I've been suckered into this from a friend's LJ. I love lists; I love books. What could be more fun? The idea is to bold the ones you've read and add three of your own.
There's an awful lot of SF and Fantasy on this list, which means I've read a lot on it, since that was most of my childhood reading, thanks to my Dad. I still read a fair amount of SF and Dark or Urban fantasy, but less junk than I used to, the exceptions being Spider Robinson's Callahan books (which are lightweight but emotionally comforting and fun), Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (which are lightweight but funny and clever satire), and Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series (which is lightweight but a good adventure read). And there are darn few mysteries on this list, a genre I've gotten to like more and more, forsaking Fantasy for it in my light reading: all the noir writers, classic and contemporary, which is what got me started in the genre (Chandler & Hammett, James Ellroy); Laurie King (both her Sherlock Holmes and her non-Holmes books); Steven Saylor; Lindsay Davies (very lightweight but fun); Elizabeth George (who is just a darn fine writer); S.J. Rozan (who just won an Edgar); Linda Robinson; and George C. Chesbro, whose books, Like Laurell K. Hamilton's straddle the line between SF and mystery.
I'm making an effort to read more mainstream lit, but the truth is that most of it bores me. My life is so ordinary and boring that I really don't want to read about the self-indulgent navel gazing of other ordinary and boring people like me going through all the life crises that we all go through, unless it's something that's extraordinarly well-written. Most of it isn't. It's competent, but not beautiful. Ann Patchett's an exception to that rule, and even her plots are a little off-beat. She seems to operate on the "everybody's got a strange history" premise, which makes lively books.
Egret says she's embarrassed by how little she's read, but really, this is a very skewed list, heavy on the SF/F and children's lit. Even the SF part of it is pretty light. It's not like this is Columbia University's "Great Books" list. And frankly, even that's an arbitrary list too.
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