Saturday 4 April 2015

FACTUAL ESSAYS REVIEW: What Makes This Book So Great - Jo Walton

Release Date: 08/01/15
Publisher:  Corsair

SYNOPSIS:

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.


REVIEW:

If like me you’re on Facebook or Twitter, the odds are you’ve received numerous lists of books asking how many have you read. As a reader it can be quite irksome to find out that you’ve not sat back and read what some people consider classics but to be honest they’re just books that people think you should have read.

Here in this title by Jo, is a book that helps explain why you should read certain titles. It’s easy to follow with well-constructed points of view and backs it all up with a huge selection that really will make your reading list harder to get through (due to the increase in volume.)

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