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

Europeana killing me btw. Thanks this thread.

A bonus one tonight, then that's it because I'm practically falling asleep. Top fifty starts tomorrow.

51. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (2000)
(46 points, five votes)

http://files.performingarts.ucla.edu/0607images/davidsedaris/Sedaris%20Hi%20Res%20Color%20(photo%20by%20Robert%20Banks).jpg

DAVID SEDARIS = genius
David Sedaris, Douglas Rackoff & Sarah Vowell

I remember reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day" between planes in an airport once, and practically weeping I was laughing so hard. Granted, i was exhausted, but still.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, January 19, 2004 10:55 PM (6 years ago)

I was rather disturbed by the stuff in 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' about how Sedaris went to Paris and did nothing but watch American movies there and mock the illogicality of the gender system in the French language. Then there were the put- downs of faggoty New York restaurants with their 'over-creative food', and the jokes about pretentious art students doing drugs.

Sedaris, like any writer, writes about what he knows. But he's a satirist, so he attacks what he knows. When this is persecution, like the 'speech therapy' he underwent at school, that's fine. But when, later, he has approximately the kind of life he deserves -- a gay, sophisticated, metropolitan one -- he attacks that too. That's when it gets problematical for me. Paris and New York are too sophisticated, and the suburbs are too boring and straight. Breeders from the boondocks get mocked when they visit him in New York, but queeny head waiters get mocked too.
So where does Sedaris stand? What are his unquestionable values, his unimpeachable virtues? They seem to be 'me and my sister, and our difference from everybody else'. And I'm a teensy bit concerned by some sort of autism there.
― Momus, Wednesday, May 29, 2002 12:00 AM (7 years ago)

I remember laughing out loud at these:
...
8. David Sedaris: Me Talk Pretty One Day (*)
...
*: I pissed my pants laughing while reading these.
― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Thursday, February 19, 2004 2:34 PM (5 years ago)

He never advanced from, or ever even equalled, the incredible promise of _Barrel Fever_.

I don't know the guy, but I'd guess that Alex and Vermont Girl were reading him in the right spirit, and Momus was not.

That's a big ass image up there.

So it is. I'd been trying to keep it to small pics, and even went so far as to reduce some of the ones upthread, but life is just a bit too short to make that the rule. I did think there was some kind of size limiter on the board though.

50. The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial Of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories - Nicholas Gurewitch (2008)
(46 points, six votes)

http://popculturezoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/pbf165-yarteries.jpg
http://jdsmanstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/PBF146-Bumble_Buzzin.jpg
http://jdsmanstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/PBF210-Wishing_Well.gif

The Perry Bible Fellowship has a new home in G2

I'm a huge fan of "smart people humor", and PBF has never let me down. It was torture having to wait the long months until I received this book for a Christmas present - I was instructed not to buy it from the gift giver.
Two thumbs up, Mr. Gurewitch. Two thumbs up. Hurry up with a sequel already!
― and what, Monday, January 7, 2008 3:18 PM (2 years ago)

* Perry Bible Fellowship / Nicholas Gurewitch - fucking great, of course. I'm inspired that this comic could become a success.
― Nhex, Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:39 PM (1 year ago)

haha, i didn't get my votes in on time for this poll, unfortunately, but i would have voted Gilead number 1. i'm interested to know who did vote it top. i've probably never been caught online being so effusive so i'm happy about that, thanks Ismael ;)

Haha, that's brilliant, I'm glad you're around - I laughed like a horse when I realised all the quotes I was pulling down were by the same person!

i did too after i got over the embarrassment :D

By the way, what's Gilead actually about?

no idea. i've never read it.

with this and the movie thread concurrent i'm wishing today wasn't my busiest at work in months.

thanks again IK sterling work.

aw, shucks. Omar's done a beautiful job over there, I'm having to really step up my image hunting

oh yeah absolutely he's showing you up in a big way but y'know, you work with what you have i'm sure.

49. 45 - Bill Drummond (2000)
(47 points, three votes)

http://i46.tinypic.com/kesntg.jpg

45 by Bill Drummond is one of the best books I've ever read full stop, never mind music books. Read that.
― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, February 11, 2005 1:28 PM (4 years ago)

"Bill Drummond's '45' is a marvellous book. He's a great writer.
Julian Cope's two tomes are hilarious and entertaining. A great writer he is not."
You are fucking high. Julian Cope can write rings around Bill Drummond.
Still, I have to pick Mr. Drummond in this particular deathmatch. He writes his ass off, plus he was in the KLF. NO CONTEST
― retort pouch (retort pouch), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 4:34 AM (6 years ago)

I prefer Pete Doherty to Bill Drummond.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Tuesday, February 28, 2006 10:16 AM (3 years ago)

I *think* I ended up not voting for PBF, although I do love his style, but I did vote for 45. Having said that, I can't really think of anything to say about it. My friend lives in the exactly correct position to have been made soup by Drummond, though, and never did anything about it, which annoys me no end.

Yay, two of my noms made the top 50, which was two more than I expected.

The pieces on Peter Green in 45 and his idea for a Scottish World Cup record are two of my favourite pieces of music writing anywhere. The Green one in particular is a heartbreaking portrait of fandom and the reality of meeting your idols.

Right, I'm going to get this myself now. Seen it many times in Fopp, never bothered opening it.

Wonderful book, 45. I somehow missed the whole voting/noms process so choices like this - books I loved but haven't even thought of for 10 years - are a very pleasant surprise.

48. House Of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski (2000)
(49 points, five votes)

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/5382/houseofleaves.jpg

'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski
ILB is too slow so let's have a thread about Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves

Reinvents the novel as we know it, whilst scaring you out of your skin for days.
― G Parkes, Sunday, April 8, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

...For the last several weeks I've been travelling across the upper United States--listening on the car CD player, coincidentally, to lots of flamenco and Greco, as well as Donizetti and Momus--and I'm struck by how many Amish and Mennonite (and related) colonies are still out there. These are people who very purposefully try to eradicate nearly all that is "modern" and "decadent" and "pop" from their lives, right down to eschewing buttons for toggles. No cars, no electricity, but even if TV were mule-powered they'd do a parental lock on every channel. They, too, want to create another year and another world to live in. At Niagara Falls I was followed for blocks by a whole gaggle of bearded (but not mustached) men in collarless shirts with suspenders and their "womenfolk" in aproned pinafores and bonnets--I looked to their feet, expecting high-laced boots, but to my astonishment saw they all wore black Reeboks. One wonders if the young boys among the clan were wearing Insane Clown Possee t-shirts under their gingham. All utopias have their rebels (just ask Lucifer). And I wondered what they thought of me with my digital camera and Tevas.
― X. Y. Zedd, Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Wow, XYZ, I really like your last contribution; I think you should check out House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski -- that is, if you haven't already. It sounds like the book you're trying to recall.
― suzy, Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Ik zal dat House of Leaves maar eens gaan proberen.
― Vasquesz, Saturday, February 1, 2003 3:35 PM (7 years ago)

House of Leaves is a book I picked up because the first conversation I had alone with this girl I'd met that didn't involve her pants was about the book. We're now moving in together, if I get into the school I want to get into, so we'll have two copies ... and I'm only just now getting around to reading it.
― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, May 14, 2003 2:19 AM (6 years ago)

Oh ho, another of my picks. I always have to preface discussions about this by saying it is a VERY flawed boook, and there are certain bits of this that still make me cringe. On the other hand, I really rate it as an excellent horror story, and while the formalist aspects are gimmicky in a way that most authors I rate avoid, they are FUN, and they do make sense within the context of the book. Yes, it may be a case of function following form for much of the time, but when actually carried out in a way that works, there really isn't anything wrong with that.

Would still recommend this to anyone.

I don't think another book has scared me like House of Leaves although I stopped reading about halfway when the pages/story became too complicated to know what I was really following. It didn't help that I tried to start reading it leading up to my dissertation, I guess as I already had 2 or 3 or 4 books a week on the go already.

Another great book. A tremendous attempt to combine postmodern tricksiness with visceral scares.

Also one of the few 00s novels with a bona fide cult following. I could be wrong but I don't imagine it was met with adoring mainstream reviews.

Definitely hit a run of 4-5 books here that I'll be investing in

Yes, Netherland through to House of Leaves is gold - Gilead is the only one I haven't read. If only jed would tell me whether it was worth investigating.

47. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon (2007)
(49 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b210/coffee_milk/yiddish2.jpg

Michael Chabon

Alex in Montreal:
Chabon has a better handle on the plot of this than Kavalier and Clay, and his continued journey into the realm of literary takes on pulp conceits is rewarding, but there seems less at stake here - intellectually, emotionally, and thematically.

yiddish policeman's union is great and totally made me call everyone sweetness for like six months after.
― schlump, Friday, October 10, 2008 3:31 AM (1 year ago)

it's...strange. Not bad, but I think he overuses the alternate history motif until it becomes alien and difficult for me to read as anything but sci-fi. The premise of Israel losing the 1948 war and Jews relocating to Alaska as Roosevelt suggested is interesting, but there is an overload of details by attempting to translate 1930s Jewish life into a modern day setting, as if by losing Israel, culture is frozen in the ghettos of Lodz, the pale of settlement is just the pale of Alaska now, etc.
― jocelyn, Friday, May 4, 2007 4:14 AM (2 years ago)

Apart from the various Skull & Bones regalia lining the walls of the cabin, there isn't much in Castro's photos that you wouldn't encounter at a typical college house party. The alleged Skull & Bones members appear in the pictures along with discarded cans of Keystone Light, liquor bottles, and a copy of michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, December 14, 2009 11:10 PM (1 month ago)

If only jed would tell me whether it was worth investigating.

LOL!

YPU got me through a tough period of baby-related sleeplessness - a hugely entertaining genre exercise but I'll be disappointed if (cf The Final Solution) that's all he's interested in now. Kavalier and Klay was more substantial and moving than that.

cf. also jews with swords, can't remember the actual title. plus the essays.

I was weighing up YPU vs K+K recently and chose the latter, but I hadn't appreciated YPU's premise and it sounds interesting. Liveblog: I'm sitting down for a coffee in waterstone's at the moment and have picked up that and Final Solution to flick through.

I set K+K aside after a chapter - I'd not long finished Fortress of Solitude and it was just a bit too slow getting going

I loved Kavalier & Klay...slow to start, but the payoff is worthwhile. I bought YPU and it's still sitting on my bookshelf, and everytime I see it I think 'Oh I should read that'...this list might be the kick in the pants that I need.

Definitely going to check out 45.

Amazon should be paying you a commission, Ismael!

If only I'd thought of that first - brought to you by amazon and prozac

I think I bought the wrong Chabon - YPU looks great

YPU's shallower but more of a page-turner, so it depends what you're in the mood for. And it's still great, vivid prose.

46. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins (2006)
(50 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Dawkinssouthpark.jpg

Richard Dawkins - Anti-Christ or Great Thinker?

LBS:
I think that this is a must read for anyone, loved the style - so much better than his TV shows which are just aggressive

Red Raymaker:
It's an entertaining read and, contrary to popular belief, Dawkins is not at all strident or aggressive in the writing of this book.  It is intelligently written but it is also humorous and entertaining.  There is also a lot of common sense in there.

Also reading Dawkins' _The God Delusion_, a book I had no intention of reading, but decided to give a shot when I received it as a birthday present. It doesn't hold any great surprises, but is better than I expected after reading some of the online discussions of it last year. I've been a bit sick of Dawkins after seeing a bit too many of his television appearances.
― Øystein, Monday, October 1, 2007 8:30 PM (2 years ago)

gross u guyz ;_;

For what it's worth, I wouldn't recommend the book at all.

45. The Complete Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (2007)
(51 points, six votes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlIAmCfHzbg

Red Raymaker:
Entertaining and very insightful examination of the build up to and the results of the Islamic Revolution.  The most fascinating part for me was the depiction of how the Islamists mobilised the socialists, communists and many liberals to oust the Shah's regime but then liquidated them once the Shah's regime was defeated.  It underlined to me how cruel, untrustworthy and morally-corrput the Islamic Revolution had been from its genesis and that the repression we are seeing now is a logical development for a sadistic regime.

http://www.groonk.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/persepolis.gif
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/satrapi_marjane/satrapi_persepolis2.gif
http://www.24sevencities.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Persepolis3.jpg

Graphic Novels chart so far:

82. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (2006) (30 points, three votes)
50. Colonel Sweeto - Nicholas Gurewitch (2008) (46 points, six votes)
45. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (2007) (51 points, six votes)

None of them picking up much in the way of comment. I liked Fun Home. With Persepolis I bought the book but decided to wait for the film, and then never got round to seeing it. Mrs K spent a couple of evenings with her nose in the book a couple of weeks back though, she seemed to enjoy it.

The book's much more striking than the movie, which doesn't add much at all. Strange that it was so acclaimed when it's basically just an animated comic book. Still think Fun Home is the decade's real graphic-novel masterpiece.

xp will be happy to comment dumbly on anything i've read, which isn't much so far. lol fantasy.

I really wish I'd seen the voting thread in time so I could have shouldered some of my favourites further up the list but on balance I can't quibble with the results so far.

Not whoring for comments - most things have picked up a decent bit of discussion. I just thought it curious that none of the cartoons had got much attention when they've been doing pretty well overall - Persepolis still isn't the graphic novel #1.

Can't see it being a superhero one (although I'd have voted for the Bendis Daredevil) so has to be Chris Ware and/or Daniel Clowes still to come?

I think Safe Area Gorazde could be the top comic.

44. Remainder - Tom McCarthy (2007)
(52 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/8231/remainder.jpg

woofwoofwoof:
It's my number one for a lot of reasons: I liked it; I liked how it turned up (limited edition, looked like an old Olympia Press paperback, arthouse press funded by some combination of grants and philanthropy etc etc), which meant it appeared from the off to be playing a different and more interesting game than all other British novels; and I did like that it was British: I despair of this country plenty but feel excited and defensive when something good turns up.

The thing itself: I enjoyed its sense of restraint, that it didn't play obvious transgressive underground games; I liked its plain voice and plain observation, which fittingly slip into old Puritan trads of writing; I like how it follows an idea insanely and cleanly; how it's funny at times; how it likes images and moments and detail better than plot (I'm not a big novel reader tbh).

I like that other readers find different things in it - the theory boys can talk up the Deleuze & Blanchot & all that, but a romantic all-about-characters friend of mine saw it more as a book about a lonely man who can't find love and just wants to be somewhere happy.

She still liked it.

I haven't reread it. I thought back in the day that it might be a work that alters things, or marks a point where things are altering; a fresh flourishing outside the broadsheet-and-hardbacks world of publishing. I guess I still feel that world is dying, but I haven't seen anything else that convinces me the new thing is here.