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Traveller

Traveller

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Swann's Way
Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis
Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker
Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time
Roger Shattuck
The Mind At Night: The New Science Of How And Why We Dream
Andrea Rock
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann, John E. Woods
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics)
Umberto Eco
Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima
Naoki Inose, Hiroaki Sato
The Inquisition of Climate Science
James L Powell
State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
The Worldwatch Institute
Media Studies: Texts, Institutions and Audiences
Lisa Taylor;Andrew Willis
Reblogged from Traveller:
501 Must Read Books - Emma Beare

While I often agreed with the authors chosen, I did not always agree with the specific books of these chosen as their "best" works.

I also personally would have re-arranged the genre sections to have a proper non-fiction section.

..and how come we are doing SF and thrillers, but no horror or fantasy? ...for heaven's sake - an iconic author such as Tolkien is included under children's fiction!?  Surely the "children's" section could have rather been named: "fantasy" which could have included children's fiction.
Non-fantasy children's novels could have been placed in a YA section.

Alternatively, could SF/Fantasy not have been placed together, since there is often a lot of crossover between these 2 genres.

I did not like the "thriller" section either, which seemed rather skewed in favor of early twentieth century detective novels. (...and in spite of that, Miss Marple doesn't even feature, heh.)

Surely, in any case, one must view the books as 'must-read' only if you are interested in the specific genre, so I feel more genres should have been represented here.

On the plus side, for those having nothing else to do, and nothing left to read, every novel gets an informative, succinct description, with some brief information on it's author included, making this a useful and interesting, if lightweight reference/coffee table addition to one's library.

The book can be read on its own mainly for entertainment and to fill out any gaps in personal literary knowledge, or can be used as a quick reference book, but it is lacking regarding the satisfaction of anything more serious than idle curiosity, since it most often doesn't even give information on other equally good or famous books a prolific author might have written.