UPDATE: It’s now 2025. I started this blog in 2012, and from my perspective NOW, the list I posted THEN seems impossibly naive. I’d still put some of these books on my Top Ten list, but here it is, over a decade later, and I’ve read so many more novels of speculative fiction, and thought about them so much more intensely, that I hardly feel like the same person. But then, isn’t that always the way? Never step in the same river twice, etc. At the least, I feel like I’ve given myself a real education. You can, too. It’s easy. No classes or degrees necessary. I’ve taught those, I’ve taken those, I have those.

But here’s the key: Just start reading, and don’t stop.

 Here’s what I said in my first post, back in 2012:

I won’t put up a Top Ten list, because there are too many good ones to mention. But I’ll just list some I like, in no particular order. What about you?

• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings series and The Hobbit–the granddaddy of them all. (Or is he???)
• C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (and several of the others in the Narnia series, but not all)
• Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana (and a few of his others, although not all)
• China Mieville, Perdido Street Station (told ya this was an electic list!)
• George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (the first two books, anyway)
• Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
• T. H. White, The Once and Future King
• Lian Hearn, Across the Nightingale Floor (and several of the others in the Tales of the Otori series, but not all)