The Sunday Salon: Geeking out over a scifi list (and one author I can't wait for you to read)

Couple of weeks ago, I came across this list in NPR books. My brother first shared it with me, then I saw it featured on the websites of a couple of bloggers I follow and then I kept running into it every once in a while. NPR Books asked its readers to vote for their favorite science-fiction or fantasy reads and drew up this list of top 100 from the votes. This is the kind of reading list that I love the best, because it is based on popular opinion and not something that a few people at a table decide from a few nominations. And when I looked through this list, I found very little to complain about. True, I haven't read most of these books, but many are titles that I have been recommended time and again by readers whose tastes I trust. Besides, I like it that the books in the list are not YA fantasy but something that caters to the adult readers as well (or mostly?).

Still, I have to say that I am surprised to see The Time Traveler's Wife and the Outlander series in the list. I read and liked the former, but I wouldn't rate it among the top fantasy reads. As for the Outlander series, I have no interest in reading the books, I know some have loved it and some have felt meh about it, but I have a feeling Outlander and I are not going to get along well. George Martin's series is the one I'm most keen to read - I'm hoping to get a chunk of reading time at some point to work through these HUGE doorstoppers. Do you like this list?

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert
5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R.R. Martin
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
12. The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer by William Gibson
15. Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
16. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
35. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
36. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (Watched the movie)
37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
38. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
39. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
40. The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad by David Eddings
42. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
46. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote in Gods Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan the Barbarian Series by Robert E. Howard & Mark Schultz
69. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way of the Kings by Brandon Sanderson
72. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (Watched movie)
73. The Legend of Drizzt Series by R. A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War by Jon Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
76. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series by Iain Banks
84. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher
87. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (I've read some stories from this collection)
92. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
99. The Xanath Series by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis

Last night, I started reading Miriam Toews' Irma Voth. I read her The Flying Troutmans two years ago and fell in love with her conversational writing about dysfunctional families. Since then, I had been planning to read more of her books, especially A Complicated Kindness, which has received a lot of praise. Irma Voth features similar elements in a different setting and the writring is just as wonderful. If you haven't read any of Miriam Toews' books, I hope you give her a try. Her characters are about as realistic as real people and their dysfunctional relationships only serve to remind me that all people are just like that - there really is no perfect person or family. I'm reading this book for a TLC book tour and my review should hopefully be posted next week.