Friday, August 19, 2011

These kids today just don't know the classics

If you haven't had the opportunity lately to wax curmudgeonly on the meretricious cultural tastes of the hoi polloi, this NPR readers' poll as to the top 100 SF/fantasy titles will do nicely.

For TBA's part, all we need to do is note the absence of Jack Vance.

... In faintly-related news, Obama buys the # 9 book on the list, no doubt to turn it into legislation once the Supreme Court affirms the dread insurance mandate:
President Obama made his first vacation visit with his daughters to a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard and was seen holding five or six books, including Brave New World and The Bayou Trilogy, according to the AP.

"He went to the cashier after Malia and Sasha had picked out some books of their own, but disagreed with the $32 price he was quoted, which seemed low for the size of his stack. He paid by credit card, telling the cashiers that he uses it only about three times a year."
I hadn't heard of Daniel Woodrell, but that Bayou Trilogy sounds pretty good.

2 comments:

  1. There were a fair number of classics on the list, as evidenced by how much I'd read on it. Considering that I don't think of myself as a science fiction reader and certainly not a fantasy reader, I was surprised how much of those I'd read-- 24 if you count having read Dune as that whole series. I haven't read any of them in a long time except for re-reading the Orwell, though, and you could tell from my list when I quit reading science fiction.

    When I was 5th -7th grade, roughly, The Once and Future King and Journey to the Center of the Earth were each for a time my favorite book.

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  2. "Considering that I don't think of myself as a science fiction reader and certainly not a fantasy reader, I was surprised how much of those I'd read"

    Not so much if you consider how many voters probably aren't SF/fantasy readers either.

    Several of the top-10 books are school reading these days, including Ender's Game.

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