Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 297

When you have a lot of plums –

Plums are a fairly reliable crop for us in south-central Missouri. We have four pretty good trees and four pretty bad trees, which divide neatly in half: The Japanese plums (and the plucot) are the good ones and the European plums are the bad ones. I mention this in case you happen to be considering planting fruit trees. For us, the Japanese plums bear earlier in the tree’s life, bear far more reliably, are less prone to disease, and hold onto their fruit better under less than ideal conditions. Most years, we get decent fruit from one or more of those trees (they tend toward biennial bearing). Most years, we do not get any fruit from the European plums.

The Japanese plums we have are Fortune, Shiro, Ozark Premier, and the plucot (which is a plum-apricot hybrid, but seems to have gotten no obvious traits from the apricot parent). These trees are unaffected by late frosts that destroy the apricot flowers or young fruits, and also far more resistant to late frosts than the peaches. The Shiro started bearing youngest and bears most reliably and heavily. It is a sweet plum with a tart yellow skin, but it goes mushy fast. The Fortune is a purple plum with purple flesh. It’s sweet, but it goes from underripe to overripe in a heartbeat. The Ozark Premier was slow to start bearing. It bears bigger purple plums with yellow flesh and has a good flavor, and it doesn’t go overripe as fast as the others. The plucot bears very heavily, small tart purple plum-type fruit with yellow flesh infused with red.

For us, it is impossible – laughable – to think of growing plums (or peaches) without spraying. My guess is it’s impossible for most people to grow plums (or especially peaches) without spraying, so take that into consideration if you’re thinking of growing fruit trees. Borers and other insects are a danger, but the real problem is, in a wet spring, brown rot will destroy your entire crop. I am not kidding. Even if you spray, you may have problems with brown rot unless you are a) lucky, b) very aggressive about spraying, c) rotate your sprays to prevent the fungus from adapting to your spray, d) are extremely diligent about picking and disposing of affected fruit in a bad year where you just can’t keep ahead of the fungus. If you don’t want to spray, my experience suggests that the only stone fruit worth trying are cherries.

Also, while squirrels or raccoons will strip a tree overnight just before you were ready to pick the fruit — an electric wire on the fence is the only preventative that we’ve found effective — we do just let the birds take a lot of plums. By now the trees are far too tall for us to pick the top fruit, and besides, in a heavy-bearing year, the trees carry so much fruit we don’t care how much the birds take. But unlike on the plums, birds alone can completely destroy the peach crop. After consulting with a nursery (and receiving a very polite and helpful letter), we now use a spray that makes birds uncomfortable about landing in the peach trees. That pretty much does the job.

So, back to plums:

As it happens, plums are a fruit I don’t much care for out-of-hand. I like them much better cooked, but not in pies, which for me offer far too much fruit and far too little pastry. I can only eat tart fruit pies if they’re drowned Here are some much better ways to use up a lot of plums:

1. The basic first step: cook your plums. Slice the plums into a pot. Add a cup or two of sugar, depending on how many plums you’ve got. You’ll taste the plums later, so don’t worry about getting the sugar right on the first try. If you want to use tapioca as a thickener, add a quarter cup or so. Cook on medium heat for a few minutes. The plums will give up a lot of liquid and start boiling vigorously; stir frequently and reduce the heat as necessary to maintain a gentler simmer. You may need to add more thickener if the plums were extra juicy.

If you’re using cornstarch to thicken your plums, when the plums have more or less dissolved – some thick pieces and skins and so on will be evident – make a slurry of cornstarch and water or cornstarch and plum liquid and stir this into your pot. Cook and stir until thickened. If you were using tapioca, the plums should thicken into a thick syrup or thinnish jam. Of course the syrup will thicken more when chilled. Once you have the thickness you think you might like, taste for sugar. When you like what you have, cool and pour into jars and either freeze or refrigerate. Or I guess you could sterilize canning jars and actually can the plum filling.

Now, stuff to do with the plum filling once you have it. Other than spooning it over ice cream, which I’m sure would work, you can try these recipes:

2. Plum-topped cheesecake

This is a really good traditional cheesecake. It’s my mother’s favorite, and of course I’m not likely to turn down a piece either. I’ve made it in three different ovens and it is a pretty reliable recipe, but of course if it does crack, you’re going to put a topping on it, so it doesn’t much matter.

1 C. vanilla wafer crumbs

3 Tbsp sugar

3 Tbsp butter, melted

4 pkg (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened

1 C sugar

3 Tbsp flour

4 eggs

1 C sour cream

1 Tbsp vanilla

Combine the crumbs, sugar, and butter. Press onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes.

Beat together cream cheese, sugar, and flour. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in sour cream and vanilla. Pour over crust. Bake at 450 degrees for ten minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees and continue baking one hour. The center should seem barely set or not quite set; it’ll firm up as it cools. Remove cake from oven and run a thin knife around the rim of the pan. Cool completely in pan. Chill. Top with plum filling right before serving.

Obviously this is fine with all kinds of toppings, but you want something a little tart and the plum topping fits the bill perfectly.

3. Frozen cream cake with plums

This is what I made for the 4th of July. Of course the original recipe called for blueberries, but I had all the plum topping already made and it worked fine with that.

8 oz cream cheese, softened

¾ C powdered sugar

2½ C heavy cream

1 C lemon curd – I was going to buy some, but couldn’t find any, so I made some. I’m sure it was better anyway. Of course you have to make it in advance and chill it.

16 graham crackers, or if you’re not a graham cracker fan – I’m not – any kind of decent flat plain cookie.

2 C plum topping (or other somewhat tart fruit topping)

Beat cream cheese with powdered sugar until fluffy, about four minutes. Beat in cream, gradually increasing the speed of your mixer as the cream is incorporated. Beat until medium peaks form (mine got pretty stiff, which was fine). Fold in the lemon curd. Set aside about a quarter of the cream mixture and chill separately.

Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap, leaving an overhang. Layer graham crackers over bottom of pan. Layer with a third of the remaining cream filling. Spread with about 2/3 C of the plum filling. Repeat layers twice, ending up with a layer of graham crackers. Press plastic wrap over the top and freeze at least six hours or up to a couple of days (I don’t see why it wouldn’t hold longer if you wanted) (I hope you checked ahead of time to make sure you had room in your freezer for the loaf pan).

Shortly before you want to serve the cake, take it out of the freezer and unmold it onto a platter. Ice it with the reserved lemon cream. Freeze for at least fifteen minutes or a couple of hours (you DID check you had room for the platter in the freezer, right?). Slice to serve. This was very good and quite pretty.

3. Cobblers

I make a little individual cobbler for myself all the time. All you need is an appropriate small baking dish – mine are about five inches across. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Make a scant quarter recipe of any biscuit or scone dough, but add a bit more sugar than the recipe calls for (I add about a Tbsp of sugar to about ½ C of flour and a little baking powder and baking soda, then milk or else yogurt and a bit of water – I don’t measure stuff, actually, I just stir it up so it looks about right). Put about a quarter cup of the plum filling in the baking dish and heat in the microwave until boiling. Drop biscuit or scone dough over and bake until done. There’s no reason you couldn’t use the same basic idea to make a full-sized cobbler, obviously.

Top Ten Under the Radar Books

What a great idea for a Top Ten Tuesday meme! From The Broke and the Bookish, top ten books with under 2000 Goodreads reviews.

Here’s Chachic’s set. What great choices (well, the ones I’m familiar with, which is about half of them). I might trade out And All the Stars for the Medair duology, though that’s a tough choice for me.

Here’s Brandy’s list. Well, obviously I don’t love this set of books quiiiiite as much, since none of my own books are present. Seriously, though, what surprises me is that A Face Like Glass has under 2000 reviews. But I checked just out of curiosity and I see it is not a lot less — about 1700. In contrast, though, Uprooted has about 40,000 ratings last time I checked. So you see.

Well, well. It’s a bit tricky. Let me see . . . I’m going to try to do this without repeating any books from Chachic or Brandy; not even any authors if I can manage it . . .

All right:

1. Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells. It’s got nearly a thousand ratings but only 83 reviews. Startlingly, I don’t appear to have posted a review for it myself. That’s just embarrassing. *Makes a note.*

2. Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw. To my astonishment, it has fewer than 600 ratings. Wow, are Goodreads patrons missing out on some great books!

3. Cuckoo’s Egg by CJ Cherryh. I figured. Anything published as far back as 1985 probably has an uphill struggle on Goodreads, even by a famous author like CJC.

4. Dun Lady’s Jess by Duranna Durgin. I always loved this one. Thinking of horses …

5. The Grey Horse by RA MacAvoy. And now that I’ve thought of MacAvoy …

6. The Lens of the World. Shameful to see how few ratings and reviews it has. Not that I’ve reviewed it, either. It’s the older-book thing again.

7. Lord of the Two Lands by Judith Tarr. One of my very favorite historical fantasies.

8. A Stranger to Command by Sherwood Smith. It’s not quite as low on ratings as some of these others, but it’s way below Crown Duel / Court Duel and that’s too bad. two more, two more, how hard can this be? FINE, let me try thinking of recent releases . . .

9. Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman. It’s getting up toward a thousand ratings now, but it’s not there yet. One more, one more . . .

10. Oh, of course. Serendipity’s Tide, first book of an indie-published trilogy that has had no publicity (as far as I know) and certainly remains thoroughly under the radar. I liked this trilogy a lot.

There you go, and that certainly reminds me to make sure I’ve posted reviews of all these myself.

And on the 4th of July, we rested

I mean, sure, my parents came over for dinner, but none of us are that interested in fireworks these years, and I, at least, was really tired and perfectly happy that it rained most of the day (it did clear up later for those who wanted to go see fireworks).

But my weekend was pretty darn busy, so Monday was a recovery day.

On Saturday, I showed three dogs in Rally, twice — Ish in Excellent, at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, and the puppies — Chloe and Jos — in Novice at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM. Then I drove home in the rain.

On Sunday, I showed them again, Ish at 8:00 AM and the puppies at 10:00. Then I was caught in a traffic jam for an hour on the way home. You know, there is NO WAY to get off 44 and get into the city — nothing else crosses the Meramec River. I should have turned around and gone west and taken this weird complicated backroads route, but, well, who knew it would take a whole hour to get through to 141?

Whew! Looong days, especially considering an hour and a half drive each way (not counting the traffic jam).

But it paid off pretty well!

Here is Chloe waiting to go in the ring. She earned her Rally Novice title with scores of 86, 97 (third place), and 70 (she deserved much, much better; I was too mad to ask the judge what the hell she was taking points off for, but I did make a note of the judge’s name so I can avoid her in the future.)

Here are Jos and Ish, glad to be home. Jos also got his Rally Novice titles, with scores of 96, 86, and 77 — again the judge scored my baby too low, imo. I know she must have taken ten points off for that extra sit, which was not very generous scoring, but I have no idea what else she was taking points off for. Ugh.

And Ish earned two legs of his Excellent title. It was my mistakes that NQ’d us the first time — well, it’s been years since I took a dog into the Excellent ring! I was really nervous.

Ish was juuuust barely adequate, with scores in the eighties for both Q’s. I thought that one judge was too generous to Ish — she gave him an 86, if I recall correctly — which is weird because she really was way too strict with the puppies. But there you go.

I’ve only taught Ish the Excellent stuff in the past couple weeks. All the pivots and turns and what have you are fine, and he now has an amazing moving stand, but his moving down has crept out over other things. I mean, I taught him this new down signal so we could do a moving down and a kind of distance-signal exercise, and he learned the new signal super fast (literally under a minute) but then he started to volunteer downs for all kinds of things. You could just see him thinking: OH I KNOW THIS MUST BE A DOWN TOO! I AM WONDERFUL! GIVE ME A COOKIE! And he is wonderful, but this issue complicated training last week.

Well, by September I’m sure Ish and I will have sorted out the Excellent exercises, and the puppies should be MUCH more steady, and then we’ll see. I certainly do not want to leave Ish’s Excellent title hanging, so I will at least finish that this year. In the meantime:

The ribbons hanging on the stand are the new title ribbons my guys have earned this year so far.

And then on the 4th, we were all quite content to just hang around and write the rest of chapter 20 (me) and grump about the rain (them). And then we had a nice dinner with my parents — the dogs all got tidbits of bratwurst, too — and went to bed to the sound of distant fireworks.

I hope you all enjoyed your 4th of July, too — however you spent the day, and whether you’re American or not.

Yet another list: 100 years of bestsellers

Here, via a link from commenter David H, a website where we see a particular reader’s responses to books when he read every single #1 bestseller (using the Publisher’s Weekly list) published from 1913 to 2013.

What a project! I had two reactions: 1. This is awesome! and 2. I would never do this!

Here’s the list — at the actual post, each title links through to the review. I read some of the reviews last night, so I can tell you: No, not that Winston Churchill. Actually kinda hard to believe there could ever have been a famous author of the same name, but so it seems.

Scanning quickly through this list, how many titles do you see that you would have to be paid (a lot) to read? For me it would be Gone With the Wind, plus The Da Vinci Code and any sequels. Well, and Fifty Shades.

How many did you think were just movies and not books? For me, that would be ET and the Star Wars novelization.

How many have you actually read? For me, very few till you hit the 1980s and then eight or so, but none in the past decade. I should add that I’ve read a couple by Pearl Buck and liked them quite a bit, but not The Good Earth.

I’m definitely going to read through the reviews. I read the first few last night.

1913: The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill

1914: The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright

1915: The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington

1916: Seventeen by Booth Tarkington

1917: Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells

1918: The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey

1919: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

1920: The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey

1921: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

1922: If Winter Comes by A.S.M. Hutchinson

1923: Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton

1924: So Big by Edna Ferber

1925: Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs

1926: The Private Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine

1927: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

1929: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

1930: Cimarron by Edna Ferber

1931: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck *

1933: Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen

1934: Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen*

1935: Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas

1936: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell*

1938: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1940: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

1941: The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin

1942: The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

1943: The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas

1944: Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith

1945: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

1946: The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier

1947: The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney

1948: The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas

1949: The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

1950: The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson

1951: From Here to Eternity by James Jones

1952: The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain

1953: The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas*

1954: Not as a Stranger by Morton Thompson

1955: Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

1956: Don’t Go Near the Water by William Brinkley

1957: By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens

1958: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

1959: Exodus by Leon Uris

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1961: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

1962: Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

1963: The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris L. West

1964: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

1965: The Source by James A. Michener

1966: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

1967: The Arrangement by Elia Kazan

1968: Airport by Arthur Hailey

1969: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

1970: Love Story by Erich Segal

1971: Wheels by Arthur Hailey

1972: Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

1973: Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach*

1974: Centennial by James A. Michener

1975: Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

1976: Trinity by Leon Uris

1977: The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien

1978: Chesapeake by James A. Michener

1979: The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum

1980: The Covenant by James A. Michener

1981: Noble House by James Clavell

1982: E.T., The Extraterrestrial by William Kotzwinkle

1983: Return of the Jedi by James Kahn

1984: The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

1985: The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel

1986: It by Stephen King

1987: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

1988: The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

1989: Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy

1990: The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel

1991: Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley

1992: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

1993: The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

1994: The Chamber by John Grisham

1995: The Rainmaker by John Grisham

1996: The Runaway Jury by John Grisham

1997: The Partner by John Grisham

1998: The Street Lawyer by John Grisham

1999: The Testament by John Grisham

2000: The Brethren by John Grisham

2001: Desecration by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

2002: The Summons by John Grisham

2003: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown**

2004: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown*

2005: The Broker by John Grisham

2006: For One More Day by Mitch Albom

2007: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini**

2008: The Appeal by John Grisham

2009: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

2010: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson

2011: The Litigators by John Grisham

2012: Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James

2013: Inferno by Dan Brown

2014: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Cover reveal!

Okay! I spotted this via Twitter last night, so I know it must be okay to show off the cover for The White Road of the Moon. Here it is:

What do you think? I like it! I did point out that it is a bit similar to the Griffin Mage omnibus cover, but they thought that was all right. Of course the colors and the circular orientation are quite different. And the font for the title is really different.

For comparison purposes, here’s the Griffin Mage omnibus:

But back to the White Road cover —

Do you see that from a distance the White Road cover is supposed to look kind of like an eye? Eyes and seeing are important in the book. You spotted the dog, of course! This is the first of my books with a dog in it; isn’t that amazing? He’s a wolfhound, not a cute little spaniel. I was indeed thinking of Irish wolfhounds, though of course this is not our world and so the dog is not actually a recognizable breed.

And as it happens, the dog — like many other important characters in this story — is a ghost.

I think it’s really interesting to compare my most recent covers:

I just think it’s fun that they’re all so completely, absolutely different. Which of them do you like the best? Find the most eye-catching? Would consider the most intriguing if you saw the book face out on a shelf?

The story of my Monday, in pictures

1. Happy Ishmael, out for a run a little after dawn on Monday. Maybe there will be bunnies! There will definitely be lots and lots of wet grass to roll in.

2. Sad Ish, at this special referral-only emergency clinic an hour and a half away, where they have specialized tools my vet does not possess. He was at my vet from 8:00 AM to noon, then we went straight to the referral clinic in Chesterfield, where we waited for four hours because they see patients by triage, not by appointment.

3. The three-pronged, inch-and-a-half grass stem, which was so deep in his ear it took those special tools to get it. Plus Ish had to be anesthetized to get the grass out.

4. Tired, tired Ish, practically in a coma on the way home.

5. Ish this morning, modeling a snood.

Normally snoods are used to protect the ears right before a show, or many people use them to make sure the dog’s ears stay clean during meals. Until the memory of our Monday fades, however, Ish can wear this one while out for a run. It’s the second time this happened to him — the last time my vet got the grass out herself — but, seriously, I just do not want to worry about this again for a while!

The sole plus of the day: I read an entire (short) book while waiting at the clinic. It was SUNBOLT by Intisar Khanani. Not bad — I think I’ll go on with the second book pretty soon.

It’s the little things that matter —

Here’s a post by Kristen at Metaphors and Moonlight: DISCUSSION: REALISM IN BOOKS – BIG THINGS VS. LITTLE THINGS

… if it’s a big thing that’s not realistic, then it’s almost like it becomes part of the premise. And I can accept pretty much any premise. I’m a sci-fi/fantasy reader, I accept crazy premises on a daily basis. It’s what I do.

But when details and little things are unrealistic, even if they have no significance on the plot or the characters whatsoever, it bothers me. Though I suppose it’s the fact that they have no significance that makes it even worse, because why even include them in the first place?!

This is a fantasy/SF reader, so by “realism” she doesn’t mean a contemporary real-world type of setting. She means that when a character has a tattoo on the palm of her hand, her reaction as a reader is to think, On the palm? Seriously? And this throws her out of the story as she googles around to confirm that indeed, the palm of the hand is a terrible place for a tattoo.

. . . if I can find the necessary information on the topic with a five minute Google search, why couldn’t the author? Did they just not care enough about their readers to bother researching?

Now, this, I think, is a tad unfair, because of course it’s the unknown unknowns that get you. The author obviously didn’t realize a tattoo on the palm might be questionable, so she (or he) saw no reason to look it up. Why, it reminds me VERY STRONGLY of the book Dead Witch Walking by Kelly Armstrong where the author — who does a fine job with wolves in a different series — has her protagonist turn into a mink and the animal she describes IS NOT A MINK. (She is describing a least weasel in its winter coat.) And she refers to it as a rodent, too, which is just upsetting, seriously. You might as well describe somebody’s pony as a rodent.

Those unknown unknowns, they’ll bite you.

So I don’t know that it’s incorrect details that are the problem, exactly. It’s incorrect details that are glaringly apparent to any particular reader. Those will vary a ton from reader to reader, obviously. I remember Sherwood Smith commenting about errors in Regencies, most of which I would probably read right over without noticing.

But I do think it’s dead true that mistakes with the details will bother a reader much more an a broadly implausible plot element that was never supposed to be realistic.

For me what matters: Food — You should not be eating chilies in ancient China or rice in medieval Norway. Plants in general — pines are suited only to certain ecosystems, not to every possible ecosystem. Animals — do not refer to any kind of mustelid as a rodent, please. Fabrics — silk is a very specific type of cloth.

Stuff that doesn’t bother me nearly as much but gets right up the nose of an expert: Everything. That river, are you sure it’s running the right way? Can you seriously have a spring-fed swamp this high up on a mountain? You know, swords were not that heavy, really. Hey, arquebuses were not very accurate and by the way, a company firing them would produce billowing clouds of opaque smoke. And then all the period details for historical novels; truly, there’s no end.

How about you, any detail issue kick you out of a book recently?

And on the flip side, the single book (series) with the best detailing I’ve read this year: The Steerswoman series by Kirstein. Loved the coherence of the setting. And even there, if I bump into her at Worldcon, there are a couple things that don’t seem to make sense and I wonder if she has justifications for them.

The 75 Best Novels Published in the Past 75 Years: A New, Personalized List

You know, it wasn’t hard at all for me to come up with a totally different and far superior* list of the 75 greatest novels ever published**. This list is a lot heavier on fantasy than the list I pointed to yesterday, also includes a lot of SF, and then I made a point of considering novels outside SFF, which led to a goodish handful of historicals and a few mysteries making the cut. Interestingly, though I didn’t set out to avoid contemporaries, I don’t think there are any here.

I thought it was particularly silly to try to come up with a list that included novels and poetry and nonfiction, so you’ll find only novels here. I was trying for novels that are fun to read, beautifully written, thought provoking, or preferably all three; and apparently I also preferred novels that offer a non-contemporary setting.

I would be happy to set my list up against anybody’s, not necessarily for literary importance, but for greatness. After all, The Lord of the Flies is certainly important, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s more because it’s assigned in every high school lit class ever, not because it is intrinsically great. I think the message it delivers about human nature is actually, you know, wrong. Or so incomplete it might as well be wrong. No, thanks.

So here you go – Rachel Neumeier’s list of the 75 greatest novels ever published.*** (I didn’t really look at the year of publication, but I expect they’re all from the past 75 years.) I tried not to include more than one book (or series) by the same author, but, you know, I didn’t try too hard. I also included a handful of children’s books, but only if I still love them as an adult.

How many of these have you read? More than fifteen, I bet. If lit teachers drew half the novels they assigned from this list, maybe more students would wind up falling in love with books.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams (Douglas)

2. Watership Down, Adams (Richard)

3. The Goblin Emperor, Addison

4. Little Women, Alcott

5. The Prydain chronicles, Alexander

6. Pride and Prejudice, Austen

7. The Last Unicorn, Beagle

8. Beauty Queens, Bray

9. The Beacon at Alexandria, Bradshaw

10. The Taltos series, Brust

11. The Vorkosigan series, Bujold

12. The Chalion series, Bujold

13. A Little Princess, Burnett

14. The Lilith’s Brood series, Butler

15. A Darkling Sea, Cambias

16. Ender’s Game, Card

17. The Foreigner series, Cherryh

18. The Chanur series, Cherryh

19. Cyteen, Cherryh

20. Cuckoo’s Egg, Cherryh

21. Paladin, Cherryh

22. Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, Clarke

23. The Lymond chronicles, Dunnett

24. Hild, Griffith

25. Dragonsbane, Hambly (not the rest of the series, imo)

26. A Face Like Glass (Hardinge)

27. Dune, Herbert

28. And All the Stars, Höst

29. Bridge of Birds, Hughart

30. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

31. The Killing Moon/The Shadowed Sun, Jemisin

32. Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones (Hey, my list, my favorite DWJ)

33. The Phantom Tollbooth, Juster

34. Under Heaven, Kay

35. The Steerswoman series, Kirstein

36. The Privilege of the Sword, Kushner

37. Infinity Hold, Longyear

38. The Ancillary Justice trilogy, Leckie

39. The Narnia chronicles, Lewis

40. Daughter of the Forest, Marillier

41. Night at the Vulcan, Marsh

42. The Riddlemaster trilogy, McKillip

43. The Book of Atrix Wolfe, McKillip

44. The Changeling Sea, McKillip

45. Sunshine, McKinley

46. The City and the City, Mieville

47. The Integral Trees, Nivan

48. The Aubrey/Maturin series, O’Brien

49. The Anubis Gates, Powers

50. The Vimes series in the Diskword universe, Pratchett

51. The King Must Die, Renault

52. 2312, Robinson

53. The Harry Potter series, Rowling

54. Bone Gap, Ruby

55. Black Beauty, Sewell (Did I mention I read nothing but animal stories as a child?)

56. Gaudy Night, Seyers

57. The Shape-Changer’s Wife, Shinn

58. The Inda series, Smith (Sherwood)

59. Norstralia, Smith (Cordwainer)

60. Seveneves, Stevenson

61. The Rubber Band, Stout (I picked a Nero Wolfe mystery pretty much at random)

62. The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

63. The Gaia trilogy, Varley

64. A Fire Upon the Deep, Vinge

65. Code Name Verity, Wein

66. The Sunbird, Wein

67. The Martian, Weir

68. The Wheel of the Infinite, Wells

69. The Death of the Necromancer, Wells

70. The Raksura series, Wells

71. Who Stole Sassy Manoon, Westlake

72. Jill the Reckless, Wodehouse

73. The Book of the Long Sun, Wolfe

74. Talking to Dragons, Wrede

75. ________________________ Fill in this gap, if you like! What *one* book have I left out that you personally think ought to go in this space? It doesn’t have to be SFF, but it should be a novel.

* “superior” defined here, obviously, as matching my personal taste; ie, there are no horrible dystopian novels no matter how literarily important, and no grimdark novels. You know, there are a lot of similarities between a dystopian novel like 1984 and a modern grimdark novel, aren’t there? I never thought about that before. That means I have hated grimdark all my life.

** Your mileage may possibly vary.

*** I hated leaving off some series that REALLY started off well, but that I haven’t finished. Here are a handful of the series I might include in such a list next year or in a few years:

The Raven Boys series, Stiefvater

The Thousand Names series, Wexler

The Devil’s West series, Gilman

And of course there are an appalling number of authors that I just haven’t read much by, amazing as it may seem, including Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson and Catherine Valente, for example.

And naturally a bunch more great books occurred to me as soon as I hit 74 titles – like Jaran by Elliot and Range of Ghosts by Bear and The Hunger Games by Collins, and, and The Scorpio Races, the Paksenarrion trilogy, Little, Big by Crowley. . . there’s no end.

I should also note that too many lists of great SFF novels or whatever seem to mistake enormous popularity for greatness. A major reason some really popular series aren’t on this list is, I don’t think they measure up. This includes the Game of Thrones, not because it is grimdark (I don’t think it is, quite) (well, it might be, I guess), but because Martin seems to me to have lost control of the series, primarily by allowing the number of protagonists to increase out of all reason. Also, I’ve quit reading the books, so they’re not likely to appear on *my* list anyway.

The 75 Best Books of the Past 75 Years

All these lists are fairly ridiculous, obviously. And yet oddly interesting to scan through. This one is even more ridiculous than most, since it’s the best 75 books in English rather than the best 75 SFF novels (or anything else that would help narrow the category down a bit more tightly). And yet, as I say, interesting to scan through.

One little kid’s book: Where the Wild Things Are.

One MG title: Charlotte’s Web. Well, and the first some-odd titles in the Harry Potter series were MG, pretty much. And there may be a couple others I just didn’t recognize as MG because I haven’t read them.

A couple poetry collections, a handful of short story collections, a couple nonfiction titles, some narrative nonfiction, and of course a lot of novels. So: waaaay too broad, though I expect the compilers had fun arguing about what to include and now people are no doubt arguing about what they should have included, which is the whole point of lists like this, after all.

Total I’d read: Fourteen.

Of those, the ones I would enjoy re-reading: Maybe two: Charlotte’s Web and Steven King’s On Writing

The ones I totally hated: Only one. That’s not bad for a list of this kind. (The Invisible Man by Ellison, if you’re curious.)

Total I have on my TBR pile: One. The Things They Carried. I keep meaning to read that.

Total number of SFF titles included: A good handful, including Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and Fahrenheit 451.

Resemblance to the list I’d put together if it were me: Virtually none, obviously. I’m sure that’s true for practically everyone. For me the crowning failure of this list: The Lord of the Rings isn’t on it. I can’t imagine leaving that off.

Religious diversity in SF and fantasy

Via File 770, a post by Krysta at Pages Unbound: WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY?

Over the years, it seems the book blogosphere has committed itself more explicitly to diversity in books, advocating for more protagonists of color, more LGBTQ representation, and less sexism in media. However, religious diversity is regularly glossed over in discussions of representations or is regularly dismissed by those who find a character of faith to be “too preachy” or don’t want religion “shoved down their throats.” This attitude does a disservice to the many people of faith throughout the world who would also like to see themselves reflected in characters in books. It assumes that the presence of an individual of faith is, by nature, overbearing, unwelcome, and oppressive–that is, apparently an individual is allowed to have a faith as long as no one else has the misfortune of knowing about it.

Yeah, no kidding. Sometimes it astounds even me, and I think I pay more attention to this than some.

Religious diversity does not have to look “preachy.” Religious diversity just means telling more stories about people living out their faiths, the same way most of the people around us are living out their faiths every day. Having a character struggle with saying no because she is waiting for marriage, or being made fun of for wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday, or trying to struggle through school and work or even sports while fasting, does not mean an author is promoting a particular religion or trying to convert anyone. It means an author is representing the life of an individual. The struggles of a character with questions of morality, with being bullied, with trying to find their way in life, does not become less valid because that character thinks of morality in terms of a deity.

I’m not actually a particularly devout person, but the way anything even remotely reminiscent of Christianity is either a) entirely absent or b) entirely negative in most SFF drives me mad. Especially the latter, which is so disrespectful of the experiences and identities of so many people, and frankly all too often showcases the abysmal ignorance of the author when it comes to religious topics.

The whole post, which is more focused on MG and YA than SFF particularly, is worth reading, including the comments.

A couple more titles that could be added here:

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb

The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zack by Brian Kircher

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson — someday soon I MUST re-read that and finish the trilogy.

The Narnia Chronicles, obviously

and, I will add:

Black Dog and the related novels and stories.