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This is not a list of great books
or must-reads. Some books at the top of other people’s lists are not
here, either because I tried to read them and couldn’t get through them
for one reason or another, or read them and felt no desire to read them
ever again. Others I just haven’t gotten around to, and maybe never
will.
This list is purely personal.
Some of these books are among the immortals; others will be forgotten in a
few decades. The only reason they are here is because I enjoyed them and
have read them at least twice, or would read them again. If you have
comments or suggestions, you can e-mail me at
pabow@gto.net
Note: Most of them can be read by
anyone of any age. However, I have not attempted an age-rating system, so
read at your own risk. Links will take you to the on-line
bookstore Amazon.com.
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy;
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe;
Life, the Universe, and Everything;
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish
. Unique. A fine read, funny, weird, and touching.
Sometimes it even begins to make sense.
Aiken, Joan
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase,
Black Hearts in Battersea,
Night Birds on Nantucket,
The Whispering Mountain,
and the other books set in her alternate world
of wild wolves, indomitable orphans, and inventively vicious villains.
Beagle, Peter
The Last Unicorn.
Heartbreaking, beautiful, imbued with the sensibility of the 1960s. On
most top-ten fantasy lists.
The Innkeeper’s Song.
A more mature book. Strong, complex, sympathetic characters, richly imagined world, a
fearsome quest.
Giant Bones.
Short stories set in the world of The Innkeeper’s Song.
Bellairs, John
The House With a Clock in its Walls,
The Mansion in the Mist,
and the other books featuring Lewis Barnavelt. Wonderfully dark, adventurous, gothic stories for
children, with some editions illustrated by Edward Gorey.
The Face in the Frost.
Bellair’s one book for adults, and one of my top
favourites. A strange, enchanting, funny, scary book. The scene with the
magically transformed vegetables will stay with you forever.
Bradbury, Ray
One of the masters of SF, he
always brought an extra sense of wonder and possibility (of both good
and evil) to his stories. For example:
The Illustrated Man,
The Martian Chronicles,
and
Something Wicked This Way Comes
(Truly scary.)
Brooks, Walter
Freddy the Detective,
Freddy the Pilot,
Freddy and the Bean Home News,
Freddy Goes to Florida,
and all the other Freddy books. They qualify as fantasy because of the
talking animals, but really they are just a darn good read. Freddy—poet,
journalist, detective, and pig—was my early inspiration.
Bull, Emma
War for the Oaks.
A
well-written, absorbing story of Faerie set in Minneapolis, in the music
scene of the 1980s. The music-magic connection is intuitively right.
Carroll, Lewis
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
and
Through the Looking-Glass.
No commentary
necessary.
Clark, Catherine
I was pleasantly surprised to
discover, as a child, that stories about magic could be set in Canada.
These are the ones I remember best:
The Golden Pine Cone,
The One-Winged Dragon, The Sun Horse.
Cooper, Susan
Over Sea, Under Stone;
The Dark is Rising;
Greenwitch;
The Grey King;
Silver on the Tree.
(The
Dark is Rising series) Cosmic good-vs.-evil story set in the present but
with a feeling of depth, based on ancient Celtic and Arthurian myth.
Excellent writing, compelling atmosphere, and strong characters,
including effective villains.
Dean, Pamela
Tam Lin.
A story that
keeps getting retold because it’s so good. This version set on an
American college campus. A bit over-written, but the details of
undergrad life are part of what makes this a fun read.
Eager, Edward
In the tradition of E. Nesbit,
but set mostly in 1920s small-town America, they are light-hearted
stories of kids, magic, and trouble. Some titles are:
Half Magic,
Knight’s Castle,
Magic by the Lake,
The Time Garden.
Garner, Alan
One of the finest British
fantasy writers; his books are few but radiant (dark, too).
Elidor.
Four
modern children, four beleaguered Otherworld cities, the four treasures
of ancient Britain. One of the most powerful and most heart-breaking
ending paragraphs I have ever read.
The Owl Service
is the legend
of Blodewedd of the Flowers, retold and set in a modern Welsh village.
Unforgettable.
Gregorian, Joyce
The Broken Citadel;
Castledown;
The Great Wheel.
An American girl (later young woman)
finds her way into a world of magic, princes, and fabulous beasts, holds
her own through force of character, and keeps getting yanked back home
at the worst possible moment. Includes a satisfying romance. The author
(who died at the age of 44) was an expert in oriental rugs, a musician,
and a breeder of Arabian horses. The horsemanship shows in the books.
Grahame, Kenneth
The Wind in the Willows.
Foolish Toad, competent Rat, crusty Badger, lovable Mole, and the
infamous stoats. Revisited now, the lack of female characters is
irritating and the classism seems quaint, but the story is still fresh,
the characters endearing.
Holdstock, Robert
The Bone Forest;
Mythago Wood;
Lavondyss.
A limitless world opens inward from the margins of
a fragment of ancient English forest. Part scientific exploration, part
Jungian quest, the hero discovers legends (Odysseus, the Green Knight,
Arthur, etc.) and the even older legends behind them, back to the ice
age and the beginnings of human myth. There’s also a wonderful
primitive Guinevere.
Huff, Tanya
Blood Price,
Blood Trail,
Blood Lines,
Blood Pact,
[Blood Debt]
Series about Victory Nelson,
half-blind ex-policewoman and private investigator, and the vampires,
demons, and werewolves she mixes with. Canadian settings add to the
entertainment value. I didn’t read Blood Debt because I didn’t like
the way the fourth book ended. I have a moral (or possibly religious)
problem with vampires (soulless killers, damned beyond the possibility
of redemption) as protagonists. But that’s just me.
Sing the Four Quarters,
Fifth Quarter,
No Quarter,
The Quartered Sea.
Musicians
and magic—great combination.
Jackson, Shirley
The Haunting of Hill House.
Classic. No oozing walls, no exploding heads, not a drop of blood—and
absolutely terrifying.
The Lottery and Other Stories.
Equally
chilling, as well as thought-provoking.
James, Henry
The Turn of the Screw.
Ambiguous at first, but leaves you with a sense that you’ve touched
ultimate evil. Well written, too.
James, M. R.
Collected Ghost Stories.
James was an academic who is better remembered for his chilling tales.
There are moments in these stories of intense, icy horror brought on by
the most subtle and apparently mundane details.
Le Guin, Ursula
A Wizard of Earthsea,
The Tombs of Atuan,
The Farthest Shore.
Forget Harry Potter, the
original Earthsea Trilogy is still among the best accounts ever written
of a wizard’s (or a man’s) education.
Tehanu.
fourth in the
series, is very different in tone: definitely an adult book. The story continues
in The Other
Wind and Tales
from Earthsea.
Lewis, C. S.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
and the rest of the
Narnia Chronicles.
I read and loved
these books as a child, without noticing the Christian symbolism. When I
did notice, it deepened my enjoyment. Some people have actually proposed
cleaning out the Christian elements. I have no room here to express how
misguided I believe this is.
Lewis, Hilda
The Ship That Flew.
A
story of time-travelling adventure.
Leiber, Fritz
Swords and Deviltry,
Swords Against Death,
Swords in the Mist,
Swords Against Wizardry,
The Swords of Lankhmar,
Swords and Ice Magic.
The original six books of the
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series are somewhat misogynist in spots. They
are also macabre, exciting, hilarious, inventive, and stylishly written.
I can forgive the misogyny. I didn’t like the seventh, a later add-on.
Lovecraft, H. P.
The Dunwich Horror, and Other Stories.
The original American gothic master. At worst his
style is almost unreadable. At the best, he has an unequalled ability to
create a sense of cosmic horror. You feel that he truly believes.
McKillip, Patricia
The Riddlemaster of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, Harpist in the Wind.
A very young story (the
author admits that) with perhaps too much angst and sensitivity, but a
beautiful read all the same. The first time I read book one, I could
hardly put it down until I was done.
Nesbit, E.
Old-fashioned in some ways, but
the children are still lively, believable characters, and the touches of
magic and strangeness still effective. Some are
The Enchanted Castle,
Five Children and It,
The Phoenix and the Carpet,
The Story of the Amulet,
The Treasure Seekers.
Norton, Andre
Star Born.
Included
because it’s the first science fiction book I ever read. I liked the
interspecies friendship, and it’s still a good, adventuresome read.
Witch World.
and the rest of the Witch World Series. Norton started
publishing sf in the 1950s. She featured very strong female characters
in an era when most sf writers were men, and most female characters were
decoration. The early Witch World books bear re-reading, but avoid the
later collaborations.
O’Shea, Pat
The Hounds of the Morrigan.
Could have been edited down to two-thirds the length, but a delight to
read for the Irish dialogue.
Peake, Mervyn
Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone.
One of the handful heading any fantasy list, the
Gormenghast Trilogy is possibly unique and probably inimitable. At times
over the top, occasionally confusing. Mostly magnificent.
Pratchett, Terry
The Colour of Magic,
The Light Fantastic,
The Truth,
Jingo,
Wyrd Sisters,
Mort,
and all the
rest of the Discworld novels. I’m not sure how long he can keep this
up, but the recent Discworld books (e.g.,
Thief of Time
) are as
strong (and as funny) as the early ones.
Pullman, Philip
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass.
( His Dark Materials trilogy).
Dark, frightening, maybe too dark for young kids; vividly exciting and
highly original. The daemons alone are worth the price of the books.
This recent trilogy will find a secure place among fantasy classics,
despite the anti-religious theme. (A sort of contra-C.S. Lewis situation
here.)
Severn, David
Dream Gold
. A haunting
story about kids at an English school and the effect of certain strange
dreams on their waking lives.
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein.
. Written by
a teenaged girl, published nearly 190 years ago, one of the earliest
science fiction stories, still a good read.
Simak, Clifford
SF writer from the Golden Age
of the 1940s and ‘50s. Stories are often set in his native Wisconsin
and feature newspapermen (which he was)—ordinary, decent guys enmeshed
in cosmic conflict and extraordinary danger.
City.
his best-known
book, is a deceptively laid-back, thoughtful look at the end of human
civilization. You’ll never guess who’ll succeed us.
The Goblin Reservation
was the first Simak book I read. (A reservation for
goblins—who could resist?) Lots more good ones:
They Walked Like Men,
Shakespeare's Planet,
Way Station,
etc. Unfortunately, like
Andre Norton, he ran out of steam in his later books.
Stewart, Mary
The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment.
Her take on the Arthurian legend, from
the viewpoint of Merlin.
The Wicked Day,
written later from the
viewpoint of Mordred, is also a good read but lacks the charm of the
earlier three.
Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris
Roadside Picnic.
Set in
Canada, perhaps for political reasons (the authors were Russian, the
Soviets still in power) but the story doesn’t feel Canadian. It has
that touch of the surreal that seems typically Russian. Haunting,
unforgettable, it’s about the world-changing, often horrible effects
of casual litter left behind by some extraterrestrial tourists.
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King.
I began
reading these when I was 12, before the first wave of fandom swept North
American campuses, and they've been part of my life ever since. Despite
its shortcomings, Tolkien’s work still holds a powerful magic, perhaps
because he created a convincingly seamless world, something that most of
his many imitators haven’t equalled, perhaps because of the clarity of
his vision of good and evil. Besides, it’s a great story.
Trease, Geoffrey
His books are historical
fiction, not fantasy, but I include them because when I read them as a
teen, I was swept away to other worlds. Still exciting, suspenseful, and
notable for spirited heroines who carry half the plot.
A Crown of
Violet
is set in classical Greece.
Cue for Treason
is set in
Shakespeare’s England. There are many more.
Walton, Evangeline
Prince of Annwyn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, Island of the Mighty.
A
retelling of
The Mabinogion,
the great cycle of Welsh myths.
White, T.H.
The Once and Future King.
Magical, delightful, erudite, beautifully written. It ends sadly, but
that’s par for the Arthurian legend.
Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Part moral fable, part fantasy, and a satisfying read.
Willis, Connie
Bellwether.
Market
research, fads, stray sheep. Nobody writes so entertainingly about the
inner workings of academia as Willis.
Doomsday Book.
Not sure I’ll
reread this, it’s so scarifying (it’s about a time-travelling
historian accidentally landing in the era of the Black Death) but so
well done I probably will.
Wyndham, John
Science fiction with
sympathetic characters entangled in world-shattering events. Wyndham had
a clear eye for both tragedy and heroism. His prose style is a pleasure.
Some titles:
The Chrysalids,
The Day of the Triffids,
The Kraken Wakes,
The Midwich Cuckoos.
Wynne Jones, Diana
A YA writer with a sometimes
wild sense of humour and great story-telling skill.
Fire and Hemlock
is another retelling of Tam Lin, better than Pamela Dean’s. Read
Howl’s Moving Castle,
and anything about Christopher Chant.
Wynne-Jones, Tim
Writer who lives in Perth,
Ontario. Has written YA books:
The Burning Boy,
The Maestro.
But
the two books below are not for children.
Fastyngange
is a
strange story about an oubliette (deep stone pit in old English castle,
built to dispose of prisoners) that talks, and its effect on people who
listen. Its ultimate fate in downtown Toronto is appropriate and
satisfying.
Odd’s End
is a chilling story about a strange
presence in what was thought to be the perfect house.
Zelazny, Roger
Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos.
The Chronicles of Amber, the powerful first series, with
Prince Corwin as protagonist, has larger characters and higher stakes
than the second series, with his son Merlin as protagonist.
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