Our project began in the fall of 2011, when NPR announced their list of the top 100 SF and Fantasy books of all time. Immediately my OCD and overt competitiveness was activated. Theo, Charlie and I started talking about it. How many of these books had we read? Where our favorites listed? How would it be to try to read all of these great books in a year? Would we have time to do anything else (eat, sleep, work, school)? Being completely crazy, we decided to embark on reading as many of the top 100 as soon as possible and use it as Theo's high school senior project. Charlie elected to join us because his job in a used book store in Durango ideally positioned him to obtain our books and also because his OCD ranks up there with mine.
Here's a link to the list for those of you inclined to join us:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-booksonced
Within a day or two I spotted the fatal flaw in our plan. This list was the "top 100" SF & fantasy books, but a majority of them are trilogies, quadrologies or worse, bringing the actual total of books needing to be read to approximately 300. Never one to be put off by overwhelming odds we embarked on the project anyway. My rules for myself (I can't speak for Charlie or Theo) are pretty straightforward: If I can't remember the plot and the characters verbatim, I have to reread the book (or books). I am not allowing myself to read any other genre of fiction until I have completed this gargantuan task. That's pretty much it.
In the next few days, I will start to write about the books I have read in the last few months. The good, the bad and the extremely annoying (George RR Martin, beware).
Dad, Theo and Chas, I invite you to write your SciFi reading experiences as well.
Mom (Lisa)
No comments:
Post a Comment