If you read only one book this decade, come and post it on the ILX BOOK OF THE 00s: NOMINATION THREAD (nominations close 20 December)

Øystein: can't really comment as I've never heard of Zbigniew Herbert I'm afraid (magnificent name though, I may sling him a vote for that alone), but regardless of date of translation he'd get in if this was the first anthology of his work (see also JG Ballard above). Any chance you can confirm?

daily growing: nice idea with the story collections. I'll try to make a new category for them when I next update the full list.

Red: thanks. The difference between you and Bellamy is that his exclusion on Saturday actually was a travesty of justice. I didn't think anyone could ever come off worse in such a comparison, so well done for that.

Is the Amazon product description of the Herbert collection good enough? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Poems-1956-1998-Zbigniew-Herbert/dp/1843548836
"This title includes the collected poems - together in English for the first time [...]"

That'll do nicely. I guess it'd've been some quick work and some bad luck if his 1956-98 anthology had missed our poll.

Enjoying these firm but fair rulings (and thanks for organising Ismael). One nomination to go. Is my c-F not working or has no-one picked this yet?

Experience - Martin Amis (2000)

The last time I gave a shit about him.

I'd noticed the lack of Amis myself when I scanned my shelves - surprised at how much of his recent stuff I own (mostly unread). I might nominate one of his myself, but not that one.

Yeah, I made that remark and then realised I never finished ok started Yellow Dog. Maybe I should take a look at that tonight.

I'm not sure if I still have one more nomination remaining but if I do I will nominate the most amazing diving guide ever! It is beautifully crafted and written, it has the most beautiful photographs of the dives and underwater life and also stupendous dive maps showing you all of the underwater attractions for each dive as well as a comprehensive route map. It's:

Alberto Siliotti - Sinai Diving Guide - 2005

It's fantastic!!!

Red: you don't.

However, because that's such an interesting and unusual choice (I don't think we have any other manuals, travel guides or photographic works), and because your original list has one book that I was going to nominate myself, I'm going to help you out here by withdrawing one of your choices and let you have Sinai Diving Guide instead.

It's a pretty obscure pick though - even Amazon don't seem to stock it - so it may not trouble the team of gollums in my basement who will be compiling the final chart. The voting thread will have some limited scope for lobbying, so you'll be able to boost its chances from Monday onwards. I wouldn't mind seeing some of those photos myself.

You got me thinking about travel writing. I remember this as quite an important genre when I first got into books, but my impression is that it's died away in the last decade. While you do still get writing from abroad, now it's more about reportage from what *we* are up to in Afghanistan, say - or else it's actually written by local authors (thinking particularly autobiographies about how ghastly a woman's lot is, which seem to do roaring business at my local supermarket).

It's rarely about the experience of journeying for curiosity and pleasure. Is old-style travel writing a casualty of a more accessible world?

David Thomson - The Whole Equation (2006)
Paul Morley - Nothing (2000)
Norman Rush - Mortals (2003)
Steve Erickson - Zeroville (2007)
Catherine O'Flynn - What Was Lost (2007)

That sounds about right - the literary shine seems to have gone off it a bit; I think stuff like the Narrow Dog books, or the Genesis drummer in Andalucia books (ie Englishman bumbles abroad) sell a shit-ton on the quiet, but it's not a buzzy important-in-the-Granta-sense genre. Lot of classic reprints now - Leigh Fermor, Robert Byron etc.

Maybe also fiction set abroad has changed the game? The Beach, Capt Correlli, The Island, Kite Runner all big Tube books or holiday reading.

That reminds me: thanks Øystein and o. nate, but I decided against giving the ten best-sellers automatic nominations (The Kite Runner would've got one) because:

- you've got to leave stuff out or there's no point having nominations at all;
- two of them are Chinese political works that don't seem to have been translated, at least that I can find;
- Dan Brown would've benefitted twice; and
- let's face it, out of modern world literature, these are the ten books that least need a leg-up.

So screw you, JK Rowling. Interesting stats though - eighty million sales of The Da Vinci Code!

Poetry:

Bob Perelman- IFLIFE
Charles Bernstein- Girly Man
Jane Yeh- Marabou
Michael Palmer- The Promises of Glass
Geoffrey Nutter- Water's Leaves & Other Poems

Oh my, just noticed we haven't had Jonathan Coe - Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson yet. This must be rectified at once. Published in 2004.

By the way, how is the voting going to work? Most of the music polls have had a minimum of ten votes, but I'm guessing that there will be a lot more people who have only read six or seven books published this decade who still want to vote. I mean, I spent most of the decade reading '60s experimentalism - I can pretty definitely compile a top ten of the 2000s, but not all of them will be supported with as much vigour as I may like.

I was going to canvas views on that, actually. I think Tuomas's model for the 80s albums poll worked really well - thirty votes each with a long tail of points, so it went something like 40-30-25-20-15-12-10-9-8-a clutch of single figures for the lesser places.

Thirty's too many for books, but I thought twenty might be about right - that way voracious readers get proper representation, while for those with six or seven books it doesn't matter so much because it's only the single figure scores that'd go unallocated. I haven't worked out the precise weightings yet. I've no idea how popular this poll is going to be either, so allowing a large number of votes might be useful to help distinguish the lower places on the poll - I don't want a thirty-way-tie for twentieth place, all with one vote each!

I thought of another solution to a logjam low down - a requirement that a book get two or three separate votes before it qualifies (or only scores half-points until then). That'd only be useful in certain circumstances which I wouldn't know until the votes were in, so I'll file that option under 'dealer's prerogative' for now and deploy it only if the chart starts to look stupid.

Can we have a bonus-vote-for-a-not-a-novel work?

How'd you mean?

upon my actually checking, Dean Young - Beloved Infidel (2004), was only reprinted in 04, published in 92 so take it out & if i give it some thought i can probably come up with a replacement good non-fiction nom

Many thanks, Johnny, very helpful.

IK i hadn't really thought it through, I just thought - like with the nominations - if there was some kind of vote reserved for Something That Isn't A Novel it might make the shape of the results more interesting

That's a thought, thomp. Not sure whether it's necessary though. The list is approximately two-thirds fiction, one-third not, and an awful lot of the fiction was taken from the other thread so it may have no popular support here. What do you reckon? I'm all for the final chart being as interesting as possible.

I'm not sure about the bonus vote for non-fiction: I think if you like something enough you'll place it high anyway, and if you don't then you, uh, won't.

Sliding-scale scores have definitely worked, and I like the idea of no minimum number of books (or a small minimum, maybe 3 as an arbitrary cut-off?) - I don't think that having read only a small number of books from a certain decade should disqualify you from voting, as you can't read a book as quickly and easily as you can listen to an album. Also, those of us who have been in full-time education for much of the decade have enormous reading lists that curtail the time we get for contemporary stuff. People who have read more than me should probably confer over whether the maximum should be 20 or 30.

Tend to agree. On one hand, novels probably do have a natural advantage in that they're more likely to manage to snowball into a communal experience and thereby attract larger numbers of votes (even that doesn't necessarily translate into high scoring). Then again, I can think of a few non-fiction books that managed the same thing but haven't even been nominated.

ok i will nom this, ppl should check it out even if they dont care abt wrastlin' ~ Matthew Randazzo V - Ring of Hell (2008)

here's where i learned abt it: "Ring of Hell", a new book about Chris Benoit going nuts

20 sounds about right. Have an awful vision of me padding the bottom of my ballot with Oscar Wao ('My friends say it's my kind of thing. I bet I'd like it') & other books I haven't technically read if it's many more than that. I get the impression my position is fairly common round ILB at least - I read a lot, but not that much from this decade.

Johnny: awesome nomination (never heard of it, of course). I may as well reveal my other idea for voting - I'm going to be quite strict about demanding a few blurbs with each ballot to include in the countdown. Basically because I want to be able to use the results thread as a reading list, so it'd be great to pack as much positivism in there as possible.

woofwoofwoof: yeah, that sounds plausible. I'm cool with things picking up votes e.g. because somebody liked the film (plot is a massive part of any book, after all). But not so much if it gets a vote just because it generated a lot of hype - some of my most miserable reading experiences have come about that away. I'm looking at you, Tim Lott - White City Blue (2000).

i have been going through amazon orders to see what i might have read this decade. it's an incredibly depressing way to look at your past. also ha i have made 101 orders this year. not ordered 101 items, made 101 orders.

j.k. rowling, harry potter novels (2000, 2003, 2005, 2007)*
tsugumi ohba and takeshi obata, death note (serialized in japan '03-'06; 12 volumes released in english '05-'07)
bryan lee o'malley, scott pilgrim (five volumes, '04-'07 and '09)**
linda williams, ed., porn studies (2004)***
david st. john and cole swensen, eds., american hybrid: a norton anthology of new poetry**** (2009)
george saunders, the brief and frightening reign of phil / in persuasion nation***** (2006)
emmanuel carrére, i am alive and you are dead: a journey into the mind of philip k. dick****** (2005)

*thought about also nominating dan brown and stephanie meyer - the latter of whom i haven't even read - but didn't have space. if i have to pick one of rowling's i'll go for harry potter and the goblet of fire, 2000, because i think it's the point where the hype really gets a lead on the quality - otoh i don't think there's any point in considering them separately /:
**probably the two most 00s comics i can think of? if i have to pick one volume of the latter scott pilgrim gets it together, 2007.
***wanted at least one academic thing, and the only other one i remember buying is fredric jameson's archaeologies of the future. porn studies is a lot more interesting than archaeologies of the future.
****kind of a frustrating botch job of an anthology, but i wasn't sure what else to pick, poetry-wise. i thought maybe of christopher logue's war music (2000) - but that's a collection, re-edited, of stuff from the 80s and 90s - so enhh
***** actually one book in england. if you want to stick to authorial-intention one book, just in persuasion nation, which came out the same year, america.
******not even sure i'll bother voting for this. but my other seventh choice (your face tomorrow i er actually haven't read yet)

i have made 101 orders this year. not ordered 101 items, made 101 orders

Bloody hell!

His are all from the thriftstore but, nonetheless, you and scott should go book by book.

"20 sounds about right. Have an awful vision of me padding the bottom of my ballot with Oscar Wao ('My friends say it's my kind of thing. I bet I'd like it') & other books I haven't technically read if it's many more than that. I get the impression my position is fairly common round ILB at least - I read a lot, but not that much from this decade."

I agree with woofwoofwoof's sentiment above. I also read a fair amount but mostly from decades before the naughties. I think 20 should be the very highest number and would probably prefer 10. If it's any more than ten then you wouldn't be getting the crème-de-la-crème of the naughties and it would start to include stuff that's very good but undeserving of such attention.

I think Ismael also has a point that we don't want "a thirty-way-tie for twentieth place, all with one vote each". However, the graded long tail of points should counter act that to a great extent. Another way of doing so is to invite friends to participate. The larger number of voters taking part the less likely we are to have thirty way ties and the more variable the individual tallies will be on a graded points system.

We don't have much foreign language literature nominated that's been published in English, do we?

If it's any more than ten then you wouldn't be getting the crème-de-la-crème of the naughties and it would start to include stuff that's very good but undeserving of such attention.

Well, yes, but we're talking about a maximum of 20. So if someone has been voraciously reading literature of this decade, they may well love 20 books and think them all worthy of inclusion. And as long as there's no pressure to submit the maximum, others should theoretically include only as many as they see fit.

The updated nominations list

We're currently at 323 books, of which 196 are novels. Some serious good work going on, things have cranked up a gear in the last 48 hours. Many thanks all.

I'd be happy to run with the list as it stands now, but there are two days to go - so get thinking, heeldraggers. Most of what I'd really wanted to see nominated has already been entered, and I'll be able to pick up about half of the (to me) obvious omissions when I do my own nominations.

My impression was that we're not doing badly for translated literature. There are at least twenty that I recognise on a quick scan, but the list has expanded way beyond what I'm familiar with and the actual total is probably nearer double that. There're only two translations that I think are obvious omissions now (neither of which I have read). They're really, really, really popular books, should anyone have slots to fill and be looking for a hint!

can i nominate

j.m. coetzee - youth (2002)

please thx

Good work, that saves me a place.

I've worked out the points system, in case we have any stat geeks reading.

There will be twenty votes each. In an ordered ballot, distribution will be:
40-30-24-20-16-13-11-10-9-8-7-7-6-6-5-5-4-4-3-3 = 231 points total
I think it pans out quite well. For the most part, as you rise through the list, every place gained gets you about 20% more points.

You'll also have the option of unordered ballot, keeping the 231 points total. Each vote here will score 11 points - but you will have to select a number one, which will score 22. Two reasons for this: (a) no.1s are important; and (b) countback of no.1s will be one of the tiebreakers.

Only one David Sedaris book nommed?! (so far)

I don't know the bloke, but I looked him up when I was updating the list and he sounded like he would have interesting tales to tell.

I forgot to say that I'd created a new category for 'short stories', but I've only moved the obvious story collections in there and won't have time to go through the whole list to check if there are any others. If you spot anything in the wrong category, flag it up here and I'll change it.

Non-fiction has become quite a big category too, but (though I'd like to) I probably won't have the time to break it up any further.

Hari Kunzru - My Revolutions - 2008 (fiction - novel)

The book I've enjoyed most in the last several years.

emil.y, that's a good point. The graded scoring system should make it work pretty well too.

i only just noticed christopher logue was already on there. and percival everett! i was going to come on and agitate for someone to maybe nominate that.

i do think 'consider the lobster' (david foster wallace, 2005) should be on here though. oops.

I ain't bending the rules for that, thomp

i'll nominate consider the lobster (david foster wallace, 2005)

just saying. in case anyone else has a spare slot, is all.

xpost aha thanks!

heh

i only read 2 books this decade and now i've nominated both of them. they were both v good tho.

i never did get with youth actually. i wonder if anyone will nominate the other two of his this decade, slow man and summertime

Last updated list before nominations close. This is your last chance - today is the final day.

A slow day yesterday means we're now on 326 books. I know there's at least one set of nominations still to come. I had a go at sorting the non-fictions into categories. It works okay, but is necessarily rough - where do you put Dylan's Chronicles? - so no complaints please!

my non-fiction noms:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran - Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006)
Julian Barnes - Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008)
Mark Rowlands - The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons in Love, Death, and Happiness (2009)

(politics, autobiog, autobiog)