What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Hardcover – January 21, 2014

Jo Walton is a science fiction author who blogs on Tor.com about the books she writes, reads, and re-reads. This collection of 130 short chapters samples some of her more popular blog posts between July 2008 and February 2011. They discuss what Jo gains from the experience of rereading. There is an interactive feel to the chapters that comes from their informal tone and from how they respond to comments about previous blog posts.Several authors receive a great deal of emphasis. I would have been happy with less about C. J. Cheeryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Steven Brust, for example. The author could have given us more about Vernor Vinge, Tolkein, Ursula Le Guin and a few others. I did enjoy learning a lot about Samuel Delany, and a bit about a few other authors I had not encountered before. Readers are likely to discover a new book or two for their must-read lists. I picked up Poul Anderson's  The Broken Sword  and Kim Stanley Robinson's  Icehenge .The real treats, however, are the author's discussions of reading itself. Topics include how to read and reread series, the impact of swearing, the unwritten assumptions readers must make to understand science fiction, and whether it is better to "sip" a book during stolen moments or set aside a block of time to "gulp" it down all at once. The author makes insightful observations and writes engagingly. For example:- "I think of a second reading of a book as completing my read, a first reading is preliminary and reactions to a first reading are suspect."- "There are readings of a book you can't have on first reading. One of them is the reading in the light of later work. Another is being impressed how much it hasn't dated."- "There's a disadvantage of re -reading as much as I do in that there are series where the books I don't like become, in time, the ones I like the best because they're the ones that retain freshness after I have the ones I like memorised."- "The language is precise yet lapidary--literally. The words are like stones, sometimes sharp and sometimes jewel-bright, and all of them essentially placed in the structure of the novel."- "You know how life and real history are always more complex and fractal than fiction can manage? Delany manages it. He does the thing where his science-fictional innovations have second- and third-order consequences, where they interlock and give you worldviews . Other people do it, but he does it all the way down. He's astonishing. This book has the density of very sparkly neutronium."- "Having a world unfold in one's head is the fundamental SF experience. We talk about worldbuilding as something the writer does, but it's also something the reader does, building the world from the clues."- "Heinlein's prose isn't beautiful like Le Guin's, but it's always crisp and descriptive and somehow confidential. He draws you inside the world-- it's as if he lifts a corner and invites you and you're thrilled to slip through."- "I read in hopes of little sparkling moments that are going to turn my head inside out. I increase my chances of getting them by reading the kind of writers who have done that to me before: (Vinge, Delany , Dean, Le Guin, Wilson, Schroeder, Cherryh...) where really skipping even a paragraph might leave you lost and confused at the end."Jo insists that she does not approach books like a critic, offering us literary analysis and objective conclusions. She reads books for fun. Her discussion of them is enthusiastic, personal, and infectious. She makes it easy to read her book for fun, too. Not to mention what can be learned from it.

In What Makes This Book So Great, Jo Walton talks (primarily) about rereading books, so it's only appropriate that the first time I read this book, I was rereading it, too: except for the first and last sections, everything here is from her excellent blog series on Tor.com, which I discovered a few years ago and read from beginning to end.Walton has a clear, straightforward style that has, for me, what she describes as I-Want-to-Read-It-osity, the quality that makes it impossible to put a book down, but more than that, she's great at identifying the parts of books that might prompt you to pick them up: she doesn't describe Cherryh (ambiguity, difficulty, history going on and on) in the same way she does Delany (rich with mind-blowing ideas). She's enthusiastic and insightful, and has a gift for inventing and/or popularizing certain irresistible reading concepts, from incluing (the art of scattering in background worldbuilding) to the spearpoint (the moment in a book or series that gains its power from everything that's come before). She's incredibly useful--I cite her in conversations all the time, I'm sure it's very annoying for other people.This is a great book for anyone interested in reading generally, especially since Walton includes general essay posts on reading as well as on specific books (skimming? Gulping or sipping? Do you have friends who have trouble grasping SF? Have any old favorites been ruined by the Suck Fairy's pernicious attention?), and it's obviously a great book for anyone interested in speculative fiction, who can revisit memories of classics, find unknown authors, and delight in the included complete-series looks at Brust and Bujold. But for me, this book bears particular significance: it was, in its earlier form, what got me back into reading science fiction and fantasy by providing not only recommendations but clear ideas of what I might and might not like, and some notion of the history and cross-pollination going on. Science fiction and fantasy can be an intimidating field for anyone outside of it, or even anyone who read it as a kid and then drifted away. Writers like John Scalzi have done a great job recently of writing potential entry points into SF, but for me, it's Walton who really opened the door, who described books in ways that let me figure out if I would like them or not, and who sent me to the library and the bookstore with reading lists as long as my arm. This book changed my life well before it even was a book, and I'm very glad to finally own a copy of it. If you pick it up, it might change your life, too, and invigorate your reading possibilities and make you recklessly spend a lot of money on expanding your bookshelves--but if it doesn't do that, it will at the very least provide you with some incredibly enjoyable hours of reading time.

People write a lot about science fiction these days. A lot of them are academics, whose focus on a few cult writers and cult literary theories misrepresents the genre and whose obsessive jargon can make an ordinary reader's eyes glaze over. Then there are the media types, who think it's all about STAR TREK and practically ignore the written word.Jo Walton is like a breath of fresh air. She's a science fiction writer, and a science fiction fan, who loves the genre and writes lucidly about it – for the lay reader as opposed to the scholar. Sure, she uses some specialized terms like "incluing," but they have to do with how sf is actually written and how readers read it. Walton has a running blog at TOR,com in which she writes with love and insight about new books and old. But WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT culls that blog for commentaries on works that she keeps coming back to -- that she reads again and again. What makes such books worth re-reading, including even those that have obvious flaws? If you have favorites that are on her list, she may help you understand why they are your favorites. If others on her list are new to you, you may have new reading pleasures to discover.Read on!

Without having read most of these books, I found the summaries nevertheless fascinating. I read this as the way a reader comes to find the books that will affect them, determine their reading course, and then looking back on that course. Others will read it differently, but this was sufficient for me.

Interesting take on all the books the author has re-read and what she gets from each re-read. The majority of books fall into the sci-fi or fantasy genre. If you're a fan of Luis McMaster Bujold you should enjoy the several chapters mid-book as she writes about several and her experience of reading many of these individually. I've never read Bujold and I'm not sure I'm convinced from this, ( the themes of the books may not be my cup of tea ) but Jo Walton's enthusiasm makes you understand the quality of what Bujold has achieved. And she does this with many of the books she has written about here. Walton has the knack of making every book she has read sound like something you might be missing out on. Each chapter is short and punchy, at about 3 or 4 pages, which derives from them being based on her blog. She does not generally provide deep analysis of the books covered, it not an literature review type book. Given the length of each chapter that would be impossible, but there's almost always something you can learn from her take on a book or a series. She seems to be able to get to the heart of what an author might have been trying to achieve.

Great book for dipping into, though even better read in sequence. Jo Walton on the subject of rereading in general as well as on the rereading of specific books: fun and informative.

It‘s a really great book about the phenomenon of rereading books several times.Some do it, and some do it never.This is a great book of the joy of reading a novel more than ones!

Perceptive comments on SF (and other books). Warning! May damage your wallet by prompting the purchase of more books. It has already damaged mine.