Guardian List

The Guardian released a list of 1000 novels everyone must read, and here are the 131 science fiction and fantasy books that were selected. Titles in bold are ones I have read. Interesting list and has led to much debate about what made it and what didn't.

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
6. JG Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
7. JG Ballard: Crash (1973)
8. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
9. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
10. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
11. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
12. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
13. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
14. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
15. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
16. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
17. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
18. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
19. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
20. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
21. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
22. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
23. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
24. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
25. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
26. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
27. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
28. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
29. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
30. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
31. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
32. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
33. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
34. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
35. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
36. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
37. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
38. Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
39. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
40. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
41. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
42. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
43. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
44. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
45. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
46. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
47. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
48. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
49. Joe Haldeman The Forever War (1974)
50. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
51. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
52. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
53. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
54. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
55. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
56. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
57. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
58. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
59. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
60. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
61. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
62. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
63. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
64. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
65. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
66. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
67. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
68. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
69. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
70. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
71. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
72. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
73. C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
74. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
75. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
76. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
77. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
78. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
79. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
80. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
81. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
82. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
83. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
84. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
85. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
86. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
87. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
88. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
89. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
90. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
91. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
92. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
93. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
94. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
95. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
96. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
97. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
98. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
99. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld Series (1983- )
100. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
101. Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
102. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
103. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
104. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
105. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
106. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
107. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
108. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
109. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
110. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
111. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
112. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
113. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
114. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
115. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
116. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
117. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
118. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
119. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
120. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
121. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
122. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
123. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
124. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
125. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
126. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
127. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
128. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
129. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
130. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
131. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

For the love of books ...

Sometimes libraries surprise you with the books you can borrow from them. I put a hold on Twenty Years After by Dumas and waited for the only copy in our extended service to show up. And what a beauty it turned out to be.
The book was catalogued by the owning library in 1924 and is a beautiful leather bound edition which is slowly falling apart but still retains enough charm to make you want to just hold it. Yes the binding is going, and the pages starting to fall out, but this is a book built to last. I doubt many paperbacks will still be gracing our shelves in 80 years time.
Reading it is a pleasure as you turn the whisper thin pages, and peer at the small type.
I am enjoying reading this immensely and the age of the book is adding to the enjoyment as well.

Take Two

Do you read books again? Are there certain classics that you keep coming back to? Are there some books that you read every year?
As if there aren't enough books for me to read, I find myself trying to re-read some of my favourites. Why do we do this to ourselves? All the stuff I read, and yet I feel like going over stuff I have already read. I know I'll enjoy it, I did last time, but is this enough of a reason to intrude on my precious reading time.
I don't understand why I do it, but I know I'll keep donig it. After all I haven't stopped yet.

Ho Hum

Sherman Young's book The Book is Dead, suffers from the common academic disease of head-up-own-arse-itis. Young claims the title is postmodern, but really shows the problem with his idea. And this is a one idea book, despite Young trying to argue otherwise.

Young thinks books have been dead for years because it is easier to get information from other sources, and ideas are discussed in other formats. Yet Young has chosen to put ideas forward in a book, despite his argument that no one reads books for ideas anymore. This sounds like a financial decision, he will get paid for writing a book, but no one will pay to read a blog on the subject.

The major flaw and problem I have had with this book is that Young totally disregards books as entertainment. He dismisses the Harry Potter series because it contains no ideas, now I haven't read the series so I can't debate this point, but what about the book as entertainment. Millions of people have read the series because they enjoy it. Young seems to think that the book should be condemned for this. No wonder no one is reading if they can't enjoy themselves.

How much impact will this book have, probably not much and Young can use this as proof of his argument. I think that most readers couldn't care less about the point he raises, they're too busy reading.

Welcome

The Beginning.
Salutations, and thank you for reading this blog.
I work as a Reader Services Librarian in a public library and thought this would be a great way to promote reading and other interesting things that are a part of my job.
Currently I am trying to encourage people to read graphic novels.
Why?
I think that they are an exciting and important medium, which speaks to everyone. Also I really enjoy reading them.
So where do I start?
There have been some great graphic novels published, and I would like to discuss some of them here. They are also great starting points for people interested in this medium.

• Watchmen by Alan Moore. Alan Moore is one of the creative giants of this field and this tale of superheroes in a world that is slightly different from ours proves this point. Taking its premise from a quote by Juvenal, Moore explores the problems of having super-powered beings loose in society.
• Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazue Koike. This highly detailed and exquisitely rendered story is set in Edo period Japan. The story follows one man and his young child as they wander around Japan following the path of Ronin. The story does contain large amounts of violence, nudity and sex, but these do not distract from the adventure.
• Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb. Arghhh, men in tights. I can see some of you switching off now, but hear me out. At its heart this tale is a true detective story, and this suits the character of Batman. (After all his strongest weapon is his brain.) The colourful cast that support any Batman story help to keep the story rolling along, and the quirky art of Tim Sale brings everything to life.
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. This is the place to go if you ever wanted to think more seriously about comics as an art form. McCloud has put a lot of time into this graphic novel, and it shows. One of the leading philosophical works devoted to comics and understanding them. I challenge anyone who reads this not to come away with a different perspective on graphic novels.

This is just a small number of the many graphic novels I have read and enjoyed. Join me next time as I explore some more of my favourites, and who knows I may even discuss some books.