First 50 Novels

In sixty-three posts, I have posted notes on fifty novels here, ten of which I had read before. I want to use a brief post to place these forty new ones in categories for myself, and write what I most remember about them now:

Great Books by date published:
Ancillary Mercy, 2015: Leckie perfected her pacing, voice, characters, and plotting—while the addition of the Translator provided much-appreciated comedic breathing spaces.
The Goblin Emperor, 2014: If you need violence and sex for excitement in a novel, this isn't for you. If you appreciate deep, applicable character study, this is your book. Before this, it had been at least a decade since I read a book so strong that not only did I put the author's other works on my to-buy list, but also other important and influential works within the sub-genre.
Lord of Light, 1967: Poetry and plot melded perfectly together. I could read this prose for days and days. This is writing!
The Player of Games, 1988: The pacing and applicability of the plot are astounding in their perfection. It's exciting but also deeply meditative in a way that informs the reader about themselves.
The Stars My Destination, 1956: Retelling The Count of Monte Cristo allowed Bester to get experimental with his writing, and that resulted in my favorite Bester novel yet. He deserves all the accolades he gets for his ability to combine exciting adventure and important insights.

Close on their heels are Good Books by date published:
The Dark Forest, 2015: Guided by its engaging eponymous central theme, this is so much better than The Three-Body Problem it's not even close.
Ancillary Justice, 2013: What a debut novel! Solid world building, writing, and pacing. She melds the writing and plot and characters so that everything supports everything else.
The Name of the Wind/The Wise Man's Fear, 2007/2011: This is how you tell a story! I'm not even sure where the story is going, or whether Rothfuss knows, but I don't care because I am so into it when I'm reading it.
Inversions, 1998: Perfects the split-narrative that didn't quite work in Use of Weapons. Would be one category up if it had a more interesting or applicable theme.
Excession, 1996: Great space opera. It's fun to watch everything unravel like this. The plot reminds me of the Doomtree line, "Okay. Plan B: just panic."
Startide Rising/Uplift War, 1983/1987: Character development and strong plot pacing in spades.
The Lathe of Heaven, 1971: This is a great philosophical debate between two interesting characters.
The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969: That back and forth between Ai and Estraven is not quite friendly, not quite antagonistic, not quite anything but a fascinating study of the alien-ness of any other and ourselves. But it's the mix of mysticism, science, and adventure that drew me in. This is so close to being a Great Book.
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968: As it's own book, 2001 is a great read. It also wholly replaced Childhood's End as the much better book covering almost all of the same ground.
Damnation Alley, 1967: Zelazny can write pulp fiction with some beautifully tight prose, evoking Raymond Chandler and Alfred Bester.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966: Completely characteristic of Heinlein letting his characters run away with his novel.
The Day of the Triffids, 1951: That sardonic, conversational tone that Wyndham hits so well is such a joy to read.

Interesting Flawed Books, also known as Enjoyable Books, by date published:
Ancillary Sword, 2014: That slow start is brutal to get through, but the book shapes up wonderfully by the end.
A Song of Ice and Fire series, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2011: Fascinating structure and complexity, but to me it broke my suspension of disbelief by having too many resurrections and implied murders turn out to be not-murders. I keep thinking this series should be one category up because he does so much so well. The concluding two works could solidify the whole series here, or bump it up a tier permanently.
Use of Weapons, 1990: Interesting idea poorly executed because he held everything too close to his chest for too long.
Creatures of Light and Darkness, 1969: An interesting journey that I was bemused by at the end.
This Immortal (aka ...And Call Me Conrad), 1965: Somewhere between the confusing pace and shifting focus of Creatures and the straight adventure plot of Damnation Alley. It pulls off neither, but is an interesting first novel.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1960: Funny and fascinating, but ultimately too brutal to the pacing and the Catholic Monks to really be endearing.
Childhood's End, 1953: Interesting, but completely blown out of the water by 2001.
The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844, 1845: Fascinating and a wonderful plot. But overlong by far.
Northanger Abbey, 1817: A hilarious and wonderfully written satirical novel that fails because people don't understand what she's satirizing.

And Bad Books I wish I hadn't read, by date published, with quotes from my reviews:
The Three-Body Problem, 2014: "He starts with the beautiful telling-phrase, 'She spoke like a telegraph—'. This confirms what I already knew with a novel phrase—a great tactic. However, he goes on: 'and gave him the impression that she was always extremely cold.' Okay, now that's just redundant. But he doesn’t end there: he keeps hammering the point home through four more long sentences that feel like he’s belaboring the point unnecessarily because he doesn’t believe the reader understands yet. [...] I am still slightly bemused [about plot and pacing]. And I'm not sure it's in the good way."
Consider Phlebas, 1987: "The pacing in the story is inconsistent to me. There are portions that seem to drag, portions that seem to speed by, and a few portions that feel just right for the amount of action, ideas, and characterization involved. Specifically, he drew out the build-up to the ending too far. I understand drawing that buildup out somewhat helped him increase tension, but he drew it out too much: at the start, I was wondering where he was going because he started so far back; and by the end I grew a bit bored and had to reread a couple of paragraphs here and there because my mind started wandering."
Ubik, 1969: "I think at some level, these existential-questioning-of-reality novels are all interesting, but none really stand out too far from the rest for me. Some of Dostoevsky’s works are notable, for sure. [...] I think whichever of these novels a reader first reads that clicks with them will probably be their favorite."
The Caves of Steel, 1954: "Partly that failure is the fault of the implausibility of the investigation—basic police questions are ignored until the end, three days into the investigation. The detective does not even view the site of the crime until then. But mostly it is the main character not being well written or interesting. He comes off like a caricature of a detective, while continually assuring himself that his partner is the character, not him. He is a puppet and Asimov jerks the strings this way and that in a logical pattern, but not a human one—Elijah's never quite believable."
Foundation, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1951: "What a slow and uninteresting opening! This is exactly what I try to avoid in my writing—these couple of tedious chapters of pure world building. The intro info dump is awkward and slow and if I wasn't listening to it, I probably would've stopped reading it, I was that bored. The details of the world building are not even that different or interesting enough to allow this."
The Plague, 1947: "This is a failure. It failed to hold my attention, my interest, or my empathy. It is a convoluted mess, and it leaves me to think that Camus can't be bothered to tell a story, write a sentence, or communicate an idea. At the least he cannot here. His characters are flat and uninteresting and they all speak in the same voice - they are mostly indistinguishable throughout the novel. Even if the character similarities are intentional for some obscure point about "mankind", this is just bad writing. A lot of the pages seem like filler - like they do not illuminate characters, situations, the plot, or the underlying ideas. It also seems like a shallow description of a plague ravaged town that carries little weight or believability. Camus is forever telling his readers that he will explain something later, which I think is a bad writing tactic. But by the time I got to the end of the book, I wished he would've explained some of the book itself."
Brave New World, 1932: "The release of tension, John throwing soma out the window, is a bit of a letdown. I understand that some act is necessary to collide the controller and John, and that the controller would try and cut off any of this type of behavior before it got out of hand, but even with all the punching, it seems a little unlike John. I think he would understand the physical differences between classes and try and change some betas or Alpha minuses. His attempts to change some deltas seems stupid and hopeless. None of the rest of the novel communicated John as stupid to me."
Last and First Men, 1930: "This pacing struck me two ways: either Stapledon is not being as fair and evenhanded with his philosophical opponents in the second half as he was in the first, or he ran out of steam as a writer. Like when you try and fit a word onto a note card and you kinda run out of room so you mash all the letters together there at the edge and it's pretty obvious that you ran out of room. That's almost what this "acceleration of tempo" feels like. This disproportion between how much time is spent on the first men, and how much time is spent on the tenth through seventeenth men was a little frustrating as a reader. It felt like a little more planning or editing could have helped."

So you don't have to go through a process of elimination, I had already read:
Baudolino, 2000, 2002: Read at own risk, not for those who need a reliable narrator. Or author.
The Dune series, 1965, 1969, 1976, 1981, 1984, 1985: 1 & 4 were great, 3 & 5 were good, 2 & 6 were bad.
Starship Troopers, 1959: Every time I read it I'm sucked in again. But I never come out the other side liking it more or less. It's a neutral novel to my tastes.
Lord Jim, 1900: One of the best I've ever read.
The Time Machine, 1895: I re-read this every few years because I like it that much.

Now onto some more novels.