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

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.

7. The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon (2000)
(121 points, seven votes, one first-placed vote)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nXKHZ4gXH8I/SaSGbf_KLyI/AAAAAAAADL8/f6Z_hgyQZag/s400/KAVALIER-Full-Actual.jpg

TimJ:
The post-millennial clamour to try and capture the essence of the 20th century was for me nowhere better realised than in this exceptionally moving and well-crafted epic of perhaps the most resonant shift to take place therein – the rise of America as Conductor-in-Chief for the world’s attention, and the concomitant emergence of popular culture through new art media such as jazz and the comic book. Here are the rise of cubism and the aspirations of a modern world alongside the rehabilitation of Europe’s dispossessed Jewry, as seen through the prism of adventure and the coruscating theme of ‘escape’.

Alex in Montreal:
It drags in the homestretch, as Chabon loses a few of his threads, but everything before Antarctica is virtuosic and vibrant prose.

Michael Chabon
KAVALIER & CLAY

Have you read 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' by Michael Chabon, Jess? It's a novel abt the American comic industry that's actually a)quite a good novel, and b)pretty historically/aesthetically accurate. It joins the v. select group of good novels abt comics (see also the brilliant 'The Kryptonite Kid' by Joseph Torchia, if you can find it.) I picked up my copy of the Chabon in a remainder bookshop in London's Soho (porn in the basement, cheap bks up top)
― Andrew L, Thursday, October 11, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

I think it's sort of slow going at the beginning. I read about 100 pages, then set it aside for six months before finishing it. But actually, even then, I enjoyed it while I was reading it but never felt eager to pick it up once I'd set it down.
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, May 14, 2003 2:41 PM (6 years ago)

I loved Kavalier & Clay to absolute bits.
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, October 23, 2003 11:38 AM (6 years ago)

Tremendous novel - would have been in my top five. I've read everything else by Chabon since but this is peerless.

I definitely found it slow going at first too, so much so that I set it aside - more than a few of the quotes in the archives say the same. I take it it speeds up after the opening?

That was my #1. Excellent book.

(two first-placed votes), that should've been - I saw yours but didn't notice the other. Only three books picked up multiple #1s

What's left then? Presumably The Corrections, Cloud Atlas, Everything Is Illuminated, The Road and something by Roth, no idea what else might be in there.

something by Roth

only one roth, though?

6. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (2004)
(122 points, six votes, one first-placed vote)

http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/099/578/400000000000000099578_s4.jpg

eephus!:
Is it gimmicky? Sure, but you have to stand back and admire a gimmick carried off to absolute perfection. No novel I read this decade surprised me more than this one.

woofwoofwoof:
Things that made me happy:
when Richard & Judy's Book Club members chose Cloud Atlas
as their read of the year. Restores a man's faith.

What do you think of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas?

Recently finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I thought just got better and better as it went along. Mitchell has such a power for conveying different voices; the central story has really stuck in my head.
― zan, Tuesday, April 13, 2004 4:47 PM (5 years ago)

Cloud Atlas isn't a puzzle book. The structure is unusual - there are six stories, and you read the first half of story A, the first half of story B.... all of story F, the second half of story E, the second half of story D... the second half of story A. But there's nothing to figure out - there aren't many connections between the stories, but the ones there are are quite obvious. Its not Pale Fire.
― Ray (Ray), Saturday, March 26, 2005 12:20 PM (4 years ago)

Wat is je favoriete Mitchell? Heb hier nog een ongelezen Cloud Atlas liggen.
Dat is mijn favoriet! Het eerste hoofdstuk is een beetje doorbijten, maar daarna wordt het geweldig. Past hij nog in je tas?
― Ionica (Ionica), Thursday, June 15, 2006 11:51 AM (3 years ago)

oh ja Cloud Atlas.. Moet nog gelezen worden.
― Ludo (Ludo), Thursday, June 15, 2006 12:55 PM (3 years ago)

Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell is an exercise in different genres, but has at its centre two sci-fi stories, one future dystopia, and a second post-apocalyptic earth. The whole thing is stunning, I think, but particularly those bits.
― Jamie T Smith, Tuesday, February 10, 2009 11:39 AM (1 year ago)

I was v. disappointed when I found out that wasn't the same guy from Peep Show.

Meh. Good not great. The connections between the stories are slim and spurious, as Ray says. The stories aren't thrilling or exciting enough to have stuck in my head and I don't think it says anything profound about our society or where we are going. I wouldn't rate it any higher than some random middle-tier new-wave wannabe literary skiffy short story colleciton.

Still managed to get to no. 11 in my ballot tho :/

I liked Cloud Atlas a lot - it was adventurous and ambitious, and fulfilled its ambition - especially the central section with the invented language. (deletes some spurious stuff about wishing there'd been more narrative progression in the second sectcion rather than just fulfillment of the various stories).

What's left then? Presumably The Corrections, Cloud Atlas, Everything Is Illuminated, The Road and something by Roth, no idea what else might be in there.

Inherent Vice I'd guess.

5. Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami (2004)
(128 points, seven votes, one first-placed vote)

http://zillagordon.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/mura600.jpg

Haruki Murakami
Murakami book order
If you like Haruki Murakami, you'd like ...
Has Haruki Murakami Sold Out? (attention: Literary Fashionistas)
Calvino, Murakami, Pynchon, and Dick battle it out for the title of Official Favorite Author of ILX

http://www.erictaylorphoto.com/images/libraries/libraries03.jpg

thats basically how i picture the library from "kafka on the shore"
― mark p (Mark P), Saturday, July 9, 2005 3:20 AM (4 years ago)

I cried pretty solidly for a good ten minutes when I finished Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Such a beautiful novel.
― Andrew (enneff), Friday, August 19, 2005 4:19 AM (4 years ago)

if we're talking highlights and lowlights, Kafka on the Shore was a surprising highlight for me this year. I thought I wouldn't like it, but ended up loving it.
― zan, Thursday, September 29, 2005 3:15 PM (4 years ago)

The Elephant Vanishes (serie korte verhalen, waaronder The Second Bakery Attack, het eerste wat ik ooit van Murakami had gelezen in een Amerikaanse Playboy ergens begin jaren 90...Ja, alleen voor de artikelen...;-p) en Kafka On The Shore.
― Ariën Rasmijn (Ariën), Tuesday, June 20, 2006 4:05 PM (3 years ago)

I recently finished Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore". It was enjoyable enough, Murakami's usual strengths and weaknesses, but I'm starting to find his amiability and imaginative zip insufficient compensation for his aimlessness and self-indulgence. I've read most of what he's written, but suspect I won't be reading any more.
― frankiemachine (frankiemachine), Thursday, October 19, 2006 8:50 PM (3 years ago)

I had no idea people rated that one so highly, Murakami fans included. I suppose it might have been helped by being the only eligible and nominated Murakami novel.

I suspect that's part of it. iirc he waxes philosophical rather unconvincingly towards the end, which was a disappointment after the sustained obliqueness of Wind-Up Bird. It's definitely the weakest of the six I've read.

I'm glad I read Cloud Atlas in the belief that it would all tie up because by the time I realised it didn't I'd already enjoyed the ride. It's basically a short story collection in disguise. I read Ghostwritten afterwards and it does something similar with more success, though less heavyweight, so I'm surprised Cloud Atlas was regarded as such a masterpiece when it came out.

Very happy to see the Carey, my #1, come in so high! Somehow I'd gone years without ever hearing of this guy, then found this book on the shelf of an apartment I was staying in, figured, well, Booker, should be pretty good, and WAU. Have since read Oscar and Lucinda (almost equally good -- in a weird kind of way the kind of book John Irving would write if he were a great writer) and His Illegal Self (a step down)

But now I'm regretting voting for Kavalier and Clay. On the same grounds that I negged Consider the Lobster and Oblivion (disappointing later material by a novelist whose main body of work I admire massively) I should have left K&C off too. Of course it has the usual Chabon flourishes and there is a lot to like on the sentence level, but there's something very by-the-numbers about its goals (i.e. it says "I'm here to write a Big American Book with some History in it and The Immigrant Experience etc."), it's like a piece of music with tons of major chords banged very loud (this is the kind of stuff I liked to play when I took piano lessons tbh) and it lacks the subtlety and surprise of Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys. In 1995 I thought maybe this guy could be the next Fitzgerald but then he veered into wanting to be, I dunno, the next Steinbeck or the next Norman Mailer or something.

agree w Jamie T Smith that the SF pieces of Cloud Atlas are the best

This poll has caused me to remember the cat-eating scene in Kafka on the Shore and now I'm faintly disturbed all over again.

oh yeah, re my experience with Carey, let me just say that I think big literary prizes are pretty good! e.g. read random 20th century novels by Nobel Prize winners and you'll do A-OK (especially if you pick Haldor Laxness) Booker and National Book Award are pretty reliable too. But not Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for some reason.

Steinbeck? Pretty much the last novelist I'd compare 00s Chabon to. He seems increasingly interested in playing genre games - very entertaining, slightly shallow, but certainly not in Great American Novel territory. I think I love K&C because it's the only one that mixes the pulpy stuff with bigger social-commentary ambitions but yes, Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys are in a different key altogether. It's good to see a writer not staying in one place, I guess, even if the transitions don't always work. When I read "Big American Book with some History on it and The Immigrant Experience etc" I immediately think of Middlesex instead.

Speaking of history, The Plot Against America coming up next? I'm guessing Roth, Foer, Franzen, McCarthy, in that order.

If Plot Against America comes next I'll have to write the same post I just wrote about Chabon except with "American Pastoral" in place of "Wonder Boys."

4. The Road - Cormac McCarthy (2006)
(142 points, eleven votes)

http://i50.tinypic.com/xop6ht.jpg

Cormac McCarthy- The Road

Tiki Theater Xymposium (Bent Over at the Arclight) wrote this on thread If you know for certain that the world is gonna end in 20 years from now, would you still want to have children? on board I Love Everything on Jan 17, 2007:
See: Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

i just finished the road by cormac mccarthy and while really, REALLY dark it was a fucking fantastic book.
― chicago kevin, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:40 PM (2 years ago)

Just want to be in first with the McCARTHY OUT
― Suggest Bandage (Noodle Vague), Saturday, February 7, 2009 4:59 PM

I finished McCarthy's "The Road" yesterday. I'm going to remember this one for a long time, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy about that. First time I read him, and I loved it while still being put off by it. Time I get more McCarthy, clearly.
Tonight I'm going to cleanse the palate by dipping into a complete collection of Noel Coward's short stories.
― Øystein (Øystein), Thursday, November 16, 2006 2:55 PM (3 years ago)

I started reading this at midnight last night and didn't stop reading until 2:45am. I think this book would actually make a great video game.
-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, May 9, 2007 9:25 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark Link

this is true actually! you start with 20% health and get 2 bullets and a tarp. there's like 3 healths in the whole game.
― s1ocki, Friday, April 11, 2008 3:14 PM (1 year ago)

Steinbeck? Pretty much the last novelist I'd compare 00s Chabon to.

Yeah fair enough. My knowledge of midcent Amfic is not sufficient to make a good comparison and maybe there isn't one.

That video game idea is amazing.

Ismael censored my blurb for this, my #8!

"A simple book that succeeds completely at the small task it sets itself."

Heh, so much for my prediction. I thought this would take it in a walk. I've never heard a bad word about it.

making ready to poop on this thread from a great height if Everything is Illuminated takes this

Question is can I get a pback copy of The Road that doesn't have NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE EVENT all over it.

So I did xp! That blurb was just too controversial to include.

I'm going with Everything Is Illuminated to win. It's short enough and prominent enough for loads of people to have read and enjoyable enough to make a lot of people's ballots, even if it doesn't really feel like Book of the Decade material.

have lots to say on this subject but am holding my poop until the announcement (as mentioned earlier, I am crouched high above the thread)

I hadn't read "The Road" by the time I voted in this poll. I have since read it. If I voted now I would have placed it in my top 3 most likely. It's one of those sort of timeless stories, like "Of Mice and Men", only better.

*shifts uneasily to one side*

Oh, fuck Everything is Illuminated if it's the top choice.

Heh, so much for my prediction. I thought this would take it in a walk. I've never heard a bad word about it.

lots of people (not me) think cormac mccarthy is macho bs and I think those people don't like this book, see it as a twisted fantasy about "what would it take for dads and sons to have a real man-to-man relationship in this degraded world" -- this reading is crazy, of course, but I report, you decide

Everything Is Illuminated = Is This It
The Corrections = Speakerboxx/The Love Below
Plot Against America = Kid A

like "Of Mice and Men"

this is very apt, I withdraw any connection of Chabon to Steinbeck and award the analogy to McCarthy

I'm not so certain about Plot Against America, by the way, the other two are obviously in