Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1999

I've had computer problems and been missing these threads, but it turns out the '90s really is a barren wasteland for me and my reading. Not even read anything crap this year. I've had the Luther Blissett on my radar for, fuck, approaching decades now, but haven't ever seen it around to pick up.

Disgrace is Coetzee's best.

I've started that Sontag novel three times.

i've only read invisible monsters, i'm not voting for it

Oh, Motherless Brooklyn , that's a good one.

I think I started to tune out contemporary literary fiction at this time. I'm sure I read Motherless Brooklyn because all my friends were doing so, but I have no memory of it.

Only read Amulet (which is great) and Disgrace. I actually like some of Coetzee's earlier novels more. I'll be voting for 2666 so I think I'll refrain from voting here.

Echo Emily. 90s are a gap but I'm unsure as to what I need to catch-up on.

The Pelevin novel is also titled Homo Zapiens, it’s a blast and I’m probably voting for it though I really liked Ghostwritten as well.

The Intuitionist is wonderful. But then again, I remember REALLY liking Waiting, but can't remember anything about it now. Huh, I think just based on my remembered feeling, it's probably Waiting.

Yeah, Waiting. Starting in the Cultural Revolution, a doctor and a nurse fall in love and want to marry, but he's already got a wife back in the village, and to divorce would go against tradition and stability of the People's Republic or something like that. But she keeps trying to get him to do it, and eventually he gives it a shot, with wild results, and there are other incidents and sort of a low-hanging electric fence of tensions and inertia all along the way, as they settle into discontent and become a negative barometer of social changes,but their lives do change too, and it's---tragicomic, except that's a fancy word for the effect---but I can imagine Kafka digging it, in between letters to Felice.

i recall thinking the very end (and build to the end i guess) of cryptonomicon was v cinematic & resultantly obv could/should be adapted to screen. wonder if its ever come close or whats the deal

voted intuitionist

Disgrace is absolutely Coetzee's best. The Intuitionist was quite the calling card.

Tarzan's Tonsillitis??

Another year in which I barely read anything

Juneteenth it is by default. I have the Gibson book and made it a few pages in but haven’t been in the right state of mind to dig in deep.

cryptonomicon narrowly over ghostwritten. those are the only 2 i've read. both page after page non-stop bangers

The Knight Of All Times by Miho Mosulishvili

Unfortunately I don't read Georgian and it hasn't been translated.

the fact that All Tomorrow's Parties is here makes me wonder where Virtual Light and Idoru were 8)

idoru is probably my favourite of the three so this gets surrogate votes

(Ghostwritten and Cryptonomicon being the other two i've read. the caves thing makes this hard for me to read)

Disgrace is magnificent. So that.

god there's some wrong 'uns on this list

anyway, Q by a country mile

Tarzan's Tonsillitis??

Sadly disappointing:

Tarzan's Tonsillitis (original title: La amigdalitis de Tarzán, 1999) is an epistolary novel from the Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce.

Plot summary
It is about the romance between Fernanda and Juan Manuel del Carpio. It tells how life can pass and they keep in touch through the years only by mail. They meet sometimes in different cities of America and Europe but they never stay together for long. So they keep writing each other.

To the best of my memory as I read all these some time ago: Disgrace is one of those books about people where I can't figure out what makes them tick or why I would want to read about them; Cryptonomicon is probably the second best of the four Stephenson's I've read though I'm not sure I was completely sold on it; Q is an intellectual historical thriller in the Eco mould except with more cynicism, violence, and far left politics, so I'm voting for that. (Though I thought the follow up Altai was far less entertaining.)

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Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2000