avrelia

There is a meme going around about 100 science fiction books, as selected by some people somewhere (NPR, I know). I am not going to do it. There are lots of of lists of 10, 50 or 100 THE BEST Books ever, and they all look very random to me. I don't dispute them – all the books in them are good and they must be special to the people who compiled those lists, but I feel no connection to them. I cannot judge my reading history and my reading plans by some random people's moods and ideas. The big part of this disconnect is, of course, that all those lists are English-language centric. Which is natural, since I read them in English-language media, but they are always presented as “world-wide”, and even have occasional non-English author brought in. Again, fine for those who only read in English, but it doesn't reflect my reading habits. I read some of the books, and I haven't read many more, but I read other great books instead, that people who made those lists have never heard about.

I did jumped on the eruthros' suggestion to make our own, fandom list of speculative fiction works, and nominated ten Russian-language books. Just so they would be there.

And if you want to nominate anything - run, the nominations are open until August 19th.

Moving on somewhat – I have the most ridiculous problem ever. I need to stop reading library books. Because there are too many book out there, and I want them, but I have entirely too many books at home that I have been planning to read forever and never got around to. I mean, I bought them, I carry them around - some for eleven years and across the globe, but I haven't read all of them yet. Or I bought them a year ago and planning to read them any day, but there is always a book from a library that I have to return, so I read it instead, and then I get another book from the library. It has to stop. And I read way too slowly these days. I mean, ok, I cannot spend a night finishing a book any longer, but a month for a regular... it is way too much.