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

I like Armitage more as a figure than as a writer these days.

Yeah, despite my vote I still have mixed feelings about him. He is super likeable (ie is Fall & Prefab Sprout fan), but that literary certainty of address or paced formality, which stops him being a Mersey Poet funster, has taken over a bit - the demotic energy & wit which kicked against that isn't there so much in his original verse now. It feels disappointing given how much I believed in Zoom & Kid; but he's someone I enjoy having around and want to do well, so Gawain pleased me. I haven't looked at his Odyssey tho. Am not sure that'll go so well.

very like a teacher's book in fact, rather than a storyteller's book

Spot on. It really dragged. Plus Pullman just seems to pop up around the place now being kind of pompous & I keep having to remind myself that Northern Lights is v powerful, terrific in imagination & execution & I am not against him.

I mean this could be very good, but I just look at the title and get a sinking feeling.

I thought The Amber Spyglass was terrific. That said, it probably is the weakest of the three, but even its errors (if that's what they were) worked for me in their context - the way it rushed through everything meant I kind of lost track of what was going on (God's dead? what? who?) but that evoked civilisation crumbling; and the lack of strong sense of place from the first book in particular conjured a strong mental image of a world of ash, like The Road, or a vague sense of purgatory.

I'm curious to know how The Pale King will read but based on the pieces that have appeared it's hard to imagine it's not much, much smaller in spirit than the other two novels.

seriously? 'the soul is not a smithy'?

echoing all of what's been said wrt the first two golden compass books setting up something wonderful, magnificent, important?, third book just collapsing under that pressure/weight.

Someone gave me a copy of Northern Lights last week but I saw The Golden Compass and it was so fucking dire that I don't really understand why anyone would want to spend time on the whole thing.

movies of books are generally shitty and dumbed down?

I saw The Scarlet Letter/Bonfire of the Vanities/The Human Stain and they were so fucking dire that I don't really understand why anyone would want to spend time on Hawthorne, Wolfe or Roth.

i saw shakespeare in love and tbh i really can't see what all the fuss is about. 'bard' my ass.

'bard' my ass.

― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Monday, February 15, 2010 4:50 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barding_and_larding

14. By Night In Chile - Roberto Bolaño (2000)
(91 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)

http://quarterlyconversation.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/by-night-in-chile-roberto-bolano.jpg

wmlynch:
Bolano's short books are in many ways more scintillating than his longer, multivocal works because they are so much more focused and thus have a fiercer impact. By Night in Chile has some indelible images--the pigeon-hunting falcons, the torture scene beneath the party--and its confessional tone is twistedly Bernhardian in the best way. It also has one of the best (and most memorable) final sentences of any work I've read in the past ten years. It is an angry ticking bomb which when exploded altered the books that I read around it.

Roberto Bolano - By Night in Chile (an odd but ultimately compelling revery, vivid images, dreamlike logic, not everything works, but enough does)
― o. nate, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 6:11 PM (2 years ago)

Roberto Bolaño - By Night in Chile
Gruwelverhaal van een priester die Marx mag onderwijzen aan Pinochet. Maar dat is niet het enige wat hem dwarszit.
― EvR, Monday, June 22, 2009 7:38 AM (7 months ago)

Quite saddened that By Night in Chile wasn't called "Storms of shit" as Bolano originally planned.
― Blackout Crew are the Beatles of donk (jim), Monday, March 2, 2009 9:17 PM (11 months ago)

Looked this up on Wikipedia and read a line guaranteed to push anything to the back of my must-read queue: "written in a single paragraph". Seriously, why does anyone do this?

Seriously, why does anyone do this

Well it asks a bit from the reader, but done well produces a kind of unsettling immersion that's hard to get at any other way - it's a powerful means of drawing you inside mania or obsession, for instance. Thinking of Thomas Bernhard & William Gaddis's Agape Agape (didn't realise this was eligible, thought it was 90-something - would have nommed & voted for it).

I expect it must've originally been 90s, but the translation date I found was 2000 so it was in.

Sorry, 'this' meant Agape Agape, which is from 2002, rather than Bolano.

btw, not saying single-par writing fills me with joy & enthusiasm. Rather a deep sigh & long hesitation before deciding whether it's going to be worth it.

Yeah, I see your argument but when there are so many novels in the world that I'd like to investigate, this is the kind of thing which makes me put it back on the shelf and pick up something else. Which probably says more about me as a reader than them as writers.

For some great all-one-paragraph American fiction try Stephen Dixon. Geez, was he not even nominated? I'd have thrown the guy some points.

13. Fortress Of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem (2003)
(91 points, six votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.faber.co.uk/site-media/onix-images/thumbs/2135_jpg_280x450_q85.jpg

JL:
A book about a neighborhood. I have logged 3/4 of a decade in the same neighborhood, though not at the same time that this book is set in, so I will recuse myself.

Ismael Klata:
My no.1.  There were two flawless books on my list - this beat them both because it creates its settings with such warmth and deceptive, languid intensity that living in its world gave me the most pleasure.  It's really serious too, but ... *and then I just tailed off, I never finished this blurb and now I can't remember where I was going*

Fortress of Solitude
Reading Jonathan Lethem ...?

i'm about 230 pp into the fortress of solitude now, and if i didn't care at all about sleep i would have stayed up until dawn to finish it. n/a, don't be put off by your bad experience w/ one of lethem's earlier books. get this one immediately.
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, September 13, 2004 2:40 PM (5 years ago)

I think I need to modify my statement about Fortress of Solitude, in retrospect. It isn't that I detested the book or anything, and there were parts that I much enjoyed, it's more that I'd been hoping for something more, well, "out there" as opposed to being so realistic. It's a book that I would recommend, with a few reservations. I think I would have enjoyed it much more had I not read some of Lethem's earlier stuff. (And I must say that his writing was more polished and readable in this latest work than in earlier publications, which is a good thing.)
― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Tuesday, September 14, 2004 6:08 PM (5 years ago)

I really loved The Fortress of Solitude; our company's book group had the fortune of discussing the book with Mr. Lethem himself. He explained a lot of the issues I had with the book, including the odd leap in style from the magical world of Dylan in "Underberg" to the not-so-magical first person Dylan in "Prisonaires". I felt much better after he explained it, but authors shouldn't really have to explain their books to their readers, should they?
― zan, Tuesday, October 26, 2004 6:55 PM (5 years ago)

Basically I just want to lay in bed and read Fortress of Solitude all day.
― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, November 5, 2004 4:28 PM (5 years ago)

#1 on my "it's strange I haven't read this" list, given my Lethem-love. Would have voted for Chronic City had it been nommed!

wao, didn't expect to see By Night In Chile. To borrow a phrase from ken c, 2666 is gonna walk this, isn't it? Or at least be real real high. (Remember that I've already realised I have no grasp of the ILXor reading zeitgeist and am obviously completely wrong.)

Yep, I didn't expect to see By Night in Chile either. Very happy that it's there. To be honest, it was so compelling that I barely noticed it was in one paragraph, and I don't think it should put you off.

I'm quite annoyed that zan never seems to have told us what Lethem's explanation was.

12. Atonement - Ian McEwan (2001)
(93 points, five points, one first-placed vote)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_yhuhp880s

eephus!:
I admired this hugely when I read it, but never read another book of his and now remember nothing about it. Not sure what that means.

Ismael Klata:
Stunning. Two faults for me: he can't do endings, and he never convinces me that he means anything he writes. That he can be good enough to create such people and such a story, and then stupid enough to use it all to play a trick, beggars belief. But what craft!

Atonement the movie C/D

For an entrancing read you could try 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan. It is a great novel about the consequences of our actions, the border between a fantasy and reality and the decline of the British 'Empire' in World War Two.
― Shutruk Nahunte, Tuesday, June 21, 2005 2:34 PM (4 years ago)

My favourite bits of Atonement (which I still think is a brilliant book) are the bits are the beginning, pre-calamity, where the main character, the little girl, is just thinking, looking at her hand and wondering how she makes it move, stuff like that.
― Tim F, Monday, August 27, 2007 12:45 PM (2 years ago)

Just read (and loved) Atonement, but having finished I realised that the novel had a great deal to do with 'writing and the unconscious', and even whilst reading it I had noticed a very strong connection with Freud's writing. Parapraxis, suggestions and masked sensuality all figure largely in the novel. In fact, the greatest psychological stunts are pulled on the reader themselves; invited to write the story before it is completed, they do so in more or less the manner McEwan had planned. I could say more, mostly about how one of the characters was pitched perfectly to snare my unconscious (the moments of truth being an unwitting parapraxis I wish I had committed and an unfulfilled stage of life), but also about Freudian imagery in another character's illegal lusting, but I must interrupt my analytical progress with the simple heartfelt statement that the book moved me more than most others. Plus, the final couple of pages bring the very nature of fiction itself into debate (and, conversely, upon reflection soften the very blow they inflict).
― Just got offed, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:27 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'd reservations about Atonement at first because the meta-games bothered me and I intensely disliked Amsterdam. Having plowed through almost all his other novels (he can "do" eroticism better than most), I've warmed considerably to it.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:35 PM (2 years ago)

he can "do" eroticism better than most
... i mean, that love-scene is OMG, and i was already reading the novel 'as' the involved male character (deliberately constructed to ensnare my sort of reader, an ideal, if you will, of a certain human type, made perfect by his glorious outpouring and propicious error, an error any young, literate male worth his salt would have dreamed of making).
... I also think you can detect quite easily the fraudulence (within the narrator's reality) of that 'everything's alright again' scene, which alleviates tension only to be crushed (alongside the 'atonement') at the last. As I say, though, that crushing, that unreliability of fiction, absolves itself from its body-blow to our sympathetic consciousness.
― Just got offed, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:55 PM (2 years ago)

OH FUCK

i found out today that Atonement is being HOLLYWOODISED and is in fact coming out IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS
... worse, KEIRA KNIGHTLEY IS PLAYING THE FEMALE LOVE-INTEREST
... YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH THIS HAS ALREADY RUINED THE MOVIE FOR ME; in the book she's meant to be a pretty but not obviously 'stunning' (and fairly intelligent) English graduate ffs. KEIRA KNIGHTLEY CANNOT AND WILL NOT PULL THAT OFF. she can't even fucking pull off an airheaded bimbo!
... as for the book's nuances, the unreliable narrator, the building tension, the use of unconscious persuasion, THIS WILL ALL GET NEGLECTED. the war-scenes will be done as action-movie rather than quasi-psychotic, selfish, mechanical trudge to the goal of freedom, and the 'old lady' bit will be like Titanic II. she'll probably even die at the end for crying out loud.

i'm going to watch this, and then i'm going to write a damning, damning review. ooh, i'm gonna hate it.

― Just got offed, Sunday, August 5, 2007 1:28 AM (2 years ago)

To quote a Facebook wall-exchange I recently had:
... "The thing about Atonement is that it calls the entire fictional process into account with its astonishing closing page. It ought to have been filmed by Michael Winterbottom or something; the novel deliberately sabotages its own reality through the sabotaging of Bryony's fiction; I'm sure this could have been mirrored filmically. Furthermore, the opening half, set on that one day, unfolds inevitably, the writer psychologically inducing the reader to write the novel before reading it. The reader generally will achieve this, and will continue to do so throughout; this is how the punchline so pulls the rug out from under our feet. Aside from all this, however, the novel is written with a fantastic sensuality; the love-scene is as erotic (tenderly violent) as they come, and the parapraxes he absent-mindedly assigns each character (Robbie's letter, Paul's "You've got to bite it", his own list of tragedies at the start of part two to which Robbie adds his own, thus placing his very self, Ian McEwan, amongst the pantheon) allow the reader to integrate with the characters' viewpoints. In fact, the greatest parapraxis, the greatest error, is the unfinished act of love between Robbie and Cecilia; this psychological hook compels the reader to wish their love consummated; our frustration grows when we learn that they met but never made love. This, indeed, is why we dislike Bryony so intensely at the end of Book One; she has not only interrupted a sexual experience in which we have a vested interest, but she has sullied the life of a near-perfect male character whose perfection will be assured with the completion of his love.
... None of this will be in the film. In fact, the only bit I expect them to pull off is Robbie's ultra-pathetic return with lost boys in tow. As a reader, I knew that was going to happen AS SOON AS the accusation was made.
... I read Atonement about a month ago whilst holidaying in Cyprus, and my analysis of it stems not from A-level buit from my studies of Freud last year. I believe Robbie actually mentions Freud in the novel; a clue, perhaps, that McEwan himself is well-versed in Writing And The Unconscious. I'm studying post-1979 literature for my finals; I immediately wanted to write an essay on the novel's use of parapraxes, but then I discovered it had been filmed, and realised that addressing the now-tainted book would draw the deep disdain of all my professors."
... More on that McEwan thread I linked above. The keystone, from a male perspective at least, is that we ALL wish we'd made Robbie's letter-exchange-error, and from then on we're living, through him, some kind of idealised life, which is shockingly EVAPORATED before our helpless eyes.
― Just got offed, Thursday, September 13, 2007 1:56 PM (2 years ago)

I've pretty much seen it, anyway
Louis, you haven't seen it
― Tom D., Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:02 PM (2 years ago)

"He can't do endings" OTM. The first half of this book, like the opening stretches of Enduring Love or The Child in Time, sets standards that the rest of it can't hope to meet.

I've only read On Chesil Beach and yes, he can't do endings. It was not a v. good read imo (made even less enjoyable having my crazy old lecturer talk about the use of ejaculation in it for like half an hour) and it has put me off reading anything else by McEwan.

^I've only read Saturday and had the same reaction. The ending ruined it for me.

Well this one's really good xp. I couldn't put the first part down, and the second part was nearly as good. The ending is awful, but like I said upthread, rip out the last ten pages before you start and that's that fixed. I see Louis liked it though.

That scene made me weep when I saw it at the cinema - though, to be fair, with that content and the way I see the world it was like pushing at an open door.

so see the movie, ignore the actual book. gotcha.

I read Amsterdam and Atonement and will never read McEwan again.

i thought on chesil beach was the only book of his with a satisfactory ending although i haven't read atonement. the endings of saturday and enduring love are atrocious. he writes well though.

One last one then I'll call it a night. Top ten in full tomorrow, real life permitting.

11. The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño (2007)
(104 points, six votes)

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2007/03/26/p233/070326_r16042_p233.jpg

Moreno:
I know a lot of people who feel like there's a let down after the exhilarating first section but I think thats what Bolano was going for. Essentially a novel about lost youth and friendship.

Roberto Bolano

Anyone else read Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives?
I just finished it about 10 minutes ago, and it's a great read. Good enough to convince me to order By Night in Chile before I was finished reading the first book, just to have it ready to go.
There's a nice article about Bolaño and The Savage Detectives here
― Z S, Sunday, June 3, 2007 10:27 PM (2 years ago)

The Savage Detectives was the first thing I ever read by him, and it's still one of my very favorite books. In some ways, especially in the middle section with all of the interviews, it does the same thing I mentioned above in introducing characters that are gone too soon. The difference is, given his format in that section, there's always a possibility that they'll pop up again, either as a person being directly interviewed, or as a character in someone else's version of events. And those are just the "minor" characters in the book. Joaquin Font, the bookstore owner, stood out for me. Seeing his name pop up on the next page is always a "yes!" moment, at least for me.
... Then there's the main pair, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. Belano is supposed to be a stand-in for Roberto Bolano himself, which gives any scene that he's a part of another dimension to explore, if you want. Again, the interview format for the long middle section of the book is perfect for getting to know these characters. Some people think they're brilliant, others see them as mere drug dealers, some are teenagers who look up to them, others sleep with them, and so on.
... It's a really rewarding book, so good that I'm almost sad I started with it, because although I've enjoyed the other books I've read by him, I think he's at his best with more space to work with, letting his characters unfold over hundreds of enjoyable pages. That's why I'm so excited for 2666, later this year!
― Z S, Sunday, March 30, 2008 5:17 PM (1 year ago)

this is an amazing book - probably the best book ive read in a couple years
― _/(o_o)/¯ (deej), Wednesday, November 19, 2008 7:15 PM (1 year ago)

hey, look at that, more books i would have voted for are showing up now. sorry i doubted you, ilx literati.

Heh, we're hitting the canon now.

I don't get people's problem with the ending to Atonement - I don't think it affects the characterisation in the rest of the book at all. The ending of Enduring Love, now, that's *really* shit.

The Fortress of Solitude and The Savage Detectives are my two favourites to place so far, so it's immensely satisfying to see them in such close succession. Presumably 2666 is still to place?

Netherland has a sluggish plot, ultimately unconvincing characters and a charmless, overly passive narrator, but is so astonishing on a sentence level that pretty much all is forgiven. It's remarkable that anyone's prose could be good enough to overcome flaws that in any other novel would make me throw it across the room. Some of the people I recommended it to, however, did just want to throw it across the room.

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Wednesday, 3 February 2010 13:50 (1 week ago)

Got to disagree with this really - all the pretty prose in the world can't gloss over Netherland's flaws for me.

The top ten is coming up, but first here's your chart rundown from one hundred and one to number eleven:

101. Nixonland - Rick Perlstein (2008) (22 points, two votes)
100. Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky (1942, translated 2004) (22 points, two votes)
99. A Storm of Swords - George Martin (2000) (22 points, two votes)
98. Veronica - Mary Gaitskill (2005) (22 points, three votes)
97. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World - Francis Wheen (2000) (23 points, three votes)
96. On Green Dolphin Street - Sebastian Faulks (2004) (24 points, two votes)
95. No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy (2005) (25 points, three votes)
94. Experience - Martin Amis (2000) (25 points, three votes)
93. Look To Windward - Iain M. Banks (2000) (26 points, two votes)
92. Nostalgia - Mircea Cărtărescu (translated 2005) (26 points, two votes)
91. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (2009) (26 points, two votes)

90. Stasiland - Anna Funder (2004) (27 points, two votes)
89. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (2001) (27 points, two votes)
88. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach (2003) (28 points, three votes)
87. The Elementary Particles also known as Atomised - Michel Houellebecq (2000) (28 points, four votes)
86. Sinai Diving Guide - Alberto Siliotti (2005) (28 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
85. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (2007) (29 points, three votes)
84. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (2005) (29 points, five votes)
83. Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago (2008) (30 points, two votes)
82. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (2006) (30 points, three votes)
81. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories - Wells Tower (2009) (30 points, three votes)

80. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell (2006) (31 points, two votes)
79. Rabbit Remembered - John Updike (2001) (31 points, two votes)
78. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks (2007) (31 points, two votes)
77. An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira (2006) (31 points, three votes)
76. Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson (2005) (31 points, two votes)
75. The Whole Equation - David Thomson (2005) (31 points, two votes)
74. What's Left? - Nick Cohen (2007) (31 points, three votes)
73. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize - David Cavanagh (2001) (32 points, four votes)
72. Nothing - Paul Morley (2000) (33 points, two votes)
71. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (2000) (33 points, four votes)

70. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell (2005) (33 points, four votes)
69. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century - Patrik Ouředník (2005) (34 points, two votes)
68. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - Alice Munro (2001) (34 points, five votes)
67. Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore (2003) (35 points, two votes)
66. Words and Music - Paul Morley (2003) (35 points, three votes)
65. Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon (2006) (35 points, four votes)
64. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson (2007) (37 points, two votes)
63. Death And The Penguin - Andrey Kurkov (2001) (37 points, two votes)
62. London: The Biography - Peter Ackroyd (2001) (37 points, three votes)
61. The Year Of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (2005) (38 points, four votes)

60. White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000) (40 points, two votes)
59. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer (2005) (41 points, two votes)
58. Youth - JM Coetzee (2002) (41 points, two votes)
57. Saturday - Ian McEwan (41 points, three votes)
56. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July (2007) (41 points, four votes)
55. Perdido Street Station - China Miéville (2000) (42 points, three votes)
54. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling (2000) (45 points, four votes)
53. Netherland - Joseph O'Neill (2007) (45 points, four votes)
52. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson (2004) (45 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
51. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (2000) (46 points, five votes)

50. The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial Of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories - Nicholas Gurewitch (2008) (46 points, six votes)
49. 45 - Bill Drummond (2000) (47 points, three votes)
48. House Of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski (2000) (49 points, five votes)
47. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon (2007) (49 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
46. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins (2006) (50 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)
45. The Complete Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (2007) (51 points, six votes)
44. Remainder - Tom McCarthy (2007) (52 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
43. Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azzerad (2001) (53 points, four votes)
42. Fooled By Randomness - Nasim Taleb (2001) (53 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
41. On Beauty - Zadie Smith (2005) (54 points, five votes)

40. The Damned United - David Peace (2006) (55 points, four votes)
39. Notable American Women - Ben Marcus (2002) (55 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
38. Rip It Up And Start Again - Simon Reynolds (2005) (60 points, six votes)
37. Anathem - Neal Stephenson (2008) (60 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
36. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) (60 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
35. The Rest Is Noise - Alex Ross (2008) (61 points, six votes)
34. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao - Junot Díaz (2007) (63 points, four votes)
33. The Russian Debutante's Handbook - Gary Shteyngart (2003) (64 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
32. Austerlitz - WG Sebald (2001) (65 points, five votes)
31. Runaway - Alice Munro (2005) (65 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)

30. The Line Of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) (70 points, four votes)
29. Complete Stories - JG Ballard (2001) (70 points, five votes)
28. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (2004) (70 points, six votes)
27. Pictures At A Revolution - Mark Harris (2008) (70 points, two votes, one first-placed vote)
26. Homeland - Sam Lipsyte (2004) (70 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)
25. Safe Area Goražde - Joe Sacco (2000) (72 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
24. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time - Mark Haddon (2003) (74 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)
23. A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers (2000) (76 points, seven votes)
22. Pattern Recognition - William Gibson (2003) (77 points, four votes)
21. Pastoralia - George Saunders (2000) (79 points, nine votes)

20. Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed - Jared Diamond (2004) (79 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
19. Consider The Lobster - David Foster Wallace (2005) (80 points, eight votes)
18. Q - Luther Blissett (2003) (80 points, three votes, one first-placed vote)
17. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) (86 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)
16. Oblivion - David Foster Wallace (2005) (87 points, five votes, one first-placed vote)
15. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman (2000) (88 points, nine votes)
14. By Night In Chile - Roberto Bolaño (2000) (91 points, four votes, one first-placed vote)
13. Fortress Of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem (2003) (91 points, six votes, one first-placed vote)
12. Atonement - Ian McEwan (2001) (93 points, five points, one first-placed vote)
11. The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño (2007) (104 points, six votes)

10. Chronicles - Bob Dylan (2004)
(115 points, seven votes, one first-placed vote)

http://img.nytstore.com/IMAGES/ICON-BDY-10001_LARGE.JPG

EZ Snappin:
"Oblique and funny, and just as full of shit as his songs; what's not to love?"

woofwoofwoof:
I'm not one of those dylandylandylan people, so I was surprised by how
much I enjoyed this: the New York chapters are an A1 portrait of
artist as young man, educating himself. Like him more after picturing
him sitting round in a cadged room reading Thucydides, going out to
see the Brecht/Weill. Assume it's chocka with lies, but that's an
artist's memoir for you.

so who's looking forward to bob dylan's chronicles volume one book?

Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler) wrote this on thread The most immodest biography you have ever read on board I Love Everything on Dec 30, 2005:
chronicles vol 1 by bob dylan

I'm in the middle of Chronicles Vol 1 right now and it's really good. Some of the quotes I saw in the media made it seem like it was going to be really eccentric, which was somewhat misleading- it is eccentric, but about as much as you would expect from Bob Dylan. I really like the fact that the voice of the guy who wrote all those songs comes through in the tone of the book.
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, February 8, 2005 2:20 AM (5 years ago)

How does "Chronicles" compare with another Dylan biography,"Down the Highway" by Howard Sounes, which I was about to read? Incidentally, the "No Direction Home" DVD directed by Scorsese was pretty good.

The Bolano love is interesting. Not only he is one of the few authors on the list I've never read - he's the only one I've never even heard of. His canonisation, at least within the sphere of ILX, has completely passed me by. I've been reading a lot about the 1973 coup so I think By Night in Chile might be the place to start before I try one of the 900pp+ monsters.

i read about a third of 2666 and thought it was genuinely awful.

@RedRaymaker Chronicles is a good read but not at all chronological and the stuff on his early years and his 60s fame is considerably more interesting than the long section on the making of Oh Mercy but it's still a must-read if you're a fan - concise, witty and very revealing. My favourite Dylan book is still Anthony Scaduto's biog, which stops circa 1970 but is pretty much faultless on the period up to that point.

9. The True History Of The Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001)
(115 points, four votes, two first-placed votes)

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/3595/nedkelly3nfsa.jpg

eephus!:
If you have a read a hundred novels in which the protagonist's voice is delivered in affected nonstandard English you've probably read a hundred annoying novels, and you've said to yourself, "Surely there must be some context in which this creates a spectacular effect and feels absolutely necessary to a great novel's success, otherwise why do people keep trying it?" Here is your answer.

o. nate:
A rip-snorting adventure tale in which Carey turns the ungrammatical and unpunctuated scribblings of an uneducated bandit into powerful and moving poetic language. The story of a poor, spirited frontier boy who becomes a man under hard circumstances and without a stable father figure.

This Ned Kelly gang book is sort of like that Icelandic saga Mr. Jaq was reading aloud - Njall's maybe? Except, it's in Australia. And modern.
But rollicking, all the same, and the women are terrible instigators.
― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, November 2, 2006 5:49 AM (3 years ago)

I wouldn't say there aren't interesting things to be done with the narratorial voice - look for instance at Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (one of my favorite novels of recent years) in which the book is narrated by an uneducated outlaw with poor grammar and unusual diction - it's just that I think that having books narrated by inanimate objects, dead people, infants, etc. is just kind of gimmicky and lame. I just don't see why that's supposed to be interesting. The thing that's great about Kelly Gang is that Carey fully inhabits the voice of his character and he finds a type of blunt poetry there. It's not just a gimmick because it actually works.
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, June 29, 2005 4:31 PM (4 years ago)

Out of the whole list, this is the one that I'm most pleased to see make it so high. Only four votes, but they include two firsts and a third which is a pretty outstanding average. Haven't read it myself, but will put that right shortly.

eephus & o.nate otm about the voice.

8. 2666 - Roberto Bolaño (2008)
(120 points, eight votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bolano.jpg

Moreno:
The pervasive sense of doom makes the most mundane scenes feel riveting. Plus some of the most fucked up dream sequences I've ever read. Probably why this and "Mulholland Drive" are two of my favorite things ever.

2666 poll

the two adjectives i would give 2666 are wild and uneven. it was a fun, fast read for me but i think i would have appreciated a little more cohesion between the 5 sections. . . just a touch more, really. highlights were all of sections 1 and 4 and the beginning of 5, until Archimboldio gets bogged down in WWII. 3 came off as this weird DeLillo-ish chunk. 2 seems a little pointless in retrospect. he's an interesting writer, the digressions just got a little old towards the end. considering how awesome 1 and 4 are, though, it hardly matters.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, November 26, 2008 4:25 PM (1 year ago)

Was on holiday in Chile few weeks ago. Having drinks with some of my dad's friends, the ex-husband of one asked me if I had ever read Bolano. I said yes, I really like him and was currently reading 2666. Turns out he was best friends with him as boys. He had recently been sent interview questions about the young Bolano and his relationship with him. He said when he was young he was a storyteller, and all the boys in the crowd would crowd round him while he made up, on the spot, fantastical stories that they all really enjoyed. Also he told an anecdote about a time when he had shot a bird with a homemade slingshot, Bolano shouted at him, calling him a murderer, and then rung the bird's neck as it was still alive, but suffering.
― what U cry 4 (jim), Sunday, December 28, 2008 6:11 PM (1 year ago)

Bolaño, grappig, een vriend van me die ik zeer vertrouw in literaire zaken vond het een van de beste boeken die hij ooit had gelezen (2666 dus). Als je het nu snel in het Engels (of Spaans) leest ben je heel erg hip voordat de hype losbarst met de Ned.vertaling ergens later dit jaar. ;) Schijnt wel erg gewelddadig te zijn en daar ben ik een beetje op uitgekeken eerlijk gezegd.
― OMC, Friday, January 23, 2009 4:57 PM (1 year ago)

Bolano loves that distance from the character. Not going to spoiler alert so I'll be elliptical, in 2666, with Hans Reiter and Lotte you're shown their whole domestic arrangement and really close to the characters while they live in the run down old building, then when they start their travels, but then they get to Italy and we totally miss out a whole really dramatic incident, only hearing about it through another character in passing.
Also I'm sure I read a short story of his where one character is dispatched by something like, "he didn't hear any more from him, and sometime later found he had died".
...
i'm finding 2666 a really hard-sell when recommending it to people ("it's 1000 pages and about serial murders in Mexico, but it's not really about that"). I don't think Savage Detectives will be much easier ("it's 600 pages and it's about obscure avante-garde Mexican poets and their search for an even more obscure avante-garde Mexican poet).
― "Hey, We're Clubbing!" (Police Squad) (jim), Tuesday, April 7, 2009 3:11 PM (10 months ago)

Finished the first section of 2666 and swithering whether to press on or take a break (ie, treat as one novel, as the publishers want me to, or 5 separate ones, which is what Bolano himself seems to have intended). I enjoyed and was impressed by the first part, although I thought it unexpectedly conventional after "The Savage Detectives". Surprisingly the writer I was most put in mind of was de Montherlant. Temperamentally there are obvious differences - Bolano is not a self-regarding French aristo, or a snob, or gay. Nor am I suggesting B matches DM's sour misogyny, but there is something troubling about his treatment of his female characters. And there's something about his detachment and his method of presenting reality, that seems like a continuation of something that might in a parellel universe have become mainstream modernist tradition (or post modernism if that term hadn't been appropriated for other purposes). Wyndham Lewis comes to mind as well as DM. All these very tentative first thoughts, of course.
... Still, it must say something for Bolano that he's got me reading this stuff and willing to read on. These days I tend to prefer a nice bit of realism, so to get me motivated to read two very long novels with experimental aspirations - especially in translation - is not bad going.
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 9:36 AM (9 months ago)

I had guessed beforehand that 2666 would end up at no.1 but in actual fact it was very slow getting going and only accelerated late on. Had I stopped the count about three-quarters of the way through it would've missed the top thirty.

i thought it would be number one but i'm glad it's not.