(no subject)

[sideways]

Long week. Busy week. People-y week. I have spent much of the weekend deep in hermitude in order to resume willingly existing around other human beings again come Monday.

silverflight8 posted the list of NPR's Top 50 Sci-Fi / Fantasy books. For curiosity's sake I tried tallying my personal count against it.

Complete read - 3
Read at least one book - 5
Sampled, not my thing - 4

Worlds To Get Lost In
- The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie
- The Dead Djinn Universe (series) by P. Djélì Clarke
- The Age of Madness Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
- The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee
- The Expanse (series) by James S.A. Corey
- The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
- Teixcalaan (series) by Arkady Martine
- The Thessaly Trilogy by Jo Walton
- Shades of Magic Trilogy by V.E. Schwab
- The Divine Cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett
- The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson

Words To Get Lost In
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Circe by Madeline Miller
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories by Ken Liu
- Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
- Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
- Olondria (series) by Sofia Samatar
- Her Body And Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente

Will Take You On A Journey
- The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
- Wayfarers (series) by Becky Chambers
- Binti (series) by Nnedi Okorafor
- Lady Astronaut (series) by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Children of Time (duology) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Wayward Children (series) by Seanan McGuire
- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Will Mess With Your Head
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
- Southern Reach (series) by Jeff Vandermeer
- The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
- The Locked Tomb (series) by Tamsin Muir
- Remembrance of Earth's Past (series) by Cixin Liu
- Machineries of Empire (series) by Yoon Ha Lee

Will Mess With Your Heart
- The Broken Earth (series) by N.K. Jemisin
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
- The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
- The Masquerade (series) by Seth Dickinson
- An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
- The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
- American War by Omar El Akkad
- Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi 
- On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu

Will Make You Feel Good
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
- Murderbot (series) by Martha Wells
- The Interdependency (series) by John Scalzi
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Sorcerer to the Crown/The True Queen by Zen Cho

Overall that is... a much smaller number than I would have expected, ahah. I admittedly haven't been on much of a new book bender the last couple of years. It's also worth noting that in most cases the series where I have only read some, I don't intend to read more - the exceptions being the Expanse and Murderbot.

I might try and sample some others on the list and see if any sink their teeth into me. There are a few I've heard enough about to think we probably won't click, but there are also some I've heard next to nothing about so have no idea what they might hold! Exploring is fun.

Comments

[nyctanthes]

I've sampled, read at least one, or completed about a third of the suggestions, but none of them with the exception of The Southern Read Trilogy are favorites. I did enjoy the first Cixin Liu novel, but not the second (a possible change-in-translator issue.) I'm curious to check out The Poppy War and/or the Tchaikovsky.

(Was Gideon the Ninth on the original list?)

[sideways]

Someone did some analysis and concluded a third of the books are Tor publications... hah. I've found Tor and I tend to disagree a bit.

Which original list do you mean?

[unavee]

My count is pretty small, but that's not surprising since I haven't been reading as much the past 5 years. But I do have quite a few from this list actually on my ereader, I just haven't gotten around to them. Now I want to make time, and take a look at some of the others. You're right, exploring is fun!

[nyctanthes]

Oh, my mistake. I thought you'd left off Gideon the Ninth but it's there under the Locked Tomb Trilogy (so many trilogies/series...)

[sideways]

There are... SO many series, lol. Part of me's like, okay, my tally looks much better if you understand that "partial read of the Expanse" is six damn books with at least two more to go.

[sideways]

People have also been making their own lists in response, which has been wonderful to poach recommendations from :)

[cloudwrack]

(Please excuse belated comments - I have left way too many tabs open for way too long.)

This feels like a personal callout for my habit of reading the first book in a series, then not picking the next one up for years even if I enjoyed it. :c But I’m glad to see the Olondria books getting namedropped - they may be my favourite entry on this list, next to the Southern Reach trilogy.

[sideways]

There are no time limits on comments. Personal policy.

Olondria, huh? They're one of the series I don't know much about! I did like Annihilation, though I liked it well enough as a standalone that I didn't feel compelled to pursue the rest of the series.

[cloudwrack]

Same policy here! I’m glad the LJ/DW setup is friendlier to delayed responses than most current social media.

The Olondria books aren’t hugely plot-driven, but the worldbuilding and language are gorgeous. I liked The Winged Histories best, but A Stranger in Olondria is lovely too. And that’s fair - I did enjoy the Southern Reach sequels and some of the new characters they introduced, but am not sure how necessary they were (at least they didn’t go too far into Overexplaining the Weird).