Because (French) Jason DeRusha Wants to Know

I just didn't make it past seeing the DeBlog part before I moved on. I hope it makes me seem really busy rather than just sloppy.

Apparently, Jason DeRusha (probably via MNSpeak) wants to know what I think qualifies as a 10 on my book list. There's nothing like Absolom, Absolom! on the list, despite having read it. My list only goes back about fourteen years, and I did all my heavy, classical reading before then: the Shakespeare and Don Quixote and early literary classics (as an English/History major). Although I do see The Aeneid and Scivias tucked in there. Nowadays, if I'm picking something up for fun, it's more likely to be some science fiction. I do notice that there are definitely books I'd rate higher now then when I first read them - Ficciones being a prime example.

Mean Mr. Mustard will disagree with me about Armor, and Steakley's other book Vampire$ is truly atrocious and should count against him in all other instances, despite being made into a movie. But I really enjoyed that it didn't have all the trappings of Starship Troopers, which tried to address several disparate social issues. Instead, it's about a man who's trapped in an unending cycle of violence through a quirk of fate, and that seems to sum up the pointlessness of war, despite not overtly dwelling on war as an evil. Fourteen years later, I might not rate it a 10 - but at the time I loved it.

It's an eclectic list. History. Sci fi. Some programming. Here's the top (better than a 9, about 5% of the total) of my list of 527 entered so far.

6/18/2002	Revelation Space	Reynolds, Alastair	9.25	SF&F
6/28/2004	Redemption Ark	Reynolds, Alastair	9.25	SF&F
11/1/2003	Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America	Savage, Dan	9.25	NONFICT
3/20/2003	Canticle for Leibowitz, A	Miller, Jr., Walter M.	9.25	SF&F
2/25/2008	Practice of Management, The	Drucker, Peter F.	9.25	MBA
9/16/2006	Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal	Schlosser, Eric	9.25	NONFI
3/7/2002	Nineteen Eighty-Four	Orwell, George	9.25	SF&F
2/20/2007	1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus	Mann, Charles C.	9.25	NONFI
8/18/2001	Perdido Street Station	Mieville, China	9.25	SF&F
5/11/2001	Cryptonomicon	Stephenson, Neal	9.25	SF&F
8/15/2006	Day of the Triffids, The	Wyndham, John	9.25	SF&F
9/27/2004	Nazi Conscience, The	Koonz, Claudia	9.50	NONFICT
8/12/2001	Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling, The	Burke, Edmund R. (Ph.D.) and Ed Pavelka	9.50	NONFICT
2/19/2003	Corrections, The	Franzen, Jonathan	9.50	FICT
6/21/2004	Four Short Novels (Hugo Nominee)	Haldeman, Joe	9.50	SF&F
5/1/1999	Instance of the Fingerpost, An	Pears, Iain	9.50	FICT
6/14/2006	Anansi Boys	Gaiman, Neil	9.50	SF&F
11/14/2007	Joel on Software	Spolsky, Joel	9.50	COMP
6/1/2007	Genocides, The	Disch, Thomas M.	9.50	SF&F
11/25/2006	Eyre Affair, The	Fforde, Jasper	9.50	SF&F
9/18/2004	Scar, The	Mieville, China	9.50	SF&F
4/2/2006	Olympus (Sequel to Illium)	Simmons, Dan	9.50	SF&F
7/7/2005	Death on the Fourth of July	Neiwert, David A.	9.50	NONFICT
7/2/2005	Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community	Neiwert, David A.	9.50	NONFICT
8/1/2004	Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The	Chabon, Michael	9.75	FICT
1/25/2007	Book of Lost Things, The	Connolly, John	9.75	SF&F
5/30/2006	At The Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America	Dray, Philip	10.00	NONFI
12/20/2003	Definitive Guide to SQL Server Performance Optimization, The	Jones, Don	10.00	COMP
2/23/2007	War With the Newts	Capek, Karel	10.00	SF&F
7/3/1994	Armor	Steakley, John	10.00	SF&F
12/24/2007	Best Software Writing I, The	Spolsky, Joel	10.00	COMP
7/5/1995	Shipping News, The	Proulx, E. Annie	10.00	FICT