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

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.

It only takes 90 minutes to read, is about the best I can say for it.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 11 February 2010 15:59 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Really? Cool, see you in 2 hours.

I think I was a bit too hard on Homeland in my quote listed above. It seems better in my memory now.

haha i had veronica @ #14 on my list but its strange to me that that would be someone's favorite book. its much more a book i admire than a book i love.

i remember liking the curious incident okay. i think it is p sentimental but im not sure being sharper or more clear-eyed about autism or his characters would have made it a better or more praiseworthy book.

i thought he meant dogville was his favourite film. maybe i lack reading skills ;_;

oh mb idk.

i do think we might have gotten more discussion if ppl had read each others selections - this list has been p useful for things to check out but we havent really argued too much. probably just want call ppl names tho

Lamp, btw, i bought that Andre Aciman book you recommended to me like 6 months ago on ILB. will let you know how i get on with it.

i do think we might have gotten more discussion if ppl had read each others selections

I mean, look, we might have gotten more discussion if people read books in general! Just look at the number of votes; max 1/10 as many people voted in this as, say, the 80s album poll. So of course less discussion. Lots of people have heard and can argue about 1000 records released in a decade; but there are very few people, certainly not me, who have strong opinions about 1000 or even 500 books published this decade, right?

Lots of people have heard and can argue about 1000 records released in a decade

Not quite! xp We got somewhere near half as many votes as the albums poll. It's probably more that to have a proper fight we'd need proper haterz - and mostly you don't bother reading books you hate or you give up pretty quickly, whereas with music there's plenty of stuff you can hate but can't really avoid.

It might change a bit when we get into the top twenty and things get a bit less niche - otherwise we'll all just have to step up with the invective. If only Amis had placed higher...

in the context that ilx is an extension of ilm i guess sure. (ha xpost) i know a bunch of ppl that havent heard near that many records or watched nearly that many movies. and it wasnt meant as a criticism really, just an observation (albiet a p obv one)

also i *think* about 30 ppl voted in this do 300 ppl really vote in ilm polls?

mostly you don't bother reading books you hate or you give up pretty quickly, whereas with music there's plenty of stuff you can hate but can't really avoid.

yeah, and also i don't have 3-5 minutes excerpts from the major books of the moment read to me at work throughout the day.

nothing really comparable to reading a book.

latest album poll = 100 ballots. (x-post)

(xposts)

Yeah, book-fite clusterfucks don't kick off often from what I see. I guess entry bar quite high for joining in (books aren't instantly available & take time to read); area too broad; so not much shared ground = smallish groups who can see that they don't have anything in common & are mutually polite - see the well-mannered discussions of 'why do you like these 'fantasy' novels?' upthread.

Needs compulsive poster with intransigent opinions.

Needs Dr Morbius to read more

fantasy books rule and all other fiction sucks ass

(but now i'm just repeating myself from the discussion above)

We had 39 ballots, Tuomas got about 80, and musically a little more than that. There's also the fact that you just can't consume as many books as you can songs or albums*, and a lot of people couldn't stretch to twenty books, whereas it's relatively easy to fill a ballot with thirty or forty albums or whatever. So our results are necessarily fairly shallow and niche, but it's made for an interesting list I reckon.

We'll see how it holds up now we're approaching the top, where I think consensus starts to play more of a role. Plenty to hate there.

* thomp excepted

(xposts)

Maybe a Geir, with 19th-Century novel in place of orchestral pop.

Oh yeah, I like the way the list looks. It's way more interesting & idiosyncratic than a broadsheety decade list - sort of reflect what's good about the what are you reading threads.

I'd like to see BookGeir confronted with a pile of pomo fiction. Sparks would start coming out of his ears and his head would spin round.

smallish groups who can see that they don't have anything in common & are mutually polite

haha yah i feel like this abt all the non-fiction/music stuff on this list. and with the exception of a couple of things (house of leaves & saturday) i can reasonably see why ppl might have liked the things i have read so is just like "yeah, not for me but i think i get what ppl value abt this"

the one thing abt disagreement is that it forces u to think about why u liked something and also (for me) gives permission to talk about it. like i could write a p lengthy defense of alice munro but it feels sorta hubristic and weird to do so in a vacuum or when ppl are like "yeah, shes p good".

It's a good point, there's basically no record or film so canonical that it doesn't have a healthy population of haters. But are there actually a lot of people who would make a point of hating Alice Munro? Maybe super-experimental language types who think conventional narrative prose is a dead end and has been for decades?

Must confess I'd never actually heard of her before all this. But I'm pretty sure she's crap.

yeah. she fucking sucks

that's the spirit!

50 odd pages in and I don't get the sentimental thing. Reasonably enjoyable though and after I eat, will crack on.

house of leaves & saturday

Same sort-of exceptions for me, or I think people are valuing the wrong thing. There's a few reasons I wouldn't really let myself have a go at them - sort of glad that ppl get enthused about fiction; don't really remember them very well; felt that attacking HoL in particular, since imo it egregiously flatters its readers & is cult-bait, would seem insulting; think there are good things about these books (fairly standard on HoL - enjoyed the scary house story); etc

Let's put some effort into the Munro-hate people:

Munro just biting played-out Chekhov steez + bullsh*t hard-life 'authenticity'. Plus pc ballot padding - if she was a man, you wouldn't vote for her.

(never actually read her. I think I'd like her, have been meaning to for a while now)

I'll be reading the worthless old fraud soon myself, even though she only got where she is because of her famous novelist father.

"felt that attacking HoL in particular, since imo it egregiously flatters its readers & is cult-bait, would seem insulting"

please elaborate!!

i knew someone who did his undergrad dissertation on it. not as bad as the girl i knew who did her MA dissertation on jeff smith's bone though.