Oh, I love Lud-in-the-Mist.

I'd love to see a horror list, myself.

I don't particularly look for wordsmithery in my fantasy, honestly. I don't mind it when it's there, but it's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for compelling reads, which means I read a fair amount of fantasy I'd objectively call bad or hackish, and enjoy it.

I quite liked The Left Hand of Darkness, but it took me many tries to get into it, and I don't remember much about it now.

I LOVE Bujold and would totally rank her above all of the authors I mentioned in a full fledged SF/Fantasy list. I still haven't read any Connie Willis, but I plan to soon.

Octavia Butler is one of those authors who writes works that feel like fantasy but have "scientific" reasons - even Fledgling, a vampire novel, spent a fair amount of time building up the scientific explanation for the vampirism. So I have a hard time placing her. It's also why I'm personally glad when lists like this don't split SF and Fantasy - they have plenty of overlaps that are hard to place.

I'd love to see a horror list, myself.

scoots closer to Amy

I'd love to see a horror list, myself.

Agreed.

We could start one, here.

I'm very happy, by the way, that The Thrawn Trilogy made it on there. When I was in 7th-11th grades, I read every book available in the Expanded Star Wars universe, and would have been able to tell you everything there was to know about that galaxy in the 20+ years following Return of the Jedi. In general, that was a positive experience, with very few of those books being anywhere close to as terrible as the prequels, but most of them were mediocre at best. The Thrawn Trilogy, which I believe was the first approved set of Star Wars novels, was the exception, and the only part of the entire canon I would highly recommend to anybody. I basically found it to be masterfully crafted space opera, with brilliant characterization that meshed with the characters as portrayed in the films but expanded them to something much more like real people. I've read the trilogy 10+ times, and am strongly considering investing in another copy to read again soon.

I don't mind it when it's there

::cries and cries::

We could start one, here.

Yes, let's!

How about Top Ten Horror Novels Since 1960? Or Post-War Era, if you like? Before that I think the canon is pretty well known.

Jilli, would you like to start us off?

Horror books I think everyone should read, in no particular order: Dracula, The Haunting of Hill House, Salem's Lot, Threshhold, World War Z, Heart-Shaped Box, Lost Souls ...

So here's my problem. There's a lot of stuff that most people would put on a list of horror novels that wouldn't occur to me because I don't find it that scary. Hell, I don't find Dracula or Lost Souls scary, but I know that they're fantastic horror novels.

Jilli, would you like to start us off?

Post-war? Man oh man, now I have to look up publication dates. Argh!

And I'm also dithering about should I say Threshold or Silk, both by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Because they're both terrifying (Caitlin is fantastic at writing CREEPY AS FUCK and unsettling stories), but Silk is slightly more terrifying to me, personally, as spiders are a running theme/image/THING in that book.