My Learning and My Top Ten Books

I wasn't going to blog today, but I decided that I might as well. Neil Gaiman always is interesting to me to read as he posts, so maybe, some day, I’ll be interesting to someone. I am still writing my story and corresponding with L.E. Modesett Jr. for help in processing stuff. I am still working on some of the stuff I’ve been assigned at work and studying up on virtualization and grid computing. It’s interesting and I think that it might be influencing my story. In fact I know it is, but so is everything else I read.

I commute about forty miles each direction to and from work, for now. So I made sure to stock up on audio books to listen to going to and from work. I am using KU’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction’s Basic Science Fiction Library as kind of a list to give me suggestions as to what to read. They are at http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/ and well worth the visit. Dr. Gunn and Chris McKitterick are two wonderful human beings. I started my listening with Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker Trilogy. I personally enjoyed the rather darker tone of Mostly Harmless unlike Adams himself.

The sad thing here is, though, that the Salt Lake Public library has no other audio books between Adams and Haggard and then nothing again until Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers (the book never the movie), and Stranger in a Strange Land rank as three of my top ten novels of all time (I think I’ll list them as part of this post). I am currently listening to The Rolling Stones and seeing where Roddenberry got a lot of his ideas.

I am also physically reading other things: Neuromancer by William Gibson and Ansen Dibell’s Plot. I am trying to refine my story telling tools. But I realize that my writing will still only improve if I actually do it. So I am hoping to prove Bradbury right, from Zen and the Art of Writing, when he said through quantity (of words and sentences written) quality will, with all hope, come.

Mason’s Top Ten Books (In No Particular Order):

1. Herbert, Frank Dune

2. Card, Orson Scott Ender’s Game

3. Bester, Alfred The Demolished Man

4. Gaiman, Neil American Gods

5. Gaiman, Neil Anansi Boys

6. Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land

7. Heinlein, Robert A. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

8. Heinlein, Robert A. Starship Troopers

9. Asimov, Isaac The Foundation Trilogy (I know it’s three books but I have them in one volume)

10. Bester, Alfred and Zelazny, Roger Psychoshop

I would also rank Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, the entire thing, up there too, but that’s ten books all on their own and, as with my cheat with the Foundation Trilogy I would include them as one.