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| Sci-fi AND Fantasy! |
Budd, over at
Sci-fi Media posted about NPR's list of their
top 100 science fiction and fantasy books and it looks like I've got a lot of catching up to do. I have only read about 1/3 of the titles on the list. To make myself feel better, I can say that I have read many of the series on the list, all of the top 5 and 10 out of the top 15... so, that's good, right?
Some notable absences I felt included Phillip Pullman's
His Dark Materials trilogy and C.S. Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia. I don't even particularly like the Narnia series, but it is certainly a formative work in the fantasy genre.
Also... No
Harry Potter!? Not making a judgment, but I was genuinely surprised. I wonder if the "real world" setting causes a psychological block so that people don't think of it as fantasy. Or maybe Harry Potter fans don't listen to NPR.
What are your thoughts on the list?
Edit: The absence of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is also surprising, given the recent HBO series and his skyrocketing profile in the fantasy authorship ranks. I actually find that fact kind of satisfying, because it reduces the argument that the selections are based on the new hotness on the book shelves. "Reduces" does not necessarily mean "eliminates." Okay, clearly I was suffering from some sort of selective vision/memory because SOI&F is #5! Please resume complaints about this being a list of "what's hot"
Also, this.
