Good SF and Fantasy
An alphabetical list of recommended SF, with capsule reviews
My booklog, with timely-ish reviews of curren reading
After an abortive early attempt to put up a page reviewing all my books, I created this site in the summer of '97. In this site, I list and review books that I think are worth reading.
The books with starred reviews are those that I think should be mandatory reading for just about anyone. These are the books that kept me awake at nights and dazzled me with their brilliance. The other books are those that I enjoyed a lot and wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone, but were missing that crucial something that would have catapulted them into the ranks of great books.
Of course, Your Mileage May Vary. I realize that not all of the books I like are going to be to everyone's taste; where possible, I'll try to make a note of which of my selections are controversial (that is, I like them, but a lot of people might vehemently disagree with my assessment). Nor do I make any pretense of completeness; I'm sure there are a lot of extremely good books out there that I haven't read yet -- and when I do read them, they'll appear on Weasel Words, as I'm no longer updating this site.
I should probably make mention here of my reviewing style. I don't do a lot of plot description, because I don't like reading reviews in which the reviewer walks you through the first 2/3 of the book; half the fun of reading is figuring out what a book's about, and it just ruins all the surprise if somebody gives you a roadmap. My goal in writing these reviews isn't to tell people what a book's about in detail, but to help them decide whether or not they'll like it. The real dilemma for me, though, is trying to refrain from too many superlatives. All the starred books are phenomenal, and I can't imagine not reading all of them. I try to keep from repeating that, but at times my enthusiasm is too overpowering, and I find myself gushing over the books. All I can ask is that you bear with me; or better yet, listen to me and go read the books.