Tag, I'm It

So Angelica kindly tagged me with this book virus that's been going around - name 5 books that you should read but haven't. Here goes...

1) Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. I want to read it, I really do. But I just can't seem to work up the energy. Maybe I was permanently turned off by Apocalypse Now.

2) Anything by Charles Dickens. Oddly, my favourite movie as a kid (and still probably my favourite Christmas movie) is Mickey's Christmas Carol the Disney version of Dickens' classic. Yet somehow, I've never read the real thing, or anything by Dickens for that matter.

3) Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Actually, what I'd really like is OoS alongside a modern reviewer, pointing out what Darwin was right about and what he was wrong about. Speaking of...

4) This Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. From everything I've heard, it's an excellent book tearing apart old racist tropes about so-called "racial" theories - it came out after the awful, racist book The Bell Curve, and Gould was absolutely merciless in his criticism of it. So I've heard, anyway. I'd love to actually read the thing. Also, it's the only 20th-century book on my list.

5) Something by Lenin. I'd really like to understand how Lenin came to power, and honestly, early Revolutionary Russian history is kind of a black hole for me. So I should really learn more, including reading some of the greats.

While I'm on this meme, Kevin Drum used a similar tag to take a swipe at the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. This was enough to have me sputtering with rage - the Mars Trilogy is really unparalelled in recent Science Fiction. However, it really isn't for everyone - it's very heavy on the actual science, and you definitely get the impression that Robinson did about five times more research for his books then he ever got to use - because he puts so much in to the books as it is. However, it is also probably the most Utopian trilogy I've ever read, in that Robinson is honestly and seriously writing about the kind of society humans would need to live in relative peace. Robinson's not an idiot - people still fight, die, weep, etc. But he does propose a world that I'd love to go to - a nice change from a lot of early-90s SF, which (for those who remember) was almost entirely cyberpunk. If you're a left-wing Science Fiction reader and you haven't read the Mars Trilogy, go find a copy of Red Mars (the first) and start now.

So, I'm going to go and tag Adam, Vicki, and Corn Flake. Go!