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

it's exciting getting down to the business end of this poll now. i'm looking forward to the top 30; many of my nominations are still to come so im looking forward to seeing how highly they place!

i really liked Drown too but i had the same reaction to Oscar Wao as Stevie, it seemed like it was by a different writer! too try-hard or something.

drown is a lot better than oscar but if u cant get w/ nerd shit than u probably arent gonna like the latter much at all

33. The Russian Debutante's Handbook - Gary Shteyngart (2003)
(64 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8912/10garyshteyngart0908lg9.jpg

mizzell:
The best book ever written about Prava, the Paris of the 90s.

I'm currently reading The Russian Debutante's Handbook the frequently funny, picaresque debut novel by Gary Shteyngart. I discovered Shteyngart through a short story and an article about T.a.T.u. in the New Yorker.
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, June 4, 2003 2:37 PM (6 years ago)

seems to just go on forever. I don't think I like it. Has anyone else read it? I think it's supposed to be a lighter read than I'm actually finding it to be, although it could be my humour.
― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Saturday, January 6, 2007 9:39 AM (3 years ago)

I'm reading The Russian's Debutante's Handbook, which I had avoided because of its terrible cover, and it's really really funny. Like one of the funniest books I've read in a while.
― n/a, Wednesday, September 12, 2007 6:23 PM (2 years ago)

Last week I met the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook (I don't think I've met a novelist before). He was interesting because it was like he was on all the time, every sentence was some kind of hilarious anecdote. I didn't think art reflected life that closely.
― Maria (Maria), Tuesday, March 1, 2005 1:57 AM (4 years ago)

Ironically, I read Wao straight after belatedly getting round to Fortress of Solitude, which I loved (well, the first 3/4s of it anyway), so I dunno if it's strictly the nerdy shit I couldn't get with. I just found the narrative voice irritating and even unconvincing...

Have never even *heard* of the Russian Deb Handbook!

Me neither. Obviously one person is nuts about it though.

Obviously I can't go anywhere near it now after seeing that photo, but it crops up in the archives as part of an Eastern European fad in the first half of the decade. I wasn't really aware of that either, other than Everything Is Illuminated. Maybe it was an American thing.

His other book, Absurdistan, is better-known I think - I'm pretty sure I've read about it before, though I may be mixing it up with various books called things like Londonstan

That's quite a photo. Really gunning hard for the creepy arsehole look.

can't wait to post about how much i hated Everything Is Illuminated when that places

32. Austerlitz - WG Sebald (2001)
(65 points, five votes)

http://i46.tinypic.com/2e3nxqb.jpg

wmlynch:
Like Sebald's other books Austerlitz is a meditation on time and memory. Sebald has an uncanny ability to evoke the fragility of human experience and human relationships and to describe the effects of society's dissolution and disintegration even while often addressing these topics obliquely. Austerlitz and the narrator are melancholic characters and the story is filled with sorrow, but the prose is stunning (as usual) and the book is nearly impossible to put down.

W. G. Sebald - C or D?

I thought Austerlitz was quite moving and powerful and unlike any other writer I can think of. He has a very poetic way of describing mental states and processes - reminds us that the mind can be a mysterious landscape all on its own. But so far, Vertigo seems like an early attempt at the same effect - where he hadn't quite polished his style to perfection. Many of the same stylistic tics are present, but where in Austerlitz they seem to flow naturally, in Vertigo they seem to stick out - almost like a cookie dough which hasn't been mixed thoroughly enough and still has clumps of baking soda in it. Also, in Vertigo, the geographic names and Italian quotations come fast and thick - a map and maybe footnotes with translations would be quite helpful.
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, January 12, 2005 8:26 PM (5 years ago)

Not the recognised authority on the Nazi's organisational skills, but GOD. The counting of heads, the systematic killing, fuck.
― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, November 18, 2003 12:15 PM (6 years ago)

a bit joyless but interesting all the same, the thing is I dont think i could actually tell you what it was "about" which is refreshing in a way. Its a really puzzling book, you have absolutely no sense of where its going and after finishing it I had little sense of what it was. None of the meaning is made expicit. Even in translation it seemed Perfectly written though and the flow of it is incredible, it seems structureless, hypnotic.
― jed (jed_e_3), Saturday, December 6, 2003 12:27 AM (6 years ago)

I wish I could copy and paste the section from W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz where the narrator visits the archives of a Nazi concentration camp and watches a 14 minute reel of footage of the prisoners playing music that has been slowed down to last an hour. The description of the distortions of the sound is quite poetic.
...
Here's a brief snippet that I transcribed from Amazon:
"In a brief sequence at the very beginning, showing red-hot iron being worked in a smithy to shoe a draft ox, the merry polka by some Austrian operetta composer on the sound track of the Berlin copy had become a funeral march dragging along at a grotesquely sluggish pace, and the rest of the musical pieces accompanying the film, among which I could identify only the can-can from La Vie Parisienne and the scherzo from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream, also moved in a kind of subterranean world, through the most nightmarish depths, said Austerlitz, to which no human voice has ever descended."
― o. nate (onate), Friday, July 30, 2004 3:08 PM (5 years ago)

That photo is of a reënactment of the battle of Austerlitz, so possibly totally unrelated to the book, but I liked it.

Really really must persevere with Sebald. Enjoyed The Rings of Saturn as a sort of temporal/spatial baedeker, but felt rather impatient with the persona. Interesting exploration of historical re-collection and spiritual engagement so will definitely read Austerlitz soon.

31. Runaway - Alice Munro (2005)
(65 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515W530EB1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Lamp:
jonathan franzen went crazy trying to describe why this book is perfect. he couldnt. it is.

characteristically brilliant. I've been reading Munro in order, which means I only have 'The View from Castle Rock' to go. I want to launch straight into it, but she's getting on a bit, and I don't want to have nothing of hers left to read.
― James Morrison, Monday, April 13, 2009 10:37 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i loved 'runaway', although not quite as much as 'open secrets'.
― where we turn sweet dreams into remarkable realities (just1n3), Tuesday, April 14, 2009 2:46 AM (9 months ago)

great result for Munro!

30. The Line Of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
(70 points, four votes)

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/01/07/beauty_narrowweb__300x322,0.jpg

Line of Beauty
'The Line of Beauty'

Red Raymaker:
This is a fantastic book. I really enjoyed the insights I gained into what life was like in London, and therefore wider UK society, in the 1980s.  I thought it was a thoughtful, entertaining and exciting insight into the lives of the ruling political class of that time and the lives and challenges of young homosexual men at that time.  It's a world that I know nothing of so Hollinghurst's writing gave me access to a world that is for all intents and purposes closed to me but which runs unseen in parallel to my life.

Ismael Klata:
Another perfect novel. Absolutely textbook how it takes its era and chooses every important part of it, tips them all in, and then weaves its story deftly around them.

i just finished "The Line of Beauty" by Alan Hollinghurst. Beautiful - verging on being a masterpiece but just misses the mark slightly by not being evil enough in the end. He doesnt cut through the characters in the same way as Edith wharton or Henry James would although James is definatley the model for the book. He's very good on motivation though and also good on how people say one thing disingenuously trying to find out another thing. I think it will win the booker prize and i hope it does. It's perfectly constructed.
― jed_ (jed), Sunday, October 17, 2004 9:28 PM (5 years ago)

Of the books I've read released this year, The Line of Beauty was the best. I seem to have read a total of 5 published in 2004, so my frame of reference isn't all encompassing.
Everyone at my book club hated The Line of Beauty for some reason so perhaps contrariness was my reason for liking it? I dunno.
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, November 9, 2004 9:33 AM (5 years ago)

Gayest book I have ever read.
― the bellefox, Thursday, January 6, 2005 11:49 AM (5 years ago)

I'm reading Runaway now! It's real good!

lol pinefox!!

The Line of Beauty is classic - the weakness of the TV adaptation underlined how much of the pleasure is in Hollinghurst's prose and observational skills

I don't know why but thinking about the age of wire and string is making me think about that motorman book by David Ohle, which is super readable

Maybe bcz Ben Marcus wrote the intro for its re-issue?

I didn't think the adaptation was weak at all, though I missed the middle episode. I really wanted to put up a youtube of the 'shadow of death' scene, but sadly I couldn't find one.

He doesnt cut through the characters in the same way as Edith wharton or Henry James would although James is definatley the model for the book.

lol i had never actually read any Henry James when i wrote that (although i had read plenty wharton). what a twat.

however, i now know that i was right.

three from my top ten 2day (i think):

russian debutante's handbook: rad book, totally hilarious, p insightful. shytengart is kinda like joe franzen if j-franz was slightly less self-hating and much more funny

runaway: this was my #1 stories in this cut so deeply... ~*emotionz*~

line of beauty: the tragedy of false consciousness beautifully written. really impressed with alive it is 'on the margins' like the actress the fortunate son d8s. at its worst when its bustin political realities4u kinda a little much but p true 2 lyfe

29. Complete Stories - JG Ballard (2001)
(70 points, five votes)

http://scifiwire.com/assets_c/2009/10/BallardCluteReview2-thumb-499x500-26263.jpg

woofwoofwoof:
A brick of awesomeness. His novels were good-not-great this decade,
but this is just terrific, the best single summation of who and what
we lost last year. At the moment: especially enjoying the Vietnam-era
stories - war-aircrash-astronaut fast despatches autopiloting into his
icy/pulp style.

Recommend me some J.G. Ballard - S/D, I guess.
Best J.G. Ballard Novel
RIP J. G. Ballard

Taking a break from ILM the other night I took a walk, Mark s had just made some interesting comments about subversion and I was thinking them through when I bumped into JG Ballard ( he was looking in the window of a dry-cleaners though a car showroom was only meters away) so after a couple of minutes chatting about Heathrow, the future, the novel, I dragged the conversation round to the internet, and the discursive nature of forums (difference of opinion leading to a greater collective understanding, rather than a empty consensus of agreement.) But he complained that the net was "limitless, no edges" and told me how he could only write long-hand. Well, it was good while it lasted, but I'd still like to go round his and watch TV.
― K-reg, Wednesday, June 27, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

I did my dissertation-type piece on these in secondary school. I don't think the teachers took me or it seriously, I think they just thought they was pulp sci-fi. I'm not sure whether they are or not to be honest, I just remember the worlds either being perverse and bizarre, or perverse and mundane. The worlds were always the point. The enjoyment came from contemplating laboratories, deserts and swimming pools, or cities that went on forever in every direction. What happened after that never seemed to matter so much.

I'd like to be able to read them again with the same mind. They don't bear much relation to how I now see the adult world. I'm not sure they ever did. The characters always seemed like they could've been robots.

Here's an extract from The Drowned World:

As the cutter moved off across the lagoon he went back to his chair. For a few minutes the two men stared across the table at each other, the insects outside bouncing off the wire mesh as the sun lifted into the sky. At last Kerens spoke.

'Alan, I'm not sure whether I shall be leaving.'

Without replying, Bodkin took out his cigarettes. He lit one carefully, then sat back smoking it calmly. 'Do you know where we are?' he asked after a pause. 'The name of this city?' When Kerens shook his head he said: 'Part of it used to be called London; not that it matters. Curiously enough, though, I was born here. Yesterday I rowed over to the old University quarter, a mass of little creeks, actually found the laboratory where my father used to teach. We left here when I was six, but I can just remember being taken to meet him one day. A few hundred yards away there was a planetarium, I saw a performance once - that was before they had to re-align the projector. The big dome is still there, about twenty feet below water. It looks like an enormous shell, fucus growing all over it, straight out of The Water Babies. Curiously, looking down at the dome seemed to bring my childhood much nearer. To tell the truth, I'd more or less forgotten it - at my age all you have are the memories of memories. After we left here our existence became completely nomadic, and in a sense this city is the only home I've ever known –' He broke off abruptly, his face suddenly tired.

I do like the early novels very much. Agree about the robotic characters. Not sure I care much, I quite like the way it makes them sinister, functions of their environment and circumstance, rather than volitional beings; as you say, the worlds (and ideas of course) are the point.

Have read some Ballard short stories - need to read them all, WILL be acquiring The Complete Stories, thank you ilb/Ismael.

I voted for the Ballard, knowing that it was a bit of a cheat (I purchased all the stories in battered paperbacks from used shops in the early 90s). What struck me about Ballard then was that he seems one of few authors entirely adverse to the idea of conscious free will. Ballard's characters seem like malfunctioning automatons because he accepts post hoc rationalizations as self-befuddlement and moves on with a clinical dissection. Its not that he, or they, lack humanity. But they all seem to be stuck on a moving train, even inside their heads.

At the time I was experiencing a lot of involuntary mood shifts and reading a good deal of popular neurobiology (Oliver Sacks, Listening to Prozac type things) and Ballard resonated with that.

xp GR, obv we're on the same wavelength wrt Ballard.

woofwoofwoof wasn't kidding about this being a brick, by the way - 1216 pages! I remember the individual collections as being little slim things. I used to carry two around in case I finished one in one go

The most Ballardian author I've encountered since is not Will Self, but Micheal Blumlein, whose short story collection The Brains of Rats is almost a loving tribute. Unlike JGB, Blumlein finished his medical training.

Plug for Ballardian. The word should be in the dictionaries by now

28. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (2004)
(70 points, six votes)

http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/Middlesex-Jeffrey-Eugenides-unabridged-compact-discs-Audio-Renaissance.jpg

Middlesex

It seems like there's currently a genre of stories of how a specific family came to the U.S./U.K. and lived through a series of historical events seen through their eyes. I'm thinking specifically of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Greek family in US), White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Jamaican and Bangladeshi families in UK), and Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (European (can't remember where from) in US). Kavalier & Clay isn't a perfect fit due to lack of generations, but seems to fit otherwise. Everything is Illuminated by that guy kind of fits as well. It seems like there are other recent examples, but I can't think of them right now. Oddly enough, all of my examples are by relatively young/new authors.
Is this a false connection that I'm making? If not, why the surge in popularity in this type of novel? Is it really a surge, or a constant? Am I crazy?
― n.a. (Nick A.), Monday, August 30, 2004 3:52 PM (5 years ago)

Does anyone have an opinion on Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex"? It's the next book on the list for this book club at work, and I'm not sure if I want to read it or skip it in order to get to some other things on my list (still have John Harrison's "Light" sitting around, for one).
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, February 17, 2005 3:18 PM (4 years ago)

It's good!
― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:03 PM (4 years ago)

It's great!
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, February 17, 2005 5:08 PM (4 years ago)

astonishingly readable epic
― The Lex (The Lex), Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:17 AM (4 years ago)

there's a bit in middlesex by jeffrey eugenides that talks about the salad days of car manufacturing in detroit, and how no-one was prepared for it; humans simply weren't equipped to mindlessly perform repetitive menial labour for hours on end. offices still like they haven't been fully integrated. they inspire a really dull kind of manic behaviour.
― schlump, Monday, November 3, 2008 8:03 PM (1 year ago)

Half the book The Virgin Suicides was, and twice the length. Hats off to his ambition but its evaporated from my memory tbh.

The Line of Beauty annoyed me. It was 500 pages of 'oh hai im a gay and we just like pretty things'.

27. Pictures At A Revolution - Mark Harris (2008)
(70 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/2008/03/cuar01_graduate0803.jpg

clemenza:
Outside of collections of Kael and Kauffmann, the best film book I've ever read; clears the ground for The Godfather, Nashville, and Taxi Driver, and also, maybe, explains how we ended up back at Doctor Doolittle.

1967's Oscar Nominees (inspired by Pictures at a Revolution)

makes a very convincing case that the entire sea change in Hollywood in the '60s can pretty well be summed up in these five films. Totally fascinating book.
― Nurse Detrius (Eric H.), Friday, April 24, 2009 5:56 AM (9 months ago)

a great read about the 5 very different movies that were up for Best Picture in 1968 ... A fun, readable blend of gossip (omg, Rex Harrison! and his wife!! Mike Nichols and Elaine May duking it out live on stage!), the dying travails of the old studio system, the intricacies of distribution, and all the weird stuff that goes on w/r/t getting a movie made (like options on scripts and how the $$ gets scraped together, etc etc). Major subplots of the blatant bigotry and racism of the times (also prudishness) and the death of the Production Code.
― Jaq, Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:59 PM (1 year ago)

The Line of Beauty annoyed me. It was 500 pages of 'oh hai im a gay and we just like pretty things'.

um

oh sorry. 450 pages of 'oh hai im a gay and we just like pretty things', 25 pages of 'aids is bad yo' and 25 pages of 'lol im dancing with thatcher'

thats such a deeply ignorant reading of things it feels willful - if thats really what u took from the book and what it had 2 say abt gay life and modes of being then idk. like im not even sure where your getting the "we just like pretty things" thing from? also the move from i to we in your 'critique' is kinda troubling imo

like w/e if u didnt like the book its cool i totally get that it just feels like u read a totally different book

Middlesex? That surprises me.

Half the book The Virgin Suicides was, and twice the length.

OTM - TVS was incredible I thought - compressed, beautiful, strange atmosphere, compelling voice, prose showed real love for images, objects, recording (might have burnished it in my memory - a long time ago); Middlesex just felt likeable and readable. Possibly it's just the kind of family-social saga that I don't really like, and it's memorable enough but it did feel oddly constructed - the final third feels really hasty iirc, as though he's just trying to get the thing finished, or has been told to tie it up. It was good - clearly big natural gift, hoping he'll turn up with something brilliant again - but disappointing.

I was thinking about Nick A's question about those immigrant-family-social-sagas. I do get the feeling that this has become much more prevalent in the last decade, but it can't be a new thing because The Godfather is exactly that - and, much as I love it, I doubt it's the literary trailblazer.

I can't really think of that many others before the glut he mentioned, except American Pastoral in 1998 - maybe it was so good and fertile that it spawned a raft of subconscious imitators?

26. Homeland - Sam Lipsyte (2004)
(70 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511V7S4Y9FL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

eephus!:
I guess this is a slight book: but lots of people wrestle with the problem of how to write about the suburbs and high school without being condescending and stupid. It's a hard problem and Lipsyte solves it here, albeit in a way that probably applies only to this book.

Johnny Crunch:
i think ive described this before on ilx that its tone nearly reminds me of ilx zing culture, or something -- this is a fairly stupid thing for me to say but i guess i mean that the POV is an underachieving but smart misanthropic dude, but a dude who also has affection for the things he criticizes; idk it's also just witty and endlessly quotable

It was a gas, a quick read, not the work of empire-shattering genius they claim it is of course, but it certainly won't take much of your time, and what time it takes will not be wasted. I had lots of fun with it.
― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, March 17, 2005 1:50 AM (4 years ago)

i enjoyed it - didn't think it was a "great" book, but fun. as if Ignatius J. Reilly or Mickey Sabbath were writing letters to their high school class. sometimes crass, don't think i could recommend it to just anyone. but definitely enjoyable if you're into self-mockery and black humor.
― carolyn, Thursday, March 17, 2005 2:59 PM (4 years ago)

Well, I did finally read this. Finished it a few weeks ago. I thought that it was pretty funny, though perhaps a bit inconsequential. I think it lacked some psychological depth. The narrator makes everything into a joke, and while the jokes are often funny, they aren't particularly revealing.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, June 20, 2005 5:20 PM (4 years ago)

the more i read this thread the more i relaise that i've read nothing published this decade.

relaise- when arealisation makes you feel ill?

a few of what would have been on my ballot made it, but man y'all got some different-ass taste in books than me.

compare and contrast to the avg dissenting post on the movies poll^

readers are v genteel imo

haha well the big difference is that i've seen just about everything from the movie poll so far, whereas i've hardly read any of these, so i can't be all "you liked 'homeland'?? DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS."

we're only at 26 yet, hold that thought

well when my number one pick showed up at number ninety-eight, i do have to admit my first thought was "you fucking people."

for all i know this list is full of literary amelies.

veronica was a piece of shit imo

(not read veronica, but this thread needs some FIREWORKS)