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

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)

Bear in mind that no.27 got this high on the basis of just two votes, so this isn't really turning out to be a consensus poll - chance missed there, a little targetted politicking and you could've had Veronica or Carra breaking the top twenty after all. You scum (will that do?).

Next up: our top graphic novel

top graphic novel - 'Black Hole'??

13/20 so far but ive not read the last 10 books

25. Safe Area Goražde - Joe Sacco (2000)
(72 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/crosscurrents/images/cc2001-03-29gor1.gif
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LVIFxAUgKVk/SnZx63Tqr8I/AAAAAAAAALI/VFMeVQqfxik/s400/sacco.gif
http://www.sadiethepilot.com/aaweb/blogpix5/safe_area_gorazde_l.jpg

Joe Sacco 'Safe Area Goradze/Palestine' and Comic Journalism

jabba hands:
weirdly the comic book format brings the story home in a way that i don't think either a straight-up prose account or a documentary film would have. makes it more humane somehow? i dunno. but anyway this manages to be funny and beautiful to look at even though it's obviously completely harrowing. i'm also a big fan of journalism which can express anger without having to spell everything out, and this does that really well. TWO THUMBS UP.

EZ Snappin:
I have a friend who went AWOL from the Croatian army during this war. He gave me the book but can't talk about the book nor what he went through before he ran. I think this was his way of trying to get me to understand the horror, which it surely did.

Have you read "Safe Area -- Gorazde" by Joe Sacco? My favourite comic- book (graphic novel, what have you) of the last few years. pretty harrowing stuff, but lovely stories.
― Alan Trewartha, Thursday, October 11, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Heh, I didn't vote out of suspicion that what little I have read this decade is "literary Amelies" + non-fiction which wasn't particularly great as writing but fitted my interests + some SF nerd stuff that would have encouraged a few more Whineys to storm in

(plus I felt bad about how many more unread 00s books I have on my shelves than read ones, ahem)

And here's another one which I have (not actually bought but) totally been meaning to read for, oh, probably 7 years since that ILX thread linked, seeing as I first heard of Joe Sacco on here.

strongo you should read home land if you haven't--it's hilarious

i put Goražde at no.1 to make sure it got included. amazing book. Palestine and The Fixer are also v good and i can't wait to pick up his new one, Footnotes in Gaza.

I need to get Footnotes as well.

24. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time - Mark Haddon (2003)
(74 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/5369/dognightln1.png

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

On one hand it's a very breezy and often funny novel narrated by a teenage autistic/savant. On the other hand, it gets -- sort of cheesily, and yet sort of powerfully -- at all the fractures and devastations of a family trying to cope with him. It's odd: sometimes it seems almost naively straightforward about such things, and yet it still manages to hit quite a bit.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, July 11, 2003 4:13 PM (6 years ago)

I'm loving this book about 1/3 into it. It's a murder mystery written from the perspective of a 15-year old autistic boy. Very entertaining with some math and logic bits thrown in for flavor. All chapters must be prime numbers!
― Dale the Titled (cprek), Monday, August 18, 2003 2:42 PM (6 years ago)

It's a detective story told from the point of view of a teenage autistic boy. The voice is perfect, and the format appears to be a perfect analogue of a hard-boiled mystery. It is unfortunately one of those books that I put down just once in the middle, and when I picked it up again it wasn't as gripping, and I don't know whether it's because you need to get back inside the voice (a bigger jump than usual) or because the story takes a turn I didn't expect, or like. Probably a bit of both.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, September 5, 2003 8:27 AM (6 years ago)

Yet another book that sits unread on my shelves.

I had much the same experience with Oscar Wao that Farrell had with Curious Incident. Read little over half in a single sitting and thought it was quite good; picked it up again two hours later, and didn't at all get along with it. Ended up returning it unfinished. After reading some of the posts here, I think I might give Díaz's other book a shot, as I guess I liked his writing, but didn't care much about what he was writing about.
Slightly worried that "Life of Pi" is on the way... (I blame that and "Vernon God Little" for me not daring to check out "The Line of Beauty")

life of pii was always gonna be on the way though

Life of Pi is a pile of shit.

should save the anger for when it makes top 10

oh there is plenty to go round.

I'll second that.

Home Land: Wow, of the books in my top 10 this is the one I thought was LEAST likely to place. I didn't really know other people had read it!

And now the fireworks can start because I will say here and now that The Curious Incident... is a steaming load. All the usual tiresome sentimentalization of mental illness and all the usual tiresome sentimentalization of higher math ALL WRAPPED UP IN ONE BOOK. It only takes 90 minutes to read, is about the best I can say for it.

All the usual tiresome sentimentalization of mental illness

Considering the author worked closely with Asperger/autistic people in years before writing the book, and the characterizations in the book seem genuine as a result, I'd argue this isn't the case.

As somebody who read the book, I'd argue it is.

i don't think the fact that he worked with mentally ill people doesn't mean he can't write a sentimental book

in other words, another vote for that book being a steaming load

Lord knows you can be tiresomely sentimental about stuff you know a lot about, is what I'm trying to say.