James Nicoll's 100 SF/F Books

On December 27th, Tor.com published an article by James Nicoll entitled 100 SF/F Books You Should Consider Reading in the New Year. Since then, various people I know have been posting the list annotated with the books they've read and liked. That seemed fun, so I thought I'd join in.

I've read 28 out of the 99 books (and shorter fiction) listed. (One entry was for a musical work; I appreciate James's inclusiveness, but I appreciate my orderly classification system more, and it's not a book.) I'm a bit surprised that's not higher, since James is one of my primary sources of book reviews. Lots of ones I've not read are in various to-read piles, though.

Among those that I have read, average rating is 7.43, which shows why I pay attention to James's reviews. Interestingly, though, that's slightly below the average rating for the BookRiot SF/F by Female Authors list, at 7.48. I thought perhaps the BookRiot list had more "obvious" good books and James was trying to be more obscure, but looking it over, that doesn't seem to be the case. The BookRiot list just has marginally more books I liked, at least of the ones I've read so far (sometimes via choosing a different book by the same author).

Anyway, here's my version of the list for anyone who's interested. I recommend reading the original article for James's short descriptions, covers, and purchase links.