The multibranched internet strikes again… A digression about books about grass (where, solely to confuse you, I am identified as phialastring), or the lack thereof, led to a struggle to remember a particular science fiction novel that featured a rainbow-hued grass planet, to a Google-fueled discovery of that novel’s place on the Gollancz SF Masterworks list.
The novel in question is Grass, by Sheri Tepper, and I am now rereading it. It is the one I was thinking of: hooray for near-infinite searchability.
But that Masterworks list… the most up-to-date index I could find has one hundred and ten books on it. I haven’t read most of them, and the ones I’ve read were mostly in the distant past. (Here’s a less-current list, but with cover images.)
And there’s a fantasy list too, with another fifty books (and here again with covers). There too I haven’t read as many as I’d like, though for both lists many of the books have been on my to-read list for many years.
I haven’t read anything on either list since I became serious about writing fiction. My approach to reading has changed as my writing skills have improved, probably the former even more than the latter.
My new long-term project: track down and read all of both lists, and write short reviews here (main index). These books won’t be all I read, nor do I expect this to read them in order or any such organized approach. As I already said, I’m rereading Grass right now. I got the first volume on the fantasy list out of the library: Shadow and Claw, the omnibus of the first two volumes of The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. New Sun has been on my to-read list longer than most, as I reliably bounce off Gene Wolfe’s writing, short or long.
Want to play along?
