The OF Blog: Revisiting the Gollancz Masterworks lists, two years later

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Revisiting the Gollancz Masterworks lists, two years later

Almost two years ago, in late June 2009, I blogged about my plans to read and eventually review the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series of 50 books.  I have managed to read all of the books on that list and to review in some form 23 of them (24, if I want to count the half of the Viriconium stories that I reviewed earlier in 2009; do plan on combining those reviews with new material later this year).  Not too shabby, considering how I like to shift my reading about every so often.

Eleven months ago, I joined the SFF Masterworks group blog, partly so I could also tackle reading/reviewing at some point all of the Gollancz SF Masterworks list.  Currently, I have read 70 of the 89 titles released so far and have written reviews for 27 of them (not including two reviews of volumes not yet released in this format).  Not too shabby, although I do hope to finish reading the extant volumes by this time next year.

If you click on the SFF Masterworks link above, you'll see that I've either ported over several reviews I wrote in 2009-2010 for this blog or you'll encounter four new reviews that I have not yet ported over here in full.  Of particular interest might be the Le Guin review I wrote last weekend.  I hope to write 1-3 more reviews later this weekend.  Possible candidates include John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop, Philip K. Dick's The Penultimate Truth, and Joanna Russ' The Female Man.

How many books from these lists have you read?  Which are your favorites and/or want to see reviewed next?

1 comment:

James said...

I have read pitifully few of these books. From both of these lists, I found four that I've read in full.

The Forever War (Read after Starship Troopers and Scalzi's Old Man's War and it really doesn't live up to either. A good novel, yes, but not as good as similar.)
I Am Legend (Still has one of the best endings I've read. Spawns bad adaptations.)
Lord of Light (Excellent.)
The First Book of Lankhmar (Pretty much a must read for any fantasy fan.)

There were two that I read in part:

Tales of the Dying Earth (Loved The Dying Earth, but hated Cugel with a passion.)
The Chronicles of Amber (Enjoyed the first, but something about the second volume put me off.)

 
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