Second Thoughts on Essential Fantasy Lists

First of all, I went to re-read what Jeff said about his list, and realized it was for a very specific purpose: "a list of fantasy I thought every writer should read....to provide as diverse a list as possible in terms of technique....skewed to my own definitions of fantasy and my own obsessions with technique".

So, what was going to be my main objection -- i.e., that his list isn't actually of fantasy in any reasonable sense of the word -- is now pretty much moot, since he wasn't trying to define or delineate any particular field of literature. I'd define his list a bit differently than he does, though, as a set of books that work with fantastic tropes in ways that are interesting and possibly useful for young, ambitious writers who want to write literary novels with fantasy elements. (This is most emphatically not a list of novels to read if you want to sell a first novel to a genre fantasy line, though -- if that's your aim, I'd read the novels on Jeff's list sparingly.)

This is helpful, because it saves me having to run around for a few hours to work up the books that really need to be on a list of "Essential Fantasy." (Did everyone notice the one huge, glaring omission? It took me a minute to realize it.) And I don't feel so bad about not having read such a big swath of those books; I'm not a writer of literary novels and never will be.