Well Written.
I’ve seen one good movie (hard candy) SIBH. I’ve seen one good show (the loyal divide) SIBH. I’ve seen no good theater SIBH. I have, however, read a few good books SIBH. I’d tell you about them, but instead did this:
I made a book list a couple of years ago at the askance of a couple of friends. I do not consider myself well read. I consider JowLew well read. And maybe the Belligerent Intellectual. Kent is on his way towards well read. I’m more pink in the middle, maybe medium red. But, dammit, this is none of their blog, so here are my new (and very poorly entitled) categories filled with their respectively remarkable books.
book list
books of the highly recommended variety (top three in a top five type way, but in no particular order)
executioners song - norman mailer
sound and the fury - William Faulkner
lolita - Vladimir nabokov
demian -hermann hesse
the tesseract - alex garland
the ginger man - j p donleavy
Middlesex - jeffery eugenides
my loose thread - dennis cooper
if on a winter’s night a traveler - italo calvino
lord of the barnyard - tristan egolf
crime and punnishment - fyodor dostoevsky
same thing as books under the last headers, but science fiction so you can write them off all at the same time
dune - frank Herbert
chasm city - Alistair Reynolds
neuromancer - William gibson
ender’s game - orson scott card
other books, seventy percent classic, twenty five percent unheard of, recommendable but only moderately terrific
in cold blood - truman capote
the fountainhead - ayn rand
we the living - ayn rand
watership down - Richard adams
something wicked this way comes - ray Bradbury
catch 22 - joseph heller
a short history of nearly everything - bill Bryson
hyperion - dan simmons
Eunoia - christian bok
period - dennis cooper
johnny got his gun - Dalton trumbo
the great Gatsby - f scott Fitzgerald
starship troopers - robert heinlein
beneath the wheel - hermann hesse
heart of darkness - joseph conrad
american psycho - brett Easton ellis
main street - Sinclair lewis
coma - alex garland
the beach - alex garland
jarhead - Anthony swofford
red mars - kim Stanley robinson
cryptomnicon - neal Stevenson
a brief history of time - steven hawkins
welcome to the monkey house - kurt vonnegut jr
sophie’s world - jostein gaarder
pilgrim at tinker creek - annie dillard
the redneck manifesto - jim goad
where the suckers moon - randall rothenburg
invisible cities- italo calvino
kornwolf - tristan egolf
paul - a n Wilson
crying of lot 49 - Thomas pychon
critically acclaimed, crap
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius - dave eggers
confederacy of dunces- john kennedy toole
catcher in the rye - j d salinger
the plague - albert camus
siddhartha - hermann hesse
naked lunch - William s burroughs
on the road - jack kerouac
bonfire of the vanities - tom wolfe
books that will hopefully soon be read by me if the mount Vernon library can figure out how amazon works
the long ships - frans gunnar bengtsson
this organic life - joan dye gussow
sexual behavior in the human male - Alfred Kinsey
sexual behavior in the human female - Alfred kinsey
the naked and the dead - norman mailer
hell’s angels - hunter s Thompson
rules of attraction - brett Easton ellis
the closing of the american mind- allan bloom
the nimrod flip-out - etgar keret
foolishness of god - siegbert w becker
satanic verses - slaman rushdie
clouds
SIBH - since I've been home
RTFM - read the fucking manual
I made a book list a couple of years ago at the askance of a couple of friends. I do not consider myself well read. I consider JowLew well read. And maybe the Belligerent Intellectual. Kent is on his way towards well read. I’m more pink in the middle, maybe medium red. But, dammit, this is none of their blog, so here are my new (and very poorly entitled) categories filled with their respectively remarkable books.
book list
books of the highly recommended variety (top three in a top five type way, but in no particular order)
executioners song - norman mailer
I stayed up to finish this book. I closed it at 6am. I had cried for an hour straight. But Adrienne read it better.decline and fall of the roman empire - Edward gibbons
History at it’s absolute finest. He wrote this at the same time the constitution was written for crissakes! But it’s erudite, funny and true.house of leaves - mark z danielewski
Meta. Dark. Pretty.not quite as splendericious, but really, quite on the higher end of scales that rate the goodness of books
sound and the fury - William Faulkner
lolita - Vladimir nabokov
demian -hermann hesse
the tesseract - alex garland
the ginger man - j p donleavy
Middlesex - jeffery eugenides
my loose thread - dennis cooper
if on a winter’s night a traveler - italo calvino
lord of the barnyard - tristan egolf
crime and punnishment - fyodor dostoevsky
same thing as books under the last headers, but science fiction so you can write them off all at the same time
dune - frank Herbert
chasm city - Alistair Reynolds
neuromancer - William gibson
ender’s game - orson scott card
other books, seventy percent classic, twenty five percent unheard of, recommendable but only moderately terrific
in cold blood - truman capote
the fountainhead - ayn rand
we the living - ayn rand
watership down - Richard adams
something wicked this way comes - ray Bradbury
catch 22 - joseph heller
a short history of nearly everything - bill Bryson
hyperion - dan simmons
Eunoia - christian bok
period - dennis cooper
johnny got his gun - Dalton trumbo
the great Gatsby - f scott Fitzgerald
starship troopers - robert heinlein
beneath the wheel - hermann hesse
heart of darkness - joseph conrad
american psycho - brett Easton ellis
main street - Sinclair lewis
coma - alex garland
the beach - alex garland
jarhead - Anthony swofford
red mars - kim Stanley robinson
cryptomnicon - neal Stevenson
a brief history of time - steven hawkins
welcome to the monkey house - kurt vonnegut jr
sophie’s world - jostein gaarder
pilgrim at tinker creek - annie dillard
the redneck manifesto - jim goad
where the suckers moon - randall rothenburg
invisible cities- italo calvino
kornwolf - tristan egolf
paul - a n Wilson
crying of lot 49 - Thomas pychon
critically acclaimed, crap
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius - dave eggers
confederacy of dunces- john kennedy toole
catcher in the rye - j d salinger
the plague - albert camus
siddhartha - hermann hesse
naked lunch - William s burroughs
on the road - jack kerouac
bonfire of the vanities - tom wolfe
books that will hopefully soon be read by me if the mount Vernon library can figure out how amazon works
the long ships - frans gunnar bengtsson
this organic life - joan dye gussow
sexual behavior in the human male - Alfred Kinsey
sexual behavior in the human female - Alfred kinsey
the naked and the dead - norman mailer
hell’s angels - hunter s Thompson
rules of attraction - brett Easton ellis
the closing of the american mind- allan bloom
the nimrod flip-out - etgar keret
foolishness of god - siegbert w becker
satanic verses - slaman rushdie
cloudsSIBH - since I've been home
RTFM - read the fucking manual
posted by Lord of the Barnyard at 9:41 PM
16 Comments:
catcher and a heartbreaking work are crap?? i disagree, though i like this post and have read many of the same books.
stacia,
drew likes to dislike things that mass population likes. it's just one of his little quirks.
anon - if i was writing a book report i would thank you and your impressive googling skillz. as it is...
stacia - heartbreaking blew something awful. catcher wasn't all that cracked up to be. and it was very cracked up to be.
ian - my guardhouse lawyer label is only half-true.
*...that [it was] cracked...
I knew you would rag on Siddhartha. You are a bad man Drew. I had a 15 minute drunken conversation with a cab driver (I was drunk, he wasn't) about Siddhartha. He was pleased someone as pale as myself would have read and found substance in that book.
It's true, AHWOSG is tedious and succeeded only in making me want to bitch slap Dave Eggers. I never finished it, but I did enjoy You Shall Know Our Velocity!. Also, I think i've had this exact conversation on three different blogs now.
I too am trying to get my hands on a copy of The Nimrod Flip-Out.
i forget who told me to read the nimrod flip-out. or why. but now i want to read it for the title and the author's name alone. etgar keret, that's strong sauce.
hey poo flinger - i'm friends with mr. jim casey, who showed me your blog during my bout of obnoxious farming questions last spring. i had to laugh, because dan simmons is my dad, and although it was very nice of you to list hyperion, we may have to fight a little that you put him after ayn rand and watership down. seriously man, demented bunnies over the shrike? psh. :)
- jane
wow. your blog is now attracting celebrity author offspring. rad.
Etgar Keret is Israeli, hence the cool name.
jane - well, there you go. i had always wondered if children of acclaimed authors despised or revered their parent's works. do you find all his books to be just as great and defendable? hollow man i found to be, well, just plain bad. song of kali was ok for what it was. the rest of the hyperion cantos didn't live up to expectations. but i did just read ilium, which was very good, but not quite good enough to break unto my list. i will be reading olympos.
my dad wrote a book here in the last 5 months. while i think the idea is a terrific and sellable one, it is very poorly written and he will not submit himself to major editings.
and while you were only kidding about the demented rabbits, none of the lists are in any particular order.
wow - do you always do you do your introductions this way?
i guess i have some questions too then -- do all children of farmers (i'm guessing you're in your 20s, so you might have to guess) despise or revere their parents' livestock? i mean, the cows your dad raised in '02 sucked ass. The ones two years ago... well, they had legs and stuff, i guess. i mean, i've never raised a cow, but i've seen better. not quite good enough to sit on my plate covered in ketchup! tee hee.
anyway. i'm glad you quickly realized that my cunning use of 'wit' and the crowd pleasing 'sideways smiley face' was not a quick way to say hi, but a secret bible-thumping of daddy's empire.
how impressive am i? especially considering the fact that i haven't even read all of his books. daomn, i'm good!
Wow, that took an unfortunate turn.
You actually read House of Leaves? It's been sitting on my shelf for over a year now. It's daunting, but I'm sure when I finally get around to it it'll be worth it.
You're right, The Plague was disappointing. Especially because The Stranger is one of my favorite books of all time.
I could go on for days talking books, but if I had to add two to your list to read soon it would be Gravity's Rainbow and One Hundres Years of Solitude.
My favorite book this week: Any Human Heart by William Boyd. I have yet to get someone to read it based on my recommendation.
P.S. I loved Confederacy of Dunces though, so what do I know?
If you like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, please write that in your profile. I was led to your blog because I thought you liked the novel Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh.
geeky chinese girl, you win first prize for best comment on my blog! that's tremendous.
cupcake - indeed.
bi - i haven't hacked through any pychon that was longer than the crying. started both V and gravity multiple times.
hundreds years is on my list of books to be read. for the longest damn time i thought Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a woman.
pork - you haven't gotten anyone to read your "favorite book this week"? so, usually at this point in the week multiple persons have been swayed into reading your recent pick? is it a sort of oprah's other white meat club?
haven't heard of Any Human Heart, what's it about?
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