My Dad got me into reading fantasy and scifi when I was in Elementary School, but he wouldn’t let me read many of these because of cough mature content cough (I’m looking at you, Wizard’s First Rule & Stranger in a Strange Land ). It was really, really cool to be able to go through his collection and pick up some older books in the genre that I had never even heard of.
List:
Dune , Children of Dune , and Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
A Heinlein Trio by Robert A. Heinlein
Sword , Elfstones , Elf Queen , Druid , Wishsong and Talismans of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Kingdom of Summer by Gillian Bradshaw
The Dragonstone by Dennis L. McKiernan
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind (I know, I know, the first book’s not bad on its own though)
The Lost Swords (The First and Second Triads) and The Complete Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
The Hollow Hills , The Crystal Cave , and The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart
Demons & Dreams (The Best Science Fiction and Horror) , edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (This one has a short story by George R. R. Martin)
Darkspell by Katharine Kerr
Stranger in a Strange Land (uncut) by Robert A. Heinlein
The Book of Lost Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Bardic Voices Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey
The Bachman Books by Stephen King
and finally,
Buck Rogers hardcover collection
I’ve only read about half of these. The covers on some of them are so deliciously 80s and 90s…
I haven’t seen a number of those covers in a long, long time.
I’ll second the Saberhagen, by the way. I really enjoyed those books. (And, of course, if you haven’t read Dune or Dragonriders , they’re both awesome.)
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