open

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

You are logged in as a guest. ( logon | register )
Posting a reply to: RE: Genre Non-Fiction

Back
General Discussion -> Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge
Guest name
Subject
Message

Emoticons
HTML: Yes
Anonymous: No
MBBS Code: Yes


Disable HTML
Enable emoticons



You are replying to:
Engelbrecht
Posted 2017-01-02 6:10 PM (#14898 - in reply to #14850)
Subject: RE: Genre Non-Fiction
Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 441
100
Administrator - 2017-01-01 9:53 AM

Engelbrecht, we should discuss creating a new genre nonfiction list for the site to complement your reading challenge and make it easier for folks to see what we have in the database.  A new list will also generate a bunch of requests for new non-fic books to be added too.

That's a great idea!

We do have partial functionality towards this in that people can view books published by year, filtered by Non-Fiction (here 's 2016).  I can't remember if adding a multi-year selection criterion for this feature is in the works, but that would be a helpful addition.

A full-fledged list would be even better though!

Figuring out what to include would be the hard/fun part...

I suppose that for starters, the Pringle/Moorcock/Broderick & Di Filippo list books would be a must.  After that, other types of non-fiction could be represented as well:

  • Lists - The above, plus possibly add Jones & Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books as well as Andrews & Rennison's 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels & 100 Must-Read Fantasy Novels?
  • History, Criticism & Critical Analysis - Aldiss' Trillion Year Spree is a classic standard.  Lots & lots to choose from here - it might be hard to know where to stop
  • Essay Collections - I'm not familiar with any that seem strikingly compelling, or "canon".  I do like Orwell's essays, and Swanwick's Postmodern Archipelago deserves to be canon, but it's somewhat obscure.
  • Review Collections - perhaps Budrys' Benchmarks series - dated, but important.  I guess that Walton's What Makes This Book So Great fits in here.  Clute's review collections SHOULD be represented, but to me, they're a bit too inaccessible to include.  There are various others that might be included.
  • Biographies/Autobiographies - Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.:  The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon for sure.  Again, lots of possibilities - Tolkien books alone will fill several bookshelves!
  • Interviews - Possibly Platt's Dream Makers books.
  • Correspondence - Another category where I'm not familiar with anything canonical.
  • Art - Should we include this?  If so, perhaps something like Hammond & Scull's J. R. R. Tolkien:  Artist and Illustrator.
  • Topics - Feminist, LGBTQ, Mythology, Children's Lit, etc. - Perhaps Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing & Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces for starters. Have a book on genre movies?


I've read around 60 non-fiction genre books, but there are hundreds & hundreds of others I've not read or am not familiar with, so I know I still have huge gaps to fill - hopefully others can chime in with some worthy additions.
 


(Delete all cookies set by this site)