November 17, 2005

• My list. (right at the bottom)
• You'll find mine there, too. Really, an excellent resource, that wiki. Hopefully this post will renew interest in it.
• I think we've done this before, haven't we? Secondly, what Alnedra and Nickdanger said about the wiki.
• Only idiots post things on the wiki, and people who do should be shot and then drowned and then killed and then bitten by dogs and then subjected to hurtful personal insults and then stabbed and then fed to bats and then mutilated and then electrocuted and then nailed to some hats and then poisoned and then burned alive and then chainsawed and then boiled in lard and then submerged in acid. But that's just my "two cents".
• Hmmm.. * Master & Margarita - Bulgakov * Der Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse * House of leaves - Mark Danielewski * 1984 - George Orwell * La Nausee - Jean Paul Sartre "Quod pro quo" "What does it mean?" "It means I'm pretentious.."
• *dunks quidnunc in poo* And you still haven't given me your snail mail addy. *pout*
• "My Life as a Douche-Bag Goat-Botherer" By Teh Quadnunk Keed - you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel dirty and abused for weeks. But mostly, you'll want your money back.
• Won't offer all time recommendations, but the best novels I've read recently are two by Ronan Bennett Havoc in its third year and The Catastrophist, Eoin McNamee's The Ultras and Graham Swift's Last Orders, the latter a re-read.
• In no particular order: Pop. 1280--Jim Thompson Mildred Pierce-James Cain Siddharta-Hermann Hesse Grendel-John Gardner The Onion Eaters-JP Donleavy
• I'll tell you what NOT to read. Don't read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'm on the tenth book, and let me tell you I wish I'd never started. Sure it's awesome for like 4 or 5 books, and you'll be all like "This is the best fantasy series since Lord of the Rings!" and "He's a genius!" but around about book 7 when he introduces the 700th character that has a similar name the starts with M and only 3 of them have ever done anything having to do with "plot" or even "character development" you'll be sorry you started mark my words. But once you get to that point you'll have to finish, because you've already spent weeks if not months of your life reading each 700 plus page novel, and so you'll slog and you'll slog and each chapter will introduce even more minor characters by name instead of just saying the maid came in and fixed the bed he'll say Mahadgadinarita came in and you'll be like "Hmmm is that the one who's the secretly evil one who's trying to kill them, or was that the one thats secretly on their side, no but thats Mahadgadinarataabager", and then it will turn out that Mahadgadinarita will be just a maid who only turns up on that one page and there was absolutely no reason to introduce her by name, but by then you've read 40,000 pages that are becoming little more then lists of the names of what can't even be really called minor characters and it will be so confusing that you will want to stop or maybe make a spreadsheet to keep track of them all but you can't because the room won't stop spinning. *hyperventilates* On the other hand I saw that book 11 just came out, so I'll probably slog through that as well. There's probably only going to be four or five more.
• I'm not saying these are the best books evar (well at least a couple of them are) but these are some of my faves over the past few years. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck Some Other Place, The Right Place by Donald Harington (a criminally unknown southern author. I haven't read his most recent 3 or so novels, but all his earlier stuff I know is amazing) Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock by Jack Butler (another favorite southern author no one knows about--fantastic book) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon To be fair, I haven't read much mainstream lit the last few years--much of it is unfortunately pretentious and forgoes plot for introspection (nothing happens in the story, but the characters think about things a lot). I tried to read Franzen's The Corrections and dropped it in disgust. Of course in any genre most of what you'll read will be bad, and mainstream/literary is just another genre. Though I did read The Shipping News by Anne Proulx and liked it a lot as well. Another honorable mention to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez, which deserved its rep and then some. I knew it'd be hard to stop at five.
• also in no particular order: Lolita A Room with a View Youth in Revolt (CD Payne) The Rougon-MacQuart Novels (yes, I do mean all 20. I think "Le Reve" is my favorite, but I love them all) (Zola) and... hmmm.. let's say Return of the Native. but I could put any number of things at 5, including most Steinbeck, some Stephen King or some Pratchett.
• Go watch tv you eggheads!!
• I've not read anything bad by Haruki Murakami, but I'd put "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World" at the top, along with "Underground," which is a collection of interviews with victims of the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway. This short story is a pretty good example of his style. As your lawyer, I'd advise you to read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". I would recommend "V", by Thomas Pynchon, but I've not been able to finish it. There is just too much going on in it to pack into my little head. I've gotten to the same point in the book several times, and enjoyed it immensely, but falter because, at the exact same sentence, I am no longer able to juggle the various threads. I count this as one of my failings as a human being. "The Crying of Lot 49" is also very good. "The Killer Inside Me" by Jim Thompson is the last book that kept me up at night, and stands as his best work in my mind.
• The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway All Quiet on the Western Front - Remarque The Years of Rice and Salt - Robinson The Man in the High Castle - Dick The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lords, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman - De Bernieres
• Watership Down Richard Adams War Against the Newts Karel Capek Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy and Madame Bovary / Gustave Flaubert (Yes, it's 2 books, but they're similar enough in most ways to be one. I thinks Flaubert's other works are quite unappreciated, but I may be alone in that) Three Men in A Boat Jerome K Jerome Canterbury Tales Chaucer (excluding the Knight's Tale)
• Yay for Watership Down!
• bunny botherer
• Poor jefeweiss! Your post made me laugh out loud in sympathy. There's another book series that I read for which I had a similar reaction so I understand your pain, but I'll be damned if I remember what it is. When I do recall, I'll post it. So if favorite books are on the wiki, maybe we should follow jefeweiss' lead (is that possessive correct or should I add another "s"?) and post books that sound great at first but should really just be avoided?
• La Peste - Albert Camus Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon Flanders Sky - Nicolas Freeling The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers Tono-Bungay - H.G. Wells
• WHAT? LA PESTE? Good Lord, man, that's the only book I haven't ever bothered to finish. Allright, people are dying. Allright, it's pointless. I. Get. It. I understand. Is this going anywhere? No? Goodbye, Camus.
• only 5 is difficult for me, but here goes: Gravity's Rainbow, T Pynchon Watership Down, R Adams Jitterbug Perfume, T Robbins The Lefthanded Spirit, R Nichols Wicked, G McGuire (that is a random pick out of a tie-for-first 10 or more)
• Gah! I forgot Jude the Obscure by Hardy, and Women in Love by Lawrence. Jude absolutely devastated me when I read it as an undergrad. So powerful, so moving. So deadly depressing, true, but still, wow. And I'm a big Lawrence supporter, me, though I can't really articulate why. I just love his stuff, the way sex is always war, the killing effects of repression. Ya think he was impotent or something? (Yes, I know he was...) I would also recommend Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Lady Chatterly's Lover by those two, respectively. Grand stuff.
• Right now I'm on two simultaneous reading kicks: fantasy/horror novels and biographies of American "fathers." --I can heartily recommend the John Adams biography by David McCullough, because it's a good portrait of a complex man. (I will admit McCullough gives Adams too much of a pass on the Alien and Seditiion Acts, but I think by that time he'd simply fallen in love with Adams and couldn't help it.) --I *will not* recommend the new bio of Washington _His Excellency_ (I can't think of the author right now) because it is booooorrriiiing (and this is from a former history major with a high threshold for boring). It could just be that Washington deliberately left behind a boring historical legacy -- he had his wife burn all of his letters after his death, and (like Clinton, really) was very worried by how he'd be viewed by history all along. -- I *want* to read the new Kearns Goodwin book on Lincoln _Team of Rivals_. Has anyone read it? Is it good? -- On the other hand, I'm reading tons and tons of stuff like Laurel K. Hamilton's vampire hunter books (the series title gets more and more un-useful as it goes along, but they're fun) -- All-time favorites: Room with a View, Little Women, Jane Eyre, anything by Austen (esp. Persuasion). These are the books I turn to at least once a year for a re-read, especially during tough times.
• also, in the recently read category, Dr. Norell and Jonathan Strange, by Susanna Clarke, was a fantastic discovery, her first novel. if you grok the Harry Potter vibe, her stuff is a dark, complicated for-adults variety.
• jefeweiss: best book review ever.
• A Fan's Notes -- Frederick Exley The River Why -- David James Duncan Another Roadside Attraction -- Tom Robbins White Noise -- Don DeLillo Rabbit, Run -- John Updike
• I presume you meant "novels", but there's one non-fiction book that I love in here: Grendel by John Gardner Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck Solaris by Stanislaw Lem His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky
• a grab bag (and trying not to repeat what's already been mentioned): Franny and Zooey--J.D. Salinger The Barnum Museum--Steven Millhauser Midnight's Children--Salman Rushdie St. Petersburg--Andrei Biely (sometimes Bely) Heart of a Dog--Mikhail Bulgakov
• His Master's Voice Come to me, my beloved.
• On The Road Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan (All the takeshi kovacs novels are decent) Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe is one of my favorite characters, but the Continental Op that Hammett created is pretty good too) and I have to second pop 1280 - Jim Thompson I was in a popular culture literature class in college where we read 3 Thompson novels over a couple of months. It was pretty disturbing in a way. After awhile several students said that they were having nightmares, I had some as well. The professor said that that's not uncommon and he had had similar complaints in the past.
• oh gawd! I can't believe I didn't put The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson forgive me. It may possibly be my number one favorite book, if you have not read it, DO SO!!!
• 5 Good Reads Blameless In Abaddon - James Morrow Sirens Of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut The Castle - Franz Kafka Endurance - Alfred Lansing Life Of Pi - Yann Martel
• Good call on The Big Sleep. Chandler's best, imo. The movie (Bogart/Bacall) ain't too shabby either. Yet another addendum--The Maltese Falcon (by Hammett, need I even mention). Hardboiled doesn't get much better, if any at all.
• Jefeweiss: Right on about Wheel of Time. The last book will probably tie back to the first book.
• What, not one Hunter Thompson fan? I'm sorry, but Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas never fails to amaze and entertain. He's always a good read, even the early Hell's Angels book that's been so discredited. Also, ANYTHING by Evelyn Waugh. Here's a great one that nobody's mentioned: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, an unbearably exquisite, priceless book whose every word was purchased at great cost. Looks like a pretty literate bunch of monkeys we've got here... great posts!
• I liked Fear and Loathing..., one of the few books I've read that had me laughing out loud. As for Kerouac, I preferred Dharma Bums to On The Road.
• Probably Ball Four, but I don't know if people who hate baseball would enjoy it.
• trying, perhaps failing, not to repeat any: white teeth - zadie smith flaming iguanas - erika lopez american gods - neil gaiman the dispossessed - ursula k. leguin zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - robert pirsig
• Arg! How did I not add The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey! So awesome.
• Oh, please, please anything but Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Turgid, overwritten near-melodrama. No offense, TenaciousPettle. rocket88, agreed on The Dharma Bums being superior to On the Road, but even The Dharma Bums left me a little flat. Yabyum aside, of course.
• In no particular order, sticking to novels, and avoiding repeats: Sexing The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson Les Trois Mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Sterne The King Must Die and/or The Mask of Apollo, by Mary Renault Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory There are plenty of others I'd stick on there-- obvious ones like The Lord Of The Rings, which I deeply love and to which I always return, Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair for its world-building, and War and Peace which I recently read and loved. And anything at all by Patrick "Literary Crack" O'Brian, and Terry Pratchett from Lords And Ladies onwards. And The Canterbury Tales even including The Knight's Tale. I should shut up now.
• Oh, holy crap, and I'm gonna break the arbitrary five books here, but... The Human Stain by Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth Our Gang by Philip Roth The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature by Neal Pollack Never Mind the Pollacks by Neal Pollack All astoundingly good books. OK, I'm done.
• The Comedians, Graham Greene. Lesser-known but my favorite. A masterfully constructed journey through chaos in Haiti.
• Oh, hell. OK I'm not done. Cat's cradle Mother night Breakfast of champions, or, Goodbye blue Monday Slaughterhouse Five and virtually every other goddam thing Kurt Vonnegut has written. And, in a totally unrelated vein, Naked Lunch and Junkie.
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck Captain Correlli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres 100 Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez All of these changed me, in some way; particularly the top 3. Not necessarily for the better, but changed, I was.
• Among the most dog-eared volumes in my stacks: - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (not to be missed--a feast!) - The History of Torture by Daniel P. Mannix (a great bedside read although not technically a novel) - Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh (disturbing hilarity) - Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (painfully beautiful) - Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (beautifully painful) - Story of O by Pauline Reage (sensual outrage) - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (the original treat, too good for just kids) - Fanny Hill by John Cleland (naughty satirical fun) - Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (always good for a laugh) - What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies (stylish and literate intrigue) Thanks again, monkeys, for some great reading suggestions!
• There are only three good Kurt Vonnegut novels, and those three change depending on what order you read his books in.
• First off, jeffeweiss - you'll no doubt be pleased to know that there is only going to be one more book after the 11th, Knife of Dreams. I myself stopped halfway through book 7, and I'm not starting again until the last book is out. My list (cheating by listing series instead of individual titles) 1) The Chronicles of Amber (all 10 of 'em) - Roger Zelazny 2) Dune - Frank Herbert 3) C. J. Cherryh's Heavy Time and Hellburner from her Merchanter's Universe series 4) Terry Pratchett's Discworld series 5) David Zindell's A Requiem for Homo Sapiens series Oh, and anything by Ursula Le Guin, Douglas Adams, Katharine Kerr, Philip K. Dick and George R. R. Martin. Many more unlisted due to obvious constraints :)
• Oh, no you don't! The five books I like best are the ones next to the bed waiting to be read. Pick FIVE, you gotta be out of your mind. I'll tell you who wrote the best of the last 20 that I've read lately, though: Louise Erdrich Elizabeth Goudge Barbara Kingsolver Elizabeth George Jane Smiley John McPhee Martin Cruz Smith In between there were a couple hack mysteries and a so-so novel or two, as well as the backs of a few cereal boxes. Can't stand not to have a book in my hand.
• Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges - not a novel but includes some of the most mind-bending short stories in existence. Little, Big by John Crowley - um. Fairies and tarot and Kings Sleeping Under the Mountain - but not your usual fantasy. (Disclosure: this is my uncle. But it's still one of my favoritest books ever.) Use of Weapons by Iain (M.) Banks - brutal sci-fi intrigue with a wicked twist. But just about anything Banks has written is well worthwhile. I'd throw out The Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, and The Bridge from his mainstream fiction, and The Player of Games, Against a Dark Background, and Excession from his science fiction as good starting points. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor by John Barth - hard-to-describe semi-biographical semi-fantastic all-around fun. Permutation City by Greg Egan - the only book I've every found that really gets into the implications of uploading people into computers. More than favorite books, though, I have favorite authors. All of the above are on that list. Also Terry Pratchett, Theodore Sturgeon, Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.), Ben Bova, Tom Robbins, Catherine Asaro, A.A. Attanasio, Raymond Chandler, Julie Czerneda, Jonathan Lethem, Daniel Keyes Moran, Charles Sheffield...
• Oh yeah. And... An Exaltation of Larks - by Robert Reed. Beautiful dreamy time-travelly universe-unravelly stuff. And everything else he's written, too, natch.
• Five 20th century authors whose work is too good to be forgotten -- George MacDonald Fraser's The General Danced at Dawn and McAuslan in the Rough; Fraser's Flashman stories are more widely known but these are also excellent tales about a nonconforming military man Gerald Durrell wrote many amusing tales of animals and birds and how various people interacted with them George Bernard Shaw's Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant Eugene Manlove Rhodes' humorous yet realistic westerns are in a class by thermselves Leo Rosten's The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N in Mr Parkhill's evening class for adults hoping to perfect skill in English
• Yes! I read The General Danced at Dawn and McAuslan in the Rough over twenty years ago. I'd almost forgotten all about them, but I remember them being hilariously funny books. Maybe it's time for a re-read...
• Well, this is what comes of paying attention to the Monkeys. Yesterday I went insane in a 2nd-hand bookstore and now I own a copy of Pynchon's "The Crying Of Lot 49", Gardner's "Grendel" and several by Neal Stephenson, including "Cryptonomicom". Plus Hemingway's "A Call To Arms", which I've read before, but had to purchase to lend credibility to my visit, in the same way some might say, "Can I have a newspaper... and a packet of gum... and, oh, I don't know, these 9 pornographic magazines I just happen to be holding?"
• awesome.
• Ooh, and the one book that I've read that really underscores, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, how long-simmering those New Orleans racial divisions have been: A Hall of Mirrors, by Robert Stone. (If I had to pick the best American novelist alive during my lifetime, I'd pick Robert Stone, btw.)
• Ender's Game? No one's said Ender's Game?? Lens of the World - R. A. MacAvoy Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter (not a novel but incredibly interesting) And a bunch of others that have already been said. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 100 Years of Solitude, anything at all by Ursula K. LeGuin or Larry Niven or a number of others.