The NPR list is exactly what people should expect from a internet poll

Really? I think it's very good for an internet poll. May not be *my* picks, but I would probably enjoy reading many of those books, and I've known about but not been tempted by Hec's list for a while now.

Yes, because it's a legend. I wouldn't say it's condescending, but the narrative convention, especially for the first one, is that this is basically "The Legend of Sparrowhawk: The Early Years". The imaginary audience already knows who Ged grows up to be.

I understood that, but it still just bothered me. I don't know. I think perhaps I would have liked them better in that class had they not immediately followed The Once ad Future King, which is basically my favorite book of all time. We had also just read The Golden Compass and Wicked, which I adored.

I'm sorry! I might give LeGuin another chance, because everyone who is not me seems to love her.

I loved the Earthsea books when I read them as a kid. When I tried to reread as an adult? They bored me to tears and I couldn't even get through the first one. But I'm not a huge SF/Fantasy reader either.

I couldn't get into the Earthsea books (only tried to read them as an adult) but I generally love LeGuin. Try The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness, zuisa. Or Those Who Walk Away From Omelas if a short story will do. Hey, you said you needed to read more SF, I'm helping!

I'm on a fantasy novella and short story kick right now and it is convincing me that I am definitely not a hardcore fantasy fan. What I like of the genre I like a whole lot, but what I don't like really irritates me.

I think it's very good for an internet poll.

It is a great list of the SF books most likely to be popular among people who'd visit the NPR website. I'm not saying I hate the books. Well, I do hate some of them, but I like a lot of them too. But I already know what books the internet likes. I don't know why it's interesting to keep rediscovering the same things about the same people over and over -- are people online normally so reticent about expressing what they are fans of that we need to draw them out?

I like having ways to discover new things. A curated list, where I know who is recommending things and whether we have similar tastes, is of some use to me when I am looking for new things. A vaguely defined "poll" of an unspecified number of anonymous people just tells me... that a website wants to drive up their traffic.

I don't love LeGuin. I would rank McCaffrey and MZB above her too, though I also don't love McCaffrey. My favorite female fantasy/SF writer (and possibly favorite fantasy writer full stop, though there's competition) is Sharon Shinn. Octavia E. Butler would compete, but she's pretty much all SF.

I would rank McCaffrey and MZB above her too,

No fucking way! McCaffrey is a massive hack.

In my opinion MZB and and McCaffrey are talented hacks. I don't regard most of their work as quality, although much of it is entertaining. I think of Le Guin as thoughtful and wordsmith, and I'd apply neither of those words to Anne and Marion. Not that I'm a connoisseur, or anything.

Octavia Butler is also high on my thoughtful and wordsmithy list. She wrote a fair amount of fantasy--Kindred, the Patternist series (right?), Fledgling...

I liked MZB's Fantasy Magazine. I think I prefer her as an editor over as a writer.

In my opinion MZB and and McCaffrey are talented hacks.

MZB and McCaffrey were good at pleasing readers with entertaining, wish-fulfillment-type of stories. Even MZB's overtly feminist work was very wish-fulfillment.

Which is not to say that The Dispossessed isn't wish-fulfillment, too, but it's a hell of a lot more thoughtful. And LeGuin's prose is much better. She's got more going on thematically than either MZB or McCaffrey, even in her earliest work.

Or, basically, what ita ! says.