New Year Musings, and a Best Books List

Well, the first month of 2013 is almost over. But between being set back two weeks with a case of whatever plague virus is burning through the Northeast, and various delays pushing off the meetings of my two different writing groups, my personal writing year has barely begun.

Despite the slow start (which means I've once again fallen out of the habit of regular writing), I'm still hopeful that it will be a good one. I've got my Nano Nano file of story beginnings to flesh out, two stories currently making the submission rounds and two more stories that are almost there, and I'll be going to both the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference and Grub Street's own The Muse & the Marketplace conference in the first half of this year.

Maybe a summer writer's retreat or conference, too. And a trip to Vegas. And a family trip or two... hmmm. How many days off do I get? (Don't forget to subtract the two sick days that I already took in January.)

Of course, you can't have writing without reading. (Really. You can't. And please, don't even try.) There were a lot of Best Of lists being circulated at the end of the year, but one kind of list that I enjoyed seeing is rather timeless – writers' lists of their 25 or 50 best reads. Not necessarily "great" or "important" works, but books that were a joy to discover, to read, and to reread. 

And so, in the list below are 25 of mine (As of today. Subject to change. Your mileage may vary. Book series considered for one listing only. Void where prohibited by law.) 

A lot of these books are in the SF/F genre, and over half of them are books I read as a very young man. Some I remember well from where they lived on my mother's bookshelf, home of the first grown-up books I ever read. (Little Women, Tarzan, the Swiss Family Robinson, and Sherlock Holmes were all on that bookcase, under the stairs leading up to my room.)  It's not a list that is necessarily reflective of what I'm reading today – but I'll still defend any one of them as a great read.

Enjoy. I did.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

Pilgrimage, Zenna Henderson

Jesus Son, Denis Johnson

Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft

The Complete Works of Saki, H. H. Munro

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

Straight Man, Richard Russo

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White

Thank You, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss

Nine Princes of Amber, Roger Zelanzy

Thanks for reading,

Stephen