1) Little, Big, by John Crowley

I know this is a heretical view, given that this is such a popular and well-loved book, but I found it terrifically tough going. Some good paragraphs, some nice hints at what is going on behind the scenes, but I had to force myself to finish it. Maybe I am just too old to appreciate it properly.

18) Jhereg, by Steven Brust

Another of my sf reading resolutions for this year. This is the first in a long series of novels featuring assassin Vlad Taltos, in a well-imagined high fantasy setting. The style owes a great deal to Roger Zelazny, but I felt was not quite as even. Complex plot which more or less made sense; I quite enjoyed it, but not really enough to seek out more in this series.

3) Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Well, I finally managed it: the second half of Don Quixote, having read the first part three years ago. It hangs together rather better than the first part - much less episodic, one senses that unlike his characters the author knew which way things were going. There is some nasty business with a Duke and Duchess who set our heroes up for a series of practical jokes; but Sancho Panza acquits himself very well from it all. In the end, Quixote's neighbours get him to just give it a rest, and the world is obviously a poorer place as a result. (Also he then dies, to reinforce the point.)

One recurrent theme of Volume II is that Quixote and Panza keep on bumping into people who know them not only from Volume I (published ten years before) but also from the seventeenth-century equivalent of fan fiction; in an early chapter, Panza is prevailed upon to explain a couple of continuity glitches from the previous volume, and there's a repeated complaint that the fanfic writers have got the leading characters completely wrong. (Tat Wood makes an obvious parallel in About Time Volume 6, which I have also been reading this weekend.)

Anyway, that's another off my list of classic literature and 2008 reading resolutions. It didn't blow me away, to be honest, in the same way that Proust has been doing; but it is one of those books everyone should try and get through.

Well, after my disappointment with Again, Dangerous Visions, I'm glad that at least one classic sf anthology I've read this year has lived up to its reputation. I'm not a wild-eyed enthusiast for cyberpunk (and William Gibson's story here, "The Gernsback Continuum", which rather lacks an ending, reminded me why not) but I'm always ready to be convinced by a good story, and there are loads of them in here. I think the only one I'd read before was Sterling and Gibson's "Red Star, Winter Orbit" which is actually rather moving and nostalgic, qualities one doesn't really associate with cyberpunk (though perhaps it qualifies because of the note of libertarian triumphalism on which it ends). I was particularly gripped by James Patrick Kelly's "Solstice", which mixes Stonehenge with sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and father-daughter cloning. But apart from my doubts about the first story, there isn't a dud in the book.

3) I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

A brilliant short novel: what would things be like if the vampires actually won? The horror of the situation, of the loneliness of the last remaining human, his desperation, his bitter disappointments, superbly well portrayed. I saw someone on my f-list recommend this a couple of weeks ago; I heartily endorse that recommendation.

2) Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys

One of the classic works of sf I resolved to read at the start of the year. It would actually be good material for a study of gender politics in the late 1950s (published in 1960, when the author was 29). The sfnal part of the story - our heroes' attempts to find a way through a mysterious alien artifact on the Moon, I guess foreshadowing both Clarke/Kubrick's 2001 and the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic - plays second fiddle to the sexual tension among the alpha males of the research group, with the James Bond figure, the Scientist and the Manager; and the two woman characters are pretty obviously the Virgin and the Whore. At the same time as the men are fighting over the sexual pecking order, they have to confront the fact that the lunar exploration project is essentially a suicide mission many times over; sex and death are pretty closely linked here. A rather fascinating book, though not really an enjoyable one.

9) The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith

I can't quite believe it, but I don't think I had ever read anything by Cordwainer Smith before, though I knew of his reputation. I hadn't realised that his writing career was so short - first published in 1950, died aged 54 in 1967 - and sparse. This volume pulls together a dozen of his short stories, all loosely connected through his future history based on the controlling Instrumentality and featuring the planet Norstrilia. I found the style on the whole almost incomprehensible in places and yet weirdly compelling; tales told with utterly unselfconscious conviction, of beings whose consciousness teeters on the edge of human understanding. I may try and find a reader's guide somewhere to help me understand what was going on, and then go back to it. Fascinating stuff.

9) Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice

This book really is the most utter tosh. I can see how it fits in the literary genealogy linking Bram Stoker and Buffy, but Stoker is less pretentious and Buffy is much funnier.

4) Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

This is the famous follow-up volume to the even more famous Dangerous Visions, which I read almost exactly three years ago; an anthology of 41 stories, mainly by the leading lights of sf as it was in 1972, with vast amounts of prefatory material by editor Harlan Ellison and an afterword from each author, and nice art from Ed Emshwiller introducing each story.

But what is striking is how unmemorable and self-indulgent most of the stories are (also true of Ellison's long-winded prefaces). The three best are definitely Ursula Le Guin's "The Word for World is Forest", Joanna Russ's "When it Changed", and James Tiptree Jr's "The Milk of Paradise"; interestingly all three have the same basic plot, of an unspoilt planet being wrecked by us humans. Many of the others are just silly, Kurt Vonnegut being particularly proud of Using Rude Words To Be Grown-Up. In fact, the only other one I enjoyed was James Blish's erotic pastiche "Getting Along", which parodies numerous High Gothic writers - I particularly liked his riff on The Moon Pool.

But four memorable stories out of 41 is a very poor strike rate. I couldn't in all conscience recommend anyone to spend money on this collection, and I am wondering, heretically, if it is really such a shame that the third volume of the series never appeared.

Classic literature: Last year I resolved either to read In Search of Lost Time, or else finish Don Quixote and read Catcher in the Rye and The Tin Drum. I managed the latter two, got no further with Cervantes and am just over halfway through Proust. It should not therefore be impossible to finish both Proust and Cervantes this year, and then I think I should reread some of the classics - Middlemarch in particular would probably reward another look.

SF: Last year I resolved to read three out of A Princess of Mars, Tau Zero, Grey Lensman, Again, Dangerous Visions, The Female Man, Last and First Men, Deathbird, and Dhalgren - in fact I managed all but Grey Lensman (which I won't read; I have given up on Smith) and Again, Dangerous Visions, which I should be able to get through if I have some long journeys during the year (which is not unlikely). I need a new list of classic SF, and the SFBC has supplied one; gaps in my knowledge from that list are Children of the Atom by Wilmar Shiras, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, Little, Big by John Crowley, The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock and The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I should be able to read at least four of those nine in 2008.

Comics: I got a lot of good recommendations in this post, and will try to work through another five or so of them.

Backlogged Books: This time last year I had 143 books on my unread list, and hoped to get through a third of them. In fact I managed 75, more than half. Of course, there has been a steady process of replacement, and my unread list is almost at the same level again, with ( 138 books, of which I hope I will read at least a third )