Genre Fiction Reading List (Or how my TBR pile is now over a decade long)
It started with me scanning through the winner's of the Nebula award winner for best novel and thinking that I wanted to (re)read most of the books on there. Then I started compiling a list genre fiction award winners for the Locus (scifi & fantasy), Hugo (including retro), Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, Arthur C. Clark, and Philip K. Dick awards to add to the Nebula list. Of course, I thought, I needed to add any prerequisite novels to this list. It wouldn't make sense to re-read 'Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea' winner of the 1990 Locus Fantasy award without having re-read the previous novels.
Accounting for duplicates the list was now approximately 385 books long (some awards were for whole series, short story collections, etc.).
Generally, I'll have an idea for a project, get a bunch of data together, and then sit on the idea. If I keep coming back to the idea, I'll start it. That's what happened here. I kept thinking about the list, adding to it, tweaking it.
The biggest addition was when I thinking through all the books I wanted to (re)read. I then went ahead and filled out the list with personal choices, making sure I had at least one per year starting with 1950. This added another 175 novels.
My grand total is now (not including duplicates) 560 books. I expect it will grow.
Why add Award Winners?
- Awards represent what a certain population of readers (a panel of judges, con attendees, etc.) vote on for best novel. There are always going to be biases in the selection process. These do not represent the "Best" novels of the year in any objective sense. They do represent to some degree a consensus pick, what was popular in the zeitgeist.
Will I read every book on the list?
- For award winners I plan on reading almost every novel. I will make exceptions for books I have previously read but have no desire to read again. For example, there is nothing for me to gain in reading anything by J.K. Rowling as part of this project. She sucks and I have no desire to talk about her work anymore. Additionally, I'll only re-read the ASOIAF novels once the series is complete. I don't expect this to happen.
- For anything I added to the list, they're 100% at my discretion.
How long will this take?
- I usually finish 50 a books a year. Generally more, sometimes less. I will be reading other books than those from this list. As such, I will 50 use as a baseline but I do not feel beholden to a specific schedule. With that in mind, at least 11 years.
- However, as I mentioned before, I expect this list to grow. 20 years is probably a much more accurate count. Every year new books will be added.
See the list here. If you have any suggestions, please share them.