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

5p. Stress Position - Keston Sutherland (13 points)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31U5fbPrcLI

4p. Dirt - Alice Oswald (16 points)

I said the dirt gets right into your fingers 
living under the trees like this the toads don’t mind it 
this is God’s honest truth there’s one about as big as a bucket 
hops out of the nettles every night you can say what you like 
that’s him slugging about the village bent-headed 
heavily laden with the cold you can tell it’s him 
spilikin knees always wet for some reason 
always poking the verges looking for a tasty bit of nothing 
always wet for some reason always standing like a bale in the rain 
remembering better times whereas naming no names 

some of us would rather not remember something 
some of us have got enough bloody nightmares already 
somebody a bundle of nerves ever since the wall came down 
won’t barely go out of the church now 
ever since a bat swooped in like a pair of leather gloves feeling her face 
had to dive under the pews for cover this is God’s honest truth

woofwoofwoof:
This is just a very good long poem. That's unusual. She has a nice ear.

3p. War Music - Christopher Logue (21 points)

Rat. 
  Pearl.
  Onion.
  Honey:
These colours came before the Sun
  Lifted above the ocean,
Bringing light
  Alike to mortals and Immortals.
  And through this falling brightness,
Through the by now:
  Mosque,
  Eucalyptus,
  Utter blue,
Came Thetis,
Gliding across the azimuth,
With armour the colour of moonlight laid on her forearms;
Her palms upturned;
Her hovering above the fleet;
Her skyish face towards her son.
  Achilles,
Gripping the body of Patroclus
Naked and dead against his own,
While Thetis spoke:
  "Son..."
His soldiers looking on;
Looking away from it; remembering their own;
  "Grieving will not amend what Heaven has done.
Suppose you throw your hate after Patroclus' soul.
Who besides Troy will gain?
  See what I've brought..."
  And as she laid the moonlit armour on the sand
It chimed;
  And the sound that came from it
Followed the light that came from it,
Like sighing,
Saying,
  Made in Heaven.

woofwoofwoof:
One of my favourite post-war translations: a great Homer for the age -
makes Archaic Greece seem truly strange, more daring than Fagles, much
happier shredding the page & going for big effects than most British
poetry, a sharp eye and pulls off unexpected tricks - epic simile fuck
yeah. You often get a real sense of men arguing by ships on a long
beach and then fighting, the physical heart of the Iliad - that's
missing in translations that are gunning for heroism/drama/trad
poetry. Good decade for translations over here - the fresh volumes of
this, Simon Armitage's Gawain and Heaney was busy.

2p. Skid - Dean Young (21 points)

I went to the grocery store 
and pressed my ear against the butter 
and it cried out and I pressed my ear 
against the paper towels and they cried out 
but of what I cannot tell.  All was 
as one jellied equation that ended 
with the symbol for oblivion although 
it could have been a mistake, 
something half-erased.  Obviously, 
there was no question about going down 
the catfood lightbulb hygiene aisle. 
We had been warned maybe a thousand times 
to enjoy ourselves but outside, the sky 
had turned fustian and doggy, there was 
rain then sunshine making the executives 
with umbrellas go from looking like geniuses 
to prim morons.  Oh how I wanted my lips 
pressed against your parachute jacket but 
you were wearning your cloak of not-being-there. 
Is all that a culture can hope to produce 
interesting ruins for the absent gods 
to sweep their metal detectors through? 
Surely, I am not the one to ask.

that was a terrible poem.

you're a terrible poem

yeah but at least i rhyme

:)

That's why it's only #2 I guess (these are only extracts obviously - don't think anyone would appreciate me reproducing the whole book)

1p. IFLIFE - Bob Perelman (24 points)

After the catastrophe, the bathwater dusted itself off,
as best it could, and dried its eyes.
The baby, the baby. Everybody likes the baby, loves the baby,
The baby’s everybody’s everything:
avant-garde, traditional, rhymes, it’s free, improvisational,
great mimic, speak Thai, it learns Thai, French French,
and it’s loving, looks you straight in the eye,
no stranger anxiety, trusting, dimples, that little smile, toothless,
hair just growing in, the whole nine yards,
you like it and it likes that.

that was a terrible poem.

It really was a terrible poem.

I think of myself as a person who reads poetry but I'm not anymore. I feel bad about having put no poetry on my ballot but I couldn't think of anything? I was like "What about Mark Levine's first book" but I looked it up and geez, it's from 1993.

I'm still learning the basics, which considering it is an art older than novels doesn't really give me times to specify brand new stuff.

I could have voted for the collected August Kleinzahler except I haven't read it -- I would have been voting for the books contained in it which came out before 2000. Cheating.

Most of the poetry got a single vote but a few scored doubles, meaning there were 18 or 19 separate votes for those fifteen on the list - or in other words, roughly every other voter found space for some poetry, it wasn't just woofwoofwoof filling his ballot with verse.

I'm quite impressed I must say - if it weren't for Simon Armitage having been a fixture on 90s Mark Radcliffe, I couldn't have named you a poet myself. It's been worthwhile finding these extracts, but actually reading them properly isn't half hard work.

never read poetry

really like that Alice Oswald extract tho

___________________________________
      AND NOW, THE TOP TWENTY
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20. Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed - Jared Diamond (2004)
(79 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/2376/collapsem.jpg

I am currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond - subtitled something like: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed. I'm a bit more than halfway through it.
It presents many scenarios drawn from history and archaeology where a society has established itself, seemed to thrive and then flamed out in some sort of self-inflicted disaster. Examples: Easter Island, the Norse Greenland colony of Eric the Red, the Maya of Yucatan. It shows how environmental distress and long-continued bad choices contributed to their collapse.
Alternatively, he presents scenarios of several societies coping with these stresses successfully. Examples: Tokugawa Japan dealing with deforestation problems, islands in Polynesia learning to deal with isolation and sustainability issues.
In the last part of the book I haven't read he gathers examples from modern states, then draws up broad conclusions on how to avoid getting driven to the wall as a society.

Impressions: It's a great concept and it assembles a large mass of information and mostly manages to synthesize it. There's a lot of incisive thinking going on here, even if it's not quite as fresh or new as Guns, Germs and Steel.
The only problem is that it seems a bit doughy and underdone, like it needed a longer time in the oven. I expect the publisher was overly anxious to capitalize on the success of Guns, Germs and Steel and rushed it out about a year too soon. It's not like it's badly written or organized, it's just a bit on the slack side and could have used some tightening up. This happens a lot these days.
― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, August 17, 2005 4:08 PM (4 years ago)

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel."
this is perhaps the greatest book ever written.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, March 26, 2004 11:32 PM (5 years ago)

Jared Diamond, the biologist well-known for Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed comments in the latter about how stunning the progress in among Papua New Guinea (where he spent much of his academic career) has been. In two generations the locals in the highlands have gone from the stone age to proficient technicians. As I recall, there was a brief argument that the primary determinents of fitness until quite recently was hunting/food gathering success and social prowess, all of which have a intelligence factor. By contrast, in the more densely populated western world since agriculture, and especially the more urbanized western world of the past 500 or so years, the most important element to passing your genes on was resistance to infectious disease. Its very possible that given identical quality environments and raised similarly, populations who achieved modern means of production & social architecture more recently might be more predisposed to high intelligence than those of European descent. We'll never know, as that experiment is practically impossible.
The best we can do is figure out what environmental/social conditions work to make high attainment possible, and improve access to those fundaments.
― derelict, Wednesday, February 18, 2009 9:57 PM (11 months ago)

eerste 40 pagina's fenomenaal en ik kreeg ook nog Collapse: How Societies Choose To Succeed or Suck Eggs van Jared Diamond. Pfff, ik weet niet of ik die "goed nieuws show wel uit kan lezen, maar het ziet er interessant uit.
― OMC, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:02 PM (1 year ago)

eerste 40 pagina's fenomenaal en ik kreeg ook nog Collapse: How Societies Choose To Succeed or Suck Eggs van Jared Diamond. Pfff, ik weet niet of ik die "goed nieuws show wel uit kan lezen, maar het ziet er interessant uit.
― OMC, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:02 PM (1 year ago)

how bizarre

The De Subjectivisten quotes have all been awesome! I don't know if they are there for lols or because everyone except me can read Dutch.

I have just received a book token. This thread is my new best friend.

I loved Simon Armitage in the 90s thanks to aforementioned Mark Radcliffe guesting, and when I sadly had to miss him doing a recital - if that is the word - near me recently I realised I had all of his 90s books and none from the 00s. Think Gawain is a must-buy.

A little for lols (how come the Dutch edition of this one gets the really cool title?!), a little because this is an inclusive thread, and a little because I always feel I can almost understand them - 'fenomenaal' sounds like a review worth including!

I always feel I can almost understand them

Ha, yes. Good point re inclusivity.

"*Nobody Belongs Here More Than You van Miranda July. Ai, dit is pijnlijk." <- this is the extent of my full-sentence Dutch comprehension. I lolled

(and I like the book - or at least, really liked some stories, the others are written in crepey character so dislike may be the point - but enough about 50 places ago)

the first 40 pages are phenomenal and i believe eggnog Collapse: How Societies Choose To Succeed or Suck Eggs by Jared Diamond. Pffft, i don't know if i'd say it's 'good news' reading why cos it look intersting

19. Consider The Lobster - David Foster Wallace (2005)
(80 points, eight votes)

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41ADZOObB%2BL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

jabba hands:
superhuman clarity of thought and expression and an obvious huge fascination with and love for life, he just seems like the best most loveable dude ever basically, and i wish he had been able to overcome his illness :(

david foster wallace: classic or dud
david foster wallace - is he a cunt?
David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer in the NY Times

Consider The Lobster is more or less business as usual for Wallace. Like most of his non-fiction (I can’t vouch for the maths stuff) it’s all humour, self-consciousness and footnotes, and it’s often pretty damned insightful to boot. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I thought that the Republican candidacy campaign as covered in Up Simba was pretty much the perfect jump-off point for one of Wallace’s recurring themes: the potentially harmful effects of a cynical, seen-it-all-so-who-cares postmodernist world view.
― David A (David A), Friday, March 17, 2006 5:39 PM (3 years ago)

Loved Consider the Lobster -- I think at this point he's more extraordinary as an essayist and journalist than he is as a writer of fiction. But part of that, I think, might be because he seems to have exhausted his original style as a writer of fiction -- it wouldn't surprise me if, years down the road, he got a second wind in a different, more developed style.
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, January 10, 2007 4:17 PM (3 years ago)

I finished Consider the Lobster, which was mostly entertaining. It convinced me that DFW is very bright, curious, verbally ultradexterous, enthusiastic - and a pot smoker; it just had that giddy-stoned feeling written all over it, but this was redeemed by the other qualities I mentioned.
The other thing this book made me think about was the way that our current version of western civilization is smothering under needless and pointless details, and the great analytical impulse that has carried WCiv for centuries now spends the majority of its force in the microanalysis of stupefyingly complex trivialities. This is the reflexive Thoureauvian in me.
The one essay on Dostoevsky was especially poignant for this reason. In it DFW exposes a deep yearning after the nineteenth century's comfort with writing and reading about all the large, basic themes of human life and thought - and then he talks himself out of following his heart's desire, wistfully citing the inability of his audience to follow him there. My impulse was to tell him, write the book you want to write and let it find its own audience.
― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, January 17, 2007 6:37 PM (3 years ago)

are you doing all 20 today?

I won't be able to get all twenty up - it takes ages to search for decent quotes and the occasional amusing picture. I'm aiming for ten today, ten tomorrow.

ok. but either way, you iz amazing for doing all this.

Ha, ok, so know I now where all but three of my votes stand.

That is a odd little list of poetry. I should check out the Paul Farley. I remember not really thinking much of Tramp in Flames, but it was a cursory read.

I don't read as much contemporary poetry as I should, tbh, so my votes felt a bit gauche, as though I should have been yelling about Salt Press stuff or bemoaning John Hartley Williams' neglect or something similar. And it's tricky to figure out my own relationship to poetry sometimes: I liked Dart a lot, but thought more about eg Geoffrey Hill or Paul Muldoon, who only sporadically produce affection in me & do annoy me, but offer verbal/cerebral/formal things to get lost in. I took simple pleasures in the end I suppose.

(I have changed my login name because it was long and stupid. Please SB me again if my repetition of critical commonplaces/comments about fantasy novels have offended you before)

I could never muster the enthusiasm to attempt Infinite Jest - it didn't look like my kind of thing at all - but DFW's endlessly questioning brain produces a fascinating brand of journalism. Amazing essays on John McCain, talk radio, the porn industry and crustaceans. Reading it, I found that he was always about three steps ahead of me - as soon as I thought, "But isn't that an oversimplification? What about x and y?" there was another tangent or footnote dealing with x and y. A truly moral and searching writer but you can see why an intellect that relentless must have been hard to live with.

Re: what I was talking about earlier - the desire for, and yet reflexive suspicion of, sincerity - I think DFW cut to the core of that contradiction better than anyone.

18. Q - Luther Blissett (2003)
(80 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.thisisanfield.com/images/barnes_watford.jpg

ledge:
More history than Umberto Eco, More violence and cursing than, well,
Umberto Eco. In a way this really feels like a history lesson
delivered by the people at the time, alive and urgent rather than dry,
academic, and dull. Plus it's an allegory of the rise and fall of the
60s social revolutions. Probably.

Luther Blissett

The Blissett cult sprang to public prominence with the arrest in 1997 of four young Italians travelling without tickets on a tram in Rome. When asked for their identities, they heard the footballer's name on a radio and insisted they were all called Luther Blissett. They later (unsuccessfully) claimed in court that "a collective identity does not need a ticket".

Derring do and doctrinal theology set during the Reformation. Yay!
― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, August 1, 2004 6:17 PM (5 years ago)

i've just picked up 'Q' by Luther Blissett. i think subconsciously i was hoping it would be like Eco, but without being 'Baudolino' or 'The Island...'. i suppose we'll see
...
okay, so 'Q' was a load of crap. now i'm reading 'Rommel? Gunner Who?' by Spike Milligan. can't go wrong with Spike. not like Italians.
― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, February 24, 2004 10:20 PM (5 years ago)

I hadn't heard of this and I must confess to having been amazingly confused for a bit there. Sounds interesting.

can someone tell me more about that mark halliday book?

Anyone want to go into more detail about Q? First black player to score England if I'm not mistaken?

i'm not being a dick....but isn't that john barnes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_%28nom_de_plume%29

The book's a wannabe erudite-but-earthy historico-political thrilleresque romp across europe during the reformation, gore and violence cheek-by-jowl with middle-ages theology, back when doctrinal disputes really were a matter of life and death. The whodunnit aspect of the thriller is pretty half-hearted but aside from that it's all good fun. And educational! A kind of Horrible Histories for adults maybe.

I think that was kind of the point. Italian scouts came to Watford - they'd heard there was this great black player there (John Barnes), but when they went Luther Blisset played a blinder and got signed for AC Milan. Of course they just played in triangles round him and the poor bloke was completely lost.

Became a sort of running joke amongst Italians, a symbolic philosophical example of how things can go chaotically/amusingly wrong and thus became the name of that anarchic collective.

ah xpost to darraghmac

Gah, not again.

I feel a bit bad about reviving that old chestnut because Luther seems like such a lovely bloke. I had to use that pic though because the photographer seems ludicrously close to the action, like Barnes is about to take him on next.

Enjoyed that little poetry run down. Woof/3 completely otm about the Logue and the real sense of men on beaches arguing and then fighting - this has probably been my favourite poetry of recent times, poetry not afraid of crude or violent images.

I like Armitage more as a figure than as a writer these days. Saw him do a reading of his book Little Green Men once and it was really appealing, worked much better than just reading it myself in fact. He's a really nice chap and a fan of The Fall, so I go a long way to defend him, but doesn't quite cut it for me any more. Enjoyed what I read of the Gawain, but then I read his latest poems in the TLS and they're just horrible, almost self-parody - no, that's not true, there's still a quiet domesticity, a concern with how normal people live ordinary lives, that is appealing, but the pseudo meditative single utterances, which are presumably designed to resonate ('A shelf. A chair.') rather make me snigger I'm afraid.

Definitely interested in the Alice Oswald.

One thing this list is doing, for which I'm extremely grateful (aside from introducing me to a load of new stuff) is make me want to read more new books and poetry, which is just great.

Ah, good to know Ismael. I was told the story by a staunch Watford fan and never really questioned it, but that article seems to make sense. Kind of a shame tho. Although, thinking about it, they probably wouldn't have gone to Watford to see Blissett, maybe he just fit the bill when they saw him, rather than it being an accident.

And yes, he always comes across as a really nice chap.

cool thanks for backstory

He was one of the first black footballers to play for England, and scored a hat-trick on his full international debut - a 9–0 win over Luxembourg. This made him the first black player ever to score a hat-trick for the national team.

My bad.

17. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
(86 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)

http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/kazuo-ishiguro1.jpg

President Keyes:
I’m sure this is considered bad SF, but it stuck with me more than any other book on this list

Alex in Montreal:
I no longer have a copy of this - I lent it to a friend of mine who was struck by a train and passed away four months later. At the time it seemed to be a fairly run of the mill science fiction conceit but two years later, the emotional implications of it have stuck with me. I just saw this in a bookstore yesterday and reread the last chapter and was really disturbed by it. It's all in the voice - innocence to experience in the most devastating way possible.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Devoured Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go on vacation and have a really hard time explaining to people why I loved it so much. It was one of those rare books you love and don't want to share with anyone else.
― zan, Tuesday, September 13, 2005 4:04 PM (4 years ago)

'Never Let Me Go' was very over-rated: second-hand sci-fi ideas told without conviction, set in a world that doesn't ring true the moment you think about how it's all meant to work. But I loved 'Remains of the Day'.
― James Morrison, Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:34 AM (2 years ago)

Probably my second favourite Ishiguro after The Unconsoled, although still haven't read Remains. That "not ringing true" is a common, and obvious, criticism, but it really didn't bother me. His set-ups are often pretty weird or at least of questionable veracity, what is important is his characters' emotional responses to them.

16. Oblivion - David Foster Wallace (2005)
(87 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/arts/photos/2008/09/14/david-foster-wallace-getty-.jpg

he story about the baby in Oblivion never fails to amaze me in its brevity and utter desperation.
― the table is the table, Thursday, March 1, 2007 5:17 PM (2 years ago)

Oblivion had moments of intelligence and humanity, and is the best I've read from DFW.
― Chelvis, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 1:45 PM (2 years ago)

no one's mentioned david foster wallace but oblivion is great
― kl0pper, Sunday, January 27, 2008 9:39 PM (2 years ago)

that was my top-placed vote. i can't really explain quite what it is about the the stories in that book, in particular; it's that david foster wallace remains maybe the one writer that i've spoken about, speak about, will speak about with friends and peers and, in doing so, really feel that his work, and talking about it, gets at not just issues of style and taste, but at what style and taste and art are ultimately good for, what they might mean to the way you live your life.

— which ultimately i think is the most you can ask from any artist?

sorry, got lost in the middle of that sentence. oh well.

I'm going to have to read him. I had mentally filed him under 'smart-alecky', possibly just because he was popular on here, but I'm impressed by the real feeling coming through in these tributes.

(Oblivion is really hard to search for, which is why the quotes for it are somewhat brief)

he's kind of the deeply earnest precursor of the mcswys 'i really mean this and this is why i have to make dumb jokes about it, here is a drawing of a stapler' line that a lot of ppl hate, in some ways.

I am a huge DFW fanboy but didn't vote for either of these. Probably should have on the merits, but I think I penalized them unfairly for being less than what he did before.