Over at the Tor blog, Jo Walton, author of the well-imagined alternate history novels Farthing and Ha’penny, is setting out to do a public service. In her “Where Do I Start with That?” feature, she’s going letter by letter through all the major sci-fi and fantasy novelists (plus some non-genre writers whom she’s read a lot) and giving her recommendation of which books a reader should begin with.

For a reader like me who only occasionally dips his toe into those waters, Walton’s recommendations are a godsend, to be filed away and drawn on for years to come. She’s already helped me set out on the oeuvre of historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett and caused me to act on my long-standing intention to read some Samuel R. Delany.

Her views on Dickens, however, I think we’ll have to agree can only be termed unsound:

Charles Dickens—don’t start. No, that’s unfair. Great Expectations and David Copperfield are his least unbearable books, and where you should start if you feel you have to. The reason they’re less unbearable is because they’re first person and not the horrible version of omniscient he uses for most of his books.

I suppose one shouldn’t ever rely one one’s guide completely, anyway.