Reading List

[coalescent]

veggiesu suggested I should post a list of all the books I have in my flat, but haven't read, to LJ.

So here it is. I'm not even going to try to order these by preference; I'm alphabetising by author. I also can't be bothered doing HTML tags for this many books. And it's possible there are a couple that I've missed, lurking behind my sofa, or something.

Brian Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree
Brian Aldiss, The Eighty-Minute Hour
Brian Aldiss, Non-Stop
Brian Aldiss, Bury My Heart At WH Smith's
Brian Aldiss, Super-State
Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds), Hells Cartographers
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Margaert Atwood, Dancing Girls
JG Ballard, Millennium People
JG Ballard, The Drowned World
Iain M Banks, Against A Dark Background
Iain M Banks, Feersum Endjinn
Iain M Banks, Look To Windward
Iain M Banks, Inversions
Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons (stalled half-way, need to try again sometime)
Iain Banks, The Business
Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Julian Barnes, England, England
William Barton, Acts of Conscience
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities (collected stories)
James Blish, A Case of Conscience
James Blish, Cities In Flight
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury, The Day It Rained Forever
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
AS Byatt, The Biographer's Tale
Italo Calvino, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
Truman Capote, Breakfast At Tiffany's
CJ Cherryh, Cyteen
Samuel Delany, Babel-17
Samuel Delany, The Ballad of Beta-2
Samuel Delany, Aye, And Gomorrah (borrowed from Geneva)
Don Delillo, Cosmopolis
Charles DeLint, Waifs & Strays
Matthew Derby, Super Flat Times
Philip K Dick, Time Out of Joint
Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Thomas M Disch, Camp Concentration
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Greg Egan, Permutation City
Greg Egan, Schild's Ladder
Greg Egan, An Unusual Angle
Harlan Ellison (ed), Dangerous Visions
Christopher Evans, The Insider
Michel Faber, Some Rain Must Fall (borrowed from Geneva)
Michel Faber, The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps
Niall Ferguson, Empire
Nicholas Fisk, A Rag, A Bone, and a Hank of Hair (will be a re-read)
F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
James Flint, Habitus
Jeffrey Ford, Memoranda
Jeffrey Ford, The Beyond
Alan Garner, Red Shift
Mary Gentle, Orthe
Mary Gentle, White Crow
William Gibson, Neuromancer (will be reading this later this month for the instant_fanzine book group)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Jen Green and Sarah Lefanu, Despatches From The Frontiers of the Female Mind (borrowed from Geneva)
Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden
M John Harrison, Things That Never Happen (need to read to review for TAO)
M John Harrison, Viriconium
M John Harrison, The Centauri Device
Kenneth J Harvey, The Town That Forgot How To Breath
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Russell Hoban, Amarylis Night And Day
Peter Hoeg, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow
Daniel Keyes, Flowers For Algernon
CM Kornbluth, The Syndic
Mark Jankovich and James Lyons, Quality Popular Television (part read)
Ben Jeapes, His Majesty's Starship
Gwyneth Jones, Bold As Love
Gwyneth Jones, Castles Made of Sand
Graham Joyce, Dark Sister
Graham Joyce, Dreamside
Graham Joyce, Requiem
Milan Kundera, Identity
Henry Kuttner, Fury
Sarah Lefanu, In The Chinks of the World Machine (part read, borrowed from Geneva)
Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem, Gun With Occasional Music
Jonathan Lethem, Amnesia Moon
Jonathan Lethem, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye
Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
Ray Loriga, Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore
Ian Macleod, The Great Wheel
Andrew Marr, My Trade
Paul McAuley, Fairyland
Ian McDonald, Chaga
Ian McDonald, Kirinya
Ian McDonald, Desolation Road
Ian McDonald, Ares Express
Ian McDonald, Hearts, Hands and Voices
Maureen F McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
China Mieville, The Scar (borrowed from Jo)
Walter M Miller Jr, Collected Stories
David Mitchell, Number9Dream
Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee
Hans Moravec, Mind Children (borrowed from Tom)
Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon (borrowed from Dave)
Garth Nix, Mister Monday (borrowed from Geneva)
Jeff Noon, Vurt
Susan Perabo, Explaining Death to the Dog
Christopher Priest, The Affirmation
Christopher Priest, The Glamour
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago
Christopher Priest, The Space Machine/A Dream of Wessex
Christopher Priest, Inverted World/Fugue For A Darkening Island
Annie Proulx, Close Range (read Cold Mountain only; borrowed from Geneva)
Mike Resnick, Kirinyaga
Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City
Alastair Reynolds, Redemption Ark
Mark Ridley, Mendel's Demon
Keith Roberts, Pavane
Kim Stanley Robinson, A Short Sharp Shock
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (borrowed from Geneva)
Richard Paul Russo, Unto Leviathan
Geoff Ryman, Was
Geoff Ryman, Uncounquered Countries
Joe Sacco, Palestine (borrowed from Andrew)
Jose Saramago, All The Names
Jose Saramago, The Stone Raft
Bob Shaw, The Ragged Astronauts
Lucius Shepard, Kalimantan
Lucius Shepard, Green Eyes
Lucius Shepard, The Jaguar Hunter (read some but not all stories)
Lucius Shepard, The Ends of the Earth (read some but not all stories)
Dan Simmons, Ilium
Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia
Norman Spinrad, The Iron Dream
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus (read, but don't think I fully appreciated; needs a re-read)
Peter Straub, lost boy lost girl
Peter Straub, In The Night Room (need to read to review for TAO)
Peter Straub (ed), Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists (borrowed from Geneva)
Bryan Talbot, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (borrowed from Andrew)
Sherri S Tepper, Grass
James Tiptree Jr, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
James Tiptree Jr, Meet Me At Infinity
Karen Traviss, City of Pearl
John Updike, Towards The End of Time
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
Jack Vance, Emphyrio
Jeff Vandermeer, Secret Life (actually Dan has this at the minute)
Vernor Vinge, Across Realtime
Vernor Vinge, Collected Stories (read some but not all)
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Kurt Vonnegut, Bagambo Snuff Box (borrowed from Jo; read some but not all)
Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters
Alexander Waugh, Time
Liz Williams, Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories
Connie Willis, Passage
Connie Willlis, The Doomsday Book (borrowed from Jo)
Gene Wolfe, Peace
Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (not a typo, borowed form Geneva)
John Wyndham, Web
Makoto Yukimura, Planetes (borrowed from Andrew)
Zoran Zivkovic, The Fourth Circle

Looking at the list, I'm embarassed to the point of mortification by (a) the number of books I own but haven't read and (b) the number of books I've borrowed but haven't read. So this is how it's going to work: you scan the list and find one book that you're scandalised I haven't read, post a comment to tell me what it is and why you feel that way about it--and I'll read it by the end of this year. Or die trying. Which, given that there are 172 books on the list and that I read about 80 last year, is a possibility.

Note to talvalin, zarabee, greengolux, and everyone else who's bent my ear about Set This House In Order: I am currently reading it, and enjoying it very much, thanks.

The List

I haven't tracked all occurrences of recommendations for the same book. If I've missed your recommendation, shout (there are a couple of instances where I'm not sure whether people are recommending or just commenting).

Iain M Banks, Feersum Endjinn (riemannia)
Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons (slowfox)
Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (immortalradical)
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (huskyscotsman, on the grounds that everything else he mentioned in his first paragraph had already been recommended by others)
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (ajr)
Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (lamentables and white_hart)
Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle (swisstone)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (pixieking)
Alan Garner, Red Shift (wg)
William Gibson, Neuromancer (everyone!)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (dfordoom)
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (veggiesu and tomburnell)
Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon (despotliz)
Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad (andreducker)
Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn (ninebelow)
Paul McAuley, Fairyland (frogworth)
Ian McDonald, Desolation Road (livredor)
Jeff Noon, Vurt (storme)
Christopher Priest, The Affirmation (lyth)
Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City (Angharad)
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age (susumu)
Bryan Talbot, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (kalorlo)
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth (deadcities_icon)
Makoto Yukimura, Planetes (snowking)

EDIT: No more please! I've capped it at 24 recommendations, since two of these per month plus one for instant_fanzine per month is going to take a hefty chunk of my reading time...

Comments

[andrewducker]

I'm torn between Lem's Cyberiad and Neuromancer.

Everyone should have read Neuromancer, in the same way everyone should have seen Citizen Kane.

But The Cyberiad is an amazing collection of thoughtful little short stories.

Oh, and yes, you should give Use of Weapons another go.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Neuromancer for instant_fanzine's book group this month. Or will be, anyway.

So is your vote for the Lem or the Banks? :)

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

Read the Barnes. That is what I think you should read. History of the world in 10.5 Chapters. Read that. That is what you should read. Yep, yep. Read it.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised. Not even a little tiny bit. :p

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

You should read Joseph Heller, Catch-22, because:

• I haven't read it yet, and if you read it, then I will too (let me know when you do)


• It's not SF, and you need to read other stuff as welll occaisionally


• It's supposed to be very good

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Okedoke. I'll keep nominating it for the book group until it wins, then. ;-)

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

(not a typo, borowed form Geneva)

Oh, the irony.

Firstly, this puts my pile of books not read to shame, and I feel much less guilty for buying some yesterday.

Secondly, read Flowers for Algernon.

Thirdly, if Castles Made of Sand is the second of the Gwyneth Jones series that started with Bold as Love, can I borrow it? You'll get it back by Picocon, which is when I want to have read it.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Oh, the irony.

Gah. It's a natural law, I tell you.

Firstly, this puts my pile of books not read to shame, and I feel much less guilty for buying some yesterday.

Glad I could help! :p

Secondly, read Flowers for Algernon.


Yes'm.

Thirdly, if Castles Made of Sand is the second of the Gwyneth Jones series that started with Bold as Love, can I borrow it? You'll get it back by Picocon, which is when I want to have read it.

Borrow which? Bold as Love, or Castles Made of Sand? Or both? Any way, yes--remind me before SciFi London. Or failing that for the Due South weekend. :)

[jorrie-spencer.livejournal.com]

Feersum Endjinn is probably my favorite Banks. I even reread it, which I don't normally do.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I've been scared off by the phonetic sections. But ok, this year I'll read it. :)

[storme]

The only one I'll seriously prod you to read is Vurt (however, I suspect huskyscotsman would tell you to read the Vance, the PKD and the Heller, if not any others). I like Jeff Noon a lot, and I think Vurt is the most accessible of his novels, being slightly less overly stylised than usual. He has a nice line in playing with words and concepts, and an enjoyably cynical worldview.

The other one you have on here that I like a lot is The Diamond Age, but it suffers from collapsing entirely about two-thirds of the way through and not really recovering. Still, that first two-thirds is great.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I should have read Vurt ages ago, given that it's a Clarke Award winner. I suspect there may also be others nominating it...

My Stephenson goal this year is to read The Baroque Cycle. Yes, all of it.

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

Neuromancer, obviously.

I've read The Man In The High Castle, but can't remember much about it (which is odd, for me). I would be hesitant to recommend catch-22 - it did wonders for language, but as a story/satire, I felt it fell a little flat.

Use of Weapons is probably my favourite of Banks' Culture SF...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

See my reply to andrewducker--Neuromancer is already lined up for this month, so you get another spin. The Dick or the Heller or the Banks?

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons (stalled half-way, need to try again sometime)
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Joe Sacco, Palestine (borrowed from Andrew)
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus (read, but don't think I fully appreciated; needs a re-read)
Bryan Talbot, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (borrowed from Andrew)
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Makoto Yukimura, Planetes (borrowed from Andrew)
Read this first, I want it back :P

William Gibson, Neuromancer
Ooh, running out of time!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Are you having trouble with the concept of 'pick one' today? :p

I'm taking your vote as being for Planetes.

[wg.livejournal.com]

The things you haven't read always surprise me (particularly the Greg Egans)

Just one t choose? But thats really hard.

Um... Red Shift. Its tiny, and I'm curious what you would make of something I've been rereading regularly for the last 15 years, and what impact it has if you aren't 12 when its first read.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I have read all the other Greg Egan. Isn't that enough? :p

Red Shift it is.

[colours.livejournal.com]

Charles DeLint, Waifs & Strays

Huh. Since when?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Er ... August, I think. 'tis your fault, anyway. ;-)

[liv]

Ian McDonald, Desolation Road

Not my absolute favourite on that list, but from reading your other reviews I think it's one you'll particularly get on with. And it's doing things that pretty much no other book (that I know of) does at all. It's a little tiny bit like One hundred years of solitude, only with SF, and not in translation, so you can really appreciate the quality of the writing.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I was ashamed to realise how little Ian McDonald I'd actually read, given how much time I've spent raving about River of Gods. So thankyou for giving me a prompt to read more. :)

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Red Shift, The Glamour, Sirens of Titan. Images and thoughts from these books come back to me, even decades after I have read them.

Read Neuromancer of course.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I swear, I'm going to add a note to the list about Neuromancer. :)

[huskyscotsman.livejournal.com]

I think my top recommendation in that list is actually Flowers For Algernon. It's just a really good, really readable novel.

Apart from that... Jack Vance is awesome, Alfred Bester is awesome. Definitely read Vurt if you haven't experienced Jeff Noon yet. Catch-22 is a legitimate classic, but I find that there's about a 50/50 split between people who find it really funny and people who find it unreadable. I like it.

The two Philip K Dick books in the list are fairly good ones. If you really haven't read Dick before, you must read them, otherwise, well, it's just more Dick.

Iain Banks: hmm, Use Of Weapons is one of his best Culture books, so if you don't like that maybe you just don't like Banks. If you're finding it too grim, Feersum Endjinn is a bit more wacky, as I recall.

Permutation City isn't very stylishly written but it has a really really good, really well-explored central idea. Read it if you like mind-expanding brainfuck SF.

The first part of Across Realtime is okay, the second is excellent.

John Wyndham is a genius but Web is disposable. If you haven't read his stuff, start with the classics—Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Midwich Cuckoos.

And I wouldn't touch all those big fat Neal Stephenson tomes with a ten-foot bargepole. Friend of mine lives in a barge, too, so don't think I'm bluffing.

[huskyscotsman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can't resist. Ones I've read and really disliked:

A Case of Conscience: super, a roman catholic morality story, how thrilling.
Stand on Zanzibar: soooo looooooong and it felt dated.
Babel-17: I hear it has interesting content but I think I bounced off the style.
The Drowned World: NOTHING HAPPENS. AT ALL.
Stranger in a Strange Land: this is well into Heinlein's extended crazy period.
Perdido Street Station: I think I would like to exchange some of this gritty gothpunk setting for some plot.
Norstrilia: nice setting, but the protagonist blunders around blindly. Get some initiative, man.

Because it was hard enough getting it down to ten...

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

Bester's best book (quite now, Mr Hogg), quite possibly the first ever Cyberpunk novel, predating Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by some years, and you haven't read it? I'm shocked. Shocked! But not quite shocked enough to end it here.

Ray Bradbury, The Day It Rained Forever

I could have left all the Bradbury books in, I really could. When I was 16 or so I went through a phase when I devoured every Bradbury book I could find, especially the short-story collections, and my affection for his work remains to this day. The true power of his work lies in its emotional core, I think, and that's partially the reason why I've narrowed the Bradbury books down to this one. The other, bigger, part is that The Day it Rained Forever as the first Bradbury book I ever read, so I've got rather a soft spot for it. So while I should perhaps be more shocked that you haven't read The Silver Locusts, I'm sticking with this.

John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar

I'm quite literally speechless by this point. Brunner's magnum opus? A book that's less of a novel and more of an experience? One of the few things that both Hoggy and I agree on as being fantastic beyond description, and you've not read it? Stunned isn't the word I'd use. Indeed, I must confess, until I saw this I thought you had read it. I'm not sure why.

Thomas M Disch, Camp Concentration

Not the easiest of reads, but then I don't think anything of Disch's ever was easy to read. Except maybe the novelisation of The Prisoner. But I digress. Clearly one of the standout novels of the '70s, I would say, and on that grounds a great surprise you've not yet read it. Indeed, I should probably re-read it myself, given I probably missed some layers or references when I first read it.

Harlan Ellison (ed), Dangerous Visions

Contrary to what Hoggy asserts, I'd say that Harlan Ellison does still matter. Dangerous Visions (and Again, Dangerous Visions) is a landmark in anthologies, being the flagship of the New Wave, as it was. I must also admit to greatly liking the lengthly introductions Ellison writes for each story in the volume, a practice too little done. Unfortunately my own copy of Dangerous Visions is in three volumes and I don't have the second one, so I suppose it'd count on my unread list too. Whoops.

...and because it wouldn't let me post everything in one comment...

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

I must confess, I'm only really shocked about this because (at least until the film of Starship Troppers) it's the Heinlein book that one would think everyone who's read at least one Heinlein would have read. Sure, it gave the word "grok" to the world, but I'm not totally convinced it's perhaps the out-and-out classic that some people claim it to be.

Henry Kuttner, Fury

Another book I have a soft spot for due to having read when I was young. As I recall it is rather pulp sf, but pulp sf of the 'smashing fun' kind, which it seemed to me hadn't aged too badly like some pulp sf has.

Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia

I'm sure I've mentioned to you before how much I like the works of Cordwainer Smith. That he should weave all his stories together (but one that I know of) and set them in the same universe as a future history - or perhaps future mythology is a better description - is breathtaking beyond compare. There really has been no other writer like him, and most likely there never will be. The saddest thing is that we'll never know how many more stories still yet to tell he had inside him when he died.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

I think almost anything Vonnegut should automatically go on the list for being shocked and scandalised about someone not having read. :) This and Slaughterhouse Five especially. Having said that, I've yet to read Sirens of Titan. So, er, moving swiftly on...

...I hate you for saying "find one book", I really do. >.< Having said all the above, if you asked me to single out one now, I think I'd say Stand on Zanzibar. I'll probably say something different next time you ask, but this time I'll stick with the Brunner.

Or maybe The Rediscovery of Man...

[pixieking.livejournal.com]

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I'm inclined to pick this, because, though all the other books are either good, or supposed to be good, it's a) non-specialist, b) relatively short, c) an example of something that I read that made me yearn to live in a period of time past, and d) I'm curious what someone coming to it 'fresh' would think; I first read it when I went on a literary bender of sorts, around the time I read The Iliad and Gore Vidal's Burr, and I don't know whether reading it at such a time coloured my thoughts on it in some strange fashion.

[deadcities-icon.livejournal.com]

Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

This ought to be prerequisite reading for anyone that even *pretends* to like speculative fiction. And I'm disappointed that you haven't read it yet, Niall.

For shame!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

*is shamed*

I'll go and hand in my fandom membership card, then...

[frogworth.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I have a huge pile of unread books too, although probably not as many as you!

I'll prod you about a few I think you ought to read, and comment on the ones we both have and haven't read!

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Well, my girlfriend has this...

JG Ballard, The Drowned World
Depending whether you've read much Ballard at all, this is v good! I particularly like his really weird drug-addled short stories...

Iain M Banks, Against A Dark Background
Iain M Banks, Look To Windward
Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons (stalled half-way, need to try again sometime)
Iain Banks, The Business
I have all of these sitting there, and interestingly I also stalled in the middle of Use of Weapons! Not because I didn't like it - something else new came in that I had to read, and now I have to start over again.
I find Banks often a bit hard-going, although I've read quite a few...

Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
I love this book. It has genre elements, non-fiction elements, and literary fictive elements, and melds them all together into a meta-text that comments upon itself in really interesting ways.
On another tip, I just read Barnes's very cute The Pedant in the Kitchen. Considering I'm a (slightly less pedantic) cook myself (in other words I cook for family/friends quite a lot) it was good fun.

Ray Bradbury, The Day It Rained Forever
Got this sitting there somewhere too.

John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
This too.

Don Delillo, Cosmopolis
I don't have this, but I do have White Noise, and just couldn't get into it. It annoyed me.

Philip K Dick, Time Out of Joint
Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Pretty sure I've read the first, and the second is a classic that you ought to read. It's short enough to just get through one afternoon probably. Well, one day. And it's different enough from other Dick. I've read heaps of Dick, and it's always enjoyable and often distinctly odd, but often also quite dated in some ways. And often quite samey.

Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
I've read this, and actually enjoyed it! It's not too arch - from memory (it was ages ago) a lot of it has a genuine narrative drive, and engaging characters, as well as all the conspiracy-theory madness...

Greg Egan, Permutation City
Greg Egan, Schild's Ladder
Well, I'm a gigantic Egan fan. My favourite novels are Distress and Teranesia?, the near(er)-future ones, and otherwise I think his shorter work is his best. Still, Permutation City is another of those classics... And Schild's Ladder has some really great bits.

Greg Egan, An Unusual Angle
...whereas I don't think you really need to bother with this one. Dip in and just know that you own it. It's definitely a juvenile, which was only really published by accident...

Niall Ferguson, Empire
Go on, you only own this because the author's called "Niall".
(Probably he's very famous and I'm just stupid)

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Hm, don't go out of your way, but it's a great period piece...

William Gibson, Neuromancer (will be reading this later this month for the [info]instant_fanzine book group)
Good! Were you the one who has read Pattern Recognition and not Neuromancer? Pattern Recognition takes on a whole meta-meaning if you've read Neuromancer...

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
I need to re-read this sometime...

M John Harrison, The Centauri Device
Have this waiting too.

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
This is one of those things... Is it a must-read classic? I really don't know. Probably...

Joseph Heller, Catch-22
I'll second the prodding about reading this. It's not just a classic, it's genuinely really great! Not just funny stuff but some very moving, haunting bits too.

Daniel Keyes, Flowers For Algernon
Yeah, read it.

Milan Kundera, Identity
I think this is sitting somewhere. I like him.

Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
Please read this! Much fun.

Gotta flow on to next comment now - too big!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Go on, you only own this because the author's called "Niall".
(Probably he's very famous and I'm just stupid)

Hah. Well, moderately famous in the UK, anyway--Empire, which is 'how Britain made the modern world', caused a bit of a stir.

And yes, it was me that's read Neuromancer but not Pattern Recognition...

(continued)

[frogworth.livejournal.com]

(and...)
Paul McAuley, Fairyland
This is my favourite McAuley, if that's anything to go by...

China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
I got half-way through this, was really enjoying it, and then stopped. I will pick it up again sometime. I also have The Scar and King Rat but stopped short of buying The Iron Council just to sit on my shelf.

Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon (borrowed from Dave)
Read it and give it back to Dave... It's definitely flawed, but a good read. Except there are some really really unpleasant torture scenes which made me wonder whether to read any more Morgan. Haven't yet.

Jeff Noon, Vurt
I think this is brilliant, as are his next few. I still have Falling Out of Cars sitting on my shelf and haven't had any inclination to read it yet. But Vurt is something unto itself...

Christopher Priest, Inverted World/Fugue For A Darkening Island
I have Inverted World waiting...

Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City
Alastair Reynolds, Redemption Ark
It's been discussed already on your journal, but I recommend reading Chasm City in particular...

Geoff Ryman, Uncounquered Countries
Yep, got this waiting.

Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia
Hm whether you like Cordwainer Smith depends on... what you think I guess. I think these ought to be read, probably, but it's been ages.

Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
I got Quicksilver but the reviews deterred me from reading it, at least yet, so I haven't got the others. The Diamond Age is amazingly brilliant except I disagree with the anti-AI premise which is sortof the basis of the book's philosophy. Oh well.

Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus (read, but don't think I fully appreciated; needs a re-read)
Started, loved, stopped. Again, don't really know why. Will pick up again. Al Reynolds tells me I must.

Bryan Talbot, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (borrowed from Andrew)
This is great, but it's very dense, especially in the normal-US-comic-size version which is all it's available in these days...

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Kurt Vonnegut, Bagambo Snuff Box (borrowed from Jo; read some but not all)
The former two are must-reads IMHO. Also Mother Night, which isn't sf by anyone's standards, but is a beautiful musing on the atrocities of war, and the distinction (or lack thereof) between who you are and who you pretend to be.

Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters
Whaddaya know, this is on my shelf too. I love Waldrop's short fiction, so this should be highish on the list...

Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (not a typo, borowed form Geneva)
Some great stuff here, but I haven't read it all...

Zoran Zivkovic, The Fourth Circle
I'm jealous, have to mail-order some of his books from somewhere sometime. Generally have liked what I read in Interzone...

Other unread stuff on my shelves includes HUGE PILES of Brian Stableford... Like, the whole Wherewolves trilogy, the vampire one (Empire of Fear), would you believe all of the Emortality sequence, of which I've read two... I find his style is often a little too detached to keep me reading, despite loving the idea of him...
Lots of Linda Nagata - read The Bohr Maker and was absolutely blown away. Then couldn't get into Tech-Heaven or Deception Well, despite not disliking them at all... Will keep trying with the others.
Quite a bit of Steve Aylett too - Slaughtermatic is a work of genius, but have only made it through a couple of his others...
...and can't possibly fill up your journal comments with all the other stuff... Glad to see someone else is as bad as (worse than?) me though!

Re: (continued)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I've never really got into anything by McAuley--not short stories, not this. I'm not sure why.

Glad to see someone else is as bad as (worse than?) me though!

Likewise! Now pick one for me to read. :p

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

Flowers for Algernon - A beautiful book, read it asap. You won't regret it.

Catch 22

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Both already recommended, so if you want to go for something else instead you can. :)

I laugh at your puny unread pile.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I've no idea how many unread books I have as all books entering the house are firstly registered and then shelved in the correct place, whether they've been read or not. (When I say 'shelved', I use the term loosely, to cover piling them up in the correct room, somewhere near the shelves.) We have about 5,000 in total, could be I've not read anything between 1,000-2,500 of them. Not going to start counting now.

If you read Passage you could amuse yourself by making puerile jokes. I took great delight in observing that Paul was struggling through Connie Willis's Passage etc etc. Maybe you aren't as childish as I am. I'm told that this would be about the only reason for reading the book.

I'd recommend If on a winter's night. I find it deeply amusing.

Re: I laugh at your puny unread pile.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind I only have a one-bedroom flat. Proportionally I'm probably on your level. [g]

Calvino added to the listl.

[white_hart]

I think you must have almost as many unread books knocking around as I do, although as you read about four times as much as I do yours may have more chance of getting read...

I'd recommend If on a winter's night a traveller to you. It's one of the few books I read for my degree that I actually really enjoyed, and seeing the name on your list makes me think (a) I must skim through it again and (b) why have I never read any more Calvino? It's slightly mad, in the manner of European postmodernist novels, but still engaging, and extremely intelligent.

I'd also recommend Catch-22, The Great Gatsby and Stand on Zanzibar; Catch-22 is a fabulous piece of satire (also quite mad in places), The Great Gatsby has some of the most beautiful descriptive prose I've ever read, and Stand on Zanzibar is one of the few pieces of chunky genre fiction I found really stood up to its reputation - a really dazzling piece of world-building, and an interesting multifaceted narrative technique.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Everyone's nominating the same books! Well, I suppose it means less for me to read, I guess... :)

[kalorlo.livejournal.com]

I nominate The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. It's great and almost certainly different from all the other things you'll be reading :)

It is rather dense and there can be a lot going on in the panels, but it's definitely worth reading. (I actually found the sequel, Heart of Empire, much easier going because that's in colour and the amount of inked detail is less). Talbot's really good at drawing facial expressions, which he uses to great effect.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

It means Andrew will get more of his comics back. He'll thank you. :)

(Am now waiting for nuttyxander to come along and nominate Palestine...)

[ex-susumu64.livejournal.com]

I hereby proclaim you the new king of the Lal-pile.

Against a Dark Background and The Diamond Age are two of my favouritest books, so I'd definitely recommend either of those. If you're also looking for suggestions of things to bury under the patio to bring the list down, bin Gwynneth Jones.

I could post my list of unread books when I get home, but I reckon it'll be orders of magnitude shorter.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I hereby proclaim you the new king of the Lal-pile.

\o/

(That's a good thing, right?)

Against a Dark Background and The Diamond Age are two of my favouritest books, so I'd definitely recommend either of those.

If it's ok with you, I'll take The Diamond Age, since I've already got two Banks books on the short reading list. :)

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

People in glass houses shouldn't really cast stones, but ...

Stand on Zanzibar and Man In The High Castle are my choices, and I refuse to decide between them. So there!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, that's ok; Stand on Zanzibar is already on the list, courtesy ajr. I'll add the Dick.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Essential

Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Jeff Noon, Vurt
David Mitchell, Number9Dream
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus

(A lot of the none essentials are very good but this are the ones that really must be read.)

To avoid

Iain Banks, The Business
James Blish, Cities In Flight
Greg Egan, An Unusual Angle

Other notes

Brian Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree is co-written by David Wingrove and is more a reference tool than a cover to cover read.

Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden is in my Lal-pile coretesy of Lal so I should read this soon.

My vote

Motherless Brooklyn - Lethem is one of my favourite writers and this, his first mainstream novel, is one of his best.