A+ Books

 

For the past twelve years, since 2010, I’ve been “grading” every book I’ve read cover to cover.

So … how many A+ books have I read in that time?

91.

That’s 7.6 books a year. Slightly less than an A+ book every month-and-a-half. An A+ book every seven weeks. (But, in fairness, some of these books I’ve read more than once. Well, actually, only Tolkien’s books fall into this category.)

Anyway, it seems to me life is way too short to be reading anything less than A+ books all the time. But this is kind of a Pollyanna-ish way of looking at things. Sometimes a book just slightly misses the mark. I’ve read a heckuva lot more “A” books. Probably a third of all the books I’ve read in the past twelve years fall into the grades A- or better.

Here, though, be the A+ books, by category, for those who might be interested in this sort of thing:

Fantasy Fiction

The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin (these are Game of Thrones books)

Watership Down, by Richard Adams

 

Science Fiction

Downward to Earth, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Nightwings, The Face of the Waters, by Robert Silverberg

Horus Rising, by Dan Abnett

Prelude to Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

Venus, by Ben Bova

Time for the Stars, by Robert Heinlein

Vacation Guide to the Solar System, by Olga Koski (not really fiction, but not quite fact, yet…)

Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl

This Immortal, by Roger Zelazny

“The Life and Times of Multivac,” “Waterclap,” and “The Bicentennial Man,” short stories by Isaac Asimov

“The Howling Man,” by Charles Beaumont

“The Lizard of Woz,” by Edmund Cooper (very punny)

“Strangers,” by Gardner Dozois

“The Problem of the Sore Bridge,” by Philip Jose Farmer

“The Mouse,” by Howard Fast (brought tears to these old eyes)

“Outer Concentric,” by Felix Gotschalk

“The Bible After Apocalypse,” by Laurence Janifer

“The Thirteenth Voyage,” by Stanislaw Lem

“Hunter Go Home,” by Richard McKenna

“Scanners Live in Vain,” by Cordwainer Smith

 

Horror

Weaveworld, by Clive Barker

“Edifice Complex,” short story by Robert Bloch

“The Basilisk,” by Paul Kingsnorth

“The Graveyard Rats,” by Henry Kuttner

“The Colour Out of Space” and “Out of the Aeons,” by H.P. Lovecraft

 

Westerns

The Long Riders, by Dan Cushman

Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger

 

Napoleonic Wars

Sharpe’s Waterloo and Sharpe’s Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell (more of these to come)

 

Classic fiction

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

The Bridges at Toko-Ri, by James Michener

Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

Richard III, by Shakespeare (A+, but not The Tempest? Hmmm….)

“The Second Stain,” a Holmesian short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Batard” and “To Build a Fire,” brutal short stories by Jack London

 

And my most glorious, weird, and exciting read, one to spend a lifetime delving into seeking interpretation and meaning:

Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce

 

 

Tomorrow: The Non-Fiction A-plusses ….