I have a lot of books. Two questions people always ask me when they see my book collection: 1) have you read them all? and b) why do you keep them if you've read them?

The answer to the first question is: not yet. About 80%, perhaps.

And the second question: I might want to reread them one day.

Except, of course, rereading becomes increasingly less ( Read more... )

Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series is recognised as a classic of the genre - it says so on the blurb of my 1981 paperback copy of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first book in the series. The last time I read it was, I think, back in the mid-1980s. Like Ringworld (see here) and Rendezvous With Rama (see here), it's one of those sf novels which ( Read more... )

When I decided this year to reread books I remembered fondly from my teens, it was a given that some - if not all - might not survive the experience. After all, I'd like to think I'm a more discerning reader now. I'm certainly a more experienced one. And what I look for, and expect to find, in fiction has changed a great deal over the past few ( Read more... )

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Le Guin is an author who grows as you grow. You can read and admire her at thirteen, and you can read and admire her at forty-three. As I have done. Because I think it must be around thirty years since I last read The Left Hand of Darkness. I'd never really felt the need to reread it because I knew the story. It's one of those novels whose plot and ( Read more... )

This month's book was somewhat delayed as I've been focusing on reading and writing about books related to Apollo 11 for my celebration of the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing. You can find those reviews on my Space Books blog here.

But on with the reading challenge.... My edition of James Blish's Jack of Eagles
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I don't know who to be more embarrassed for: myself, for liking this book when I was young; or the genre, for continuing to revere the series and its author. Because, let's face it, Second Stage Lensman
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The Tar-Aiym Krang
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