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I've been reading as long as I can remember. My parents tell me I read signs to them as they carried me over their shoulders. My parents read to me as a child, as well. They began reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit to my sister and I in first grade. Halfway through, my sister Emily, who is almost two years older, began to read ahead. I didn't enjoy being read to alone, especially with Emily exclaiming, "Oh, I like this part!" I began to catch up on my own. Eventually, my parents gave up. My sister continued her reading with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, with me in her footsteps. I gradually began reading more and more, until you could no longer see me on the school bus; I was hunched over my book trying to read in the early-morning light despite the screams of the other children. I finished Tolkien's massive trilogy perhaps midway through second grade. I had been bitten by fantasy. For the remainder of second grade, I read Angus Wells' The Kingdoms Trilogy, whose gruesome descriptions I still rather vividly recall. Through elementary and middle school, I delved deeper and deeper into the realms of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In middle school and high school, I dabbled more in other types of fiction. I continue to enjoy sci-fi and fantasy, but I also read all sorts of classic novels and some nonfiction. Below are books that I have read, and perhaps (eventually) a short description or recommendation.
| The Muller-Fokker Effect | John Sladek | ||
| The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | ||
| The Godwars Trilogy | Angus Wells | ||
| The Kingdoms Trilogy | Angus Wells | ||
| The Stars My Destination | Alfred Bester | ||
| The Demolished Man | Alfred Bester | ||
| Mona Lisa Overdrive | William Gibson | ||
| Neuromancer | William Gibson | ||
| The Difference Engine | William Gibson and Bruce Sterling | ||
| All Tomorrow's Parties | William Gibson | ||
| Pattern Recognition | William Gibson | ||
| Idoru | William Gibson | ||
| Count Zero | William Gibson | ||
| Burning Chrome | William Gibson | ||
| American Gods | Neil Gaiman | ||
| Neverwhere | Neil Gaiman | ||
| Goedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid | Douglas R. Hofstadter | ||
| Islands in the Net | Bruce Sterling | ||
| Globalhead | Bruce Sterling | ||
| Holy Fire | Bruce Sterling | ||
| The Space Trilogy | C.S. Lewis | ||
| The Chronicles of Narnia | C.S. Lewis | ||
| The Carson of Venus Series | Edgar Rice Burroughs | ||
| I Sing the Body Electric! | Ray Bradbury | ||
| Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | ||
| A Graveyard for Lunatics | Ray Bradbury | ||
| The October Country | Ray Bradbury | ||
| The Illustrated Man | Ray Bradbury | ||
| The Martian Chronicles | Ray Bradbury | ||
| Quicker than the Eye | Ray Bradbury | ||
| Catch 22 | Joseph Heller | ||
| The German Lesson | Sigfried Lenz | ||
| The Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka | ||
| Ghost in the Machine | Les Martin | ||
| The Magic Kingdom of Landover | Terry Brooks | ||
| A Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | ||
| Dune | Frank Herbert | ||
| Night's Dawn Trilogy | Peter F. Hamilton | ||
| His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman | ||
| Vampire Chronicles | Anne Rice | ||
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | ||
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| I Will Fear No Evil | Robert A. Heinlein | ||
| The Puppet Masters | Robert A. Heinlein | ||
| The Names of the Beast | Robert A. Heinlein | ||
| The Odyssey Books | Arthur C. Clarke | ||
| The Ender Series | Orson Scott Card | ||
| The Alvin Maker Tales | Orson Scott Card | ||
| Lost Boys | Orson Scott Card | ||
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston | ||
| The Lymond Chronicles | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| White Fang | Jack London | ||
| The Trial | Franz Kafka | ||
| The Convent School | Barbara Frischmuth | ||
| Cat and Mouse | Gunter Grass | ||
| Siddhartha | Hermann Hesse | ||
| The Trial | Franz Kafka | ||
| The Odyssey | Homer | ||
| The Iliad | Homer | ||
| The Elegant Universe | Brian Greene | ||
| Otherland Series | Tad Williams | ||
| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | ||
| Chimera | John Barth | ||
| Fury | Salman Rushdie | ||
| Beowulf | trans. Seamus Heaney | ||
| Prodigal Summer | Barbara Kingsolver | ||
| Time and Again | Jack Finney | ||
| The Tales of Xanth | Piers Anthony | ||
| Hassan | Piers Anthony | ||
| The Belgariad | David Eddings | ||
| The Mallorian | David Eddings | ||
| Red Dragon | Richard Harris | ||
| The Red Tent | Anita Diamant | ||
| The German Lesson | Siegfried Lenz | ||
| The Reader | Bernhard Schlink | ||
| Homo Faber | Max Frisch | ||
| The Tripods Trilogy | John Christopher | ||
| Alice in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | ||
| Through the Looking-glass | Lewis Carroll | ||
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert Pirsig | ||
| Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut | ||
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | Arthur C. Clarke | ||
| Sophie's World | Jostein Gaarder | ||
| Foundation Series | Isaac Asimov | ||
| The Stars are also Fire | Poul Anderson | ||
| Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman | Richard Feynman | ||
| The City and the Stars | Arthur C. Clarke | ||
| Fermat's Enigma | Simon Singh | ||
| Snow Crash | Neal Stephenson | ||
| The Lord of the Rings Trilogy | J.R.R. Tolkien | 1992-05-01 | |
| Darksword Trilogy | Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman | 1993-01-01 | |
| The Lords of the Sky | Angus Wells | 1994-01-01 | |
| The Lost World | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | 1996-01-01 | |
| Mage Wars Series | Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon | 1996-01-01 | |
| White Fang | Jack London | 1996-09-01 | |
| The Earthsea Series | Ursula K. LeGuin | 1997-07-01 | |
| Homebody | Orson Scott Card | 2000-01-01 | |
| Souls in the Great Machine | Sean McMullen | 2000-03-01 | |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | 2000-07-01 | |
| The Fionavar Tapestry | Guy Gavriel Kay | 2003-01-01 | |
| Treason | Orson Scott Card | 2004-01-01 | |
| The Dubliners | James Joyce | 2004-07-10 | |
| Linked - The New Science of Networks | Albert-Laszlo Barabasi | 2004-07-31 | |
| The World According to Garp | John Irving | 2005-07-01 | |
| The Left Hand of Darkness | Ursula K. LeGuin | 2005-08-01 | |
| Of Love and Other Demons | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | 2005-10-01 | |
| Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Edward Albee | 2005-11-01 | |
| Islands in the Stream | Ernest Hemingway | 2005-12-15 | |
| The Man in the High Castle | Philip K. Dick | 2005-12-31 | Excellent |
| The Alchemist | Paul Coelho | 2006-03-10 | |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 2006-03-15 | |
| Distress | Greg Egan | 2006-07-10 | |
| A Scanner Darkly | Philip K. Dick | 2006-07-15 | |
| Archangel | Sharon Shinn | 2006-08-10 | |
| Jovah's Angel | Sharon Shinn | 2006-08-24 | |
| On Intelligence | Jeff Hawkins | 2006-09-01 | |
| Permutation City | Greg Egan | 2006-09-05 | |
| The Return of Jeeves | P.G. Wodehouse | 2006-11-29 | |
| Jeeves and the Tie That Binds | P.G. Wodehouse | 2006-12-04 | |
| Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson | George Alec Effinger | 2006-12-06 | |
| Lords and Ladies | Terry Pratchett | 2006-12-10 | |
| Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness | Daniel C. Dennett | 2007-03-17 | |
| The Alleluia Files | Sharon Shinn | 2007-03-20 | |
| blink | Malcolm Gladwell | 2007-03-23 | |
| Cryptonomicon | Neal Stephenson | 2007-05-20 | |
| The Namesake | Jhumpa Lahiri | 2007-05-29 | |
| The Sirens of Titan | Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. | 2007-06-10 | |
| Cat's Cradle | Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. | 2007-06-25 | |
| The Mind's I | Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett | 2007-06-26 | |
| Black Boy | Richard Wright | 2007-06-30 | |
| I Capture the Castle | Dodie Smith | 2007-08-05 | |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | 2007-08-12 | |
| Tales from Earthsea | Ursula K. Le Guin | 2007-08-15 | |
| The Other Wind | Ursula K. Le Guin | 2007-08-18 | |
| Lord of Light | Roger Zelazny | 2007-08-27 | |
| A Game of Thrones | George R. R. Martin | 2007-11-18 | |
| Ringworld | Larry Niven | 2007-11-25 | |
| A Clash of Kings | George R. R. Martin | 2007-12-20 | |
| This Immortal | Roger Zelazny | 2007-12-29 | |
| A Storm of Swords | George R. R. Martin | 2008-02-01 | |
| A Feast for Crows | George R. R. Martin | 2008-02-26 | |
| The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency | Alexander McCall Smith | 2008-03-02 | |
| Frost and Fire | Roger Zelazny | 2008-05-20 | |
| Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 2008-06-03 | |
| The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath | 2008-06-05 | |
| The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 2008-06-09 | |
| Out of the Everywhere | James Tiptree, Jr. | 2009-08-10 | |
| Ethan of Athos | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2009-08-29 | all-male planet -- interesting! |
| The Warrior's Apprentice | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2009-09-15 | |
| The Vor Game | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2009-09-19 | |
| Shards of Honor | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2009-09-25 | |
| Whose Body? | Dorothy Sayers | 2009-10-01 | Delightfully intertextual. Contains good example of cued recall. |
| The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | 2009-10-04 | |
| Strong Poison | Dorothy Sayers | 2009-10-11 |