Had to include High Fidelity for trolling purposes.
This is also the year that the first Left Behind book was released fyi.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 24 September 2021 13:57 (two years ago) link
I know it's her most popular, but The Blue Flower's my least favorite Fitzgerald.
Gonna vote for The Ghost Road or The Rings of Saturn
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 September 2021 13:58 (two years ago) link
This is now the era of books I remember being nominated for the Booker prize but haven't read.
― edited to reflect developments which occurred (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 September 2021 14:04 (two years ago) link
Don't know how Sebald holds up tbh so won't vote.
"The Children Of The Dead by Elfriede Jelinek"
I know there has been talk of a translation for the past couple of years.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 September 2021 14:08 (two years ago) link
High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby
kill it with fire
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 24 September 2021 14:08 (two years ago) link
the rings of saturn is the best book ever written, it's the one
Hey, I've read some of these.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin HobbNorthern Lights by Philip PullmanThe Rings Of Saturn by W.G. SebaldThe Reader by Bernard Schlink
Hard not to go with Sebald out of those. The Hobb I read earlier this year and liked, though ultimately the trilogy was a bit of a time sink.
― jmm, Friday, 24 September 2021 14:08 (two years ago) link
another Tyler book i've read and probably enjoyed but can't remember. (oh, it's the one with the walking into the sea.)
but only this and HiFi this year...
― koogs, Friday, 24 September 2021 14:12 (two years ago) link
The Ghost Road by Pat BarkerSlow River by Nicola GriffithThe Star Fraction by Ken MacLeodThe Unconsoled by Kazuo IshiguroThe Rings Of Saturn by W.G. Sebaldand probably High Fidelity by Nick Hornswaggle.
The Rings Of Saturn is great but The Unconsoled is my all time #1.
― ledge, Friday, 24 September 2021 14:14 (two years ago) link
one of these i will read the unconsoled and probably love it
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 24 September 2021 14:30 (two years ago) link
one of these days*
PKF ftw
― I, the Jukebox Jury (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 24 September 2021 14:47 (two years ago) link
The Ghost Road by Pat BarkerThe Rings Of Saturn by W.G. SebaldHigh Fidelity by Nick HornswaggleThe Information by Martin AmisMarabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine WelshNorthern Lights by Philip PullmanAmerican Tabloid - James EllroyThe Reader by Bernard Schlink
The Information I liked at the time but yeuch; similar with Marabou Stork Nightmares. This is between Pat Barker and Sebald really but I could talk myself into a vote for Ellroy.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 24 September 2021 15:18 (two years ago) link
I don't know if it's the best book, but I voted for Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) because I love it and have read it many times.
― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Friday, 24 September 2021 15:35 (two years ago) link
I like High Fidelity--or at least I liked it when I read it in '97 or thereabouts. What am I doing wrong?
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Friday, 24 September 2021 16:22 (two years ago) link
it has a kind of contempt for people who are really into music, especially experimental music, it's kind of a self-loathing, but it gets generalised in an imo unforgivable way
― edited to reflect developments which occurred (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 September 2021 16:28 (two years ago) link
too many 'kind of's, that's why I won't be appearing on any of these lists
― edited to reflect developments which occurred (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 September 2021 16:29 (two years ago) link
Man, I really wasn’t reading contemporary fiction at this point.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Friday, 24 September 2021 17:42 (two years ago) link
“Blindness” is the only one I’ve read here, and I prefer “Seeing” so much more.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Friday, 24 September 2021 17:43 (two years ago) link
I am pretty sure I liked Behind The Scenes At The Museum. I can't remember if I read all of Reservation Blues or just a Granta excerpt.
lol @ the treatment of High Fidelity here
Knowing me, I am sure that tried to read the Gass but I don't think I got through it.
So Amis it is. A clumsy book in many respects but I remember that it made me laugh in spots, so it must have had some merit. It helps if you hate Amis as much as he hates himself. Bonus if you feel the same way about Julian Barnes, maybe? Dunno.
― Richard Marxist (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 24 September 2021 18:57 (two years ago) link
I think I read "High Fidelity" but not sure. I did read "The Information". I feel ambivalent about voting for it though I enjoyed it well enough at the time.
― o. nate, Friday, 24 September 2021 19:55 (two years ago) link
"Sabbath's Theater" was 1995(!) I would've voted for that.
― o. nate, Friday, 24 September 2021 19:57 (two years ago) link
What’s the best place to start with Amis?
I tried with “Money” maybe 10-15 years ago and couldn’t make it beyond 30-40 pages.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Friday, 24 September 2021 20:07 (two years ago) link
I thought The Rachel Papers and Time's Arrow were pretty good, aged about 15 or 16.
― edited to reflect developments which occurred (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 September 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link
voting for American Tabloid because of how it blew my teenage mind
― calumerio, Friday, 24 September 2021 20:13 (two years ago) link
Blindness is good at making you feel like you can't see shit. I'm iffy about the book's metaphor of blindness for moral blindness which could be offensive to people who are actually blind.
I voted for northern lights a.k.a. the golden compass.
― adam t. (abanana), Friday, 24 September 2021 20:59 (two years ago) link
Rachel Papers is squicky in places but accurate, and def of its time. Time's Arrow is well-executed pomo trickery.
The Information is cranky but not a starting place. So: London Fields. Start there and then go to Visiting Mrs. Nabokov.
FWIW (not that anyone asked) I think Barnes's romps are better than Amis's. Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters are both good keep-in-the-bathroom browseable books. Same pleasures as Italo Calvino and Nicholson Baker: if you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like.
Metroland and Rachel Papers are close in sensibility and may as well be the same book as far as I am concerned.
I was (obviously) v susceptible to this kind of book in the nineties. I can't imagine going back to them with an adult eye, but for a 90s white male burb SNAG they were the right thing for one's nightstand.
― Tone-Locrian (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 24 September 2021 21:23 (two years ago) link
have only read Reservation Blues and Northern Lights. Has any Pelevin shown up on these polls yet
― JoeStork, Saturday, 25 September 2021 06:41 (two years ago) link
I'd say a big part of the animosity, especially amongst British readers, is that it's a very average bloke-ish look at music fandom, not just in terms of being a straight white middle class male protagonist but also a certain skepticism against anything too artsy or high minded - remember the bit where he talks about having read a few big books and goes "they're about girls, right?" or something to that effect.
Another aspect is it's a book about a manchild finally getting it together that's super generous towards its manchild protagonist and views his previous terrible behaviour in relationships as just, like, steps in his self-actualization journey. Hornsby himself is quite scathing about this aspect of it these days.
Being honest though I read HF as a #teen and with no frame of reference for the relationship stuff I was just excited to read a novel featuring top5 lists and references to Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and depictions of that most impossibly glamorous of lives, working at a record shop.
It was in the longlist but had to drop it to get to 50, alongside final novels by Iris Murdoch and Patricia Highsmith.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 26 September 2021 10:14 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Monday, 27 September 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Melancholy is one of several amazing Fosse novels, although maybe not your obvious Fosse starter with its complicated conceit - a fictionalized first-person biographical story of a tortured Norwegian old master painter, boring inside his mind at his most fraught, around the time he was admitted to the asylum.
― abcfsk, Monday, 27 September 2021 12:22 (two years ago) link
I was hoping Patrick McCabe's "The Dead School" would have been included. I think its his best.
Otherwise, I am voting for "American Tabloid".
― Saxophone Of Futility (Michael B), Monday, 27 September 2021 13:50 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Tuesday, 28 September 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1996
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 28 September 2021 16:49 (two years ago) link