Better late than never!
In the Before Time, the Long Long Ago (i.e., before I started this blog), I would ask The Vast Wisdom of Usenet (i.e. rec.arts.sf.written) what books I should read this year. Now that I have the blog, I’m posting the question here.
Below are 100 books (or a few more, counting multiple titles by a single author) of fiction I’m considering reading in 2012. With a few exceptions (like forthcoming books), they’re pretty much all books I already own in first editions. Most likely I’ll get to considerably less than 100. The first few are books I’ll probably get to (or are already reading), whereas the rest are a little vaguer (and in alphabetical order by author). That’s where you come in. Tell me which of the books below I should or shouldn’t read, and why. If a book’s not on the list, it’s probably because I’ve already read it, or have no interest in it, won’t get to it this year, etc., so save your electrons instead of suggesting alternates (there are plenty of other places for that). And if I list Book #2 in a linear series, rest assured I’ve already read Book #1.
I don’t promise I’ll read all the highest rated works, but those most highly praised are considerably more likely to be added to the reading stack, which is what’s happened the previous years I’ve done this.
Michael Shea: The Color Out of Time (read)
Jack Vance: The Killing Machine (read)
Stina Leicht: Of Blood & Honey (reading)
Joe R. Lansdale: Hyenas
Joe Dominici: Bringing Back the Dead
China Mieville: Embassytown
Robert Jackson Bennett: Company Man
Vernor Vinge: The Children of the Sky
Philip K. Dick: Clans of the Alphane Moon
Michael Moorcock: The War Hound and the World’s Pain
Greg Egan: Crystal Nights
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor
Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
Iain Banks: Against a Dark Background or Matter
John Barnes: Kaleidoscope Century or One for the Morning Glory
Stephen Baxter: Traces or Mayflower II
Peter S. Beagle: A Fine and Private Place
Greg Bear: The City at the End of Time or Hull Zero Three
Leigh Brackett: The Best of Leigh Brackett or The Long Tomorrow
David Brin: Dr. Pak’s Preschool
Tobias Buckell: Sly Mongoose or Tides from the New World
Octavia Butler: Fledgeling
Jack Cady: The Night We Buried Road Dog
Ramsey Campbell: Creatures of the Pool
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
John Christopher: No Blade of Grass
Susanna Clarke: Ladies of Grace Adieu
Hal Clement: Iceworld
Avram Davidson: The Adventures of Dr. Esterhauzy or Limekiller
L. Sprague de Camp: A Gun for Dinosaur
Bradley Denton: Laughin’ Boy
Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Paul Di Filippo: Lost Pages or A Princess of the Linear Jungle
George Alec Effinger: What Entropy Means to Me
Harlan Ellison: Deathbird Stories
Greg Egan: Crystals Nights or Zendegi
John M. Ford: The Dragon Waiting
Neil Gaiman: Fragile Things or The Graveyard Book
Hinko Gotleib: The Key to the Great Gate
John Gardner: Freddy’s Book or The Wreckage of Agathon
Ray Garton: Night Life or Nids
Jane Gaskell: The Serpent
Joe Haldeman: The Accidental Time Machine
Peter F. Hamilton: Mindstar Rising
Robert E. Howard: The Coming of Conan
Nalo Hopkinson: Brown Girl in the Ring or The Salt Roads
Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Lottery
K. W. Jeter: Noir or Dark Seeker
Ha Jin: Waiting
James Patrick Kelly: Strange But Not a Stranger
Stephen King: Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass or The Colorado Kid
Russell Kirk: The Surly Sullen Bell (and yes, I’ve read the 2 Arkham House collections)
Henry Kuttner and/or C. L. Moore: The Dark World or Black God’s Shadow or No Boundaries
R. A. Lafferty: Archipelago, Aurelia, or The 13th Voyage of Sinbad
Fritz Leiber: Night’s Black Agents
Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn
Thomas Ligotti: Grimscribe, Noctuary, or The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
Ian MacLeod: Breathmoss and Other Exhalations
Ken MacLeod: Giant Lizards from Another Star or The Execution Channel
Gregory Maguire: Wicked
Barry Malzberg: Hervoit’s World
Richard Matheson: Duel
Maureen McHugh: Mothers and Other Monsters
Sean McMullen: The Miocene Arrow
Ward Moore: Bring the Jubilee
Richard Morgan: Woken Furies
Pat Murphy: The Falling Woman
John Myers Myers: Silverlock
William F. Nolan: Things Beyond Midnight or Wild Galaxy
Naomi Novik: Black Powder War
Chad Oliver: The Shores of Another Sea or The Winds of Time
Susan Palwick: The Fate of Mice
H. Beam Piper: Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
Tim Powers: Three Days to Never or Pilot Light
Fletcher Pratt: The Well of the Unicorn
Mike Resnick: Paradise or Kilimanjaro
Alastair Reynolds: Redemption Ark
Rudy Rucker: Master of Time & Space or The Secret of Life or White Light
Matt Ruff: Fool on the Hill
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
Joanna Russ: The Female Man
John Scalzi: The Lost Colony
Karl Schroeder: Permanence or Lady of Mazes
Michael Shaara: The Herald or The Killer Angels
Lucius Shepard: Floater or Aztechs or Viator
Lewis Shiner: The Edges of Things or Black and White
Dan Simmons: The Terror or Hard as Nails
Robert Sladek: Roderick
Neal Stephenson: Zodiac or The Big U
Charles Stross: The Apocalypse Codex (forthcoming)
Theodore Sturgeon: Microcosmic God: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Volume 2
Steph Swainston: The Year of Our War
Thomas Burnett Swann: The Day of the Minotaur
Manly Wade Wellman: The Sleuth Patrol or The Last Mammoth
Martha Wells: The Element of Fire
John Whitbourne: To Build Jerusalem or Binscomb Tales
Jack Williamson and James E. Gunn: Star Bridge
Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Gene Wolfe: The Land Across (forthcoming)
Tags: Fantasy, Gene Wolfe, Horror, Jack Vance, Joe Domenici, Joe R. Lansdale, Manly Wade Wellman, Paolo Bacigalupi, Philip K. Dick, Robert Jackson Bennett, Science Fiction, Stina Leicht
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2012 at 11:26 PM and is filed under Books, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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[…] Lawrence Person asks What Should I Read in 2012? […]
I’ve read these off your list and liked them. Anything by Piper.
Vernor Vinge: The Children of the Sky
Hal Clement: Iceworld
L. Sprague de Camp: A Gun for Dinosaur
H. Beam Piper: Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
John Scalzi: The Lost Colony
Jack Williamson and James E. Gunn: Star Bridge
Great list! Some of these are on mine as well. I added a number of them to my list.
Of those I have already read, I particularly enjoyed:
Stina Leicht: Of Blood & Honey
Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book
Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
Maureen McHugh: Mothers and Other Monsters
Pat Murphy: The Falling Woman
Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
From that huge list, I would highly recommend Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
I’d suggest you read “Dark Tower IV” simply because I suspect you’ll feel jerked around by “The Colorado Kid”, knowing you as I do.
I haven’t read “The Terror” yet, but (as I think you know) my feeling is that the Joe Kurtz series began to hit diminishing returns by the end of the second book, so I’d recommend that over “Hard as Nails”.