Saturday, February 16, 2008
Currently reading:
The Third Girl, Agatha Cristie.
System of the World, Neal Stephenson.
Third Girl is frustrating. In the first few pages, the third girl tells Poirot he's too old, at which point I knew I'd read this before, so eventually I will remember whodunnit. But I don't remember anything else in it - I guess it been years and some memory loss since I last read it. Cristie wrote 80 books, mostly in a formula that works, about the retired Colonel's country house and a dead body, and I've read less than half of these, but I seem to keep running into the ones I've already read.
System of the world is volume 3 of the Baroque cycle, another 1000 pages or so, which is probably putting me behind schedule to read 50 books this year, but a few good books is better than lots of not as good books.
Liberty and Power, a libertarianish group blog I don't usually read, lists essential dystopian novels. Following is a list of the ones I've read, and then the ones I haven't.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)
Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
1984 by George Orwell (1949)
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1952/1953)
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1960)
"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
The Dispossessed bu Ursule K. Le Guin (1974)
Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
Children of Men by P.D. James (1992)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
"The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster (1909)
The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells (1910)
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (1937)
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949)
Gather, Darkness by Fritz Leiber (1950)
Limbo by Bernard Wolfe (1952)
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955)
334 by Thomas Disch (1972)
The Gate to Women's Country by Sherri S. Tepper (1988)
Children of Men by P.D. James (1992)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
Feed by M.T. Anderson (2002)
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (2004)
Some of these I've never heard of, some are by authors I like but haven't read these particular books. I've met the late Octavia Butler, and used to have an autographed copy of the Dispossessed.
The Third Girl, Agatha Cristie.
System of the World, Neal Stephenson.
Third Girl is frustrating. In the first few pages, the third girl tells Poirot he's too old, at which point I knew I'd read this before, so eventually I will remember whodunnit. But I don't remember anything else in it - I guess it been years and some memory loss since I last read it. Cristie wrote 80 books, mostly in a formula that works, about the retired Colonel's country house and a dead body, and I've read less than half of these, but I seem to keep running into the ones I've already read.
System of the world is volume 3 of the Baroque cycle, another 1000 pages or so, which is probably putting me behind schedule to read 50 books this year, but a few good books is better than lots of not as good books.
Liberty and Power, a libertarianish group blog I don't usually read, lists essential dystopian novels. Following is a list of the ones I've read, and then the ones I haven't.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)
Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
1984 by George Orwell (1949)
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1952/1953)
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1960)
"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
The Dispossessed bu Ursule K. Le Guin (1974)
Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
Children of Men by P.D. James (1992)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
"The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster (1909)
The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells (1910)
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (1937)
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949)
Gather, Darkness by Fritz Leiber (1950)
Limbo by Bernard Wolfe (1952)
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955)
334 by Thomas Disch (1972)
The Gate to Women's Country by Sherri S. Tepper (1988)
Children of Men by P.D. James (1992)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
Feed by M.T. Anderson (2002)
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (2004)
Some of these I've never heard of, some are by authors I like but haven't read these particular books. I've met the late Octavia Butler, and used to have an autographed copy of the Dispossessed.
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