Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1962

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This is the hardest so far. Love the Shirley Jackson, Kesey, Dick and Vonnegut but on reflection I think this has to be Another Country.

Mugged? Burgled? Run over? Kesey, Dick and Vonnegut are the lawyers for you.

lol

btw guys I have zero knowledge of what Burgess is well-regarded beyond the Orange so here's yer chance to lobby me for future inclusions

I read another Burgess, a fairly grim seedy spy novel set on a ship, it was bad.

Only just seen the Ballard. The Drowned World is great but second tier, I think. Besides, I'll have plenty of opportunity. to vote for him later.

This was a crazy hard choice before I kneejerk voted for Pale Fire

Solzhenitsyn loomed large for a while before his rebranding as an anti-everything talking head ... I have no idea how his reputation stands these days, but A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is powerful

iirc I enjoyed Garcia Márquez, Deighton, Delany, Faulkner, Le Carré, and Burgess; Stark, Dick, Jackson, and Abe are great; Kerouac is not so hot; Nabokov is the canonically correct winner

I voted for Ballard for sentimental reasons ... I agree it's not his best novel, but it feels like the one that best splits the difference between classic SF and Ballardianism

I see quite a few titles I ought to have read here ... I've enjoyed all of Baldwin's non-fiction but haven't attempted any of the novels yet, I wonder if this would be a good one to start with

It was the one I started with and I got hooked, so I'd say yeah.

Anything but Pale Fire.

btw guys I have zero knowledge of what Burgess is well-regarded beyond the Orange so here's yer chance to lobby me for future inclusions

― Daniel_Rf

Honestly not sure, tbh. Having a look over his bibliography and the only ones I recognise are the Enderby novels, which I haven't read and don't look that much like my kind of thing. I will warn you that we're getting very close to the point where I will expect you to include every single BS Johnson and Ann Quin novel so I can vote for them and shout about it.

Earthly Powers for one thing, re Burgess.

I will warn you that we're getting very close to the point where I will expect you to include every single BS Johnson and Ann Quin novel so I can vote for them and shout about it.

― emil.y, Wednesday, 28 April 2021 17:03 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is what I am hanging around here for.

If we can make requests, I want to vote for J.B. Priestley's Lost Empires in 1965, please (not knowing what else is coming in 1965)

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I've had Pale Fire on my shelf for the best part of 25 years. Thread, I will read it this year.

Huh, I didn't expect Baldwin to win this, but I didn't expect mine to be the only vote, either.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1963

I wasn't sure where to put this but... If one has recently watched Point Blank and would like to read some Richard Stark does one a) need to start with The Hunter ii) read the series in order?

I have been in a lot of corridors today, trying to walk as loudly as possible.

Would be interesting to compare book and movie, but bookwise I started with the last, Dirty Money, which picked up right where the one before left off, and had no mystifying references to anything. Stark talk here over the years, most recently from noob me and some experts responding: Crime Fiction, S/D

An all-time classick crime movie for sure.

I have a bias towards reading series in order, but I wouldn't worry about it too much with the Parker books ... there are some recurring characters, but they aren't developed in ways that are likely to be confusing if you read the books out of sequence. (I've only read the pre-Comeback books, so maybe the later books have more continuity.)

Cheers both - I've ordered a couple and will see. And aye, what a film.

As with most things, I'm a dilettante (grew up on Hardy Boys and Hitchcock's Investigators; sprawled since then); I can see that thread is going to cost me a fortune!

Agreed you can just start wherever but I see no real reason NOT to start with The Hunter - it's a great introduction to the character and sufficiently different from the film to not feel deja vu.