The Books I Haven't Read
May. 31st, 2004 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentLast night, when various OUSFG types were gathered in the Pink Giraffe restaurant in Oxford, a frustratingly familiar observation was made: that I am intimidating because I am so widely read. This post exists purely to prove to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tinyjo and others that I'm not. For starters, it's a given that I haven't read the classics: no Dickens, no Austen or Bronte, no Salinger, no Wodehouse, no Proust or Joyce or Heller or Pynchon. But even within my chosen genres, sf, there are many, many notable authors that I haven't read. So: here we have the Top Ten SF Authors I Feel I Should Have Read:
I could pick more; for instance, I stalled half-way through Use of Weapons, which is the Banks novel that everyone raves about. The only Chris Priest I've read is The Separation; the only M John Harrison, Light. No Delaney or Disch, and precious little Dick. So when people tell me I seem well and widely read, I feel like a fraud; at best, through a subscription to Locus and regular visits to sites like The Agony Column and The Alien Online, I've read about most things, so I know where my gaps are. But it seems to me that that's a very long way from not having gaps at all.
tinyjo and others that I'm not. For starters, it's a given that I haven't read the classics: no Dickens, no Austen or Bronte, no Salinger, no Wodehouse, no Proust or Joyce or Heller or Pynchon. But even within my chosen genres, sf, there are many, many notable authors that I haven't read. So: here we have the Top Ten SF Authors I Feel I Should Have Read:10. Mervyn Peake. Suddenly, everyone's citing him as a reference point; describing an alternate history of fantasy literature that doesn't include Tolkien. But I haven't read Gormenghast. I've seen the TV adaptation, but I'm sure that's only a shadow of the book.
9. Richard Morgan. Purely through prejudice, this one: for a long time, nothing I read inspired me to pick up Altered Carbon. Slowly, enough people whose opinions I respect have suggested I might be an idiot for taking this view to convince me to at least borrow a copy.
9. Frank Herbert. I've never read Dune or any of its sequels, although again, I've seen the film.
7. JG Ballard. I haven't read Drowned World, or The Concrete Island or even, so far as I can recall, any of his short fiction.
6. Robert Heinlein. I think I might have read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, years ago, and possibly a short story here or there, but nothing else. No Stranger in a Strange Land, for instance.
5. Alastair Reynolds. I had an allergic reaction to the short story 'Galactic North' when it appeared in Interzone, and consequently avoided anything bearing Reynolds' name for years. Eventually, it was the novella 'Diamond Dogs', collected in Infinities, that changed my opinion, and since then I've sought out and enjoyed a number of his other short stories - but I still haven't read any of his novels. This year I at least want to read Chasm City and Century Rain.
4. Ursula le Guin. I read the Earthsea books when I was a teenager, and liked them well enough, but whenever someone mentions The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed, my eyes glaze over. I know they're books I should read at some point, but the will is lacking.
3. Dan Simmons. I don't have a word of this author. No Hyperion; no Endymion; no Ilium. Partly, it has to be said, because I feel culturally inadequate; since I've also never read The Canterbury Tales or The Iliad, I worry that I Just Won't Get It.
2. China Mieville. The big contemporary author, and the only story of his that I've read is the PS Publishing novella, The Tain. Perdido Street Station has been on my to-read list since its publication, but never seems to get any closer to the top of the pile.
1. William Gibson. I haven't read Neuromancer. Isn't that terrible? Arguably the most significant sf novel of the past twenty-five years, and I haven't got around to tracking down a copy. Hell, I only read Pattern Recognition because
I could pick more; for instance, I stalled half-way through Use of Weapons, which is the Banks novel that everyone raves about. The only Chris Priest I've read is The Separation; the only M John Harrison, Light. No Delaney or Disch, and precious little Dick. So when people tell me I seem well and widely read, I feel like a fraud; at best, through a subscription to Locus and regular visits to sites like The Agony Column and The Alien Online, I've read about most things, so I know where my gaps are. But it seems to me that that's a very long way from not having gaps at all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:44 am (UTC)Heh. I'll probably read Ilium when Olympos is published next january, and if I like them I'll no doubt go back and read more Simmons at some point...so you've probably got at least a year more of feeling smug. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:12 am (UTC)It's a shame the Fall of Hyperion, IMHO, squanders the potential of the first book by being much crapper with a poo ending then.
Is Ilium part of a sequence as well?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:17 am (UTC)Yeah, I've heard this before, too. Although the general opinion last night was that both Hyperion books are good.
Is Ilium part of a sequence as well?
From what I hear, it's one enormous novel chopped into two big books, rather than a sequence as such. But obviously, not actually read it, so can't say for sure. Anyone?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:55 am (UTC)From Simmons' website:
Dan is currently working hard on OLYMPOS, the concluding volume in the ILIUM-OLYMPOS two-book epic tale.
With any luck, I'll have read Ilium before Olympos comes out. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:08 am (UTC)For pure pulp fiction you can't beat 'The Player of Games' though.....
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 01:22 pm (UTC)Yeah, I remember when I first read it thinking "ooh, this is a bit harder than usual." In fact it has the same high quoitent of handwaving as his other novels but it does have that great opening section, dressed up in hard sf clothing.
Use Of Weapons is both my favourite Banks novel and, I think, one of the best sf novels of the last 25 years. It is also possibly the only sf novel that would make my top ten novels list.
Player Of Games is just behind it and I would say that novel was less pulpy than Excession.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:01 am (UTC)Mid Heinlein is really good. Stranger in a strange land and Jobe are both amazing books. Some of his earlier pieces are a bit too preachy, and some of the later ones have far too much incest....
I can lend you stuff from both authors if you want (but it's in Bournemouth, so might take a while to get)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:17 am (UTC)Think the biblical story of Job(e), done with Heinlein flare. The guy (and eventually his girlfriend) get dragged from one world to another, trying to make do along the way.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:22 am (UTC)(Pause a moment for me to go eeee! Gormenghast! Am ok now. I have much love for those books)
Whereas I have read a couple of random Dickens, Austen, some Joyce chapters and the beginning of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (really must read the rest. I stopped because I didn't have time to give it the attention it needs) and I've been reading Greek and Roman myths since I was little, but if it wasn't for people on my friendslist I would have no idea what was going on in contemporary SF. I do read various samples of it, but I wouldn't know what was *happening*.
From the books you've mentioned above, I've read Gormenghast (obviously) - I started it just before the tv series was on, and finished before it finished, so I was very well placed to go "they changed that bit!" On the whole, they did a very good job with the adaptation.
Richard Morgan - I have Altered Carbonbut haven't read it yet, same with China Mieville and Perdido Street Station.
Frank Herbert - I recently read all of the Dune books (those written by him, at least) and while they do go downhill a bit, I really like the first three.
Ballard, Heinlein, Reynolds, Gibson - not read any.
Ursula le Guin - in addition to Earthsea I've read The Lathe of Heaven and at least one book of short stories.
Dan Simmons - I've read The Rise of Endymion but not any of the others. (Haven't read the Canterbury Tales either, but I know a bit about them).
I've read a few bits of M John Harrison's Viriconium - it's another book I have waiting. I've also read Neveryon, Tales of Neveryona and parts of Dhalgren by Delaney. These are books that try and strand you outside your head. Tis a little disconcerting. No Disch or any Dick other than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I tend to go for the fantasy before the sf though, with Banks and Macleod being exceptions. With the exception of Asimov (and a few Anne McCaffrey series, though since she writes both she might not count), almost any author I've read a lot of books by is a fantasy author. Partly to do with length of fantasy series, of course, but I have pretty much always gone for the fantasy first. And when I got random books from the library and ended up with Gregory Benford for example... it didn't hugely encourage me to read more books with stars on the covers. (I find his books just so *depressing* and not in a good way either. There just isn't any joy in them).
After that lengthy ramble, I think I'm saying that while I am surprised at some of the things you don't know (like Greek myths, since I was even taught those at primary school and I tend to assume *everyone* knows the basic ones), you still know a hell of a lot more than me about SF both older and contemporary. Along with the reading about things, and so knowing roughly what many books are about even if you haven't read them, you still have plenty of space to be intimidating :)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 09:30 am (UTC)And somewhat peversely, I haven't read Do Androids.... I've read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and a bunch of short stories, but not the novel he's most famous for.
After that lengthy ramble, I think I'm saying that while I am surprised at some of the things you don't know (like Greek myths, since I was even taught those at primary school and I tend to assume *everyone* knows the basic ones),
I don't remember being taught them, at least. I have a certain amount of very fragmentary knowledge that I've picked up through a combination of osmosis and exposure to Eddie Izzard. If you can recommend a good book on greek and/or roman mythology, I'd be much obliged!
you still know a hell of a lot more than me about SF both older and contemporary. Along with the reading about things, and so knowing roughly what many books are about even if you haven't read them, you still have plenty of space to be intimidating :)
Dammit! I don't want to be intimidating...
P.S. If you like the fantasy, go buy The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston. It's great.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 10:09 am (UTC)If you can recommend a good book on greek and/or roman mythology, I'd be much obliged!
That could be tricky... Most of my knowledge came from kiddy versions, then progressively less kiddy versions. I read Tales of the Greek Heroes by Robert Lancelyn Green a lot when I was little, but that's a bit too young for you... The other books we have are my dad's many massive encyclopedias on mythology, most of which are a bit dry.
Am somewhat tempted to get the first one myself.
Dammit! I don't want to be intimidating...
Embrace it!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-01 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 07:06 am (UTC)Gravity's Rainbow, comparable to Ulysses in stature IMHO (not that I've finished the latter yet). Thanks for the link to the essay, which I've just read.
There's a lot of good stuff in there, and he has identified several real problems.
I think those who feel they belong in the high-status literary mainstream often make the error of thinking that separation from that mainstream = isolation (compare the apocryphal Victorian headline 'Fog in English channel: Continent cut off'). That being sneered at by academics is a problem for SF, rather than a problem for them.
So, while I think it would enrich the mainstream if they were a bit more open-minded, I don't think SF has suffered, except in terms of being respectable and acceptable and who wants that anyway? Just as, if a theory of music excludes hip-hop, so much the worse for the theory, not for hip-hop. It still sells, and SF still outsells the mainstream.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 04:29 pm (UTC)It's so hard to tell whether or not that's a compliment. ;-)
And I certainly agree that sf has won the culture war. How many summer films can you think of that aren't, to some degree, sf or fantasy? But still, I find it galling that the mass-market face of sf is so often seen as its only face.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 07:37 am (UTC)I found Gravity's Rainbow to be one of the most frustrating books I have ever read. The reason I picked it up was because one of the blurbs on my copy of Cryptonomicon; Stephenson's books was described as "a Gravity's Rainbow for the information age". I can see the similarities: both books are fairly long and meandering, with numerous digressions along the way. Both are partially set in the Second World War, and look in part at the effects of the technology developed therein on society. But Pynchon's book doesn't just digress: it jumps around like a bunny-rabbit on crack cocaine. Time, space, reality, metaphor -- it's like the plot was dumped into a blender and whizzed on high.
I have never found a book so hard to read -- and yet have not given up in disgust. Every time I found myself thinking 'just one more page, and then I dump this', I would find a sentence or a paragraph of brilliance, a flash of erudition -- and I'd slog through the next twenty pages. Maybe this is how the people feel that find Cryptonomicon a slog.
In a thread on one of your other posts, you talked about novels as conceptual art rather than traditional narrative. I'd put Rainbow in that class of books. It's a novel that people seem to love or hate. I wouldn't say I hated it -- I'd even like to re-read it in order to understand it better -- but, given all the other books out there, I don't think it's worth my time to do so.
As for the Jonathan Lethem essay, I can't decide whether he's being incredibly condescending, or whether he's simply making some not particularly revolutionary points -- albeit in a well-written and engaging way. I suspect it's that he's writing for non-fen. Don't forget that the Pulitzer board refused to award a prize to Gravity's Rainbow; Instead, in 1974, no Pulitzer prize for fiction was awarded. Maybe I'm mis-reading him, but I resent somewhat the implication that if those skiffy writers could just be more *literary*, like his favourite new wave authors, they could join the big boys at the grown-ups' table. Whereas we all know that rain and the smell of boiled cabbage do not great literature make...
no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 08:48 am (UTC)I thought so too. His other point was that there wouldn't be so much crap SF, if it were integrated into the mainstream. Nice idea. Not sure how that would work though? If people want to pay money for rubbish (which they manifestly do) presumably there will be writers and publishers who make a living from supplying it.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 12:24 pm (UTC)Another thing I thought of is that I always end up with the impression that you're always reading important genre building stuff whereas I reserve quite a lot of reading time for easy reads. Do you read lazy stuff?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 02:11 pm (UTC)Result!
Do you read lazy stuff?
I'm not sure. I mean, for me, settling down with a new Baxter or Macleod or Ted Chiang (I wish) or what have you is what I do when I'm feeling lazy; there aren't very many books that I would objectively class as genre-building stuff, really. The last really challenging book I read, if I'm honest, was probably The Master and Margarita; before that, Light. But every author I read on a regular basis I read because I think they're good in some way, although that way is not always 'intellectual'; Peter F Hamilton and Neal Asher come from the multiplex end of the spectrum, if you like.
I suppose there aren't many books that I don't think about afterwards, which might be part of it. Although to be honest, that's why I like sf; a high proportion of the time, they make me think.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 12:47 pm (UTC)I've read probably rather too much Heinlein, and not enough Le Guin. Need to go back to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed is excellent.
Haven't read the others though i would like to. What fun to make a list of SF i've read and you haven't :-)
Banks SF is good, though its been years since i borrowed them from my brother so i can't remember much about them beyond that, having read them all in a pack they kind of merged into one in my head. Use of Weapons is really worth sticking with.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 02:12 pm (UTC)Yeah, yeah, don't get cocky. :-p
Someone needs to nominated Use of Weapons for the book group, I think.
Ballard
Date: 2004-05-31 01:33 pm (UTC)That said I have a soft spot for Ballard's urban disaster novels (High Rise, Concrete Island, Crash) and The Drought which I think is the best of his earlier disaster quartet.
To get a taste of Ballard at his most extreme try The Atrocity Exhibition. This is the most intense Ballard experience (and one of the most intense full stop). Not a favourite of mine but influential and wrth being exposed to.
As for Dick, I regard A Scanner Darkly as his masterpiece despite the fact it is hardly representational of his career.
Re: Ballard
Date: 2004-05-31 02:17 pm (UTC)Re: Ballard
Date: 2004-06-01 02:32 am (UTC)A Scanner Darkly is being made into a film starring Keanu Reeves. Now, Keanu's a little worrying but he was instrimental in getting the project off the ground so I'll give him that. Also Linklater is a relatively safe pair of hands.
A Maze Of Death is another good Dick novel and perhaps his most underrated one. I think Gollancz are re-releasing it next year.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 03:13 pm (UTC)Dude!
Date: 2004-06-02 11:32 am (UTC)This said, here be comments on the stuff you ain't read that I have:
Morgan is...hi-octane thriller scifi with a touch of pulp, IMO. It's a fun, fast, adreline soaked read, but I honestly couldn't tell you why so many people seem to love 'Altered Carbon' to bits.
Herbert: 'Dune' is a work of beauty, stunning book. The sequels are fun, sometimes exciting, space operatic to the extreme, but nowhere near as good as 'Dune' itself. Also, unfinished. Because the man died. If you're on a schedule, read 'Dune', leave the rest.
Heinlein: political nutter, but you knew that. 'Starship Troopers' is a great short book, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' is kind of an odd 70's flashback trip, but fairly decent, and gave us the word 'Grok'. Haven't really read much else of his.
Reynolds: Read 'Diamond Dogs' first (again, y'know them pretty square books? YOUR FAULT HARRISON!), picked up Revelation Space second hand because it was a) cheap and b) pretty cover and c) Diamond Dogs was pretty good. Good Space Opera pretty much covers it. PFH's 'Nights Dawn' is still way more fun, IMO.
LeGuin: What You Said Exactly.
Simmons: Buy and read 'Hyperion'. It's fab. Really, truly fab, and you don't need the whole rest of the background to appreciate it. 'Fall of..' isn't a patch on the original, though.
Mieville: Move 'Perdido Street Station' to the top of the pile. Do it NOW. You've read 'The Light Ages', right? Despite the comparisons on the back, it's a) not really THAT similar and b) not nearly as fantastic as PSS. Really.
Gibson: Neuromancer, meh. 'sokay. 'snotgreat.
Re: Dude!
Date: 2004-06-02 04:26 pm (UTC)Some of the books on the list I want to read because I believe they'll be worthwhile. This one I mostly want to read so I can have an opinion.
If you're on a schedule, read 'Dune', leave the rest.
It's hard to resist the temptation to plan my reading for the rest of they year down to the last book and the last week...
Simmons: Buy and read 'Hyperion'. It's fab. Really, truly fab, and you don't need the whole rest of the background to appreciate it. 'Fall of..' isn't a patch on the original, though.
Like I said elsethread, I'm going to start with Ilium/Olympos and see how I do with that.
Mieville: Move 'Perdido Street Station' to the top of the pile. Do it NOW.
Eh. It's slated for July. After all, have to get that and The Scar read before the new one comes out. :-p