The Telegraph‘s Peter Robins has, to my great astonishment, followed up on my suggestion of asking book critics what they read for fun. Robins has queried his fellow staffers, even registering the response time and emotional reactions of his colleagues. This certainly sets a very important precedent, and I do hope that other newspapers follow Robins’s example. In the meantime, it seems a fine time to ask what you, dear readers, have read for fun these days. (For my own part, I have been wildly entertained by Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and have enjoyed revisiting a number of stories for a book I’m currently reviewing.)
This is heartening news. As for myself, I’m working on the first “Dangerous Visions” anthology. It feels almost a mythic, important object from SF’s past, but it’s actually pretty enjoyable.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler is what I always return to for fun – if there has been a decent delay since the last reading. Brilliant book.
The Worst of perth
BC Silvia:
Dangerous Visions 1 and 2! I’ve owned, and then lost, copies of those books *three times* since DV2 was originally published (I got my first copy in the mail as a teen member of a Sci Fi book club). Wonderful stuff; I wonder how different an experience it is to read those stories, for the first time, as someone older than 13? (laugh)
Fun? Dare ya to ask David Ulin. Betcha he can’t even spell fun.
As someone who writes for Ulin from time to time, I can assure you that he knows fun. But that’s not a bad idea!