Journal

Tuesday, December 18, 2001
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=best2001tractorbeam is Borders Best of the Year list for SF and Fantasy. (We're in there at #2 after Tales of Earthsea.) For those not keeping track of these things, American Gods came in in first place on Barnes and Noble's list and second on Amazon.com's list (to Perdido Street Station). And in each case, I'm in very good company.

If you've read American Gods and are wondering what 2001 fiction to read next, I commend to you Jonathan Carroll's profoundly odd and glorious The Wooden Sea, Ursula Le Guin's The Other Wind (which repairs all the things that her novel Tehanu did to the Earthsea sequence), China Mieville's peakian extravaganza Perdido Street Station, Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time (or The Truth, and especially The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents).

How do I feel about this? A sort of combination of pleased and awkward, I think. Slightly embarrassed, but happy. I suspect that this is a peculiarly English thing to feel.