A great omission

A while ago I realised that for a person who supposed was rather fond of science fiction and fantasy fiction I had read remarkably few books of the genre (the fact that I generally prefer dead authors having a great deal to do with it). Even though I have seen many many films. The list of books on the genre that I have read and liked enough to remember the titles of, are very very few:

1. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

2. Dune and it’s sequels by Herbert

3. The Narnia books by CS Lewis

4. The Harry Potter series by Rowling

5. The five book Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy by Douglas Adams

And some books that don’t really count

- Alice in Wonderland

- The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (the last bookshop I visited had it as science fiction.)

- The Master and Margarita by Bulgarov

And that’s about it. All other’s have been forgettable mediocre books,

But not for long! I have decided to remedy this.

And I started with Gay Gabriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, which was nice. Really nice. It has a great cover, I am a sucker for books with nice covers. It wasn’t as good as Tolkien, but it was more adult than Tolkien, as in the heroes where real live people, with feelings and hang-ups who even slept with each other from time to time. I liked it. I teared up at the point where the dog and the wolf lord where fighting while Paul hung from the summer tree. I am weird that way. On the other hand making Jennifer into Guinevere and raising King Arthur and Lancelot from the dead was a bit much. I liked it enough to consider reading some of his other books in the future.

And now I have just bought Pullman’s Dark Material’s trilogy and am hoping to read at least the first book before I see the film... Let’s see.

On another note it had finally got cold here, and this is the time the boiler in my block of flats decides to break down. I have been freezing for days now, when will this torment end!