ILX BOOKS OF THE 00s: THE RESULTS! (or: Ismael compiles his reading list, 2010-2019)

Coming soon, folks. But first I have to get some lunch.

anticipation running high! i need a reading list too!

screw lunch we want results

I hereby solemnly vow to read the #1 book.

Unless the 'I love the fantasy genre, lots, and I want it to stop sucking' thread team have block-voted & it's the 6th book in David WW Sheffield's Breast Elves of Cinnara sequence.

Yay! Was hoping this would come up soon.

Lunch has been et and we're ready to go. Couple of preliminaries before we start:

- I'm going for a top hundred and one, as there was a four-way points tie for 98th;
- everything which got only a single vote has been removed. A handful of top choices thus miss out. My original plan was to give those half-points, which would have put them all outside the top hundred anyway, but I decided to get honest and just kick them out. We can have a 'sadly missed' section for these in memorian near the end;
- I've turned out to busier this week than I'd hoped, so this might be slowish going. Do bear with me.

101. Nixonland - Rick Perlstein (2008)
(22points, two votes)

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_GZBskGaBQAY/Sb3jyy_T7PI/AAAAAAAADDw/4CVBeRlaLIg/s400/nixon.png

Take it away, President Keyes:
Not quite as great as his earlier book about the Goldwater campaign, since the Nixon years have been covered to death already, but it’s valuable as a catalog of that era’s GOP wretchedness.

This was supposed to be awesome! If there are 100 books of the decade better than this I've got a lot to read.

100. Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky (1942, translated 2004)
(22 points, two votes)

http://www.mrbsemporium.com/internetshop/images/uploads/suite_francaise.jpg

caloma:
I loved how this broke everything down to show how war affects everyone, often in the most mundane ways. In the first part a man starts to leave Paris only to return to his prized possessions because he cannot bear the thought of them being destroyed or stolen - whereupon he is killed by a car whilst crossing the street.

99. A Storm of Swords - George Martin (2000)
(22 points, two votes)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511811QMKFL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

disappointing pile of holiday reading:
... george r.r. martin, a storm of swords ...
they were all ok i guess

― thomp, Monday, January 4, 2010 1:22 AM (1 week ago)

I'm sorry I can't do any better than that quote, but I did try.

Haha. Oh, and you've put that as 99 - I'm guessing it's actually tied with the others, from the score.

There are loads of ties up until we reach the 50s, then the list thins out quite a bit. However, I specified a number of tiebreakers in the over-wordy version of the voting instructions, and if I apply them properly I think everyone will get an individual spot. A Storm of Swords beats Suite Française purely because it's first vote came in ballot #9 as opposed to ballot #13.

Ahh, okay.

man, if that's as high as george martin got then breast elves of cinnara is screwed

naw i put it as my #1

I didn't vote as I haven't read enough contemp lit to really justify doing it but am excited to see the results anyway, so yay Ismael for doing this.

also lol where u the other martin vote?

if i had blurbed the martin it wld read something like: this book is rad because it reminded fantasy writers that their epics should be more like cable tv shows and less like encyclopedias and also because of [spoiler] and [spoiler] and most jaw-droppingly rad of all [spoiler]

also this fat dude knows not to let his sentences get in the way of a good stabbing

xp yep, this is already enjoyable ismael, & i'm not even an ocd organisational poll-lover

Aw shucks, guys. I think I've read quite a lot and I've certainly built up an enormous library, but it's still pretty horrifying to see just how many of these are totally unknown to me. As a rule of thumb, if I can't come up with an unusual or amusing photo to illustrate a book, I need you to tell me more about it.

98. Veronica - Mary Gaitskill (2005)
(22 points, three votes)

http://media.newtimes.com/1939698.47.jpg

Just finished Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. 227 pages=just the right length as I think she was starting to lose some gas. Beautiful book, though. Some of the prose and the ideas and images contained within were way too dense for me to read more than a few pages at a time.
― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Wednesday, August 2, 2006 12:49 AM (3 years ago)

Veronica is good. I missed my chance to get Mary Gaitskill's to sign my copy at the ALA conference. She seems sort of intimidating, though.
― youn (youn), Saturday, July 15, 2006 8:06 PM (3 years ago)

Mr. Que is right on here. _Veronica_ is a hard and kind of unsparing book -- I would certainly advise somebody new to Gaitskill to start with Two Girls, Fat and Thin (a fictionalized account of the death of Detroit and the circle around Ayn Rand in the 60s!) or Because She Wanted To. Try "The Girl on the Plane":

http://books.google.com/books?id=WcqlIYeRKBkC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=%22the+girl+on+the+plane%22+gaitskill&source=bl&ots=yb1_vR0R7a&sig=Unsv6vz-adaVzh6QGNJb_oNLIY0&hl=en&ei=rEtPS_S7MojUMo602Y8J&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20girl%20on%20the%20plane%22%20gaitskill&f=false

If you don't like this Gaitskill's probably not for you.

Going by Google Images, I'd say that youn's right on here too.

I talked to her after her reading and I too agree with youn.

I didn't vote as I haven't read enough contemp lit to really justify doing it but am excited to see the results anyway, so yay Ismael for doing this.

― Body Butter (a hoy hoy), 14 January 2010 16:24 (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^ and will be keeping my eye out for this as a future reading list.

yes i was the other martin vote. couldn't bring myself to go for erickson tho

if i had blurbed it it would probably be something like "by the end of this the third volume in his eightynine book series one of george r r martin's characters has spent like two thousand pages basically trying and failing to walk from one castle to another and yet in spite of this it is still totally exciting in some way i don't want to admit"

97. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World - Francis Wheen
(23 points, three votes)

http://i46.tinypic.com/ioexhl.jpg

'How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World' by Francis Wheen is fantastic, just out in paperback and painfully timely.
― snotty moore, Friday, November 5, 2004 4:08 PM (5 years ago)

Anyone seeking an alternative to Pop Social Psychology could do worse than read How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen.
― Mike W (caek), Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:43 PM (3 years ago)

I don't think it's possible to do worse than reading Wheen's terrible book.
― James Ward (jamesmichaelward), Monday, February 13, 2006 10:14 AM (3 years ago)

96. On Green Dolphin Street - Sebastian Faulks (2004)
(24 points, two votes)

http://www.musicnotes.com/images/productimages/mtd/MN0041627.gif

Ismael Klata:
I couldn't believe how good this was. Totally convincing in following its protagonist around her love affair, almost as successful in painting the very attractive world that she moves in, and extremely skilful in implying dread - while never tipping over into horror, distaste, sentimentality or any of the other directions he might've aimed her in. I just felt that he showed a great empathy for the humanity of all his characters, and ultimately that's all I want him to do.

as a lover of pretentious bullshit continental "thought" (larf) this Francis Wheen jerk seems like a bit of a jerk. Am I wrong?

p.s. thanks Ismael this is awesome. I had read hardly anything on the nominations list so I abstained, but it'll provide a nice reading list for me too.

It made my longlist, but didn't get a vote from me because I couldn't remember very much about it. I did enjoy it though, but then pretentious blah blah impresses me less and less the more I get to know, so he was preaching to the choir here.

I recalled it as being mostly aimed at spin doctoring, evangelising and homeopathy, and the like - but I just flicked open my copy and landed on a whole chapter deconstructing Derrida. Maybe not your ideal reading, then.

Aptly enough, I have to go and shovel snow off my driveway now rather than expound further on crank philosophy and its demerits. When I get back in I'll try and get another couple up before calling it a night.

you'll be posting 102-? when all is said and done i presume? sorry i didn't vote btw, i think i read too many old books this past decade : /

think those are going to be sadly-missed or some sort of almost made it appendice

95. No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy (2005)
(25 points, three votes)

http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/ar/97803304/9780330440103/100/0/plain/no-country-for-old-men.jpg

fun and violent and pulpy
― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, August 9, 2005 1:55 PM (4 years ago)

The novel I'm reading now, Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, doesn't signal it at all, it's up to the reader to guess that it's speech. (The other annoying punctuation trait of this novel is leaving out the apostrophe in cant didnt wasnt etc., although leaving it in for it's...) Anyway, I'm on the whole enjoying the McCarthy novel, which is sort of Texas noir, but this mucking around with the speech annoys me. Why do writers do it?
― Revivalist (Revivalist), Tuesday, January 16, 2007 3:08 PM (2 years ago)

I'm almost through McCarthy's No Country For Old Men now, and I think it's pretty good. But this punctuation thing does annoy me. Not just his lack of quotation marks, but his leaving out apostrophes in a seemingly random way, and I can't be bothered to check but I get the impression that there is not a single comma in the entire novel. I don't think these eccentricities really add anything to the novel, they're just distractions.
I think I disagree with this, the lack of apostrophes was meant to enhance the impression of unpretentious, country-not-school-smart good ol boys talkin.
I would hate to hear Cormac McCarthy talk about politics and stuff but I sure do like his books.
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, February 8, 2007 11:53 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my impression is that he's really liberal actually?
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, February 9, 2007 12:30 AM (2 years ago)

I'll post the full lot eventually, yes. As a teaser, 210 books scored at least one vote. 87 scored only one vote, and 123 scored more than one. One book with only two votes has managed to make the top thirty!

hey I've read that one! It was alright!

Should've been higher in my view. One of those votes was mine.

Particularly in view of what's coming up next.

I'm thinking about (if I have time, anyway) trying out some of the more mainstream modern fiction that this list throws up. Would McCarthy be a good place to start? I'd be more likely to go with The Road than No Country, as I like me some depressing shit.

I can't get into McCarthy at all - I have tried All the Pretty Horses three times without success. I didn't get past page 5.

If you can't get into that McCarthy, try Tom. Remainder is incredible.

94. Experience - Martin Amis (2000)
(25 points, three votes)

http://www.bookforum.com/uploads/upload.000/id02299/article00.jpg

Parenthetic hound (woofwoofwoof) says:
Has a bit of a heart, or perhaps deliberately written to make him seem as though he has a bit of a heart. In any case, more engaging than the novels around it, mostly because of its cast - Kingsley above all (cf Koba the Dread - only bearable when Hitch or Kingsley turn up on the page, rather than all the tiring & histrionic "Six million dead. Think about it. Six. Million. Just words. Each one a life. Count to six million: one life for each number. Your life. Your wife. Your child. etc etc" rhetoric.).

and

The last time I gave a shit about him.
― Parenthetic hound (woofwoofwoof), Thursday, December 17, 2009 2:19 PM (4 weeks ago)

No Country really reads like a film treatment to me while The Road feels more complete in a way despite its almost fragmentary style. If you've not read any McCarthy I might recommend starting with an earlier work like Outer Dark or Child of God, but The Road might be okay too. In any case, Blood Meridian very much seems to be his masterpiece so if you want the full experience I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

Child of God is a really good intro to McCarthy. It's easy to read and creeeeeeeeepy in that special McCarthy way and includes his language quirks, so you get a good feel for his style. Blood Meridian is his best, but it's denser.

Experience was dead last for a long time, limping along on three points, and I was looking forward to opening the countdown with it as 'joint 348th' before Parenthetic hound ruined my fun. Amis just invites the cheap shot, and I say that liking a lot of his stuff - including Koba the Dread, which I even gave thought to nominating.

Anyway, that's enough from me for tonight. More tomorrow.

Random getting-in-drunk catch-up.

Thought No Country was some fun, but God that last chunk of babbling on about what was it the primal evil of the land etc. Confusingly blows all the tautness, intensity that he'd done so well. But absolutely seconding the Blood Meridian recs, that's an incredible novel.

Am anti the Wheen book. He's a terrific old-school journalist of the Private Eye species: sharp, funny, has a ridiculous memory/card index for gossip and form on public figures - ie if you were send'em back or embarrassed yourself with a fireman in 1973, he remembers. But Mumbo-Jumbo felt confused: what was he attacking - new ageism? critical theory? Diana-gush public sentimentality? These are all different things, with different histories. Why does he think all these start when Thatcher comes to power? And I'm really hazy on the 'Enlightenment values' he's all for - unsure there's a method you can cleanly extract from the intellectual history of early-mid c18th europe that gets you on the high ground he fancies. But I haven't read since it came out & don't have a copy here; can't confirm my remembered skepticsim.

Ismael, You are dead right that part of the joy of Amis is cheap shots. Sorry for ruining the fun on Experience.

Rennavate, I'm pretty sure that McCarthy (Tom) is going to turn up somewhere in the list. Hoping for aberrantly high.

Any predictions? I think US Male fiction for the win. Either the 40ish crowd or Roth, but I hope to be surprised.

I hope one of DFW's books makes the list. Oblivion in particular.

Taking Oblivion - his only eligible fiction? - as a potential winner. & Consider the Lobster likely to place strongly.

I dunno, I'm a big lover of DFW and I didn't place Oblivion.

93. Look To Windward - Iain M. Banks (2000)
(26 points, two votes)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514JUww60WL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

As I said above, I'm sure IMB is a bit kinky. Doesn't Look To Windward have a brief sentence about the main protagonist's surprised joy when his wife introduced him to bondage?
― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, November 15, 2006 4:12 PM (3 years ago)

A travesty and betrayal of the Culture imho.

I did not vote as the sci-fi books were the only ones I've read (and maybe a quick glance at some of the non-fiction entries which are largely piled unread around my flat), but I am glad to see this place.

xpost oh, why, out of interest? This is probably my favourite IMB of the ones I've read, but that's only a few.

The Culture is meant to be a starry-eyed utopia! An almost kinda sorta plausible techno-liberal-anarcho-communist paradise! A crazy ideal to strive for. But in LtW he tried to sow the seeds of doubt, of internal strife, unprinicipled power grabbers, neo-con responses to a terrorist threat. It went some way to justifiying those who saw the Culture as a parody of America and American foreign policy, which it never was.

xpost

I think this is my favourite novel by one of my favourite writers. I've always had a basic problem with the realist novel that it misses the essential point of fiction, that it is "made up". Iain M Banks seems endlessly effortlessly inventive, creating whole universes of previously unimaginable worlds, entities, dilemmas. I'm probably not going to convert any non-SF fans by saying that much of the story takes place inside the body of a behemothaur, forever travelling around the edge of the galaxy in a mysterious air sphere lit by orbiting sun-moons, but hey. SF is bedevilled by aliens that are just people in a suit, but with Banks, the specifics of his creations, their ecology, history, philosophy, actually drive the plots. He is also both serious and playful, and this is in part a meditation on death for people for whom death is optional. The whole Culture sequence is an effort to first imagine a perfect society and then pick at it, like a scab.

Yeah ok, the 'perfect' society is unobtainable and he always was exploring its limits - but in LtW he gave it cancer.

t went some way to justifiying those who saw the Culture as a parody of America and American foreign policy, which it never was.

Ledge, have you read Matter yet? Pretty explicit take on "liberal interventionism" that actually annoyed me slightly in the same way. Still good, though.

Don't you think the problems/contradictions of the Culture were always there? Like the explanation of the Idiran war in Consider Phlebas?

I haven't read enough of the books (or read them in the right order, since I think Look to Windward was my first) to comment, but even LtW seems pretty starry-eyed to me! I mean LtW may go "here is a small scab upon this vast utopia", but coming from reading the bubbling landscape of black death pustules that most future-society SF offers...

(PS no disrespect to less utopic fiction but a change is nice)

I've always had a basic problem with the realist novel that it misses the essential point of fiction, that it is "made up".

I can maybe concede that this is the main trait of the term 'fiction', but as my old friend B.S. Johnson says, "fiction and the novel are not synonymous". Do you really think this is the main point of writing?

xxp I did read Matter, but I just took it as an enjoyable romp, the political parallels didn't jump out to me nearly as much as in some of his others (prob should reread it then) - which also are definite takes on "liberal intervention", but not as a parody of America, more as a critique of its methods and motivations.

Obv the Idiran war was presented as a pretty clear dilemma, what with the peace faction 'n' all, but the justification was still pretty clear and understandable even from a liberal perspective.

utopic

Whoops "dystopic" but "utopian", who designed this crummy language anyway

"dystopic"

really?

Am enjoying this - didn't vote, because I had a sudden access of internet gloom, which meant I missed out on some music nominations as well - but like a few here I don't read an awful lot of contemporary fiction, and the only thing I would have suggested that I don't think did get suggested would have been the translation of Journey By Moonlight (Rix/Szerb).

And well, what can I say Ismael, I loved Experience, probably my favourite Martin Amis. Thought it was well-structured, interesting and on occasion moving and funny. I did take exception to a couple of the bits of whining, which I didn't think showed much poise (and the balance, poise and tone is very much what I liked about the book).

Anti that specific Wheen as well. That sort of thing can feel so pat - I bought it for a Telegraphy reading, the whole world's going to hell relation, cos it's the sort of thing he'd like. There's stuff you find yourself nodding to of course, but it's the whole audience reaction thing/baiting aspect to it that I'm uneasy with. I'd rather people were involved in speculative and unusual theory and philosophy than writing that sort of thing basically.

am worried that the latest robert jordan book came to late to clinch #1 in this

Hm, Google says -topian over -topic by about 10:1 for both so I can only assume that some treasured book of my youth had a blurb abt "dystopic" on the back.

Sorry for derail, carry on!

92. Nostalgia - Mircea Cãrtãrescu (translated 2005)
(26 points, two votes)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Mircea_cartarescu_by_cosmin_bumbutz.jpg/250px-Mircea_cartarescu_by_cosmin_bumbutz.jpg

wmlynch:
This book of five short stories is an excellent read. In prose reminiscent of Borges, Schulz and the magical realists, Cartarescu describes a Bucharest that is under tremendous stress at the end of the Communist era. This book is worth reading for the first story alone: "The Roulette Player" is about a man who takes part in public, underground Russian Roulette games and who continues to increase the stakes until there are more bullets than holes in the gun. Cartarescu deserves to be read (and translated) far more widely than he is.

I know those are the wrong accents, by the way, but I'm having to improvise using my iPhone today and they're the best I can do.

I hadn't heard of that but I like the sounds of it. +1!

Yeah, me too! (Would read anything compared to Borges, really)

Sadly seems to be out of print though but will definitely try to track it down.

The blurb reminds me of a long-forgotten book I had, also set I think in Eastern Europe, where the (probably all-male) characters started out violent and got sickeningly violent the longer it went on. The bit that sticks in my mind is where they took part in an underground racing club where the thrill was to race at top speed along a narrow residential street, knocking from the line of parked cars as many hardback books as possible, said books having been taped to the vehicles' doors. During the race an unfortunate woman woke up in one of the stationary cars and tried to get out, only to be immediately decapitated and depieditated(?) by her own passenger door.

I'd love to find it again, if anyone knows it.

(Would read anything compared to Borges, really)

Haha, yeah. I will join the ranks of those who don't know this but are intrigued.

91. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (2009)
(26 points, two votes)

http://bestlittlebookshelf.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/malcolmgladwell2.jpg

Red Raymaker:
All of Gladwell's work is excellent but this is my favourite. It's very well written, entertaining and insightful. He doesn't quite make the point but it could be taken as a blueprint for social change.

JL:
Gladwell is an eager, sincere propagator of wrong ideas

Have only read Blink but it was moderately entertaining, but high on anecdote and supposition, low on real data, and ultimately pretty confused about its own premise.

I didn't vote as I haven't read enough contemp lit to really justify doing it but am excited to see the results anyway, so yay Ismael for doing this.

― Body Butter (a hoy hoy), 14 January 2010 16:24 (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^ and will be keeping my eye out for this as a future reading list.

― Not a reactionary git, just an idiot. (darraghmac), Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:06 PM (Yesterday)

^ thank u

Can't get past his hair I'm afraid which may be why my copy of The Outliers has been lying in my 'to read' box for several months.

Late to the party but: I liked Look to Windward all right. If I remember correctly, there were too many long speeches in it! I read Consider Phlebas too and have a hard time remembering which events happened in which ones. One of them had too many long "action" sequences. Didn't feel either one was really strong in the "unbridled inventiveness" dimension -- yeah, yeah, big ringworlds, people are immortal, etc. etc. I felt like the word "trillion" was used a lot just to make things sound big. The only thing that impressed me was the names of the ships.

Reading that it seems very harsh! But I did kind of like this book and will probably read others -- just felt disappointed after hearing many times that Iain Banks was the apex of literary SF.

I wouldn't go that far. Literary space opera maybe.

I'm surprised Outliers only got two votes. I thought it was a very good book with some well thought out ideas. Thus far it seems to me that all of the books, many of them very fine ones, have found it difficult to consolidate support from a sizeable number of people voting. As Ismael has alluded to before, it seems that, at least at the bottom of the poll, that the results are quite flat. I hope that it thins out the higher up we go and I would hope that the top book will have more than just a few votes. I suppose what appears to be happening in the results thus far was likely when few people voted - which makes it all the more important that Ismael gave us the chance to weight our votes heavily in favour of our top two or three.

I think Waterstones may be organising a similar competition. I had a glance at a poster suggesting this in one of their shops yesterday - there's nothing I can find on the internet about it though. I imagine that if they get a few thousand people voting they will notice significant amounts of votes accreting to certain books (probably Meyer and Brown).

Has Ismael said how many ballots were cast?

Waterstones

Oh are they now? Let's see them get Mircea Cărtărescu in their top 100.

39 ballots, emil.y. And don't fear, they do get significantly more votes as we rise (with the odd rogue result of course). It started out very flat, but turned into more of a parabola by the end.

90. Stasiland - Anna Funder (2004)
(27 points, two votes)

http://berlin-germany.ca/images/trams.jpg

one reason why the Stasi in East Germany did not open fire on crowds of demonstrators was that that said demonstrators were so heavily infiltrated by Stasi agents that they would be shooting their own. This is asserted in Anna Funder's book "Stasiland", but I don't think it is that convincing an explanation for the fall of the DDR.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, May 29, 2006 4:04 PM (3 years ago)

Communists aren't 'completely different' to fascists. They have a great deal in common, most obviously that in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union the interests of the party were identified with those of the nation at the expense of the individual and the independence of the judiciary was destroyed ... Women are assumed to be less likely to commit atrocities and start wars because women rarely commit atrocities and start wars. That's just a fact. I'm not saying women are 'good' and men are 'bad' because of hormonal or reproductive differences. I'm saying that their experiences and situations differ (as you obviously understand, because you say as much) and therefore so do their reactions to them. Unusually this is reflected in 'Stasiland', which is what makes it such an interesting and original work, though I may be biased due to its undeniable literary qualities.
― snotty moore, Saturday, September 24, 2005 10:50 PM (4 years ago)

89. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (2001)
(27 points, two votes)

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5255/patchett.jpg

Ismael Klata:
Books like this get unfairly overlooked because they're just trying to be good stories instead of thinking they're recording or changing people's worlds. This was about a hostage seige in an embassy in Latin America, with lovely detailing of the changing relationships between and among captors and hostages. Full of empathy.

Nothing, huh? These two and Suite Française are the only ones so far not to get at least some comment.

Sadly I haven't read any of the ones mentioned so far. I am actually gutted that I was away for a month and missed the nomination deadline.

I'll comment on Bel Canto: I am really glad to see it on this list, because I thought it was a compelling and lovely story, and its presence here reminds me that I want to read The Patron Saint of Liars.

Stasiland triumphs over Nixonland - but can they both hold out against Netherland? Stay tuned!

It has been so long since I read both Bel Canto and Suite Francaise that it is difficult to explain exactly why I liked them - The one thing they both have in common is that they explore how people's relationships can develop beyond the roles assigned to them at the start. For example in Suite Francaise, a relationship develops between an occupying German soldier and a woman whose house he is assigned to (similar to Captain Corelli's mandolin but not as poignant). I also agree that Bel Canto was a really lovely story - makes me wonder why I haven't read more of Patchett.

Can't get past his hair I'm afraid which may be why my copy of The Outliers has been lying in my 'to read' box for several months.

If Gladwell's writing will remind me of Georges Perec as much as his hair does, then that's someone else I need to put on my reading list.
(only just seen pic, images turned off at work)

Oops, it's non-fiction. I should really stop ruining this thread and just thank Ismael for all his hard work.

Ha, that hair comment reminded me of Perec, too.

http://i48.tinypic.com/dr9p90.jpg

"Maybe you stop with the wisecracks until you've sold ten million books, hmm?"

http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1225922827p5/15923.jpg

"Hey, chill out dude. They're just jealous they can't have such vibrant hair."

perec looks like he should be in "willow" there.

I definitely need to read Suite Française - France running up to 1940 sounds fascinating. Also, I'm not sure I can remember any other book getting such ecstatic reviews on release.

Funny, Suite Française had a lot of hype going for a while, then boink, no one seemed to care anymore. Indeed, one of the last mentions I recall of it, was a backlash article in, uh, Commentary magazine, I think?
Really need to get around to reading it -- I have a copy on my shelf, even!

Enjoying this countdown a lot -- I like the slow pace you're posting them at. Sorry again for not voting, but I'm way too aware of how much good stuff I haven't read. Weak ;_;

Oh, it was in the Jewish Quarterly: http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/article05e1.html?articleid=400 (by Tadzio Koelb)

Uh, dammit, I cannot even make links anymore. The title of the linked article is "Irène Némirovsky and the Death of the Critic."

Thanks Øystein. The slow pace was more about having other things to do, than because of any grand plan - but it's working quite well and we're in no rush, so I think I'll keep it leisurely.

88. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach (2003)
(28 points, three votes)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f0gL22kRMKs/Spqncg6TYBI/AAAAAAAAByw/Xu_vLD4LqBA/s400/Stiff-cover.jpg

excellent. Fascinating all the way through.
― James Morrison, Saturday, March 10, 2007 3:47 AM (2 years ago)

I asked for that one after seeing it mentioned at ILE somewhere! My SIL gave it to me for my birthday and said I could never make fun of her husband's wish lists again (his list is always entirely made up of obscure books about the Holocaust because he's a German history prof). I've only made it to chapter four or so in Stiff, but so far it is really great.
― Sara R-C, Saturday, March 10, 2007 7:38 PM (2 years ago)

I am enjoying "Stiff - The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach - nonfiction about the history of corpses, decomposition, funereal industry, etc. it's very fun, but don't bring it to read at breakfast, and don't try to read the funny passages aloud.
― aimurchie, Saturday, May 8, 2004 10:45 PM (5 years ago)

87. The Elementary Particles also known as Atomised - Michel Houellebecq (2000)
(28 points, four votes)

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2009/9/10/1252573627930/Michel-Houellebecq-001.jpg

Parenthetic Hound (woofwoofwoof) says:
Not sure I'd still love this, and diminishing returns over the next novel or two, but a fine piece of misanthropy in the best European tradition. Nice dash of science & repulsion at the biological facts of humanity. And I'm glad there's a lunatic, unpleasant French author with some fame about the place. Brightens things up.

Loads of great material on this in the archives too, too much to leave it all out. Here's a couple of quotes:

Houellebecq definitely has a schtick: reactionary, clinically depressed, nihilistic provocateur. The French public loves to be provoked and it has a long history in French letters with Celine being another relatively recent example. For me, it's hard to tell if this is him for real, or a series of voices he's taking on and that's what makes him vaguely interesting.
― Bill in Chicago, Saturday, September 8, 2007 12:32 PM (2 years ago)

OTM. This is the only thing that's at all interesting about MH's work: the ambiguity of the voice. He even riffs on this in Atomised, when Bruno (who, like the author began his literary career as a poet) presents his editor with a reactionary screed about "the Negro" and his ostensible sexual prowess. But it's not enough. While Houellebecq clearly intends to provoke, he's too chickenshit to follow through on his own threats. Nothing in Atomised or The Platform pushes as hard as, say, Kathy Acker. He won't even go as far as Bruno, his literary doppelganger. So, I wind up feeling cheated.
― Bob Standard, Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:02 PM (2 years ago)

I have read 'Atomised' and saw the film based on the first one. I felt quite depressed after seeing the film, perhaps because it was on a Sunday night and I went to the cinema on my own, which prompted too much questioning on my own existence. Found them both clever, though stretching a bit too much to fit some of the arguments. According to my male friend who recommended his books:he is not mysoginistic, he just should have needed a good shag, or a few, at 18.
― Laetitia, Friday, November 23, 2001 1:00 AM (8 years ago)

But enough from me - I'm calling it a night. Squabble amongst yourselves.

did much topical political stuff make the nomination list? seeing the non-fiction above makes me think of a few things that i can't remember coming across - standard operating procedure, the dark side, political bios of bush, etc.

not sure what to say re: stasiland other than that i'm pretty sure it was one of my votes, and it's recommendable across the board not just for germany-nerds or whatever else; as a free-floating journalistic roam, a study of human nature under repression.

What about Obama's books? They must be this last decade? (on shelf, waiting to be read, since you ask)

i think the first one's probably fifteen years old, the second i've never been motivated to read so much, i think it's kinda manifesto-esque?

The Audacity of Hope would've qualified. It seems like kind of an obvious omission now that you mention it.

There were only a few modern political books nominated and (without giving too much away) mostly they haven't done so well. I do find it a bit hard to tell where politics stops and history or economics begins sometimes. There's one coming up in two or three books' time, though.

all of Houellebecq's books kinda blend together for me (except for a possibility of an island which is terrible) but im a fan too

http://mamarucci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/glenn-beck.jpg http://smb.media.seagate.com/files/2009/07/fingers_crossed.jpg

I didn't enjoy Atomised at all. Houellebecq is for me the Marilyn Manson of prose because they're both out to shock their audiences. Houellebecq compares unfavourably to Marilyn Manson though because he doesn't have an equivalent mastery over the art form he's using and his presentation is poor. I won't be reading any more of his nihilistic oeuvre. I read it when I was in my mid-20s but it struck me that it was the sort of book that in Britain could only really be popular amongst certain teenage students in university. In much the same way as a book like "One the Road" it encourages its reader to strike out and rebel against social convention but to no obvious purpose (not even a positive individualism), and worse than something like "On the Road" it prescribes nihilism and hopelessness. I predict that of those who voted for this book that a majority will be under 25 and I expect (though they might not agree just now) that they will become more critical of the book's messages as they grow up. Feedback on these points from those who voted would be interesting to read on the blog - what was it you voted for exactly?

I didn't vote on this poll but I don't think Houellebecq is advocating nihilism so much as describing the world.

86. Sinai Diving Guide - Alberto Siliotti (2005)
(28 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)

http://shop.divenow.nl/shop/catalog/images/Sinai_diving_guide_geodia.jpg

Red Raymaker:
This is a beautifully presented and written book.  It is also a very practical guide for those wishing to scuba dive in the Sinai.  However, it stands out from any other diving guide I have seen by the fact that it includes lots of top class and beautiful and colourful photographs of the underwater life and coral shelves in the Sinai, and the fact that each dive has a beautifully drawn underwater map setting out the dive site or route, including topographical features such as coral walls, shelves, holes, caverns etc, and it also manages to link this to the lie of the land on the surface. It's such a beautifully crafted book.

I'd just like to take a moment to assure contributors that neither of those votes was mine.

haha. I'm sure that's a very nice book, but I don't think I'll be looking into it.

Hahahahahaaaa.

I think this is the one book that made it on hype alone. Googling "Sinai Diving Guide" brings up our noms & voting threads as the #25 and #43 hits.

Damn, I missed out on my commission from Alberto as it didn't kick in unless it got into the top 20!

Btw, did the person who voted it as their number one do it as a joke or do they really love the book?

Hm, there may have been a slight element of manipulation there - I did rather bend over backwards to interpret alimosina's post as an extra ballot. I'm absolutely certain it was dead serious though (and it did get Stiff into our line-up too).

An interpretation for which Daryl Harper would be proud!

Ha, I saw him giving a very good decision against Strauss earlier. During an absolutely ripping bowling spell from Steyn, Morkel and Parnell (I tried 'booming' there, it didn't really work)

i read suite francaise and thought it was tremendous in a rather simple "here are some people and this is what happened to them during this period of time" manner. the invasion comes across in the novel as a brief dark period for some, an annoyance for others, and less a horrific crisis for any of them. pretty interesting as a take from inside the heart of it.

I hope to see Rory Stewart's The Places In Between on this list.

The Sinai Diving Guide looks amazing.

Ker-ching! I'm hoping that at some point Red will scan in the single copy in existence and we can have a proper picture thread.

OK, I'll see what I can do and whether someone can help me to do that at work next week...

85. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (2007)
(29 points, three votes)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3592/3408934837_17e1f781ba.jpg?v=0

extract:
As I dug deeper into the history of how this market model had swept the globe, I discovered that the idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operandi of Friedman's movement from the very beginning - this fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to advance. What was happening in Iraq and New Orleans was not a post-September 11 invention. Rather, these bold experiments in crisis exploitation were the culmination of three decades of strict adherence to the shock doctrine.

everything wrote this on thread canadian government about to fall? on board I Love Everything on Dec 3, 2008:
Naomi Klein is using the situation to try to sell some books:
"What I think we are seeing is a clear example of the shock doctrine in the way the Harper government has used the economic crisis to push through a much more radical agenda than they won a mandate to do. At the same time we are seeing an example of what I call in the book a "shock resistance," where this tactic has been so overused around the world and also in Canada that we are becoming more resistant to the tactic"

Haha, excellent choice of pic. I haven't actually read any Klein, so can't comment, though I'm guessing this placing means No Logo is a certainty?

Was it nominated? Just took look at the list, and it doesn't seem so.

Not nominated, would you believe. And a quick google reveals that it was indeed (2000) - I had it down as quintessential 90s.

Here's a thread on it anyway, though - and the day just keeps on giving for Naomi Klein fans, because...

84. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (2005)
(29 points, five votes)

http://i47.tinypic.com/333b9c6.jpg

oops (Oops) wrote this on thread Recommend to me some good "popular" economics books on board I Love Everything on Jul 5, 2005:
Found that lying around the house, so am reading it now. It's okay, but I don't think it'll really "help a smart person undestand economic concepts with which they have no previous experience". It's more of a "here's a few counterintuitive findings about non-boring stuff that may make you go hmm" rather than a general background/intro to economics

Philip Nunez wrote this on thread "The Wire" on HBO on board I Love Everything on Nov 18, 2009:
Isn't Poot a reference to the 'rational actor' argument from the venkatesh/freakonomics stuff? he makes more $ slinging sneakers than drugs -- basically everyone who sucks at it gets out. (e.g. cutty, namond)

abanana wrote this on thread ILX BOOK OF THE 00s: VOTING, lobbying and boostering thread (voting closes 31 December) on board I Love Everything on Dec 24, 2009:
the abortion/crime study is particularly bad because after freakonomics was published mistakes were found in the coding which got rid of any correlation -- so levitt cooked up a slightly different formula which got the result he wanted

nabisco (nabisco) wrote this on thread william bennett: aborting Black babies would lower the crime rate, but that would be wrong on board I Love Everything on Sep 30, 2005:
I feel bad for the poor dude! He was clearly trying to caricature someone else's position, or at least one he was reading into Freakonomics -- isn't that the source for the abortion-lowers-crime research? So he tries to argue with what he imagines to be the implications of that ("this doesn't mean abortion is good -- I mean, we could lower crime by aborting all black children, but obviously that'd be reprehensible") and then gets called out as if he's actually taking that stance.
I mean, this is why no one on ILX can ever run for office -- just think of the horrible out-of-context things you've said on this board

Steven Levitt:
in your face, Klein!

Oh woe, the next page I looked at offered me this image instead:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/hagy1bWeb.jpg

!

this was posted in the voting thread but worth referencing again - freakonomics demolished:
http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/mythsofmurder.htm

And on Atomised - from what I remember, if it advocates anything (& I don't think it does especially) it's a scientific transcendence of the human, ie the abolition of death and sex. And it's very hard on rebellion, especially that of the 60s, which it sees as self-interested hedonism. But really Noodle Vague otm.

83. Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago (2008)
(30 points, two votes)

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ioB6RCYquo9tYM:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_L5KZ2GdNwMw/SuHyHrwHRYI/AAAAAAAAAEY/h3mqDqO_nRc/s400/jose-saramago.jpg

I ordered [2666] a few days ago, along with Saramago's Death With Interruptions. I probably will not get a chance to start either until May 17th, 2009, my 26th birthday, graduate school graduation day, end of a personal nightmare, and beginning of the better part of my life. I'm really looking forward to that day.
― z "R" s (Z S), Friday, November 7, 2008 5:29 PM (1 year ago)

Pretty thin archive for this - that's its only mention outside the context of this poll.

... and there's no sign of that changing. Poor Jose, with his nobel prize, solid gold house and his rocket car.

82. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (2006)
(30 points, three votes)

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6672/funhome.jpg

Lovely story of a family wrestling with troubles and secrets
― Ismael Klata

Fun Home isn't really that good after all. It's more "literary" I suppose but in a very obvious way -- I'm not used to authors spelling out their allusions to other texts. Also Bechdel has an odd habit of dropping in 4 syllable words from out of nowhere. Much preferred "Blankets" despite its lower aspirations.
― Arethusa, Sunday, July 22, 2007 3:41 AM (2 years ago)

No, it really is very good.
One of the great things about Fun Home is that can spell out its allusions to other texts, because it isn't making those allusions to be clever, but instead wants to show how overwhelming the weight of those allusions can be. So a sly "did you get that? it's like Proust!" moment, which is the sort of game that most allusions end up being, would have totally defeated her purpose. Instead, she almost makes fun of you for being part of that game; the book is about some of the consequences of such a mediated life.
― Casuistry, Sunday, July 22, 2007 5:29 PM (2 years ago)

Good authors don't use allusions to be "clever". I prefer them to be used in more subtle manner, more as a seamless you-can-see-it-if-you-know-it-doesn't-matter-if-you-don't manner, rather than the book become nothing more than a personalized Cliff Notes. *shrugs* Which is how Fun Home read to me. I get that's how she had to tell her story, it just didn't work for me. (Funnily enough the Proust section worked the best for me, probably because that was the one, out of all of them, that least needed the And This Is How Budding Grove Applies To My Life tactic.)
― Arethusa, Sunday, July 22, 2007 6:21 PM (2 years ago)

Graphic novel, obviously - pity the panel didn't come out a little bit bigger. A decent result, but it's not the highest one in our poll.

Just finished reading two good books from the noughties this week:
(i) "Getting Our Way" by Christopher Meyer (published in 2009) - this is a really good book on British diplomacy. It has three parts:
1. Security
2. Prosperity
3. Values
Each part has 3 case studies. I found the most fascinating to be the 3 case studies in Part 2 which dealt with British diplomacy with China. The first case study charted Britain's first contact with China when McCartney visited the Emperor, refused to kowtow, and the general apathy of the Chinese to the outside world. The second case study examined the gunboat diplomacy of the 1800s and the third case study analysed Sino-British diplomacy over the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Really well written with fascintating insights into how diplomacy works. Much better than Meyer's last book this one is joined by a three-part series on diplomacy coming up on BBC4 in February. I hope it's as good as the book. I was really pleasantly surprised.

(ii) "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy - this was on our nominations list and the book was adapted into a film which is currently out in the cinemas. I read it in under 20 hours so it's a really easy and quick read. On its surface it's a very sad and disturbing book given that a boy and his father are travelling down the US to the coast and scrabbling around a desolate and dead world looking for food and ways to avoid being killed and eaten. However, the way the relationship between father and son is portrayed, and the sacrifice that a parent is willing to endure for his offspring is really heart rending and life affirming. In many ways I felt the book distilled the greater human condition, the predicament we find ourselves in. Worth a read. Those of you who read it, how did the film compare?

am reading 'surperfreakonomics' atm and it's light, easy & entertaining stuff, but not presented in a way to make you sit up and think 'eureka' at any stage. i believe most of it about as much as i'd believe a student case study of 'starbucks' as a success story in 2006. in fact it's pretty much delivered in that style.

am curious as to whether palin's diaries will place, which was pretty much the book i enjoyed most the past decade.

Not nominated Darragh, so no (see what wrongs you could've put right by pitching in?).

Are they as amusing as they should be? I got them for Xmas one year, but was immediately put off when I read somewhere else that he's actually a miserable sod in real life. I do hope it's not 500 pages of gripes and despair.

One of the great things about Fun Home is that can spell out its allusions to other texts, because it isn't making those allusions to be clever, but instead wants to show how overwhelming the weight of those allusions can be. So a sly "did you get that? it's like Proust!" moment, which is the sort of game that most allusions end up being, would have totally defeated her purpose. Instead, she almost makes fun of you for being part of that game; the book is about some of the consequences of such a mediated life.
― Casuistry, Sunday, July 22, 2007 5:29 PM (2 years ago)

this is so otm it leaves me completely unable to elaborate on anything else about it or why else that book is great

I didn't know the film was out. I saw the trailer absolutely ages ago (like, about a year) but then it just disappeared. I wondered if the whole thing was getting canned. I've read the book but shan't pronounce on it here as there's still a tiny chance that it could feature later.

Are they as amusing as they should be? I got them for Xmas one year, but was immediately put off when I read somewhere else that he's actually a miserable sod in real life. I do hope it's not 500 pages of gripes and despair.

no, they're great! incredibly informative and much more honest about the workings of python than i was anticipating.

i didn't get involved in nominating simply because i didn't imagine anything i'd actually have read would be up to scratch in intimidating ILX book club tbh.

The film of The Road wasn't grey enough, cold enough or dead enough. It was alright, Viggo was good, I didn't have a problem with the bigger part given to the mother. My favourite scene from the book, where they come across the train rusting into the tracks was missing.

Fantastic book, above average film.

thought that whole palin conversation was about sarah. despite reference to "he".

I can't begin to imagine what her diaries would be like.

Intimidating? Hm, the meta chat re Fun Home left me floundering a little I must confess. I sometimes wonder whether all that sort of effort is totally wasted on me. Maybe I do enjoy the added layers of meaning without recognising what the author's up to. I remember there being a Proust bit in Fun Home at least, but it didn't mean a great deal as I've never read Proust and so possibly I didn't pay enough attention to what it was really saying - but whether there were other references I have no idea. I just took it, and enjoyed it, at face value - a sweet story about an awkward, infuriating man.

re: intimidating: i didn't actually have any basis for this btw, just assumed it.

fwiw, Fun Home was the first graphic novel I ever read, and it made me really excited to further explore the genre. I loved it.

81. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories - Wells Tower (2009)
(30 points, three votes)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/11/arts/towe.jpg

Mizzell:
A great writer of young characters, also sensitive vikings.

I encountered an unforgettable story in the 2003 Pushcart collection, "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned," by Wells Tower, originally published, it says, in Fence, which I've never heard of. It tells of a band of marauding Norsemen who have attacked every village around but still need to maraud, so they go back to a town they had just been to recently, even though there is nothing left to steal and no one to fight with. Although the setting is historical, the main character tells the story in a contemporary voice. The contrast between setting and voice makes for some startling humor. Includes lots of grotesque violence.
― Janet Gurn-Soosy, Sunday, January 11, 2004 6:00 PM (6 years ago)

^ seriously ahead of her time. Everything else I've seen says it's from 2009. (I liked this New York Times piece)

this sounds awesome and i love fence. First one on the list I feel I'll definitely read.

Yup, will most likely read. Normally short stories from promising US writer absolutely not my thing, but I've heard about Wells Tower from a few different directions now. Also, awesome name.

would love to hear more about the palin book. i'd kinda assumed that since it was brushed up rather than straight out of her confused jumbled mind, it wouldn't be so compelling.

you know they were talking about michael not sarah right

Yeah, Darragh's talking about Michael Palin. I doubt Sarah's the reflective journal-keeping type, but if they exist they *must* one day be releasedomeIm anticipating some ungodly cross between William Steig, Mein Kapmf and William Burroughs.

"...released. I'm..." I don't have tourette's.

goddammit. i was thinking diaries was going rogue.

IIRC Palin's diaries weren't nominated, shame as they would have crept in near the bottom of my ballot.

I've never heard of Wells Tower but I will definitely have to check that book out. The description of that story sounds kind of like "Culloden."

Great thread so far, Ismael, thank you for doing this!

Very confused for a second about Wells Tower. I remember reading that short story in Anchor's New American Short Stories Anthology back in 2004 and liking it a lot. Didn't realize he was just now releasing his first book. I'm guessing I should pick it up based on the Viking story and this one from the New Yorker a few years ago.

The Sinai Diving Guide

Here are some snaps from the book which I scanned this afternoon.

THis first one is a 3D atlas of the Blue Hole - El Bells dive I described about a week ago.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5449/snapshot20100117185650.jpg

And here are some of the pages describing the Blue Hole - El Bells dive. There is a smaller version of the 3D atlas dive plan, a photo of a diver in the Blue Hole, and a photo of the crack in the reef (top right) which allows entry into EL BElls and the long narrow descent to 32 metres to the start of the coral wall drift dive.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2725/snapshot20100117191002.jpg

Here are some pages describing the "Canyon" dive in Dahab as well. There is a mini 3D atlas of the dive, photos, a map and descriptions.

http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/6217/snapshot20100117191614.jpg

Some more photos and 3D images of the "Canyon" dive:

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1751/snapshot20100117192130.jpg

Liking it. I see the Blue Hole better now in the first one - it looks bloody terrifying. Wikipedia tells me there is footage around of a guy filming his own death at the bottom, which is just about the worst thing I can imagine. The name 'El Bells' is quite fitting, I've got AC/DC on my internal jukebox now. I like the little camels up in the hills too.

I'm just relieved the book exists to be honest - I was starting to get worried that we'd been hoodwinked into lionising the book equivalent of Keyser Söze.

80. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell (2006)
(31 points, two votes)

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5049/blackswangreen.jpg

Parenthetic Hound (woofwoofwoof):
The best of the generation's Britishes

He got some stick (again, from Private Eye, I think) for the relentless product name-dropping, and it is very noticable (someone with a better memory for pop trivia could probably place the year exactly but I'm stuck on 'early-80s').
It's probably set in 1982 (Mitchell was born in 1969, so 13 in 1982).I loved the book. And I think I am not in the target demographic as a Dutch girl born in 1979...
― Ionica (Ionica), Friday, June 30, 2006 12:54 PM (3 years ago)

after a fairly weak start i thought "Black Swan Green" was superb. it really takes off after the Frobisher section and Jason, who i thought was weak and frustrating, suddenly started to interest me. the last 20 pages or so were incredibly moving. in fact i'm welling up just thinking about them now (no joke). there's a beautiful moment when jason meets the man at the "house in the woods" at the end *SLIGHT SPOILER* and jason says he thought the house was miles from anywhere and the man replies that the wood is "no more than the size of three or four football pitches, it's hardly sherwood forest." it's an amazing moment because it's so familiar yet so unexpected; a small moment that subtly changes your impression of the entire book.
i can't believe this book hasn't been marketed in a major way to teenagers. if i was a parent or teacher i would be urging kids to read it.
― jed_ (jed), Thursday, October 19, 2006 7:43 PM (3 years ago)

Wat is je favoriete Mitchell? Heb hier nog een ongelezen Cloud Atlas liggen.
Dat is mijn favoriet! Het eerste hoofdstuk is een beetje doorbijten, maar daarna wordt het geweldig. Past hij nog in je tas? Black Swan Green vond ik ook heel goed, maar dat is een heel ander soort boek. Een beetje "The straight story" van Mitchell.
― Ionica (Ionica), Thursday, June 15, 2006 11:51 AM (3 years ago)

It's not actually scary at all if you follow the dive plan on the first scanned photo. It would be a different story though if you entered the Blue Hole through the tunnel at 60 metres. That tunnel is not indicated in the first scanned photo as it's too deep and is off the map. However, it appears in the smaller 3D dive map on the second photo, right at the bottom in the middle of the dive plan. That is where most of the Russians die. Get nitrogen narcosis, laugh like crazy and throw away their BCD (buoyancy control device) and air tanks as the nitrogen narcosis makes them feel overconfident and ecstatic, but affects their judgment for the worse. I don't think I'll ever have enough qualifications or experience to do that part of the dive. Funny, when I turned up I initially thought I'd be able to do it!!!

I must have read 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned' in that Anchor collection at some point. Should look it up again and maybe get the Wells Tower book, as the descriptions so far have been rather compelling.

That's the first of a seven-way-tie, incidentally - some totals must be easier to land on than others.

You should have gone for it anyway, Red

79. Rabbit Remembered
(31 points, two votes)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/John-updike-candid.jpg/220px-thumb.jpg

Red Raymaker:
I have to confess that I would have been tempted to include this novella on my voting list even if it had not been top notch, simply because Updike's four principal "Rabbit" books are my favourite books of any decade and I would have been tempted to recognise his achievements in this poll too.  However, I feel in all good consciousness, able to vote for his novella on its merits.  I think it is top notch again, but not quite as excellent as his principal works.  Given that, and the fact it is a novella, and the fact that the protagonist does not really feature in the novella, I did not think it merited finishing any higher than fourth, but I think that is already a terrific achievement.  The three books which I have voted for ahead of the novella are, I think, better.  In this novella Updike does what he always does when writing creatively - he sets himself apart from his peers by his ability to provide sharper and more profound insights into the world, consciousness and the human conditions than any of his peers.  The characters he creates feel completely and convincingly real to me.  I find it very difficult to think that there might not be a Janice Angstrom commuting between Brewer and Florida this winter.

79. Rabbit Remembered - John Updike (2001)
(31 points, two votes)

Loved this one, but I got my heading wrong - time to call it a night I think.

Updike is simply the most fantastic writer and the character of Harry Angstrom (Rabbit) is the quintessential everyman. It is wonderful to follow the growth of the character of Janice, his wife, from a young expectant mother suffering from a lack of self-confidence to the middle aged go getting owner of Springer Motors and property realtor. And to follow the resentments and inadequacies of Nelson their son throughout the four principal books and this novella. Then there are unforgettable characters like Skeeter who enter Harry's life and change it irrevocably. Updike writes so convincingly about some of the little things that make us human - the additction to the feeling of sweet and also salty snacks dissolving in our mouths to the profound everyday irritation which loved ones can cause us to the love and loyalty of family despite their shortcomings.

I'm not too surprised the novella didn't score so highly because it is just that, a novella, and not one of the principal four Rabbit books. However, I'm surprised that it didn't attract one or two further votes. Of those who have read this novella and didn't vote for it, why did it fall short for you? Because it was a novella and didn't feel substantial enough to qualify, or because you didn't think it was up to scratch?

Incidentally, I don't think I would have enjoyed the novella so much as a standalone read. It only really worked on the back of the four principal works which preceded it.

I'm just about to start a new book. I was thinking of either Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" or De Lillo's "Underworld". Which one should I go for?

I forgot about David Mitchell, was Cloud Atlas nominated?

Black Swan Green is in some ways my favourite David Mitchell but I very much hope Cloud Atlas places higher.

I was pretty exhausted last night and missed that Rabbit Remembered actually did pick up three votes, not two - meaning that it's been unfairly bumped down a handful of places. However, there's no room for third umpires in this poll, so Updike will just have to make do with universal acclaim instead.

78. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks (2007)
(31 points, two votes)

http://www.paramuspost.com/mediagallery/mediaobjects/tn/d/d_engleby2.jpg

Red Raymaker:
Beautifully written and fascinating to gain an insight into the mind of a dangerous loner.  Thought it was a much more successful attempt at examining the dark recesses of the human mind than his "Human Traces"

and

I'm probably being too scathing about Faulks, a writer I've read with some pleasure in the past. I didn't on the whole like "Birdsong", presumably still his most highly rated, although there were certainly good things in it. I've also read Engleby, Charlotte Grey, On Green Dolphin Street, The Girl at the Lion D'Or and The Fatal Englishman (this last non-fiction). Engleby and and OGDS in particular were enjoyable reads, although I'd be reluctant to make any claims for them beyond that.
Faulks has nothing to be ashamed of but if you compare A Week in December with, say, Hollinghurt's The Line of Beauty (there are some similarities, like a set piece dinner parties held by Tory MPs) there's a substantial gulf in class. I get the impression Faulks is bitter because he's not taken as seriously as the likes of Hollinghurst, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan but the truth is he's just not as good as they are.
― frankiemachine, Monday, October 26, 2009 2:32 PM (2 months ago)

That quote was part of a discussion where I was lamenting Faulks' buffoonery in a recent interview. It was singularly depressing because I'd been so impressed by On Green Dolphin Street, forming a view of him as a man happy to be superb at his craft without the need to pontificate on things he knows nothing about. It's true that he can't match up to The Line of Beauty, though to be fair very few books can. But (from what I've read) as a storyteller he's far above most of McEwan's work, which is after all his job, even if McEwan does a better job of looking clever.

The tragedy is that I suspect Faulks' greatest ambition really is to be taken as seriously as Martin Amis.

77. An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira (2006)
(31 points, three votes)

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:sNBvRcNdFw0KxM:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_66iHOBlQisQ/RY9AWeJWbZI/AAAAAAAAABI/d_qDDWl417A/s200/Landscape.jpg

wmlynch:
Aira's writing can often feel tossed-off and unserious, but at his core he is a master at storytelling. I found the opening to this (very) short book off-putting and somewhat boring, but when lightning strikes (literally) the book becomes impossible to close.

Hm, that's maybe a bit too small. Here's Mr Aira looking quite pleased about whatever it is he's holding, possibly surrounded by books on landscape painting:

http://flip2007.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/cesar_aira.jpg

76. Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson (2005)
(31 points, two votes)

http://i46.tinypic.com/vdlv2q.jpg

Lamp:
this book is why the word "epic" became a thing

Every successful fantasy writer needs a better editor, which I think is the great distinction between Memories Of Ice and Toll The Hounds. I think the latter's writing and story may be just as good - if not better - than the former's, but Memories is a lean machine and Toll is plumper than Kruppe.
― EZ Snappin, Friday, December 25, 2009 12:24 AM (3 weeks ago)

We used to stop off at Ashburton during long car trips, I have fond memories of ice cream.
― Livvie (Livvie), Tuesday, May 11, 2004 11:53 AM (5 years ago)

still struggling through book 2 of these. only ilx recommendations keeping me at it.

My first reaction to that was o_0 but I guess I'm totally not a fantasy person - do you guys who are into it actually think these books are up there with the best literature, or is it more a case of giving props to your own corner of the book world? This is meant to be an honest question, not a leading or snidey one, by the way. Although I do realise we may end up in a book version of popism vs rockism...

could ask the same question about a lot of the picks so far- lots of books by hip earnest young authors of the moment here that i couldn't see myself ever having any interest in.

or, alternatively, there are other things to look for than 'literature' when picking up a book, i suppose?

as is apparent by the shockingly constructed sentence above sorry for rural irish

^ bizarre coupling of cultural cringe with aggressive defence of fantasy lit

oh, sorry if that came across as aggressive, wasn't meant to be! i thought emily phrased the question as nicely as she could.

there are other things to look for than 'literature' when picking up a book, i suppose?

Yeah, I think it's this that made me think of the rockist argument... but then, I'm not sure what there could be that I wouldn't think was an aspect of 'great literature' that would make me pick up a book... Surely plot would come under that, even if it is not the same as deft word construction (the latter of which I appear to be seriously lacking this afternoon). So if it is great plotting that makes fantasy appealing, then is the answer 'yeah! of course it's as good as Updike/Faulks/etc'?

though i take your point that great 'writing' without a story is probably a lot better than a great story told by a terrible writer- if that's your point!

but to answer your actual question the fantasy books so far are mainly in it for the story/plotting, while being a lot better than the vast majority of the genre in terms of the writing quality to get you through those plots.

While inquiring minds are inquiring then, does the best new Fantasy stuff tend to be have more depth or nuance in the kinds of worlds it takes place in than ye olde sub-Tolkein guys? I mean is it goodies yay vs baddies boo or is there the kind of moral ambiguity going on that you'd expect to find in good espionage or detective fiction?

It's true that he can't match up to The Line of Beauty, though to be fair very few books can.

on the basis of this line I have made my first purchase based on this thread, as I had seen The Line of Beauty (hardcover) hanging around in Poundland for months and continually forgot to find out anything about it, but that there is quite enough to sell me. Maybe not the greatest leap into the beyond at £1, but heyyy it's something.

Even in my geeky teens I had no taste for fantasy (despite the SHROVES of awful sci-fi I read), so I'm guessing by this point I'm destined to never be a fan.

huh I had no idea it won the Booker Prize. I truly don't know shit about shit.

xp is there the kind of moral ambiguity going on that you'd expect to find in good espionage or detective fiction?

certainly, it's there if you want it. but there's another thread that lists the best out there for this kind of thing, "fantasy is my favourite genre why is it so bad and hated" or something like.

heh i've dallied with reading other genres but tbh since i was 8 i read hardly anything but fantasy.

I had never heard of this writer. A glance at Amazon turns up this review. It made me laugh.

(worth noting that i don't actually rep that hard for erikson as i'm only halfway through bk 2 of 35 atm)

but (again) the prince of nothing series by r scott bakker (if the name doesn't put you off) is something i've been trying to get people to read.

I'm not sure what there could be that I wouldn't think was an aspect of 'great literature' that would make me pick up a book

Dunno, I think 'literary' & 'great literature' are tangled, but tend to be used more narrowly than this implies - in the modern novel, a few of the following tend to be there: psychological sophistication, irony, moral ambiguity, individual connected to large-scale historical events/zeitgeist, self-conscious style. That kind of thing.

Pedal-to-metal can't-put-it-down narrative & narrative immersion aren't really on that list; a writer who specialises in that usually takes years/decades to be accepted as actually ok, and even then there's a bit of sniffiness (thinking of Stephen King). Fantasy's also disadvantaged because pure invention isn't admired; the 'literary' tends to adhere a bit more closely to this world.

The 'literary' category is maybe shifting a bit, so SF has an easier time slipping through than it did 20 years ago; but I think bookshops, newspapers, publishers are all quite tied to it.

Just trying to describe this by the way, rather than judge; literary realism bores me rigid, & I tend to like fiction that pumps up style or invention or formal fun or ideas or whatever (so I fell for Black Swan Green partly because it was playing strange Romantic tricks - gypsies, doubles, poets - beneath the surface of conventional psychologically rounded realism).

Fantasy's also disadvantaged because pure invention isn't admired; the 'literary' tends to adhere a bit more closely to this world

conversely, gimmickery or characters acting unrealistically bothers me much more in a supposed 'real world' setting where i'm trying to imagine it as something that could happen- in fantasy, i don't mind dudes wrestling dragons because the whole world is a suspension of disbelief, so i can't be jarred out of it by false notes.

I'm on the popist* side, as you may have picked up from my unsuccessful attempts to get The Kite Runner and Angels and Demons nominated. Plot, with character, is definitely the most important part of any book. Of course it's nice if all the other stuff you mention is there too - but if it's not then I'm not going to lionise McEwan, say, for his themes or style if the stories are rubbish. Give me Faulks or whoever any day**

The basic problem which I have with SciFi/fantasy is that, cut loose from the real world, it's easy to let the characters drift away from being real people with real (by which I mean my) concerns. Which then in turn stops the plots making sense to me. That's why it's interesting to me to hear the comments above on Banks or Towers (that viking story is fantasy, right?) - it makes it sound like they have made the much greater effort to create a reality to ground their stories in.

*at least I think I am, but often I think I've misunderstood this debate entirely
** I say that, but I suspect my real reading list is probably pretty pseudish

tell you what though, i've changed my mind and decided my vote would have been for the fantastic "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" which is an amazing mix austen, historical fiction, fantasy and fairytale, told brilliantly. note perfect.

My first reaction to that was o_0 but I guess I'm totally not a fantasy person - do you guys who are into it actually think these books are up there with the best literature, or is it more a case of giving props to your own corner of the book world?

this is hard to answer but tbh im probably the 1 resp for most of the fantasy shit placing so ill give it a shot.

a) fantasy (and sci fi) have had a lot to do w/how i discovered reading and with how i view lit in general. the stuff that got me into reading (tolkein, jordan, eddings) had a lot to do with forming the things i value in a book and thats stayed w/ me

b) i read a lot of fantasy and i think, in making a list like this, that that deserves acknowledging

c) fantasy generally feels like its ~important~ in the larger context - like its values and tropes have really effectively permeated others books and movies and tv this decade and i guess i rate authors who have been at the vanguard (lol) of defining and redefining those values and tropes

d) i think if your judging fantasy - partic epic fantasy - u have to judge the work on its own terms which are largely different from the way u wld read and understand modern "literary" fiction. erikson has an mfa from a p prestigious program - presumably he can write better sentences then he does - but epic fantasy isnt really abt "good writing". realize im not really explicating these "terms" but generally certain aspects of plot and "world-building" are impt in ways they will never be in any other genre

e) have a whole thing abt cognition and the reader but basic i dont think losing yrself in books abt magics and dragons is automatically less interesting and worthwhile than immersing yourself in the solipsism and faggy neuroses of brainy english majors.

cliffs: i "actually" think sum of these books rank amongst the best books of the decade because i value the things they do well and can forgive or dont care abt the things they do poorly

this is interesting, but what I really want to know now is if there are any books about the solipsism and faggy neuroses of dragons.

lamp = hero

richard morgans "the steel remains" is (kinda) abt the solipsism and faggy neuroses of magic elves

peter jackson's LOTR movies are all about faggy elves tbh, watch them instead

fwiw i read scifi 'cause i love the idea of spaceships and the future n shit

sheesh, at least dragons were real once

The dragon in Grendel is all that

75. The Whole Equation - David Thomson (2005)
(31 points, two votes)

http://www.hankstuever.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/thomsoncover-205x300.jpg

David Thomson: Classic or Well-dressed?

I'm around 100 pages into his new book, The Whole Equation, and it's way denser than it has any right to be. I guess it might be good? But I don't think I'm ever going to find out, due to the ease of finding a much higher return on my time for both information and entertainment elsewhere.
― andrew s (andrew s), Saturday, March 5, 2005 2:38 AM (4 years ago)

I got David Thomson's 'The Whole Equation'. Finish it tonight and its amazing but also getting prepared for its annoying conclusion, as I imagine it - its the end of cinema as the movies can't give him that communal feel that he had with others when he started going to the movies (just after WWII ended) anymore. Its a gd ol' follow the money history but plenty of judgement, biographical sketches, experiences and so on.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 5:48 PM (2 years ago)

Much prefer Thomson in bite size chunks. I tried reading 'The Whole Equation' but gave up after about 40 pages, his style's a bit too dense and rich for me in a tome that size. If I'd been able to nominate more I would have nominated 'Have You Seen' and his 'New Biographical Dictionary of Film' which says what he wants to more succintly and more effectively.

It's quite a bold cover. But whenever I buy things that look like The Face, I always mentally file them under 'not really for reading'.

speaking of bold covers...

74. What's Left? - Nick Cohen (2007)
(31 points, three votes)

http://www.document.no/2007/01/26/nickcohen.jpg

Ismael Klata:
Study of how (certain parts of) the left keeps getting itself in trouble. It sees what it likes, works it into an ideology to cheer for - then does stupider and stupider things trying to support that ideology, until eventually it ends up supporting the opposite of what it liked in the first place. This decade being a good leftist turned into supporting fascism, dictatorship and theocracy. It's a great read, and would've been funny if it weren't so serious and sad.

Red Raymaker:
A very much needed critical apprisal of what's gone wrong with left wing politics in recent years and its flirtation with the politics of the extreme right. The fact it was written by a man of the left makes it all the more interesting and persuasive. A fascinating read, articulating what has been self evident for quite some time.

Come back fantasy genre fiction all is forgiven.

Is no liberal pundit free from ilx ire? So what are Cohen's problems then.

Apart from enthusiastically banging the drum for the invasion of Iraq and comparing opponents on the left to appeasers of the Nazis, you mean?

Fair enough. I don't keep up with this stuff very much tbh.

I had a quick search for him in the archives, couldn't find a single positive quote.

And I'm a fan, obviously. I'd've put one up for humour value, but they tend to be, uh, punchy.

My first reaction to that was o_0 but I guess I'm totally not a fantasy person - do you guys who are into it actually think these books are up there with the best literature, or is it more a case of giving props to your own corner of the book world?

eh well the list isn't called ILX MOST BESTEST LITERATUREST BOOKS OF THE 00s y'know? more of my ballot is for neuroses-of-young-iowa-grads stuff than was for genre picks i guess, but i didn't vote for the on-average 'best' 8000 pages of writing i read from this decade, it's kind of a mix of 'i think this is objectively good' 'i really enjoyed this' 'i think this is culturally relevant'

& i think you can pick standards by which you can talk about erikson and martin being 'objectively good'. i mean, i'm sure that redraymaker's diving guide is a pretty good diving guide. i'm never going to read it because it sounds terrifying, mind.

of course you can define 'up there with the best' and 'objectively good' a whole bunch of ways, and i could kind of cosign most of lamp's points. i mean, i guess my question is "in what sense 'up with the best'"

want to know who the other voter for memories of ice is though.

erikson has an mfa from a p prestigious program - presumably he can write better sentences then he does

^ this is pretty fascinating! actually otoh there was this whole internet thing not long ago lately about how apparently david foster wallace and dan brown went to the same mfa, so er y'know

I'm on the popist* side, as you may have picked up from my unsuccessful attempts to get The Kite Runner and Angels and Demons nominated. Plot, with character, is definitely the most important part of any book. Of course it's nice if all the other stuff you mention is there too - but if it's not then I'm not going to lionise McEwan, say, for his themes or style if the stories are rubbish. Give me Faulks or whoever any day**

The basic problem which I have with SciFi/fantasy is that, cut loose from the real world, it's easy to let the characters drift away from being real people with real (by which I mean my) concerns. Which then in turn stops the plots making sense to me. That's why it's interesting to me to hear the comments above on Banks or Towers (that viking story is fantasy, right?) - it makes it sound like they have made the much greater effort to create a reality to ground their stories in.

otoh i don't really care about characters being 'real people with real concerns' so much as i care about them being, er, generative of interesting sentences and of interesting shapes for plots? -- but 'creating a reality to ground their stories in' is a massive part of what people who care about fantasy novels care about in what they read - qv. 'world-building' 'subcreation' etc.

I voted for the Erikson. I don't really make genre distinctions when it comes to what I value - my enjoyment is my guide. So sci-fi, fantasy, literary fiction, mysteries, whatever - it's just a different set of tropes to hang ideas on.

thomp's point reminds me of an Edmund Crispin (Bruce Montgomery) novel

At one point Gervaise Fen comes across a crime writer testing out the practicalities of a scene in a local field. Fen suggests that doing this must enable him to some extent to get ‘inside the mind of the murderer’.

An expression of mild repugnance appeared on the man’s face. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it doesn’t do that.’ That subject seemed painful to him, and Fen felt that he had committed an indiscretion. ‘The fact is,’ the man went on, ‘that I have no interest in the minds of murderers, or for that matter,’ he added rather wildly, ‘in the minds of anyone else.’ Characterization seems to me a very overrated element in fiction. I can never see why one should be obliged to have any of it at all, if one doesn’t want to. It limits the form so.’

Really enjoying this thread by the way, although unlike woof, no matter what the No 1 is, I'm going to investigate these breast elves.

73. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize - David Cavanagh (2001)
(32 points, four votes)

http://www.creation-records.com/blog/playlists/philwilson_playlist.jpg

dismissed by Alan McGee as 'the accountant's story', which just goes to show how bad his judgement is these days. Obsessively researched, it's a kind of elegy for a time when indie labels could hope for something more than cottage industry and vanity releases. At least 10 cracking Lawrence-from-Felt anecdotes, too.
― Stevie T, Monday, December 4, 2000 1:00 AM (9 years ago)

the beginning section (detailing the aftermath of punk rock & such) is quite interesting. The more McGee & Co. become entangled in the music biz, the less interesting the book becomes. By the time Oasis hits, it's a dull melange of A&R people and publicists and major label knobheads rolling in the dough.
It simply tells a story. The funny thing is, it's not really McGee's story. Cavanaugh writes it more like a Forrest Gump tale, where McGee is walking through history (in this case, the development of the current British music scene), and just HAPPENS to make millions of bucks and just HAPPENS to be smack-dab in the middle of it.
... Cavanagh simply tells it like it is; the drug use (of which there is an abundance) gets treated with the same importance as the label signings ... I definitely think it's a fine book about the UK indie scene. Just don't expect much about Alan McGee. And, personally, I'm very grateful that Oasis didn't show up for 400+ pages. Reading about the House of Love's drug issues is vastly more entertaining. And intelligible.
― David Raposa, Tuesday, May 15, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Certainly not concise and definitely not value neutral, but as a history of the label, and indeed of post punk indie I don't think you can beat David Cavanagh's My magpie eyes are hungry for the prize.
No doubt some ILxer's (Momus/Jerry T) have their own view but I think this is going to be as good as you get for the time being.
― Billy Dods, Saturday, December 22, 2001 1:00 AM (8 years ago)

The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize by David Cavanagh is fascinating, but only if you have any interest in 80s british indie.
― Nicole (Nicole), Tuesday, January 21, 2003 3:00 PM (6 years ago)

It's a pretty good social study all around, though.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, January 21, 2003 4:30 PM (6 years ago)

72. Nothing - Paul Morley (2000)
(33 points, two votes)

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:hLy1LVD8JEtEJM:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_C-e81HBNKFw/SobgtoQ_rCI/AAAAAAAAAPo/M8iS1nhW8-A/s320/41XSZ749SKL._SS500_.jpg

Nothing by Paul Morley

If this is the one about his father committing suicide, I got it out of the library but didn't read more than a couple of pages. I was worried that it might be a bit bleak.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Friday, July 11, 2003 7:54 AM (6 years ago)

You ought to give it another try, PJ. The Pinefox and I were discussing 'Nothing' last weekend, and such was the PF's pleasure in the book that I was moved to reread it. Happily, it is even better than I remember. There is an emotional current to the book that focuses his more abstract meanderings and adjectival pile-ups - the kind of thing that often puts people off his writing. Also: it's very funny.
I often wonder why a writer like Morley shouldn't have the status in the pop world that, say, David Thomson does in film - as a world respected writer and critic, commissioned for extended features in the Sunday Supplements and op-ed pages.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, July 11, 2003 8:48 AM (6 years ago)

there is plainly nothing of worth by Paul Morley that you can recommend me.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, January 14, 2003 4:37 PM (7 years ago)

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2009/12/23/1261566866792/morley-nyman-mcalmont-005.jpg

That came out too small again, but this is nice.

I haven't read Erikson - and like possibly several ILXors I became confused when I got the impression that Steve Erickson had started writing epic fantasy novels.

The only contemporary fantasy I really stan for is Robert Jordan (not a nominee) which is a hangover from my youth, but when I've tried to explain to skeptics what I like about him the half-hearted attempts at arguments I've made probably apply to a lot of (the better) fantasy, namely:

While an absolute emphasis on realism now seems to be pretty rare in modern lit crit or its more popular variants (e.g. newspaper book reviews) I think instead there's quite a strong judgmental binary between realism and playing-with-form, such that what counts as good writing often has to slot into either (or sometimes both) of those categories, an opposition which stuff like "magic realism" really only papers over. It's not so much that this restricts what kinds of stories can be told, but rather it defines the contexts in which particular kinds of achievements can be recognised as such.

Jordan is (was) probably the most sophisticated "plotter" of any writer I've read in terms of the dizzying interplay of characters, twists, narrative arcs etc. but because the actual writing style is fairly conventional, this can never be celebrated as such, it's defined as being soap opera-ish (which it is) or even decadent b/c fantasy just isn't supposed to try for complexity; while at the same time a "merely" complex plot isn't enough by itself to impressive in a non-fantasy context. It would be different if he had been constructing a social realist drama or if he'd been playing with literary convention (or both!) both of which provide a more respectable framework in which the complexity of the plot would become at least for some critics a point in its favour. I mean it's pretty obvious why new wave SF of the 70s and 80s gets a lot of critical support whereas fantasy does not - it ticks so many more of the boxes that exist for good non-SF writing. To be fair, figures like Dick and Ballard and Gibson are just all around better and more interesting writers than most prominent fantasy writers, but that doesn't mean the cards aren't also stacked against the latter group in terms of achieving recognition when they are doing good or interesting work.

I think "we" are much better at recognising how populist and/or middlebrow techniques can be inventive and effective in the context of television shows or, obviously, music, than we are with writing.

I totally avoided this thread because I assumed it was fiction only. D'oh! So a moment of silence for Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.

Man I'm sad that that Aira book placed so low. It's really excellent as are his others.

Plot, with character, is definitely the most important part of any book.

Very much not obvious or even uncontroversial. I don't know if there's a sensible way to argue about this point, but just know that lots of people feel otherwise.

pretty sure there was an implied 'for me' there ~

71. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
(33 points, four votes)

http://manolomen.com/images/Malcolm%20Gladwell%20for%20Harry%20Rosen.gif

LBS:
Brilliant insights into human nature

Malcolm Gladwell C/D S/D

I read the marketing inspirational book, The Tipping Point. I found some of the social science studies discussed and some of the anecdotes interesting, though in many cases I didn't see how exactly they supported the author's overall thesis; but then, I'd have a hard time saying exactly what that theses was.
― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, December 1, 2002 8:40 PM (7 years ago)

Thought this would land higher, just by virtue of everybody having read it.

This book is a brilliant success by the way.

aye, that was a good book too. i'd like to see a photo of gladwell with his hair straightened though - it would probably reach to the middle of his back.

i think gladwell has received a bit of unfair criticism on the blog thus far. i reckon his ideas are pretty interesting even if i don't agree with every single detail of them. and he writes in such an engaging, clear and interesting way.

likewise, i think Freakonomics and Mumbo-Jumbo were singled out for a bit too much criticism. I thought all of these books were pretty good.

incidentally, I opted to start de Lillo's "Underworld" rather than Bellow's "Augie March". I think I made the right choice. I just finished the prologue and I absolutely loved de Lillo's depiction of the baseball game in New York in the 1940s - the descriptions of all the different clusters of players, fans, commentators etc. A real highlight of my week so far!

It was interesting looking for quotes about this in the Archives - very little from 2001/2, then it finally seems to take off in 2005 or so.

70. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
(33 points, four votes)

http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/author_malcolmfotoveebis.jpg

Seek: this New Yorker piece on Ivy League admissions
Destroy: Blink, which is admirable only because he manages to keep up analysis at the level of Peter Sellers in Being There for a whole book.
Taken together, these literatures demonstrate the importance of unconscious cognition, but their findings are obscured rather than elucidated by Gladwell's parade of poorly understood yarns. He wants to tell stories rather than to analyze a phenomenon. He tells them well enough, if you can stand the style. (Blink is written like a book intended for people who do not read books.)
― Mike W (caek), Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:02 PM (3 years ago)

Search: "Big and Bad", "Group Think", quite a few other New Yorker pieces, and especially "The Pitchman"
Destroy: The books. I agree with coleman. I think he's more skilled as a short-piece writer. It's not that the books aren't good - I enjoyed both of them quite a bit - but I find that they get really repetitive in the second half. Oh, and also destroy his comments about The Streets.
I'd say classic overall; very skilled writer, tells great stories.
(full disclosure: I may be biased - he's from my hometown, I've met him, and I worked for his father for years...)
― jackl (jackl), Saturday, February 11, 2006 4:20 PM (3 years ago)

The story of Kenna's big-name supporters, test marketing, and ultimate lack of record sales is covered by a whole chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, titled "The Kenna Dilemma."
― gr8080, Saturday, December 15, 2007 3:21 PM (2 years ago)

Hrm, never tried to read this guy's books. I read some articles of his that were recommended here (one on ketchup, at least!) but thought them too damn tedious to ever bother with him again.
Also, the books sound kinda self-helpy, which isn't very appealing. "You too can be awesome, just work at it for ten kilohours, what what?"

Btw, hoping Tom McCarthy's _Remainder_ places well -- I've just read half of it and having a great old time.

Yes, I must admit that i view these books with a certain amount of suspicion - possibly entirely wrongly, I haven't read them - catching a whiff of aspirational schtick, like Charles Atlas for money grubbers. Q

Dammit- hadn't finished...l

Question is: am I being unfair? Is Gladwell worth a go?

Also hoping Remainder places high.

Stick with the New Yorker pieces imo

http://www.gladwell.com/archive.html

Thanks ledge - suffering from some horrific plaguey symptoms today, so a look through those shd prove most welcome.

Gladwell is best thought of as a priest of the American secular religion. He writes sermons, officiates at ritual events (gives keynote addresses at corporate meetings) and, by incantation and storytelling, wards off the threat of certain dangerous ideas. It's a good life.

i saw him give a speech once where he talked about how all creative or commercial projects could be categorised as either picasso-like (brilliant paradigm-shifting insight early on, most high-impact work produced early in career) or cezanne-like (years and years of slow refinement of one single insight, best work produced late in career). he listed lots of examples of how you could categorise things like this, eg, guns'n'roses = picasso, fleetwood mac = cezanne. then the talk ended. it was lame. it seemed like a really banal way to think about things, apart from being not true.

haven't read his books but that talk put me right off

incidentally, I opted to start de Lillo's "Underworld" rather than Bellow's "Augie March". I think I made the right choice. I just finished the prologue and I absolutely loved de Lillo's depiction of the baseball game in New York in the 1940s - the descriptions of all the different clusters of players, fans, commentators etc

That's the best bit of the book - I felt the rest really struggled to live up to that opening.

He did a piece on that for the New Yorker too. Having shown my ignorance in not knowing who he was upthread, I've just realised that I've actually read various articles and I think one of his books too. Oops!

(I am not American so maybe New Yorker writers are more avoidable in my life, or maybe I'm just making desperate excuses)

Uh that was an xpost to jabba hands' picasso/cezanne post.

re Underworld, it's the leap from Pafko at the Wall into chapter one proper that's the really difficult bit - you go from one of the most thrilling and celebrated flowing pieces of writing ever into this dense, realist(?) tract on waste management and some guy's problems with his wife and colleagues, and it's pretty jarring - a bit like series one into two of The Wire. I think it's a pretty epic tract too, in its own way and particularly in the context of the whole book looking back - but it does not give the same running rush that the prologue does.

69. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century - Patrik Ouředník (2005)
(34 points, two votes)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pG1UEqZDiG0/Sy2CqTGPlzI/AAAAAAAAALA/ilipWr0nKn0/s400/europeana.jpg

schlump:
A 'novel' chronicling the 20th century through a lens of facts and statistics; stories of concentration camps told in how much and what kind of gas was used. Weirdly emotional considering the inemotive writing.

An oddity, this one - neither book nor author had ever been mentioned here in approximately 7,800,000 posts before we started this poll.

Honestly I feel like Gladwell gets a bad rap here. I mean, I really enjoy reading his books, he always bandies about fun theories and stuff. As long as you don't go and believe every theory of his, they're usually good fun. I love reading about all those studies that i'd never hear a word about if it weren't for him. Then again, not living in the US, I have never read a single article of his so maybe those are actually what's worth reading. All in all, I'll keep on enjoying his books without believing a single of his theories.

Jibe: I agree, I love reading his stuff. I think a lot of the criticism comes where people know more than he does about whatever he's picked as his topic du jour - but he's not writing for specialists, he's writing for people who: (a) are interested in learning a bit about something new; and (b) like good stories.

As for his theories, a lot of them make sense and I'm sure he's mostly right, and that's enough for me. I'm hardly going to go out and coach young tennis players after reading Blink or plan a civil war after listening to him lecture, any more than I would rely on wikipedia when I'm doing my job. I use wikipedia all the time and I think it's terrific, but I know its place. Gladwell's kind of similar but better, particularly because what I want most from him is entertainment, which he's great at.

Jibe: Fair enough for Gladwell himself. But there are larger issues, and believe me, Gladwell knows exactly what the stakes are. He probably sees himself as being on the front line of defense, and in a way he's right. But this is getting off topic so enough about it.

europeana sounds cool imo. never heard of it before

hello Europeana come with me to the Amazon checkout.

Had not heard of it before, sounds tremendous. Thanks voters!

alimosina: i wouldn't want to derail this thread I've enjoyed reading so far but i'd be curious to hear you expand on what those larger issues are.
To be honest, nobody I hang with even knows the guy and i don't know a thing about him except for the fact that he writes books and puts his mail exchanges with Bill Simmons on the web. So I have no clue if there's a controversy about him or anything.

Jibe: I don't want to derail the thread either, so I'll move cautiously.

A lot of religious fundamentalists see the idea of evolution as a mortal threat (because it blows up the master narrative: Fall -> original sin -> redemption -> eternal life). A lot of other people, many but not all of them non-religious, see no threat to their own basic beliefs from the idea of evolution, and regard the efforts by fundamentalists to fence off the implications (using Intelligent Design theories or outright denial) as ridiculous. Are you with me?

i think europeana's the biggest selling thing that ilx-favourite dalkey archive have published. ourednik's next is currently in translation iirc.

68. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - Alice Munro (2001)
(34 points, five votes)

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:-VpoWhq42VRT7M:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pSO5Oh1UJ1A/Rj0aRE3cCwI/AAAAAAAAAhE/aWyEYjG7QHs/s400/awayfromher.jpg

What's so great about Alice Munro?

she has 10 short story collections so take your pick! her last was entitled, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and the title story of that collection is one of them there tour de forces. And don't be fooled into thinking that her books are the sort that your granny uses to nod off to sleep. she's deep, son!
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, January 9, 2004 11:59 PM (6 years ago)

Am now reading Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, etc etc - really really really good.
― James Morrison, Saturday, August 2, 2008 2:50 AM (1 year ago)

this thread......as if there isnt enough books on my wishlist

Only sixty-seven, plus a whole bunch of randoms, to go!

gonna have to pick this munro up tho i suspect i've already read a few in the new yorker. makes me sad for the days when the new yorker was consistently publishing great fiction from munro, jhumpa lahire, annie proulx and others.

also liked the move adaptation of "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." very impressed that a 27 yr old sarah polley directed it.

'Hateship, Friendship, Courtship' featuring Julianne Moore drops in 2011, I see

67. Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore (2003)
(35 points, two votes)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/Stalin_1902.jpg

JL:
The more details of Stalin's life that turn up, the stranger he seems. Montefiore somehow talked to everyone.

The most entertaining "court intrigue" book on communism may well be ]Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Montefiore, some 800+ pages of scheming, sexual imbroglios, paranoia, and happy sunsets at the dacha.
― Derelict, Friday, May 22, 2009 6:06 PM (7 months ago)

so far (300+ pages in) Montefiore makes no mention of the western left or even Stalin's larger role on the world stage - his focus is incredibly specific, almost hermetically sealed. It is ALL about the machinations of Stalin's "court" and the internal politics/relationships in Stalinist Russia. Lefties - of both the US and UK variety - are never mentioned. Montefiore's agenda seems to be of the more benign, academic variety, ie, making the most of newly available documents to provide an authoritative overview of a previously highly disputed period.
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:06 PM (3 years ago)

I'm resisting the urge to post the crazier bits of this bio, like the anecodte from Kruschev about Yezhov showing up to a Politburo meeting, fresh from the torture chambers at Lubianka, with blood from the "Enemies of the People" on his cuffs and trousers.
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, August 29, 2006 10:33 PM (3 years ago)

Man, the pictures I could've used here:

http://karlomongaya.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/stalin.jpg

http://englishrussia.com/images/stalin_clown.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FfetiF7C9vo/SGHlhAGZHlI/AAAAAAAAI0w/BmtNGp3z9O8/S760/Joseph+Stalin.+Secret+Police,+Russia,+%401908.JPG

I need to stop this now

young stalin looked so fucking cool.

By my count so far, almost evenly split between fiction and non-...

http://komarandmelamid.org/chronology/1981_1983/images/101.jpg

66. Words and Music - Paul Morley (2003)
(35 points, three votes)

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/pictures/popular/531.jpg

Parenthetic Hound (woofwoofwoof):
Patchy, but here because I want something for the end of music criticism that likes going for a ride with interesting ideas and a fun style, and it's a nod to the ilxory pop aesthetic that's become a large part of my head over this decade. I could have taken Ways of Hearing by Ben Thompson just as happily, or Real Punks Don't Wear Black (it's smarter, but some of the autobiography's a bit indigestible), or even Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches. But this because Morley's a good thing: if he's on TV, there's a fair chance, but not a guarantee, he'll say something interesting.

Paul Morley 'Words And Music' – brilliant or just trying hard?

65. Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon (2006)
(35 points, four votes)

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/22/2_Pynchon_061222110106887_wideweb__300x451.jpg

Parenthetic Hound (woofwoofwoof):
Pynchon in the 00s: two novels, which was a treat. Neither as good as Gravity's Rainbow or Mason & Dixon, but for me Pynchon >>>> all other living writers, so I'm not partic bothered. There's no-one else I get excited waiting for, buy on first day, will clear space to read.
Actual opinions... I like this later Pynchon. I find the books hugely sad: full of the possibilities of freedom & revolution, a belief in an alternative possible universe where state-corporate interests aren't sitting on everyone, and moments where the freedom is realised (I thought maybe Against The Day was so long because it's trying to call this universe into being, like it's some kind of cyclopedia creating an Anarchist Orbius Tertius), but then that's betrayed, it collapses or fades. The day takes over, the Sixties end.

right. against the day. 1 page down, 1084 to go ... thank you, mr pynchon, for keeping me busy till next year.
― the hunchback of nassau ave to be (bbrz), Tuesday, November 21, 2006 2:11 PM (3 years ago)

Do you realize that this is the first time I will be able to anticpate NEW PYNCHON

http://www.nndb.com/people/979/000023910/pynchon3-sized.jpg

I never knew there were other pictures of him 'til now. He's no Joe Stalin.

Wow, that is surprisingly low.

As an aside, I remember somebody on the other thread lamenting the lack of books dealing with the credit crunch/new depression/all-round economic collapse - well, an ad for The Big Short, the new Michael Lewis number just landed in my inbox, and it looks like it does just that.

64. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson (2007)
(37 points, two votes)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_eSKyzEeZdO4/SwvZq2En1OI/AAAAAAAABS0/pqz8dCRHeWU/s200/2007.jpg

President Keyes:
Johnson sets aside his junkie noir fixation long enough to write the batshit epic prose poem I’ve been waiting to read from him for two decades

i read Tree of Smoke. i thought it was pretty blah. i liked the solider stuff but the CIA officer stuff was a real slog. the two stories merged, sorta. some longish books don't seem long, they fly right by and you want to read more. that was not the case with this one though, it was a drag. the guy is great with a short story but his long stuff i just don't enjoy.
it was also really choppy for a novel? i wanted him to get into certain scenes in real depth and length, but he would just cut scenes off at the knees and stuff. it may be worth looking into though, if you like him, it wasn't horrible or anything.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:47 PM (2 years ago)

just about to finish up denis johnson's tree of smoke. thoroughly enjoying it, though after a nice long buildup, it seems to be fizzling a bit in the last 100 pages. we'll see.
― andrew m., Monday, March 9, 2009 6:39 PM (10 months ago)

just finished "Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson. good but not great vietnam/conspiracy/paranoia epic. slightly overlong/over-written in my humble but mostly worth the effort.
― m coleman, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:04 AM (5 months ago)

why do i like denis johnson?
when he is on form he can capture the ennui of modern living of people who are saddled with problems which i see as recognisable: junkies, trash, grief, etc. like in jesus' son ,angel and name of the world.
other times he veers into the experimental which can succeed and fail with 'hangman' and 'already dead' - though i personally enjoyed the surreal black comedy of 'already dead' - people who read it on my recommendation mention what you've had - problem areas with johnson - re: total abandonment of structure mid-way through, no development and lack of editing.
but then again maybe that is why i enjoy the johnson writing - he is, at times, able to capture america, as it is and as it wants to be. does that make sense?
― griffin doome, Wednesday, December 24, 2003 8:45 PM (6 years ago)

that's all fairly lukewarm praise for a book that placed. lots of small votes?

Carried in by one big backer. I've found this a few times, also with Gladwell and especially Cohen - I'm trying to give a balanced view, but the silent majority are scared to speak up.

i promise i'll supply a negative as all-fuck review on the first one i've read and disliked, for balane.

63. Death And The Penguin - Andrey Kurkov (2001)
(37 points, two votes)

http://www.morose.fsnet.co.uk/images/kurkov.jpg.jpeg

The most current thing I enjoyed reading this year was Andrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin -- by a Ukranian writer, and very much involved with the weird and ruleless post-Communist bureaucracy that seems to pervade the entire post-Soviet enterprise. (The narrator gets his penguin because the mismanaged zoo cannot afford food and has to give all the animals away!)
The situation of the post-Communist state seems ideal for literature, a many of the reviews I've read of the Kurkov claim that it's part of a vague new wave of writers with similar concerns
...
I think because it politicizes everyday life, perhaps? A big literary problem in the comfortable west seems to have been that the everday lives of people do not appear to many writers to contain much that is of paramount importance beyond the standard emotional relations with others (and a lot of fretting about the course of our culture and consumerism and etc). Whereas the post-Communist situation seems to be that the details and organization of everyday life are themselves in question, in deep political and philosophical question, making just about everything a potential exercise in the very important; modern life and a sence of urgency and change coexist more so than elsewhere, maybe. I may be talking out of my ass here, but that's the sense I get.
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, November 14, 2002 5:36 PM (7 years ago)

Its like a mixture of Bulgakov and Calvino. like, droll, spare prose, descriptive with no frivolous adjectives. simple, and touching, and pretty funny.
― ambrose (ambrose), Tuesday, August 26, 2003 10:15 AM (6 years ago)

i voted for this. must re-read again sometime. nabisco typically otm. speaking of post communist writers, what is pelevin's 00's work like? ive only read the clay machine gun.

62. London: The Biography - Peter Ackroyd (2001)
(37 points, three votes)

http://www.urban-logic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taking-down-the-houses-of-001.jpg

Parenthetic Hound (woofwoofwoof):
Yeah yeah bastardization/dilution of Sinclair psycho-g, but a book full of interesting info, and bound up for me with my move to London.

London: The Biography is excellent, Tom got it for me for my birthday and whilst I had not previously been much of a fan of Peter Ackroyd's stuff it is a well researched and very accessible tome. That said, I suggest you don't try to necessarily read it as a narrative, rather dip into and grab the chapters which interest you first. I found I covered the whole book better when I started to do that - and I keep going back to it. (Esp Underground rivers & stuff).
― Pete, Tuesday, December 11, 2001 1:00 AM (8 years ago)

Now I'm reading London: The Biography which is good bc I seem to have a lot of free time suddenly and an 800 page book works well. I enjoy it, but I wonder, is it just PR for London? When I think in terms of NY I can't think of a similar book being written. It seems to be so much glorification, which is fine, when he is just repeating Dickens or Smollet or whatever, but I wonder, does he actually love London so much? It seems a bit of a stretch, but it makes for interesting reading.
― Mary (Mary), Wednesday, June 11, 2003 4:59 PM (6 years ago)

It was quite difficult to find a picture that wasn't of Tower Bridge.

got about 40 pages into "Tree of Smoke" and quit. there were a couple nice parts but i just couldn't motivate myself to read another 600 pages of mediocre vietnam drama.

I don't remember anything about London ;_;(*) should prob try dipping into it again.

(*) except for "God a'mercy, horse!"

i just remember the bit about the biggest public toilet ever

i didn't know 'tree of smoke' was a vietnam novel. i thought people had stopped bothering with those

Go on, enlighten us re this moumental khazi. I really wish that bridge was still there, by the way, it would be the greatest attraction in all the world.

Yeah, fuck that skimpy Millennium bollocks - shoulda had a full scale replica of the old London Bridge.

London, despite reservations about both author and method, is great, especially to dip into - the thematic slices work really well and it's choc full of great details.

I really fancy it now: unusually, 800 pages here seems like a badge rather than something vaguely shameful. I know the author's name too, but not quite sure why - I'm sure he's a larger-than-life character in some way.

Loved Death and the Penguin. But surprised its from the 2000's? I remember reading it at the tailend of the nineties, I guess my memor is playing tricks on me. Anyways, yeah that penguin is really great, love the fact that the guy writes obituaries of living people. Reread the book a few years ago in the middle of the night and I just might read it once more thanks to this thread, to see if its still a thoroughly enjoyable book.

I never knew there were other pictures of him 'til now. He's no Joe Stalin.

― Ismael Klata, Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:34 AM (8 hours ago)

In my first real adventures on the internet ca. 94-95, I found had uploaded a paparazzi pic of TP & Wife and baby stroller taken somewhere uptown. Dude did NOT look happy abt it.

61. The Year Of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (2005)
(38 points, four votes)

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185430a.jpg

Moreno:
People always warn you when they recommend this cause it's some harrowing shit she dealt with, but it never gets too heavy. She stays observational but never impersonal. Just a beautiful book about how people cope with loss.

Last week I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and cried many times, often out loud on buses.
― zan, Tuesday, December 6, 2005 3:36 PM (4 years ago)

The Year of Magical Thinking I thought I'd leave this for after this period of intense work and beginning new pregnancy, but then I was in a bookshop, saw it, read a few pages standing. and decided i could not not reading it immediately, i owed it to it.
― misshajim (strand), Friday, March 31, 2006 10:35 AM (3 years ago)

Just started The Year of Magical Thinking, which is as good as everyone says.
― Ray (Ray), Monday, April 24, 2006 6:15 PM (3 years ago)

I really fancy it now: unusually, 800 pages here seems like a badge rather than something vaguely shameful. I know the author's name too, but not quite sure why - I'm sure he's a larger-than-life character in some way.

Is this Ackroyd, Ismael? I don't know that he's especially larger than life, but Hawksmoor rocks, if you haven't read it.

I'll look into it

60. White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000)
(40 points, two votes)

http://m1.wholesite.com/2009/12/8/e046b24e-6d7b-a6c4-29f0-1d3567909ffa/480x277_zadie_smith_main.jpg

Zadie Smith

here's a prejudice - whenever I see people reading 'one of those books EVERYBODY'S reading', be it 'White Teeth' or 'Captain Corelli' or 'Memoirs of a Geisha' or 'Bridget Jones', I assume the person is really really stupid and boring, and if I ever (God forbid) end up talking to the person it will take a long time for them to change my mind, if ever.
― dave q, Monday, July 30, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

White Teeth's a bit of a funny one. I found it extremely readable, despite the irksome feeling that was rather Rushdie lite. I was puzzled by this, until it was pointed out by one of my old college friends that Smith writes like so many of our other contemporaries wrote and spoke. The familiarity the language makes it almost too easy to keep reading.
― Richard Tunnicliffe, Sunday, July 15, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Some of the best bits of white teeth (see book thread) are about a Jehova's Witness called Hortense. Very believable seeing as that's just what Witnesses in north london are likely to be called. unfornutnately I have no funny story about getting rid of witnesses because just offering to read a watchtower will normally send em packing.
― Ed, Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Did anyone else thing White Teeth was really awful? An utterly hollow, badly plotted, dunderheaded book.
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, June 12, 2002 12:00 AM (7 years ago)

I was dearly hoping White Teeth might lead into an actual New Thing in lit. It was the first thing I'd read in a long time that took such a sense of pleasure in the act of storytelling; it read like Dickens, so far as I was concerned; or rather, it read like a happy kid doing Dickens, taking pleasure less in the story/characters/dialogue than in the process of writing them out, building them up. (It read like fiction might be what I'm saying.)
I was hoping for a groundswell of this sort of thing -- blow away the stilted cleverness of certain McSweeneyites and their even worse bids at weightiness and take us back to the simple fact of young people having fun painting odd funny pictures of what life is actually like ... White Teeth seems the flagship -- it was like the best-ever "I've been working on a novel" that a friend in an undergrad writing course would hand you.)
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, November 13, 2002 5:53 PM (7 years ago)

huh, I thought that would've been way higher. While it's certainly flawed it would've been dangling around somewhere in my list, and I assumed that would be the case for many. Perhaps the long discussions of it here I remember were really just Pinefox talking to himself about how awful it is.

I really like White Teeth but I love On Beauty - I just read an article on Smith which suggested she considered the latter to be almost a repudiation of the former (or The Autograph Man maybe) but I think of it as just a major refinement, focusing the same sense of imaginative fun that nabisco gets at in the quote above on a better story and better characters.

Completely agree. White Teeth was fine with the autobiographical stuff, then spiralled into absurdity with the strawman middle class family, KEVIN, etc. On Beauty has so much more poise and storytelling muscle, and so much more to say - about class, education, physicality, betrayal. I was surprised how much I loved it.

Ha - here's the sentence I omitted from nabisco's quote: "But it looks as if Zadie wants to hop straight ahead to being Serious and Meaningful and Too Be Reckoned With, and I'm not up-to-speed enough to know what else could fill this gap."

I'm surprised this is so low too - loads of the quotes I didn't use are about how ubiquitous it was, at Ned's library, in the hands of every commuter on the tube, etc. etc. It didn't get nominated until really late on either. I suspect people mostly think of it as 90s, same as may have happened to No Logo.

I'm sorry about the pace of all this, by the way - I've been exceptionally busy and it's all I can do to get four or five of these up a day. I'm going to Spain for a few days, and then have a pretty busy schedule after that, so chances are that after today there'll be nothing for a week or so. I had hoped to get down to number 50 today and then have an interlude, but I don't think I'll even manage that.

here's a prejudice - whenever I see people reading 'one of those books EVERYBODY'S reading', be it 'White Teeth' or 'Captain Corelli' or 'Memoirs of a Geisha' or 'Bridget Jones', I assume the person is really really stupid and boring, and if I ever (God forbid) end up talking to the person it will take a long time for them to change my mind, if ever.
― dave q, Monday, July 30, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

I have this problem, totally. I am rubbish and mean.

And Ismael, don't worry about it - I think we're all just grateful that you took the time out to do it in the first place.

i'm not, the pacing is ruining this for me tbh

i read everything but the last twenty pages of white teeth. i remember there was this bit gonna happen where all the characters were gonna be in the same place for different reasons and shit was gonna go down

i remember there was this bit gonna happen where all the characters were gonna be in the same place for different reasons and shit was gonna go down

that can probably go here tbh top100- stock plot devices for important works of literature

Okay, I'm going to have to leave it at number 60 and get back to it probably in a week or so. Thanks for reading this far!

Ismael's taking a chance that we don't take over the running of this competition ourselves - a pirated top 60! Number 1 - the Sinai Diving Guide!!

A close second: Porn Studies!

59. All Pets Go to Heaven - Sylvia Browne (2009)
http://sitb-images.amazon.com/Qffs+v35lepZl2QzJTOeYZYkRMuqFus/v0sAzgLbvSMZQWXtCgLlyDKUfoCfzTqR3YTmyzitBiA=

"the truth that exists in the forth dimension"

o dear. I wish I could lol, but as an animal lover who accepts that past pets NO LONGER EXIST stuff like that just makes me sad. Incidentally, my extensive wikiresearch reveals that Caroline Myss' PhD is in Intuition and and Energy Medicine from the unaccredited Greenwich University. I trust the shit out of her.

Thanks for doing this Ismael.

I was about to defend Greenwich University, but then I realised that Greenwich University in Australia is not the same as the University of Greenwich, UK. I am probably not the first person to be confused by that.

58. The Wit of Martin Luther - Eric W. Gritsch (2006)

(42 points, 4 votes)

Marty Rocks, September 22, 2007 (on Amazon)
"I was amazed to find that this incredible theologian was also a great wit. Eric Gritsch has woven a rye story of the human and funny side of Martin Luther."

J. Ferguson (on Amazon)
"This book tells of the humorous side of Martin Luther. There are points in this book that make me chuckle, but the way it is written is a bit complicated, definitely not in simple English. Overall, the reader can get what the writer is saying, but it is not an easy read."

Christianbook.com
"Eric Gritsch ties Luther's wit and humor to his sharp polemical exploitation of the absurd or incongruous in service to his Reform. At a deeper level Luther's wit and witticisms reflected his keen appreciation of human frailty and the unknowability of things divine. Luther, Gritsch shows, especially relished humor in his interpretation of the Bible, in his pastoral relationships, and in his encounters with death. Ultimately humor in face of mortality is a gauge of human freedom, a "lightening up" that makes of life a divine comedy."

http://i50.tinypic.com/2s6wk02.jpg

oh and thanks Ismael, hope you enjoy yr holiday. We'll do our best to read everything on the list so far while you're gone. Also, to finish the list for you.

57. Fan-Tan - Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell (2005)
http://home.comcast.net/~flickhead/brando001.jpg

(47 points, 3 votes)

"...it's one of those books that I just had to keep going with, to find out how much worse it could possibly get, and in this regard, the book never once failed me." -Amazon reviewer

56. Black Velvet Masterpieces: Highlights from the Collection of the Velveteria Museum - Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin (2008)
(55 points, 4 votes)

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/or/ORPORvelveteria_ks3643.jpg

55. Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us - Jim Marrs (2000)
(62 points, 5 votes)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31TRyRSqGAL.jpg

"He incorporates an ample amount of information from UFO books of the 1960s and 1970s--strange lights on the moon, the ancient-astronaut theories of Erich von Daniken, cattle mutilations, Nazi saucers at the South Pole, the contactees of the 1950s--and updates it credibly with UFO data from the 1980s and 1990s, providing a reasonable survey of abductions, secret underground UFO bases, the MJ-12 group, crop circles, remote viewing, and channeling."

54. A to Izzard: A Harry Stephen Keeler Companion - Fender Tucker (2009)
(131 points, 10 votes)
http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/jackets/ducaglio.jpg

An indispensible guide to the genius of Keeler.

Bloody hell, I forgot that loljoekanswers took over and was thinking proper wtf

53. The Adventures of Larry The Lemur - Ralph Castenada (2004)
(140, 8 votes)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yRP7Xdi4L._SS500_.jpg

Arguably one of the best set of Lemur-based adventures of recent years.

52. Making Waves (The Autobiography) - David Hasselhoff (2006)

142 points, 11 votes

http://i46.tinypic.com/aaf47n.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/bej75s.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/wqq836.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/2569tfb.jpg

3.0 out of 5 stars Speedo might've been a little tight while writing this one, July 8, 2007
By Nerd Alert "Xon" (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Don't Hassel the Hoff: The Autobiography (Hardcover)
"I didn't want to buy this book; I didn't want to read this book, but I couldn't pass it up. It was like standing in line at the grocery store and trying so hard not to look at the tabloids but failing and finally tearing through the magazine to see who got a new set of boobs.
The good part is you won't be bogged down with a complicated writing style or busy flipping back and forth between "the Hoff" and a dictionary. The juvenile writing style will allow you to fly through this book. On another good note, you will laugh out loud many times at how unbelievably arrogant this guy is. He is friends with every star, the ladies love him, Dirk Nowitzki shoots free throws at 90% because of his music, he leveled the Berlin Wall, oh and he is the most watched TV star of all time. Those are only some of his accomplishments, it takes nearly 300 pages to fit all of them in.
Seriously though, the Hoff could've gotten a little more personal with his life. This book is mostly filled with fluff and doesn't go into much detail about anything the reader might find really interesting. He dances around any wxtra relationships he might've had along the way and side-steps anything that might be controversial. It's like listening to a politician promote himself. He actually goes into great detail about Knight Rider and Baywatch episodes and their meanings, give me a break.
But here I am writing about it, so I guess I'm the sucker. If you find pop-culture funnny maybe you should pick this up for some comic relief. But hide the dust jacket because your friends are certain to give you a hard time for reading about this clown.

Now all I need is a Steven Segal book and I'll be set."

xposts ah! Thanks for that, I heard about Mr Keeler somewhere but then forgot his name. Another victory for the ILX books of the 00s list B-).

Enough pop culture -- now the list gets down to serious business. What made the past ten years of history so historical?

51. The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush - Carolyn B. Thompson and James W. Ware (2002)
(161 points, 13 votes)
http://www.g-8.de/Content/EN/StatischeSeiten/G8/Lebensl_C3_A4ufe/Bilder/george-w-bush,property=poster.jpg

50. An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror - David Frum and Richard Perle (2003)
(168 points, 2 votes)
http://www.chris-floyd.com/war/images/030925_ss_iraq_01_jpg.jpg

"But the greatest contribution of "An End to Evil" is its full-throated, passionate defense of the rightness of our cause." - Mona Charen

49. Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust - And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today's Expanding Real Estate Market - David Lereah (2006)
(190 points, 26 votes)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nSTO-vZpSgc/Svdd19dkzTI/AAAAAAAAHRw/emL5TPScBXU/s400/building+topple1.png

“An invaluable book... Today’s real estate markets are booming and Lereah makes a convincing case for why the real estate expansion will continue into the next decade. This book should prove to be a truly practical guide for any household looking to create wealth in real estate.” —Dewey Daane, former governor of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

48. "Dow, 30,000 by 2008!" Why It's Different This Time - Robert Zuccaro (2008)
(198 points, 31 votes)
http://static.howstuffworks.com//gif/stock-market-trends-2.jpg

"The author is an intelligent fellow with a gift for writing, it is just that he was completely wrong on everything. [...] Now his two mutual funds are out of business." - Amazon reviewer

47. Apollyon Rising 2012: The Lost Symbol Found and the Final Mystery of the Great Seal Revealed - Thomas Horn (2009)
(214 points, 17 votes)
http://www.the2012countdown.com/images/122-doomsday2012.jpg

After the wild fantasies of Frum and Perle, it's refreshing to come back to earth with this pragmatic analysis of the approaching New World Order.

"Horn provides other surprising connections to the year 2012 in the Capitol Dome and structures immediately surrounding D.C., ultimately laying the groundwork for what he calls "the true lost symbol, which Dan Brown completely missed." This symbol is connected to the Capitol Dome as the ancient structural representation of the womb of Isis, and the Obelisk, the ancient representation of the erect male phallus of Osiris. How this is connected to the year 2012 and the return of Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod in Apollyon Rising 2012 is disturbing, especially the magic square in the base of the Washington Monument that "binds" the Bible's influence."

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_YT5lMzCouRo/SLCEdRZpufI/AAAAAAAACYI/EVJZu4yktS4/s400/snapshot20080817214639.jpg

"Mine eyes!"

You guys. It'll be Tuesday before I can get stuck back into this properly I think. Developments in my absence distress me - I'm glad to see Larry the Lemur and I think his presence graces us, but I cannot and will not compete with Hoff.

46. Cheese Problems Solved - PLH McSweeney (2007)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412cIU2bZqL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

"For the dedicated cheese enthusiast, this £135 guide promises to answer 200 or so of the most commonly asked questions about cheese and the cheese-making process, 'from problems arising during the preparation of cheesemilk and cheese ripening to queries regarding cheese analysis and the nutritional profile of cheese'. You’ll be delighted to hear that cheddar, blue cheese and mozzarella each merit their own sections."

233 points, 15 votes fyi

there isn't a combination of 15 votes that makes 233 you chancer.

a+ job ruining this thread u guyz

there's a good shout for a mod intervention here, if a mod would be so good.

just a bit of fun let's be cool

Confessions of a Brazilian Bikini Waxer
240 points, 6 votes
http://waxconfessions.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/bktiltlr.jpg

This book is a riot! My wife had a layover at LAX and three people approached her when they saw the cover page. The author has three things going for her: She knows how to treat her clients, she's a creative and expert waxer, and she's got some hilarious stories to share. I promised my wife more approaches from my 747 if she gets a landing strip someday!

btw 20*9 + 10*5 + 3*1

Larry the Lemur is an avid reader, so he fits right in.

Extraordinary Chickens - Stephen Green-Armytage (2000)
241 points, 6 votes
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SqhhJb_P3Kk/SvpQrkb0yMI/AAAAAAAAJ-Q/zUVrESwVj7o/s400/Extraordinary+Chickens+cover.jpg

btw 20*9 + 10*5 + 3*1

― take me to your lemur (ledge), 27 January 2010 17:27 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh no my careful research ruined

It's cool. This has been an amusing, if at times admittedly farcical, half time entertainment during Ismael's unveiling of the results. We should think of this interlude as equivalent to Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's half time extravaganza during Superbowl XXXVIII in 2004:

http://i46.tinypic.com/33lmhdl.jpg

Like Justin, and certainly Janet, a few of us might indeed have made tits of ourselves whilst Ismael's been away, but as we've seen the ref is back in town and he's about to get the second half underway.

We should also draw comfort from the fact that even though it may have gone tits up during half time in Superbowl XXXVIII, the second half of that game is widely considered to have contributed to what was widely renowned as the "Greatest Superbowl of all time" according to commentators such as Peter King in Sports Illustrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII

http://i45.tinypic.com/282gphg.jpg

So, let's get our pompoms out, oh yeah, start shaking them, Oh Yeah, start stamping our feet and shouting at the top of our voices, OH YEAH, as Ismael runs back down the tunnel to kick off the second half of this wonderful spectacle that is the ILX BOOKS OF THE OOs!!!!!!!!! Give us a S, Give us an "I", give us an "N", Give us an "A", Give us an "I", OH YEAHHHH!!!!!

Take it away, Ismael*! .........

http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgggfn.jpg

* Ismael/Hoff are interchangeable, as desired, as we all know that they have the same relationship as Clark Kent and Superman do; Spain my arse, I know that Ismael was actually in Germany to attend to his adoring fans.

Ismael, if you want, I could take all this stuff off the thread when you come back to repost the ACTUAL non-joke results.

Abbott, is there a way for people who aren't running the blog to intervene in such ways? If so, how is it possible? It surprises me that that would be possible except for a moderator or the host of the site. I'm new to blogs so don't really know how it works, so bear with me please.

This is a message board. I am a moderator so I'd be able to do it, if Ismael wants.

I hope that answers your question. I am kind of confused, I admit, why you think ilxor.com is a blog.

ilxsitenewanswers.com

Keep the cheerleaders, whatever else you do! That photo makes me proud to be an American.

I've learned a valuable lesson here: like babies and bicycles, results threads should not be left unattended. I'm gratified to note that the last few entries have been unnumbered, proving that your phoney system is collapsing in ignominy already - that's cool, it just proves that these things are more difficult than they look.

I'll be back to take care of business on Tuesday - no need to clean up in the meantime. I could've lived without Hoff, but who am I to criticise others' fetishes?

You could start a new thread for the top 59.

43. Speak with the Dead: Seven Methods for Spirit Communication - Konstantinos (2004)
242 points, 7 votes
http://www.ipadrblog.com/uploads/image/telephone-rotary.jpg

"Speak with the Dead is the first book in the modern marketplace to focus on practical, usable techniques for communicating with spirits. This book shows you seven methods for spirit contact:

-catching Electronic Voice Phenomena on tape
-using radio noise to provide spirits with a voice
-capturing ghostly images on videotape
-letting spirits use your computer or telephone
-scrying, establishing telepathic contact with the dead, and holding a seance

Speak with them. They're waiting."

Lard and Lard Adulterations - Harvey Washington Wiley (2009)
(243 points, 8 votes)
http://www.treehugger.com/lard.jpg

A quick grease pit stop on our pilgrimage to Sinai.

41. Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen - Marie Etienne (2009)
(210 points, 12 votes)
http://artistryinfaux.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/mardi-gras_500.jpg?w=484&h=356

"The second memoir from former Louisiana aristocrat Etienne is essentially a disjointed retread of her first, Storkbites, wrapped in the bland language of self-discovery lit and tied up with a funny new title. While covering (already-covered) topics like her abusive father, promiscuous streak, mental illness and brother's death, endless reaffirmation gives readers the feeling that Etienne still feels like a victim, and stock expressions of empowerment take the place of serious self-searching. With little in the way of conclusions or narrative arc, Etienne's tales prove frustrating and forgettable. If the tale of this desperate débutante intrigues, readers should pick up the first version (also available from Alluvium) and avoid this undercooked recap." -PW

40. Insulators: A History and Guide to North American Glass Pintype Insulators Price Guide - John and Carol McDougald (2007)
(220 points, 11 votes)
http://www.drumbarracks.org/Original%20Website/images/Insulator3.jpg

"John and Carol McDougald have been active collectors and dealers for 35 years. Both have served as officers in the National Insulator Association. John and Carol are distinguished Lifetime Members of the National Insulator Association and have been awarded the organization's Outstanding Service award multiple times. Carol edited the monthly hobby publication, Crown Jewels of the Wire, for 18 years.

The McDougalds also maintain Grampa Mac's Insulator Emporium, a web-based store for insulators."

The best-of list crashes through the "40" barrier with ease.

39. Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects - Faith D'Aluisio (2004)
(225 points, 12 votes)
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/ManEatingBugs.gif

"The plentiful, gorgeous photographs will take you on an emotional journey, from the depths of disgust to the heights of awe, as you realize that 'the shelves of the supermarket carry only a small slice of what the world has to offer.'"

38. The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything - Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir (2007)
(240 points, 12 votes)
http://theartblog.org/blog/wp-content/uploaded/bracket-288x300.jpg

The bracket applied to all phenomena.

37. Famous Last Words, Fond Farewells, Deathbed Diatribes, and Exclamations Upon Expiration - Ray Robinson (2003)
(241 points, 13 votes)
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/eric1513/eric15130804/eric1513080400033/2806016.jpg

"Here are writers, philosophers, athletes, gangsters, kings, queens, movie stars, and politicians, in all sorts of moods and states of preparedness. Some merely want to say goodbye to loved ones, others want to create a legacy. And some are caught completely off guard, like Civil War general John Sedgwick, answering his troops' urgings to take cover: 'They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-'"

36. In Search of the World's Worst Writers - Nick Page (2000)
(242 points, 14 votes)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GAWSXEE8L._SS500_.jpg

The standard reference work on a topic of perennial interest.

This is really making me disgusted with myself, thinking of every time I derailed great threads, amusing only myself in the process, and now seeing how tacky and stupid it looks from the other end.

That insulators book made me check out www.insulators.info and some of them are absolutely gorgeous pieces of industrial design. I can understand why someone would want to collect them.

http://www.insulators.info/photos/images/130-cob.jpg

Yes, and I kind of want to solve all my problems using just brackets.

_____________________________________________________________________

The way we were:

101. Nixonland - Rick Perlstein (2008) (22 points, two votes)
100. Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky (1942, translated 2004) (22 points, two votes)
99. A Storm of Swords - George Martin (2000) (22 points, two votes)
98. Veronica - Mary Gaitskill (2005) (22 points, three votes)
97. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World - Francis Wheen (23 points, three votes)
96. On Green Dolphin Street - Sebastian Faulks (2004) (24 points, two votes)
95. No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy (2005) (25 points, three votes)
94. Experience - Martin Amis (2000) (25 points, three votes)
93. Look To Windward - Iain M. Banks (2000) (26 points, two votes)
92. Nostalgia - Mircea Cărtărescu (translated 2005) (26 points, two votes)
91. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (2009) (26 points, two votes)

90. Stasiland - Anna Funder (2004) (27 points, two votes)
89. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (2001) (27 points, two votes)
88. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach (2003) (28 points, three votes)
87. The Elementary Particles also known as Atomised - Michel Houellebecq (2000) (28 points, four votes)
86. Sinai Diving Guide - Alberto Siliotti (2005) (28 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
85. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (2007) (29 points, three votes)
84. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (2005) (29 points, five votes)
83. Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago (2008) (30 points, two votes)
82. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (2006) (30 points, three votes)
81. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories - Wells Tower (2009) (30 points, three votes)

80. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell (2006) (31 points, two votes)
79. Rabbit Remembered - John Updike (2001) (31 points, two votes)
78. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks (2007) (31 points, two votes)
77. An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira (2006) (31 points, three votes)
76. Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson (2005) (31 points, two votes)
75. The Whole Equation - David Thomson (2005) (31 points, two votes)
74. What's Left? - Nick Cohen (2007) (31 points, three votes)
73. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize - David Cavanagh (2001) (32 points, four votes)
72. Nothing - Paul Morley (2000) (33 points, two votes)
71. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (2000) (33 points, four votes)

70. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell (2005) (33 points, four votes)
69. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century - Patrik Ouředník (2005) (34 points, two votes)
68. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - Alice Munro (2001) (34 points, five votes)
67. Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore (2003) (35 points, two votes)
66. Words and Music - Paul Morley (2003) (35 points, three votes)
65. Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon (2006) (35 points, four votes)
64. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson (2007) (37 points, two votes)
63. Death And The Penguin - Andrey Kurkov (2001) (37 points, two votes)
62. London: The Biography - Peter Ackroyd (2001) (37 points, three votes)
61. The Year Of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (2005) (38 points, four votes)

and the way we are:

60. White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000)
(40 points, two votes)

http://m1.wholesite.com/2009/12/8/e046b24e-6d7b-a6c4-29f0-1d3567909ffa/480x277_zadie_smith_main.jpg

Zadie Smith

here's a prejudice - whenever I see people reading 'one of those books EVERYBODY'S reading', be it 'White Teeth' or 'Captain Corelli' or 'Memoirs of a Geisha' or 'Bridget Jones', I assume the person is really really stupid and boring, and if I ever (God forbid) end up talking to the person it will take a long time for them to change my mind, if ever.
― dave q, Monday, July 30, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

White Teeth's a bit of a funny one. I found it extremely readable, despite the irksome feeling that was rather Rushdie lite. I was puzzled by this, until it was pointed out by one of my old college friends that Smith writes like so many of our other contemporaries wrote and spoke. The familiarity the language makes it almost too easy to keep reading.
― Richard Tunnicliffe, Sunday, July 15, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Some of the best bits of white teeth (see book thread) are about a Jehova's Witness called Hortense. Very believable seeing as that's just what Witnesses in north london are likely to be called. unfornutnately I have no funny story about getting rid of witnesses because just offering to read a watchtower will normally send em packing.
― Ed, Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Did anyone else thing White Teeth was really awful? An utterly hollow, badly plotted, dunderheaded book.
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, June 12, 2002 12:00 AM (7 years ago)

I was dearly hoping White Teeth might lead into an actual New Thing in lit. It was the first thing I'd read in a long time that took such a sense of pleasure in the act of storytelling; it read like Dickens, so far as I was concerned; or rather, it read like a happy kid doing Dickens, taking pleasure less in the story/characters/dialogue than in the process of writing them out, building them up. (It read like fiction might be what I'm saying.)
I was hoping for a groundswell of this sort of thing -- blow away the stilted cleverness of certain McSweeneyites and their even worse bids at weightiness and take us back to the simple fact of young people having fun painting odd funny pictures of what life is actually like ... White Teeth seems the flagship -- it was like the best-ever "I've been working on a novel" that a friend in an undergrad writing course would hand you.)
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, November 13, 2002 5:53 PM (7 years ago)

59. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer (2005)
(41 points, two votes)

http://wpsmedia.latimes.com/image/backlot/2008/7/1/Twilight_duo_rain_tree/Twilight-402-3-large.jpg

The inevitable 'Twilight' thread

LBS:
200 pages of pure teenagers' emotions - literature maybe not, but gripping certainly

caloma:
I'm a sucker for a love story and this was a really good one. It took me right back to the naivety of being fifteen again.

(this is for real again, by the way)

lol

it would be lame of me to have participated in the defence of fantasy above and then lose it now.

but

I always mean to have a go at these massive phenomena on the basis that ten million readers can't be wrong, but I hardly ever get round to it. The one time I did try, with The Da Vinci Code, I could not put the thing down.

i liked the first twilight movie but i guess there's no point reading the book as well

lol Twilight.

Hey, I liked the film too - though I found some of the big set-pieces totally jarring, like the baseball bit or the climbing trees really fast. While they looked pretty crappy to me, I kind of assumed that there were teenage reasons why these would've been really cool, and that I'd just forgotten what they were. But maybe they'd just been badly done. It'd be interesting to read the book and see if that made any difference.

58. Youth - JM Coetzee (2002)
(41 points, two votes)

http://www.proteatours.de/fileadmin/media/suedafrika/reiseinfos/Literatur/Youth_by_J.M._Coetzee_-.jpg

jabba hands:
i read this book when i was, like the main character, a recent graduate who had moved to london and wanted to be a writer. man, it was depressing as hell, let me tell you! and this book didn't help at all. but it did kinda make me laugh at the whole situation i guess. i'm not actually sure it's trying to be funny. anyway, great book!

I read it in fairly similar circumstances. I liked it, but not as much as Disgrace. Almost uniquely I've lost my copy and can't remember a thing about it. Except a description of some secretaries moving around an office with an easy familiarity with one another's bodies, like animals in a burrow - that's stayed with me for some reason, and I trot it out myself from time to time.

in what possible context?

Hm, now you mention it I couldn't give you an example - I must have to crowbar it into some curious conversations. Maybe folk on a dancefloor while I wallflower, or people comforting one another - I'm not a very touchy-feely type, just a bit of a creepy one.

When chatting up secretaries?

Now this isn't the impression I should be giving of myself at all.

thread derailing again, godamnit. apologies

Liked this book a lot, and indeed the whole trilogy. Summertime, my favorite of the three, has made me wonder if there were obviously untrue parts in the first two books that I was too obtuse to recognize.
This one was odd for me to read though, as I was just then feeling really sad because I had a job as a programmer in a company that I didn't feel morally comfortable with. I think the book made it slightly easier to think about quitting the damn job -- which I actually just did a few months ago.

My problem with Coetzee is that his books are so easy to read that I storm through them and probably miss a bunch, and certainly end up forgetting way too much! But I'm looking forward to re-reading him; "Foe" will probably be the first.

Oh man Foe made my head hurt. (But then I couldn't read RC and was studying too much/going through minor family-related trauma, so maybe try it again? Wait, no no.)

Hoping low placing of "White Teeth" (which I liked!) indicates it gets beaten out by "On Beauty" (which I liked even more!)

Actually I voted "Youth" #7 but oddly, like Ismael, I remember almost nowt about it, except that, as with everything JMC writes, the sentences were perfect. And maybe there was a lot of boredom in it. DFWallace is getting lots of attention for posthumous novel all about boredom but I think it is a big subject for Coetzee as well.

By the way, I took creative writing from Coetzee in college. He was soft-spoken and terrifying.

Wow. That really is impressive - Martin Amis vanity course it ain't. What was he like, in terms of learning rather than fear?

I'd never seen a picture of him 'til I searched for that image. He looks really thin.

I have decided on the basis of today that books are better than people, so it's good to start the countdown again.

nice to hear it, Gamaliel

57. Saturday - Ian McEwan
(41 points, three votes)

http://www.pierretristam.com/images/112606-mcewan-saturday.jpg

caloma:
I can't quite remember exactly why I liked it, but I do remember that I really enjoyed following the story. I listened to the audiobook and that really made the language stand out for me.

It's never a good idea to for an author to start off a book with ten pages of boring, overly technical descriptions of a middle aged brain surgeon's work week. Fortunately things have gotten slightly more interesting since those early pages, but how couldn't they have?
― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Sunday, March 26, 2006 2:59 AM (3 years ago)

I think Saturday has significant strengths as well as weaknesses, but I have to agree with those criticisms - with the further observation that the portrayal of the blues musician son totally undermines any confidence you might have in McEwan's ability to write about anything he hasn't experienced directly. I know enough about the music scene to know that the son's musical "career" is a total absurdity. I know very little about brain surgery, but the suspicion must be that if McEwan's perception of the music scene is so ridiculously wrong, his perception of what it is like being a brain surgeon is equally daft.
― frankiemachine (frankiemachine), Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:18 AM (3 years ago)

Saturday by Ian McEwan. It is a signed copy. I looked at a few signed copies and the signatures were all completely different.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Monday, January 23, 2006 11:25 AM (4 years ago)

I haven't read "Youth" but would like to after enjoying "Disgrace" which I thought shared some similarities with Roth's "The Human Stain".

I like it that Ismael got in on the joke list too by including "Twilight"; Abbot won't be pleased though.

"Saturday" was excellent I thought. The first book to examine that strange day on Feb 15th 2003. I liked the way McEwan placed the day within the life of a troubled surgeon. It worked well for me.

I still haven't read a McEwan book that wouldn't have been improved by tearing out the last ten pages.

I don't agree with Jeff's slating of the first ten pages of Saturday though - I thought the descriptions of the surgeon at work were lovely and dead interesting, and really unusual with it to see so much attention paid to going about one's work. Then I read McEwan interviewing Zadie Smith, or vice versa, and they went on about how all that stuff was really about writing, not surgery, and it was all horribly self-congratulatory.

"I still haven't read a McEwan book that wouldn't have been improved by tearing out the last ten pages."

so OTM

56. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July (2007)
(41 points, four votes)

http://asset3.venuszine.com/article_image/image/4241/viewer_wide/MirandaJuly3.jpg

Miranda July is an excellent writer

The cover of the 9/18/06 New Yorker shows a couple in Central Park and is rendered in pastel colors. Besides the Clinton profile, the issue has articles on the science of neuroeconomics, the perils of imperfect French (Sedaris), and a dirty and engaging short story by Miranda July.
― Eazy (Eazy), Monday, September 25, 2006 3:04 PM (3 years ago)

I'm reading Miranda July's new collection. Is it just me or do her narrators all come across as wise, worldly five year olds? It's starting to bother me.
― franny glass, Monday, September 3, 2007 3:40 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Miranda July comes across as a wise, worldly, preachy five year old.
― remy bean, Monday, September 3, 2007 7:59 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I wanted to like that book more than I did. Some of the stories were very good, but it didn't quite have the greatness promised by the inventive ad funny website (of all things).
― James Morrison, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 3:46 AM (2 years ago)

I saw Miranda July at a vegetarian restaurant in Chelsea (which wasn't very good). She was with some dude, and she was making the same over-deliberate "endearing" faces she makes in the film.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, March 31, 2007 2:09 PM (2 years ago)

someone just told me that my voice sometimes sounds like miranda july. i have no idea what she sounds like, so i don't know what that means.
― Juulia (julesbdules), Friday, September 2, 2005 7:23 PM (4 years ago)

*Nobody Belongs Here More Than You van Miranda July. Ai, dit is pijnlijk. Ik had na haar film wat meer verwacht dan dit. Het lijkt wel alsof ze haast had om deadlines te halen..laten staan dit.
― EvR, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:21 AM (1 year ago)

I'm trying to remember if I like Miranda July or not.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, June 24, 2005 2:33 AM (4 years ago)

Miranda July can seriously go to hell. It's like listening to a retard.

Miranda July can seriously get in my pants.

i seriously hope ur pants are filled with lava

lol @ twilight bein the least worst thing posted 2day

I'd never heard of book or author and was taken aback to find her all over the archives in magazines, films, books, restaurants and whatnot. It did occur to me that there might be more than one Miranda July - hopefully at least some of those quotes are relevant.

Yeah, those all sound like her. I really liked this book, more than I like most books of what I take to be its kind. Here's what I said on the thread you linked:

Occasionally the stories are too schematic but more often the simplicity (why do people think she's pretentious or affected or jokey or twee?) works for her, as in "This Person", one of the best stories I read last year. It is really hard for me to see her as anything like Lorrie Moore except that they're both women and both write stories with jokes in them, I guess. Maybe she's like a much better Judy Budnitz or a less bleak Gary Lutz. In any event she writes in the manner of someone whose last name ends in "tz".

55. Perdido Street Station - China Miéville (2000)
(42 points, three votes)

http://cache.io9.com/assets/resources/2008/02/newcrobuzongordillo.jpg

Just finished Perdido Street Station (I swear it was 700 pages when I started, but it was 850 by the end), by China Mieville, which is brilliant ... The chapter where they meet the Ambassador is pretty much perfect.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, January 14, 2003 6:08 PM (7 years ago)

It's supposedly great, but I gave up a couple hundred pages in because I didn't give a fuck about what was going on.
― otto, Wednesday, February 4, 2004 6:48 PM (5 years ago)

I'd second the recommendation for China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (which I loved and spent a whole weekend reading rather than spending time with loved ones).
― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, February 5, 2004 12:21 PM (5 years ago)

lint (Jack) wrote this on thread Reading Two Books at Once? Combine Them on Apr 7, 2004:
"By Perdido Street Station I Sat Down and Wept" - Extraordinarily long story of doomed love during attack on fantasy city.

It's a bit like discworld played straight, and that makes it all the more ridiculous.

― poster x (ledge), Friday, 25 December 2009 22:53 (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I haven't read this so don't know where that image is from, but I'm seeing a bit of similarity with our no.76:

http://i46.tinypic.com/vdlv2q.jpg

Is bare-chested-standing-on-a-crag-over-a-ruined-city a genre of its own now?

xp well given that discworld is fantasy played with a twist........

Yeah but all the stuff with the weaver, and ambassador from hell, and insectoid sex, all seemed more ridiculous than normal fantasy. but hey it's not a genre i normally bother with so feel free to ignore me.

heh we've done all this above so not much point in doing it again after every fantasy (may there be 40 more imo)

54. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling (2000)
(45 points, four votes)

http://blondierocket.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/harry_potter_and_the_goblet_of_fire.jpg

Harry Potter: Classic or Dud?
the new harry potter movie, harry potter and the goblet of fire

LBS:
Unbeatable, brings you back to childhood and makes you feel the magic all around

I said this on the children's lit thread already, but here it goes. A zillion times better than most adult genre fiction. Significant character development, incredible tempo which never flags nor speeds to far ahead, just the right amt. of suspense, and a fairly decent set of morals which aren't scrawled over the book like bad graffiti. juve lit is the only lit these days where we can fantasize about playing a pivotal role in world events (too fantastic a thought for "mature" lit) and Potter's melding of the mundane and the tremendous (cf. anime, Tenchi in particular) presents a sort condensed release for the frustrated desire to do something which matters. Uh. Compare to worst offenders in this realm (the tail-books of the Enders Game set, as I recall) and get a sense of the adeptness which Harry's special status w/r/t schoolmates is dealt with.
― Sterling Clover, Thursday, August 16, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I agree. The people you expect to be villians are heros and vice versa. The satire is sharp and clever. The girls are as important as the boys. Alot of it is so funny. The plot is not at all bare bones. The use of langauge and puns is sophistacated. It talks to kids about a whole slew of tough issues( mortailty ,loyalty, "the other" ) without being pendandtic . It is playful with its conventions. I think with everything i have read in the past 6 months the 8 or 9 days with Harry Potter were the most enjoyable. Oh and i read ALOT !
― anthony, Thursday, August 16, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

rereading the books at the moment, in fact I'm about 40 pages from the end of Goblet of Fire. I'd say I enjoyed them just as much second time around, though this may be cos a) the film's just come out, b) it's a while since I read them first or c) cos I'm just a big kid.
― Andrew Williams, Wednesday, December 5, 2001 1:00 AM (8 years ago)

Franz Ferdinand cancelled their roles in the upcoming Harry Potter movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Alex, Bob, Paul and Nick were planned to play a guest role as a band named the 'Wyrd Witches'. British newspaper Mirror reports that the tensions in the band, which caused arguments between Alex and Nick this week, were the cause for this decision. But a spokesperson of the band demented: 'There has been a little argument, that's normal. They can't act in the movie because they don't have the time for that.' The role of the 'Wyrd Witches' will now be played by Radiohead members Jonny Greenwood and Jarvis Cocker."
I assume they meant 'commented,' but you never know.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, November 19, 2004 11:47 PM (5 years ago)

oops, massive - but I do prefer the old drawings, before the brand got all cinematic and 'dark'

it's a not-very-well-written book, even for a teen fantasy.

Is the fact that this was the only Harry Potter nominated (of the four released last decade) meant to indicate it's considered the best of the four?

I probably enjoyed reading The Order of the Phoenix the most of those, and think the end of the last one is pretty much perfect.

(didn't vote for this though as I had to cut off somewhere)

I struggled with these books, particularly The Goblet of Fire, which just seemed so leaden. They feel paradoxcally both bloated and lacking in space, the writing feels monotonous, almost like it's not supposed to be read too closely, but just skimmed as a sort of muzak. I also don't believe the magic. A lot of this comes from comparing it to the Earthsea novels, which may be unfair, but the subject matter invites the comparison.

Favourite out of all the franchise is probably the film of Prisoner of Azkaban.

Oh and, er, sorry for the drunken Miranda July posting. But really, I went to see that film and felt like blowing my brains out - the self-conscious kookiness, that horrible version of twee, really grated, and when I read something by her, without realising it was by her, I immediately recognised the voice, which I guess is actually quite a good thing, but it's not a voice I like at all.

I agree that the magic is a disappointment. For such an important part of the story, it's an uncommon lack of imagination on her part. What does a wizard do to make something happen? He says it in Latin! Even Latin is such a dull choice, and is one of the times when the public-school ethos of the whole series really bugs me. I'm surprised the films didn't correct this - in fact they're even worse, now the wizard just shouts it in Latin.

There was one magic class I remember from the early books where they had to roll up their sleeves and slog away concocting potions or somesuch, and all the pupils hated it 'cos it was so boring. I thought that was great! It took me back to endless months of connecting rubber tubing and heating water, before finally graduating to burning a tiny piece of magnesium near the end of term and it seeming like the coolest thing ever

hard to say if the films are worse than the books, from memory- i think the films get better as you go along, whereas the series of books lags badly in the middle.

the individual books lag badly in the middle too, if you get me.

I don't really want to waste my precious reading time reading a kid's book about wizards. So I have no idea if this is good for what it is or not. But it was bound to be on the list, and I don't particularly begrudge it being so, having been very much a 2000s cultural phenomenon.

I'm guessing Selby Jr's Waiting Period didn't get in then -- shame I was away while voting took place...

Agree that the film of the third one is perhaps the best of any of the books or films.

I think the books are more interesting for their retelling of the star wars story than for anything like their use of magic. Harry is a convenient fusion of the parts of luke and anakin skywalker with the most story potential.

Thought the film of Goblet of Fire was pretty weak, incidentally.

That reminds me, e.mily: I went to see Martin Amis give a reading in 2000. The Q&A afterwards was mostly pretentious students sucking up to him ("Do you see your role as to chronicle the pornography of the quotidian?") but someone did have the guts to ask him if he liked Harry Potter. I'm sure he was as disdainful as you'd expect, but I wish I could remember exactly what he said - I'm sure I'd never get tired of repeating it.

I don't think Selby Jr got nominated, but I was pretty amazed to find out that he (and Saul Bellow - maybe Burroughs as well?) were still alive and producing in the 2000s

Oh I think you copied and pasted the Selby from an ILB thread so I assumed it was nominated.

xxp to waitresses in nightclubs, presumably....

No, you're right, he was nominated, I just had him slightly out-of-place on my alphabetical list. You can draw your own conclusions from my uncertainty.

xp no no, that's all wrong - quoting Amis in those circumstances is something Amis would do

53. Netherland - Joseph O'Neill (2007)
(45 points, four votes)

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n49/n247540.jpg

Talk to me about 'Netherland'

Finished Joseph O'Neil's Netherland yesterday. I wanted to start a thread called "'We courted in the style preferred by the English: alcoholically' Joseph O'Neil's Netherland" but was afraid no one cares/has the read the book/would post.
I loved it so much I'm reticent to give form or shape to my enthusiasm because I'm not sure I can describe the why w/o falling into hyperbole and/or incoherence. A big part of the pleasure in reading, for me, is stumbling on moments where an author makes explicable thoughts and feelings that I've had but have never been able to formulate and Netherland is filled w/those moments. When he's describing the formation of players on a cricket field, or applying for a driver's license or the drunken logic which dictates a boozy night out, O'Neill's prose is perfect. I just loved this novel so much.
― Lamp, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 11:57 PM (1 year ago)

OK, am now reading 'Netherland', and it's wonderful. Realised about 50 pages in that I read another book by this chap years and years ago--'The Breezes', which was a very funny novel about "the unluckiest family in Ireland".
― James Morrison, Monday, June 16, 2008 10:55 PM (1 year ago)

Iemand Joseph O'Neills Netherland gelezen? Is één van mijn favoriete boeken van het afgelopen jaar, zo niet het favoriete. (De grote favoriete van de 'kenners' ook trouwens: als het om boeken gaat ben ik een keiharde rockist.) Mooi geschreven boek over cricket, de draad in het leven een beetje kwijt zijn, post-9/11 New York (zonder dat het vermoeiend actueel probeert te zijn) en nog meer cricket. En een beetje cricket in Nederland ook.
― Martijn Grooten, Monday, December 8, 2008 10:56 AM (1 year ago)

Netherland, which is knocking it outta the park. I don't want to reach the last page.
― Jaq, Monday, August 25, 2008 2:58 PM (1 year ago)

Deserved better in my view. It just never got any momentum. Looking at my own ballot I see that I only gave it 13th spot, and I feel ashamed.

Ooh that looks v. good. Want to read it now. Nice to see some actually positive quotes beneath one of the placegetters!

I'm also ashamed that Lamp's thread title is so much better than mine.

Hm, maybe I've been going a bit overboard in trying to pick sceptical quotes, rather than gushing ones - but I've never read a bad word about Netherland. I think it even won some sort of 'cricket book of the year' prize here, which is usually reserved for things like Atherton's autobiography.

Netherland has a sluggish plot, ultimately unconvincing characters and a charmless, overly passive narrator, but is so astonishing on a sentence level that pretty much all is forgiven. It's remarkable that anyone's prose could be good enough to overcome flaws that in any other novel would make me throw it across the room. Some of the people I recommended it to, however, did just want to throw it across the room.

I'm a big cricket fan and, cricket literature definitely being a genre, have been meaning to give this a go for a while - this shd prompt me I reckon.

I didn't really get the Harry Potter phenomenon. I watched about three of the films but didn't find them very interesting. I suppose they are aimed at children though so that is probably not surprising. A good piece of business from Rowling though; well done her.

I thought this was an interesting read. However, I couldn't see what would propel it from "interesting" to "great". Can someone explain. I noted that the book got a lot of publicity following Obama's revelation i the summer that he was reading it.

The prose, the prose - literary critics go months waiting for sentences this beautifully crafted so they get understandably excited.

I agree with Lamp that the prose was excellent and there were some good insights. I just didn't think the story was all that strong. Nothing really happened in it of great consequence. Perhaps O'Neill was trying to evoke the atmosphere of a rained off fifth test dead rubber? It was like being in purgatory.

I thought everyone loved Netherland and it was a good shout for #1! I am evidently not one with the ILX zeitgeist.

never heard of it ;_; i love beautiful prose so it's shot to the top of my must-read list.

^^

(well i'm not crying but the rest of it)

During my research I found out that the author spent part of his own childhood in Holland (like the narrator). That's cleared something up for me at least, because (like I said in the link) when I read this I just couldn't believe how completely he'd taken on the guy's voice in all aspects of his life - I'm still in awe, but now what he's pulled off at least seems plausible.