The last of our 2018 list challenges is now ready, and can be found here. Expect to see a link collecting all four lists on the sidebar by the end of the weekend, and monthly posts for people to talk about how they are doing on these challenges.
The last of our 2018 list challenges is now ready, and can be found here. Expect to see a link collecting all four lists on the sidebar by the end of the weekend, and monthly posts for people to talk about how they are doing on these challenges.
These are intended as ‘read these this year”, right? That seemed like the point of the other lists, but I rarely re-read books other than beloved favorites (though one or two of those are in the list).
It’s inevitable, I guess, but the results (with the exception of Stephenson) skewer towards older books. A lot of the more recent books that lost out are better-written than some classic SF works, IMO, but newer and less well-known. I suspect they also resonate less than books that introduced or mainstreamed certain SF concepts.
I’ve read almost all the SciFi/Fantasy ones (:
I refuse to read any more Neal Stephenson books. I made it through Cryptonomicon and while most of it was enjoyable, it needed to end a few hours earlier since he clearly had no idea where he was going.
Flowers for Algernon has been on my list for ages; I should try and finally get that one done. And anything by David Brin that I haven’t read yet.
I did try reading Moby Dick a few years ago. In fact, I was live-tweeting it, once I noticed that every chapter of that book could be easily summarised into a short sentence. I think I got about half-way through before realising that nothing was happening and then they kill whales. I just couldn’t finish it.
Which is too bad, since I was going to self-publish “Moby Dick: The Twitter Version”. My subtitle was going to be “Long on words, short on content.”
You might want to retry those novels again. Quite a bit happens in Moby Dick— it’s just not plot. I think that’s a large part of the reason his other, mostly-forgotten work sold, and MB took decades before it became something people read. And while I’ve been critical of some of Stepheson’s later novels, I think he knew exactly what he was doing with Cryptonomicon. (okay, maybe the ending needed work. And a certain female character).
Of course, people read for different reasons. You may not want to open’em again.
For some reason, I’ve never read Flowers for Algernon, either. I suppose I should add it to my list.
Snow Crash was a favorite of mine. I heard that it originally was intended as a comic, so that might be why it hit so well with me, but I am more likely to go re-read Snow Crash than I am any of the other classics mentioned.
Moby Dick wasn’t that long ago, otherwise I’d think maybe I was too young to get it (I had that with Catch-22 which I tried reading when I was 16, never got past the first couple of chapters, but picked up again as an adult and enjoyed). I got half-way through Moby Dick before giving up. I know a lot is going on, but none of it was, you know, interesting. And I’m more than half-sure that a lot of the symbolism that makes this a “good” book was unintended.
There are literal boxes in my attic of books I need to read. I refuse to put books on my bookshelves if I haven’t read them, and I add to the boxes in the attic faster than I can read them… which is why I don’t tend to go back to authors I didn’t really enjoy. When I find an author I do enjoy, I hit used book stores and Amazon Marketplace or eBay and just get everything they wrote. Sometimes that’s a quest-level activity (:
I did stop by Half Price Books today and grabbed a copy of Flowers for Algernon.
Also Snow Crash.
Also 8 other books.
I may have a reading problem…