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

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.