Wednesday 27 July 2011

Gollancz '50th Anniversary Top 10'

I was mooching around Twitter the other night and saw that Gollancz have finally tallied up all the votes for their ‘50th Anniversary Top 10’ collection. The results are over Here, go and take a look :o)

Having looked at the list, a couple of things struck me...

1)      Yellow? Really?? I know that it’s retro but it also makes my eyes hurt. Quite a lot actually. Just because Gollancz had a job lot of yellow (back in the day) that they needed to use up on book covers shouldn’t mean that we get subjected to it all over again. What do you think of these covers?

2)      I suspect this won’t stop me picking up a number of these titles anyway, there’s a number there that I haven’t read and it is my birthday in September...

3)      Seven of these titles are on the ‘SF Masterworks’ list already while the other three, erm... aren’t. We’re talking ‘Eric’, ‘The Name of the Wind’ and ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’. In thirty or forty years time, which one(s) do you think will be regarded as ‘Masterworks’? I think ‘Lies’ could well be...

4) I still haven't read 'The Book of the New Sun', I am ashamed of myself...

Comments?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Book of the New Sun is my all time favorite work of fiction, period, with I Am Legend a close second. I actually love the selections. I do think The Name of the Wind will be considered a Masterwork in twenty years. It's the story of how legends come to be. Simple, fun, and beautiful. It brought me back into fantasy.

Salt-Man Z said...

I really wish they would just bite the bullet and put out The Book of the New Sun in a single omnibus edition. I have to wonder how many people get to the end of Shadow and Claw and say, "I don't get it," and give up. I've got the old SFBC book club edition omnibus, and I can't imagine reading it in any other form.

Antonakis said...

The book of the new sun is simply wonderful. One of the most impressive and unique pieces of fiction I have ever read. Read it without any expectations though because while beautiful it's still very weird.