It's an interesting list (and it's good to see titles listed alphabetically instead of some arbitrary list of quality), although I would quibble with a new absences: Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History and Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain should definitely be on such a list, and the absence of anything by Kate Elliott is surprising. But there's definitely some very good books on there, well worth checking out.
It read me me like a random list.
ReplyDeleteI think it's an odd choice to say that "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" or "Shards of Honor" are the best books in their respective series. I don't think I'd even put Shards in a list of the top 10 books written by Lois McMaster Bujold.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brian, the exclusion of authors like Norton, Cherryh, Tepper, Brackett, etc. make me scratch my head, as do the inclusion of books that are translations into English. Or Le Guin first showing up at number 28. Pretty random list without an explanation of their criteria other than, "Here are some women authors."
ReplyDeleteThe list is in alphabetical order, not order of quality, otherwise yes, Le Guin showing up that low would be odd. They probably should have bullet-pointed it rather than numbered, to make that clear.
ReplyDeleteIn a few cases, it also looks like they've put Book 1 of their respective series on the list rather than the whole list a random middle-series volume.
Who would chose Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" over real classics like "Kindred " or "Wild Seed" or even semi-classics like "Patternmaster".
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