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

_____________________________________________________________________

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.