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

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.