Let's Make a Better List

badducky said:

The more I think on it, the more I think "Good Omens" is the best Pratchett choice, because it includes the genius of Gaiman, as well.

Thoughts?

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Got my vote.

Also vote for Ysabel. I love almost all of GGK's stuff, but Ysabel is the one that I go back to when I am out of fresh reading material. And it still makes me tear up, and laugh hysterically, and read passages aloud to my husband. Not sure why, but LOVE that book.
However, the same thing happens with Lions, so I'm good with either one being on the list.

GuyGavriel Kay is sadly someone I still haven't read... My personal list would be this:

1)Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum
2)Memory and Dream - Charles DeLint
3)Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
4)Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K.LeGuin
5)Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
6)Pern - Anne McCaffrey
7)Harry Potter - J.K.Rowling

note: I have Frankenstein there because it really is a fantastical novel, not really horror. Likewise, I put Pern on because well, I'd consider it fantasy more than sf -- at least the stuff she wrote up till the later 1990's or so.

You know what's funny about that list

Quite a few on there come under 'Books I've read that I wish I hadn't'


As for our list - you think we'd ever come up with a definitive one everyone's happy with?

ETA: makes me wonder if that paper is actually going out of its way to turn people off fantasy.

IdiotsRUs said:

ETA: makes me wonder if that paper is actually going out of its way to turn people off fantasy.

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The more I think about it, the more I suspect you might be right. Do you know what The New Yorker is famous for? Literary fiction and criticism. Hmm.

On topic, I'm not sure how to "correct" the list, or even if it needs correction. Beyond removing Erikson (his work has zero exposition and is therefore too difficult for any beginner's list), I have no immediate suggestions. We'd need to decide what our goal is.

What's wrong with Sedia? She's a woman, and Russian, and her stuff is fantastic. I'd also argue that "beginners"(teenagers?) can handle it.

I'd make Earthsea the first trilogy (I've not read the later ones) as The Farthest Shore is the best of them IMO, and one of the best children's fantasy novels of the 70s.

Most of Ian McDonald's novels are SF, but King of Morning, Queen of Day is fantasy (three generations of Irish women and their encounters with the world of faerie) and it knocked me out. However, that and Gormenghast would pull the list more in a stylistic rather than storytelling direction (not that the two are mutually exclusive).

If you're looking for faerie books, Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely is the obvious recent one, though it's a very well written book that I liked rather than loved. There's also Kim Wilkins's The Autumn Castle, which is the best of her three "Europa Suite" fantasy novels, though Rosa and the Veil of Gold is a close second. (I found Giants of the Frost disappointing - I read it with its original ending, rather than the more upbeat one the Americans got.) But although I like Wilkins's work, I'm not sure I'd quite put any of hers in a list like this.

"Alchemy" was really good, yes.

I'm afraid I don't usually pay attention to race and gender, so can't help you with a good hispanic author. But I also don't think it is a necessity. Good luck.

I've never even heard of #4 and #7. They might be awesome, but I wouldn't know. The others look fine, if not exactly my taste.

I haven't read The Etched City yet, but it is very high on my list.

Bu Iam curious as to what you would suggest, SP.

badducky said:

Right, so here's our list, then. An objections?

1) Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
2) Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
3) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuinn
4) The Etched City by K. J. Bishop
5) Kindred by Octavia Butler
6) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
7) The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

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Good God, I am so behind in my reading. I haven't read any of those yet.

Alan Yee said:

Good God, I am so behind in my reading. I haven't read any of those yet.

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I've only read two. Book money has been tight lately, so almost all of those are still stuck on my TBR list.

badducky said:

Right, so here's our list, then. An objections?

1) Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
2) Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
3) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuinn
4) The Etched City by K. J. Bishop
5) Kindred by Octavia Butler
6) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
7) The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

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No place for David Gemmell?

No 8, 9, 10?

*votes for another GGK book* ofc

I thought the idea was to limit it to seven because the original article had?

Kitty Pryde said:

Jonathan Strange etc is a great book, but almost everyone I talked to found it really hard to get through (even the folks who liked it!). Is that good fantasy for beginners?

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I have to say, I don't read a huge amount of fantasy, but I completely loved this book. It took awhile to read, but I didn't find it hard to read at all. I even loved the foot notes. (And I'm probably never going to start any fat fantasy sword-and-sorcery series novels, because I just don't tend to like that kind of thing.)

(Another fantasy story I loved: The Book of Lost Things, by Michael Connelly. That one's a winner, as far as I'm concerned.)

badducky said:

Thought: Theodora Goss' short story collection? (Severe shortage of short fiction on the New Yorker list...)

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Maybe we should have a separate list for short fiction. Theodora Goss's In the Forest of Forgetting would definitely be on my list for that.

Re: Good Omens, I probably shouldn't be offering two cents on a book I haven't read, but those friends of mine who are fans of Neil Gaiman and/or Terry Pratchett tended to be less impressed with Good Omens, with the usual opinion I hear over and over being that, for a book written jointly, it weakens both their voices and is not as strong as their other writings, or as indicative of their usual work.

Quite frankly, I'd like to see them both on this list--perhaps "American Gods" for Neil Gaiman? Or, if we want to put together a short list of short fiction, as Alan has suggested, we could put a Gaiman anthology on that list somewhere, and leave Pratchett in his original place, with "The Color of Magic" or "Guards! Guards!"

Okay, my list is going to be terribly limited in scope, but assuming I put together a list of "essential books to introduce the casual fantasy reader to more 'advanced' fantasy, and which I've read, keeping in mind that 'advanced' or 'better' are subjective terms anyway, and a lot of this depends on what I know of that person's taste in reading," I'd offer them:

1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2. The Beyond by Jeffrey Ford
3. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
4. Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow
5. Watership Down by Richard Adams
6. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
7. And, for the dragon vote, either Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, or The Dragon and the Unicorn by A.A. Attanasio, depending on their tastes.

If you think this bus is being driven unsafely, let us know!

Ooh, Watership Down! What a gorgeous choice!