Doing a comprehensive survey of Appendix N

I’ve been chipping away at Appendix N since 2012 (although I’d read a number of Appendix N works prior to that, just not as Appendix N works), and my thinking on how to approach it has changed over the years. My next Appendix N book to read, L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall As I was logging a recent finished book, Michael Moorcock’s excellent The Stealer of Souls, on my spreadsheet, I realized that I no longer find the “open-ended” nature of Appendix N intimidating. It’s okay to take Gary literally when he says, “In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all their fantasy writing to you.” That really does mean that in the case of, say, Leigh Brackett, Gary encourages you to read all of her work. I interpret this statement to also imply two things: Work from 1979 or earlier, since that’s the year Appendix N was published Not just fantasy, but fantasy and science fiction, since plenty of the titles listed in Appendix N (e.g., Burroughs’ Mars books) are…