book meme: my personal sff canon

So this started with Renay's post of essential sff reads. Her list was sixty items long.

Mine is about half that. It only contains books I've read. I decided to limit myself to one entry per author, but to give alternative titles for most of the authors (because I always find it so arbitrary when comparing booklists and finding that one book by someone that I *didn't* read). In cases of book series, I always list the first volume (except if the series is made up of loosely connected stand-alones). In choosing the titles and authors, I was guided by my personal affection more than by buzz or critical consensus. In cases of magic realist fiction, I sometimes decided in favour and sometimes against including a title (so some of my favorite genre-adjascent authors and titles may not be here). The list is alphabetical. There's no urban fantasy / supernatural romance here, which I think tells me which genres I've been avoiding... My write-ups are personal rather than informative, because I assume the book descriptions are easy to find.

I will probably re-post this to my book blog later for easier linking.

( the full list, all 30 authors, is under the cut )