What Makes This Book So Great
"As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading--about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers"
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What Hacker News says
- I read a version with enough footnotes to help me understand that underneath a funny and beautiful book is an attempt to use satire to say something serious about the regime that Bulgakov lived under. Part of what makes this book so great is how it is effective at this goal but also just fantastic literature.
I'm a heavy reader but bad at reviews. All I can say is read this one. One of the best books I've ever read and that was clear to me before I finished it.
- I just read both of those earlier this year, based partially on recommendations on HN.
Speaking of book recommendations, try almost any book reviewed in Jo Walton's collection of essays: *What Makes This Book So Great?. I read and bought about the first half-dozen or so that I hadn't already read, and there was only one that I didn't enjoy thoroughly, and more because it was too much of an emotional downdraft than because it was badly written, which it wasn't at all.
- Jo Walton's What Makes This Book So Great along with about half a dozen of the books it mentions (it's a collection of blog posts on books she's rereading) which I hadn't previously read. All of the previously unread ones I've now finally read are good, a couple great, ditto the ones previously read. One was enough of a downer that I didn't finish it (Random Acts of Senseless Violence).
Definitely recommended if you enjoy science fiction and/or fantasy.
