Genre books meme

[sunnyskywalker]

Gacked from gehayi

1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Mark those you have read however you want.
3) Feel free to tell your friends what you thought of them.

Bold = Read
Italic = Started, but didn't finish (either the book or the series)


1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes, the first time when I was 9. (It took me a while to get through the Dead Marshes, though.) It's one of the few slow-paced, world-building-focused books that I still love. I get distracted by all the shiny bits of old tales and songs and things.
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes, this one too. It's always jarring going from this to the trilogy - they're so different in tone!
3. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes, but this one is a little too heavy on the "and then this happened, and then this happened" for me, as interesting as all the history is.
4. Foundation series, Isaac Asimov: Ages ago.
5. Robot series, Isaac Asimov: No.
6. Dune, Frank Herbert: Yes, on my own and then in my SF Lit class. Ecclesiastes + The Byrds + ecology + drugs = the sixties, man. Or so we concluded.
7. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein: No.
8. Earthsea series, Ursula le Guin: A while ago. I need to re-read them.
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson: No. One of those classics that doesn't really interest me.
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury: Yes, and I think at least once for school.
11. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham: No, but I read The Midwich Cuckoos and love the interpretation of it as generational conflict gone horribly wrong. (Kids these days, growing up too fast and communicating in their own mysterious lingo and totally alien compared to us!)
12. A Book of the New Sun series, Gene Wolfe: No.
13. Discworld series, Terry Pratchett: I read The Color of Magic and didn't go further, but I hear the rest are better, so I'll try one of these days.
14. Sandman series, Neil Gaiman: Preludes & Nocturnes, yes. Don't have access to the rest.
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams: Oh yes.
16. Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffery: Read one once, enjoyed it okay, don't feel a burning need to read more.
17. Interview with the Vampire series, Anne Rice: Read the first one. Louis sure is a whiner. Tried to read the next one, but hated Lestat as a narrator and put it down.
18. The Shining, Stephen King: No.
19. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin: Eee, yes! Thanks to plasticinecupid :D
20. The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny: I'm pretty sure I read the first one and just haven't gotten to the rest yet.
21. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke: I don't think so.
22. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke: No.
23. Ringworld, Larry Niven: Unfortunately. Neato worldbuilding, but the misogyny, it burns! How exactly can a species have non-sentient females which produce sentient males, anyway? And if you're an ex-ship's whore who's been crazy for millenia, does getting zapped with an alien pleasure ray and hooking up with the protagonist really cure you? And let's not even get started on the yellowface...
24. Elric of Melnibone series, Michael Moorcock: No.
25. The Dying Earth series, Jack Vance: No.
26. Lyonesse series, Jack Vance: No.
27. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson: Started the first one, but the unrelenting bitterness and self-loathing turned me off. I can't read a whole book where that's the dominant emotion.
28. A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin: Yes, very interesting. But I worry that the story has gotten too big to control, since Book 5 is going to be "meanwhile, back at the ranch Wall..."
29. The Worm Ourobouros, E.R. Eddison: No.
30. Conan series, Robert E. Howard: No, and who cares about Conan this much? Who made this list?
31. Lankhmar series, Fritz Leiber: No.
32. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick: No.
33. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells: Yes, and I want to write fic about Morlock society. What do they make of this tall Eloi who is not a dumb herd animal and has a strange metal machine? Do they know what they're eating, or is that memory lost? Are they really communists, or is that just the Time Traveler's misinterpretation?
34. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells: Unless I read it when I was 7 and forgot, no.
35. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells: When I was 7 or 8. I don't remember it well.
36. Eon, Greg Bear: No.
37. Book of the First Law series, Joe Abercrombie: No.
38. Miss Marple stories, Agatha Christie: Not yet - I'm way behind on my classic detective fiction reading.
39. Hercule Poirot stories, Agatha Christie: Not yet.
40. Lord Peter Wimsey stories, Dorothy L. Sayers: Not yet.
41. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett: Er, I saw the movie ages ago?
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan: No.
43. Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Not all of them, but lots.
44. Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft: I know I read some of the short stories once, but not many.
45. Inspector Wexford stories, Ruth Rendell: No.
46. Adam Dalgliesh stories, P.D. James: No.
47. Philip Marlowe stories, Raymond Chandler: No.
48. The Godfather, Mario Puzo: No.
49. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth: No.
50. The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsyth: No.
51. Smiley series, John le Carre: No.
52. Gentleman Bastard series, Scott Lynch: No, and I don't really care to.
53. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson: No.
54. Watchmen series, Alan Moore: No, but I hear it's good.
55. Maus, Art Spiegelman: No.
56. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller: No. I'm allergic to Frank Miller.
57. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi: Not yet. Actually, I did read an excerpt in class once.
58. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling: Yes, including Beedle and Quidditch Through the Ages and all that. I like all the unexplored crannies in the world, but thought it really went downhill in the later books. Book 7 hardly even made sense
59. Chrestomanci series, Diana Wynne-Jones: I've read Witch Week and The Lives of Christopher Chant. They're fun.
60. Ryhope Wood series, Robert Holdstock: No.
61. Wilt series, Tom Sharpe: No.
62. Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist: No.
63. Temeraire series, Naomi Novik: Yes! Book 4 is my favorite, what with the Tswana nation's Operation Get Those Damn Europeans Off Our Continent. But I also like Temeraire the dragon militia leader/revolutionary in Book 5.
64. Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis: I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at 7, 12, and 20. I liked a lot of the bits like the wardrobe itself and the White Witch's evil Turkish delight, but hated the narrator. I thought he was condescending. (Yes, I do know what it means when you say he sounded pale in the dark, and if I didn't, saying "if you know what I mean" would hardly help me, would it? It would just rub in the fact that I didn't get it. But I do. Because 7-year-olds are smarter than you think, narrator.) I eventually read The Magician's Nephew and didn't care about it one way or the other, so I didn't bother reading the rest.
65. His Dark Materials series, Phillip Pullman: I LOVE the first book. I found it disappointing that Lyra lost a lot of agency in the second two, and thought the third was a little too didactic at the expense of the story, but still enjoyed them.
66. Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman: No.
67. Twilight saga, Stephenie Meyer: I've read the first one to see what the kids are up to. You know, if my boyfriend was stalking me and only just restraining himself from ripping my throat out, I think I'd get a new boyfriend. But there I go being sensible.
68. The Night's Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton: No.
69. Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer: Read the first one. Fun, but I have no burning desire to read the rest.
70. Honor Harrington series, David Weber: No.
71. Hannibal Lecter series, Thomas Harris: No.
72. The Dark Tower series, Stephen King: No.
73. It, Stephen King: No.
74. The Rats series, James Herbert: No.
75. Dirk Gently series, Douglas Adams: No.
76. Jeeves and Wooster stories, P.G. Wodehouse: No.
77. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown: Yes. Don't you just hate those books that are really bad, but you can't stop reading?
78. The Culture Series, Iain M. Banks: Not yet.
79. The Duncton series, William Horwood: No.
80. The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson: No.
81. The Aberystwyth series, Malcom Pryce: No.
82. Morse stories, Colin Dexter: No.
83. Navajo Tribal Police stories, Tony Hillerman: I've read The First Eagle and The Sinister Pig. Fun mysteries. And I like that the Navajo in the books are modern, alive, not fading like Tolkien's elves for no apparent reason, and have a variety of attitudes toward the traditional ways and beliefs. I can't speak for their accuracy in depicting Navajo culture, but at least there's that.
84. The Ipcress File, Len Deighton: No.
85. Enigma, Robert Harris: No.
86. Fatherland, Robert Harris: No.
87. The Constant Gardener, John le Carre: No.
88. The House of Cards trilogy, Michael Dobbs: No.
89. The Dark is Rising saga, Susan Cooper: I read the first one ages ago and just haven't gotten around the rest. Bad Sunny!
90. Psychotechnic League and Polesotechnic League series, Poul Anderson: No.
91. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton: Er, I think so.
92. Star Wars: Thrawn trilogy, Timothy Zahn: Some of the only SW EU books I still have on my shelf.
93. Ender's Game series, Orson Scott Card: It's amazing how different they seem when you re-read them as an adult(-ish person).
94. Gormenghast series, Mervyn Peake: No.
95. Miles Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold: If Shards of Honor counts as part of the series, I've read that one. It was... actually kind of boring and ridiculous by turns, I thought, which was disappointing considering all the good things I've heard about it.
96. The Once and Future King, T.H. White: Not yet.
97. Fighting Fantasy books, Ian Livingston & Steve Jackson: No.
98. The Stainless Steel Rat series, Harry Harrison: No.
100. The Cadfael stories, Ellis Peters: I've read... two of them, I think? Fun.

I wonder who made this list, and what the criteria for inclusion were.

Comments

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

That's a truly odd list - who [i]reads[/i] The Godfather or The Maltese Falcon? I was under the impression that, along with Jaws, they were the canonical examples of books that made better movies...
And the Fighting Fantasy books? A choose-your-own-adventure series? Come on!

[sunnyskywalker]

I think I'll go with deaka's explanation that people have been randomly adding books, because it doesn't seem like the work of one or even four people to me.

[deaka.livejournal.com]

I keep seeing what seem to be variations of this meme, but there are always different books on it... kind of randomly selected. Maybe people are adding and removing books as it's doing the rounds?

The Vorkosigan series reaches its fullest potential with Miles as the main character, I think, and personally I prefer the middle books of the series. Cordelia just feels like she's too much of an authorial mouthpiece at times. And Shards of Honor follows a much more conventional plot arc than most of the series.

Oh, Ender's Game. I loved the first book, from memory, but the subsequent books were... well, odd, and I didn't finish the series. Card really seems to toe the line in terms of letting his agendas swallow the story. Themes are good, but I prefer them not to be in the shape of anvils. :p

[sunnyskywalker]

I read SoH and went, "Okaaaay... Cordelia, does it really seem so far-fetched that you've been brainwashed? Because seriously, you don't know this guy."

Yeah, it got really annoying the later books were Saint Ender Explains It All. (And then the little things... even when I was thirteen, the idea that Valentine could land on a new planet, learn its entire history in six months, and write the definitive history book seemed way sketchy to me. It does not work that way.) If you re-read the first one now, though, you can see the seeds of that, and it's sad.