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

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)

no

He most certainly is...

Is the only book poll that was done on ILX? ILX needs to do more book polls oh so badly.

What do you have in mind? I sometimes toy with doing some kind of bestsellers/blockbusters/exciting/genre-thriller poll, but I've never really settled on what the parameters might be. Also, these things take a lot of work and I can't really tell in advance how busy I'm likely to be (hence slow pace of and big gap in the middle of this one), so have put the idea off for a while.

whoa, for some reason i thought Joan Didion was a folk singer. thanks for setting me straight Books of the 00s thread!

Is there a sci-fi poll of any kind? That would be cool

What do you have in mind? I sometimes toy with doing some kind of bestsellers/blockbusters/exciting/genre-thriller poll, but I've never really settled on what the parameters might be. Also, these things take a lot of work and I can't really tell in advance how busy I'm likely to be (hence slow pace of and big gap in the middle of this one), so have put the idea off for a while.

I didn't really have anything specific in the mind, but sci-fi and/or fantasy poll sounds intriguing. I wouldn't be able to vote because I haven't read any sci-fi other than early Vonnegut or any fantasy other than The Hobbit. I suppose that the last thing I need is another book poll to give me one more list of books to feel guilty about not getting around to reading. I would like to make the time to read close to three quarters of the books listed in this poll alone. It would probably help if I spent less tims online.

i wld be willing to organize a sff poll but realistically i dont think wed get very many votes

I think that's probably the issue with a lot of book polls. It's why the heavy hitters threads work well I think - attract people interested, not too many choices to dilute the discourse. Favourite/best private investigating detective might be a good one.

hmm, not book related but i've been toying with the idea of a favourite screen detective poll.

Not that dreck that was the Zen programme that's for sure. My word. Did anyone see that? The Dibdin books aren't amazing, but the early ones especially aren't at all bad. Especially Ratking. One of the things that gave them a certain degree of charm was the world weariness of the main character. Charm and world weariness were not characteristics that could be discerned in the TV programme.

I think an sf/f poll might do ok-ish for voters - it seems to be the home genre for a lot of posters. may need to encourage them to jump that 'oh i haven't read much' voting roadblock though.

Thought about it myself, but my schedule's mad till spring then unpredictable; also having a more active f/sf fan (I dip in and out) in charge wld make sense.

(oh we talked about Zen prog a little on that Michael Dibdin thread in ILB. To repeat self, I was distracted to madness by some of the characters having Italian accents)

Oh right, somehow missed that. Cheers. (and I meant 'aren't at all bad' rather than 'aren't all bad'). s/f one undoubtedly the way to go I think. My knowledge is decent but sketchy at best (and that goes for s/f as well ahem), so I'd definitely be looking forward to the results.

man the lynda barry thread being bumped makes me really regret not having Cruddy on my list.

How did we manage to poll 101 books without Wolf Hall even placing? If we were to rerun the thing now it'd stand a pretty good chance of winning the whole thing.

how long had it been out then? 6 months?

I still haven't read The Corrections.

People have decided to hate Franzen but I bet I'd still really like The Corrections if I read it again now.