging Alison Pierce along as well. Would be good to see you there.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

I will never forget reading "Fahrenheit 451" and feeling nauseating disgust over their viewing of The White Clown. Sometimes I see movie previews and clips from today (such as the "Saw") and wonder if we've reached that point as a society of being so desensitized to murder and violence.