What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Fantasy and SF

What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Fantasy and SF
ISBN-10
1472111621
ISBN-13
9781472111623
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
448
Language
English
Published
2014-01-16
Publisher
Corsair
Author
Jo Walton

Description

Jo Walton is an award-winning author of, inveterate reader of, and chronic re-reader of science fiction and fantasy books. What Makes This Book So Great? is a selection of the best of her musings about her prodigious reading habit. Jo Walton's many subjects range from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. Among them, the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by 'mainstream'; the under-appreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers.

Other editions

Similar books

  • Among Others
    By Jo Walton

    As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closests companions.

  • So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading
    By Sara Nelson

    It was then that Sara realized the books chose her as much as she chose them, and the rewards and frustrations they brought were nothing she could plan for.

  • The King's Name
    By Jo Walton

    As civil war threatens to destroy the hard-won peace of Tir Tanagiri, warrior Sulien ap Gwien must take up arms once again in a conflict that tears her country, family, and friendships apart.

  • The Prize in the Game
    By Jo Walton

    When four friends participate in a competition that leads to the death of a horse and enrages the Horse Goddess, the friends must evade the godess's curse and save their countries from destruction.

  • Sibyls & Spaceships: Poems
    By Jo Walton

    Sibyls & Spaceships: Poems

  • The Prize in the Game
    By Jo Walton

    Now she returns with a powerful epic set in the same world. The Prize in the Game is the tale of the intertwined fates of four friends, destined for kingship but riven by rivalry and war.

  • So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
    By Cal Newport

    Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before.

  • So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
    By Maureen Corrigan

    Offering a fresh perspective on Gatsby, SO WE READ ON takes readers into archives, high school classrooms, and onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths, revealing its surprising debt to noir, its rocky path to ...

  • Ferry to Cooperation Island
    By Carol Newman Cronin

    A boat captain is forced to team up with the woman who stole his job in order to save his New England island home from developers.

  • So Big (Illustrated)
    By Edna Ferber

    This is the famous story of Selina, who taught school in a community of hard working farmers and thrifty wives—and found beauty in cabbages!