CAVEAT #1: I'm not putting J.R.R. Tolkien's works on this list. I'll pause while people recover from passing out/having aneurysms/looking for weapons, etc. The reason is...they kinda go without saying, right? Also, they're my gateway drug books. I've probably mentioned somewhere in the deepest, darkest earliest of my several years of blog posts that I stole borrowed a copy of The Hobbit off my Dad's nightstand (because he was taking too long to finish it) when I was 8 years old...and I never looked back. It's not an exaggeration to say that book and The Lord of the Rings changed my life. And yes, I still know how to write in Elvish. Peter Jackson did a pretty darned good job with the film adaptations (although I still don't care for the casting choices for Arwen and, to a lesser extent, Galadriel). I'm looking forward to Amazon's new "Rings of Power" series and hoping they don't screw up The Silmarillion too badly.
CAVEAT #2: Same goes for C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Again, the film adaptations don't do the books any favors, but they are a cut above most others. Strangely, I picked up The Silver Chair as my first intro to the series and didn't care for it (still maintain that's the weakest book). In fact, I almost didn't read the rest of the books, but thank goodness, I did. It wasn't until I went back and read them in order that I really fell in love. Also, Reepicheep rules!
CAVEAT #3: This list is for series. No standalone books - maybe I'll make a separate list for those.
CAVEAT #4: I'm going to loosely organize the list in chronological order based on the period of my life where I discovered the books - not necessarily anything to do with when they were published although there will likely be SOME similarity there.
CAVEAT #5: If you're looking for hard sci-fi recommendations, this is probably not the list for you. While I've read some, they tend to not be my favorite books or have much impact on me. 100 pages of technical detail of how circuit A fits into capacitor B because dilithium crystals and half-integer spin equals space travel is more likely to make me fall asleep or throw the book across the room in frustration. I prefer my technology like my cars and my computers - I know enough to turn them on and get them to run, but I couldn't build one from scratch or perform anything other than VERY basic diagnostics (yep - that tire appears to be flat). Forget repairs - that's what AAA and Geek Squad are for. Although, a story about a tow-rocket operator in space might be kind of interesting...something along the lines of "Highway Through Hell", but in space with aliens and stuff.
CAVEAT #6: This list is already spawning a couple of corollary lists - one for standalone books that I loved, but that weren't series and one for books that I either flat out hated or at least was underwhelmed by (that everyone else seems to be raving about).
Okay, next entry will start the actual list. I felt like I had to get a lot of this set up off my mind first to clear the decks and get the old memory banks warmed up (getting harder all the time - I am definitely remembering a couple of stories that have no title or author attached to them or even enough detail for me to search for them...which is kinda sad).
KJ
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