This is a collected and bound version of a blog that Jo Walton wrote for Tor.com from about 2008-2010 (give or take). The focus of the blog was to reread various books from “Classic” sci fi to more contemporary sci fi and assess and reassess them.
It probably worked fine as a blog, but as a book it’s quite limited. In part it’s limited by its relatively repetitive pattern of summary, explanation, assessment, and restart of most of the reviews. It’s also limited by the reading choices of Jo Walton. I caught myself getting really into one section that does a thing, only to find myself skimming later when she does the same thing again. So when you find yourself reading twelve consecutive reviews of Lois McMaster Bujold books (each book that you’ve read twice) it’s easy to believe that this is a nice and good thing and you’re enjoying it. But then when you’re doing the same thing with 12 straight books in a series you haven’t read, well….less so now.
So that’s part of the problem: sci fi comes in series, so if you haven’t read the subsequent books, any review past the first one doesn’t do you much good. And so this book probably needed a little more editing. The other issue I have is that the cover and some of the early material seems suggests a reread of the classics, and well a lot of these books are from the 1990s and 2000s, and well…I just didn’t care.
So I came away with a handful of books to check out but not a new appreciation for the genre as a whole.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-This-Book-Great-ebook/dp/B00FO79RV2/ref=sr_1_13?crid=25AYT4QYYTKM8&keywords=jo+walton&qid=1556624907&s=gateway&sprefix=jo+walton%2Caps%2C223&sr=8-13)