Fantasy Mistressworks Fifty!

A recommended reading list featured on the Fantasy Mistressworks blog compiled by Amanda Rutter. Since I've been trying to read more books written by women this year, I couldn't let this one pass.

Bold is what I have read, italics what I own. I've also linked the ones I've reviewed. So how did you do?

1. Songspinners – Sarah Ash
2. The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
3. Rats and Gargoyles – Mary Gentle
4. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon (this was published as Cross Stitch in the UK)
5. The Riddle-Master of Hed – Patricia McKillip
6. The Blue Sword – Robin McKinley
7. Lud-in-the-Mist – Hope Mirrlees
8. The Curse of the Mistwraith – Janny Wurts
9. Shadow Magic – Patricia C Wrede
10. Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb
11. A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K Le Guin
12. Familiar Spirit – Lisa Tuttle
13. Beauty – Sheri S Tepper
14. Diadem from the Stars – Jo Clayton
15. The Crystal Cave – Mary Stewart
16. Black Horses for the King – Anne McCaffrey
17. The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M Auel
18. Fortress in the Eye of Time – C J Cherryh
19. Red Moon and Black Mountain – Joy Chant
20. The Birthgrave – Tanith Lee
21. Briefing for a Descent into Hell – Doris Lessing
22. Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
23. The Wood Wife – Terri Windling
24. Briar Rose – Jane Yolen
25. The Porcelain Dove – Delia Sherman
26. The Winter Prince – Elizabeth Wein
27. The Time of the Dark – Barbara Hambly
28. Sword of Rhiannon – Leigh Brackett
29. Tam Lin – Pamela Dean
30. Fire in the Mist – Holly Lisle
31. The Sacrifice – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
32. The Beleagured City – Margaret Oliphant
33. The Soul of Lilith – Marie Corelli
34. The Citadel of Fear – Francis Stevens
35. Jirel of Joiry – C L Moore
36. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter – Elizabeth Moon
(added 26-May-2013) 37. Dragon Prince – Melanie Rawn
38. Black Trillium – Julian May
39. The Thief’s Gamble – Juliet E McKenna
40. Daggerspell – Katharine Kerr
41. The Blue Manor – Jenny Jones
42. The Barbed Coil – J V Jones
43. In the Red Lord’s Reach – Phyllis Eisenstein
44. The Spirit Ring – Lois McMaster Bujold
45. The Last of the Renshai – Mickey Zucher Reichert
46. Archangel – Sharon Shinn
47. The Hall of the Mountain King – Judith Tarr
48. A Blackbird in Silver – Freda Warrington
49. Kindred – Octavia Butler
50. The Red Magician – Lisa Goldstein

Four out of fifty. A pretty poor score really. I guess I have some reading to do.

Gollancz SF Masterworks: What I've Read

I saw this list posted by Neth, who is currently participating in an interesting project to review all the titles in Gollancz' SF Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks series. I will be following this blog with interest. I've read a couple of books in the SF Masterworks series myself but, after going over the list, not nearly as many as I would like. I'm still not particularly well read in SF classics.
Bold means I've read it, italics that I own but haven't read it, and plain means I don’t own it and haven’t read it. Links to reviews on this blog have been included. Some books appear on the list twice because they have been published as a hardcover and the regular paperback. Also note that after The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick, no numbers have been assigned to the books and that some books have been published in both the old and the new style.

I - Dune - Frank Herbert
II - The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
III - The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick (added 10-may-2011)
IV - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
V - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
VI - Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke (added 04-sep-2010)
VII - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein (different edition)
VIII - Ringworld - Larry Niven
IX - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
X - The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

1 - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
2 - I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
3 - Cities in Flight - James Blish
4 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
5 - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
6 - Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany (added 08-okt-2011)
7 - Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
8 - The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe
9 - Gateway - Frederik Pohl
10 - The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith

11 - Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
12 - Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
13 - Martian Time-Slip - Philip K. Dick
14 - The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester
15 - Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner
16 - The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin (added 29-nov-2010)
17 - The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard
18 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
19 - Emphyrio - Jack Vance
20 - A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

21 - Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
22 - Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock
23 - The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg
24 - The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells
25 - Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
26 - Ubik - Philip K. Dick
27 - Timescape - Gregory Benford
28 - More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
29 - Man Plus - Frederik Pohl
30 - A Case of Conscience - James Blish

31 - The Centauri Device - M. John Harrison
32 - Dr. Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick
33 - Non-Stop - Brian Aldiss
34 - The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke (added 14-dec-11)
35 - Pavane - Keith Roberts
36 - Now Wait for Last Year - Philip K. Dick
37 - Nova - Samuel R. Delany
38 - The First Men in the Moon - H. G. Wells
39 - The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke
40 - Blood Music - Greg Bear

41 - Jem - Frederik Pohl (added 02-aug-10)
42 - Bring the Jubilee - Ward Moore
43 - VALIS - Philip K. Dick
44 - The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin (added 01-mar-2011)
45 - The Complete Roderick - John Sladek
46 - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick
47 - The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells
48 - Grass - Sheri S. Tepper (added 19-may-2013)
49 - A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C. Clarke (added 30-sep-2012)
50 - Eon - Greg Bear

51 - The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson
52 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
53 - The Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock
54 - The Space Merchants - Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth (added 30-oct-10)
55 - Time Out of Joint - Philip K. Dick
56 - Downward to the Earth - Robert Silverberg
57 - The Simulacra - Philip K. Dick
58 - The Penultimate Truth - Philip K. Dick
59 - Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg (added 10-mar-12)
60 - Ringworld - Larry Niven

61 - The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman
62 - Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement
63 - A Maze of Death - Philip K. Dick
64 - Tau Zero - Poul Anderson (added 21-jan-12)
65 - Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
66 - Life During Wartime - Lucius Shepard
67 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm (added 08-jun-2013)
68 - Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
69 - Dark Benediction - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
70 - Mockingbird - Walter Tevis

71 - Dune - Frank Herbert
72 - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein (different edition)
73 - The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick (added 10-may-2011)
74 - Inverted World - Christopher Priest
75 - Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut (added 19-jun-2013)
76 - The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells (different edition)
77 - Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke (added 04-sep-2010)
78 - The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
79 - Dhalgren  - Samuel R. Delany
80 - Helliconia - Brian Aldiss

81 - Food of the Gods - H.G. Wells
82 - The Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
83 - The Female Man - Joanna Russ
84 - Arslan  - M.J. Engh (added 12-oct-2013)
85 - The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
86 - The Prestige - Christopher Priest
87 - Greybeard - Brian Aldiss
88 - Sirius - Olaf Stapledon
89 - Hyperion - Dan Simmons (different edition)
90 - City - Clifford D. Simak

91 - Hellstrom's Hive - Frank Herbert (added 16-nov-2013, different edition)
92 - Of Men and Monsters - William Tenn
93 - R.U.R. and War with the Newts - Karel Čapek
94 - The Affirmation - Christopher Priest
95 - Floating Worlds - Cecelia Holland
96 - Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
97 - Dangerous Visions - Harlan Ellison
98 - Odd John - Olaf Stapledon
99 - The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons (different edition)
100 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (added 16-nov 2013, different edition)

101 - The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
102 - Synners - Pat Cardigan
103 - Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler
104 - Ammonite - Nicola Griffith (added 13-apr-2014)
105 - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe - D. G. Compton  
106 - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley  
107 - Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban  
108 - Wasp - Eric Frank Russell
109 - Unquenchable Fire - Rachel Pollack

110 - The Sea and Summer - George Turner

111 - The Caltraps of Time - David I. Masson
112 - Doomsday Book - Connie Willis (different edition)
113 - Slow River - Nicola Griffith
114 - Riddley Walker - Russel Hoban
115 - The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov (added 22-jan-2014)
116 - Engine Summer - John Crowley
117 - The Gate to Women's Country - Sheri S. Tepper
118 - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller
119 - To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis (different edition)
120 - This Is the Way the World Ends - James Morrow

121 - The Deep - John Crowley
122 - Time is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis - Connie Willis (added 7-jul-2013, different edition)
123 - No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop
124 - Double Star - Robert A. Heinlein
125 - Random Acts of Senseless Violence - Jack Womack
126 - Half Past Human - T. J. Bass
127 - Transfigurations - Michael Bishop
128 - The Door into Summer - Robert A. Heinlein
129 - Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds  (different edition)
130 - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams (different edition)

131 - Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams (different edition)
132 - The God Whale - T.J. Bass

Hmm... I guess I have some reading left to do. Maybe I can add another sometime later this month.

Edit: updated 16-09-2011 to include new and forthcoming titles.
Edit: updated 18-11-2013 to  include new titles

Random Comments Stats So Far

There's a meme going around on the book blogs I follow about the 2010 stats so far (I've used Ken's version but there are a bunch of others). I generally do these kinds of things, I'll tell you about 2010 when the year is (almost) done, not because five months, fourteen days and 17 hours of it have already passed. Having reached 100 reviews last week I thought it would be nice to look back on those however, so I am doing slightly modified version.

The 100 reviews consists of 86 novels, 5 omnibus editions, 1 short story, 7 collections/anthologies of short fiction and 1 novella. 90 of these were written between July 4th 2009 and June 11th 2010. I cheated 10 times and moved older pieces to this blog. Once I decide I like an author I tend to return to their work. Kim Stanley Robinson and Alastair Reynolds are currently in the lead, each with 6 reviews, followed by a number of authors with 4.

Of these 100 works, 23 were written by women, 71 by men and 6 contained work by both men and women. I guess I'm still a bit biassed there although part of this seems to be that the men I read seem to be more prolific. The 23 books by women I read had 18 different authors (some more than one), the 71 books by men had 36 authors (again, some more than one). Or maybe I don't return to female authors as much as the men. Bit of both probably. No idea about people of colour but I'm pretty certain the authors are overwhelmingly Caucasian.

I read 10 works in Dutch, of which three were translations from German and 7 original Dutch language works. The other 90 were in English, of these only one was a translation, in this case from Russian. In total these works had 45,880 pages. The shortest being a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, 10 pages, the longest is Toll of the Hounds by Steven Erikson with 1295 (the mass market paperback edition, it may not actually be the longest in word count).

Publishers:
AW Bruna: 1
Ace: 1
Angry Robot: 2
Apex: 1
Baen: 4
Ballentine Books: 2
Bantam: 6
Berkley Medallion Books: 1
Books of Fantasy: 1
Corgi books: 1
De Bezige Bij: 1
Del Rey: 4
Doubleday: 2
Dover: 1
Dutton: 1
Fairwood Press: 1
Gollancz: 10
Grafton: 1
Grand Central Publishing: 1
Het Verschijnsel: 1
Kramat: 1
Little, Brown and Company: 2
Luitingh: 4
NEL: 1
Night Shade Books: 2
Orb: 6
Orbit: 4
Pan: 1
Penguin: 2
PM Press: 1
Pocket Books: 1
Pyr: 3
Rainbow Pockets: 1
Roc: 2
Solaris: 1
Tor: 19
Voyager: 4

That adds up to 99. I had a look at an Edgar Allen Poe story a while back which, being free of copyright, is widely available as E-book on the web. I guess Tor and Gollancz are the big winners. That is without getting into the whole which imprint belongs to whom thing of course. I must admit I lost track of that a long time ago.

Year:
<1900: 2
1900-1959: 1
1960-1969: 4
1970-1979: 4
1980-1989: 6
1990-1999: 8
2000: 4
2001: 3
2002: 1
2003: 5
2004: 3
2005: 1
2006: 7
2007: 5
2008: 12
2009: 21
2010: 13

Large emphasis on the last few years. I don't think a book blogger can escape that entirely. The picture is slightly skewed though. I read four Poul Anderson collections that contain work dating as far back as the 1950s but have only recently been published in this form. The same goes for a Frederik Pohl collection which spans something like five decades.

Most popular reviews:

01. Dust of Dreams - Steven Erikson
02. The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
03. Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
04. The Lucky Strike - Kim Stanley Robinson
05. Servant of the Underworld - Aliette de Bodard
06. Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks
07. The Apex Book of World SF - Lavie Tidhar (ed.)
08. Blackout - Connie Willis
09. Shine - Jetse de Vries (ed.)
10. Dragon Haven - Robin Hobb

I guess epic fantasy still rules. The Lucky Strike is the odd one out. I gets an insane number of search engine hits for some reason. The others are either very popular books or the reviews were linked on author/editor blogs.

Hmm, I guess that's about it. Anything else you'd like to know?

The Book Habits Meme

I saw this one appearing on just about half the blogs on my blogroll so I thought I'd have a go at it as well.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?

I will do anything for a bowl of katjang pedis but since they contain enough calories to fuel a Boeing 747 I try to keep it to a minimum.

What is your favourite drink while reading?

Water or coffee. Can't live without caffeine.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I usually put my name and the date and place I got them in the books I buy. I marked a passage once but generally I prefer to keep my books as pretty as possible. I'm a little more protective of the hardcovers than paperbacks though.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

I do have bookmarks somewhere but I never use them. I either remember the page of chapter last read or put whatever is available at the moment between pages. Bits of paper, pens, hairbands, cds....

Fiction, non-fiction, or both?

Mostly fiction, once a year or so the urge to read history or something in the natural sciences seizes me so I have a couple of those at hand.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

I can pretty much stop at any place but I prefer to do so at the end of a chapter. Unless it ends in a really bad cliffhanger.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

No such abuse allowed in my house no matter how bad the book.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

I mostly read in English these days, which is a second language so this does happen once in a while. Unless it is really important to the story and I have absolutely no idea I don't use a dictionary. Would be too distracting to look up every word I can't immediately translate. In fact, I try not to translate at all. Works fine most of the time but I will admit reading China Miéville is a challenge.

What are you currently reading?

Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik. May finish it tonight, if so expect the review tomorrow.

What is the last book you bought?

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. It has yet to arrive.

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

I can read several at a time but I find it easier to review books if I concentrate on one. These days I mostly stick to one at a time.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?

Mostly in the evening when everybody else has gone to bed.

Do you prefer series books or standalones?

No preference really.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ian McDonald, Alastair Reynolds and Daniel Abraham.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)

I own way too many books so I have resorted to the most economical way to stow them in the bookcase. The order which they are in only makes sense to me.