I think it's fun. I suspect montreal will think it's triply fun and immediately start to-read lists from your best of lists, because he is even more of a list maker than am I.
I like this list because I've read almost all the books on it and agree wholeheartedly with eight of the choices. I don't disagree with any of them, but I might have picked a different book in a series, maybe.
Jo Walton, Sherwood Smith, Terry Pratchett, Susan Palwick, John M. Ford, Steven Brust, Elizabeth Bear, Daniel Abraham.
Neat! I'm surprised I've only read two of these, though one other is next on my mental to-read list. (Of the two, I agree strongly with one, and for the other, would have picked a different book by the same author.)
Susan Palwick, The Necessary Beggar
Whee! I've been trying to figure out if I really never saw this mentioned before picking it up in a bookbin for $2 and loving it to bits, or just never noticed it before and will now come across it mentioned every second day for the rest of my life. :-)
...huh. It's interesting; in 2000 I was nine years old and getting into the YA section of my library. I haven't been paying attention to the tordotcom list, so much, so it's startling to see things like Fall of the Kings (which I had assumed had been around Forever) on a list of the last decade-if-you-squint.
(Given this, I don't think I could make a best-books-of-2000-2010 list if we're counting publication dates; I have very little sense of that, and had even less when I was younger. I could make a best-books-I-read-between-2000-and-2010 list, but that would jump wildly all over the place with regards to publication year, I suspect. Or maybe not? Hmm.)
For me the publication dates of my reading are certainly all over the place. The reason I could do this at all coherently is that I keep a library file I could just filter by date.
And I remember being at your time of college and how much things were "classics" that have been around "forever" that were actually not that old, so I do sympathize.
Hm. Agreed on Tooth and Claw, Sun of Suns, Wintersmith, The Fall of the Kings, Ash, and Issola.
As for different books by the same authors I'm picking Iron Sunrise and The Last Hot Time.
Additions would be Doctorow's Little Brother, Bujold's Paladin of Souls which I expect you forgot, and Cherryh's Explorer because I did read them recently enough to remember which one was the best.
And maybe the Baroque Cycle, I haven't made up my mind about that yet.
And now we've conversed and you know that I didn't forget Paladin of Souls, but I'm waffling on that and The Curse of Chalion. I'm at least as likely to reread them as a bunch of stuff on this list, which seems like it ought to mean something.
Agree about Last Hot Time.
I'd probably go for The Privilege of the Sword over The Fall of the Kings, The Paths of the Dead over Issola, and An Autumn War over The Price of Spring (the latter two for reasons we've discussed), but both the Stross and the Powers are definitely on my list, and Tooth and Claw probably ought to be.
Our reading does not overlap as much as I might have expected, though two three four five of your choices are high on my list to read.
And one of them, well. Thanks. :-)
Privilege of the Sword over Fall (which I think is half a book)
But Declare? Oh yes!
Which half do you think it is, and what do you want the other half to be doing?
I think it's the first half, and as for the second half, I've had some very long conversations about Ellen about that!
Well, it's not that I think nothing else can happen. I just felt it was complete as itself, so I was curious as to what else you wanted of it.
I felt it was all setup with not enough payoff--that the payoff was yet to come.
I did like The Fall of the Kings, but I ultimately liked Privilege of the Sword better. Fall of the Kings was interesting because it was a lot different from the other two books, but it didn't feel as fulfilling as Privilege.
Book lists are always fun!
I'd vote for the whole Inda series, if possible. Can't decide which I like best. The first one is really good, but so is the last one. The first one's the only one you could read alone, though.
I love most of those that I've read. Like many above, I'd take Privilege of the Sword over Fall of the Kings, and I'd take The Stratford Man over By the Mountain Bound. I'd add Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell.
I enjoyed the Karl Schroeder while I was reading it, but it failed the Bechdel test in some ways I found really annoying. (I have less patience for Level 3 failures than Level 1 and 2 failures.) | 
