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

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I need to stop this now

young stalin looked so fucking cool.

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

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

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)
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"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."

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