nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
I really want to read Celine... and Dostoevsky again. I'm quite surprised by Middlemarch. Also Heidegger, what a terrible writer. And you can't select the "Complete Works of Freud" - this is absurd!



I think there are two kinds of books: night books, and day books...

Hey you picked a film! So there. Besides you can't read just one book of Freud's and then be like, ok I understand Freud.

One book I'm pretty sure you would like if you haven't read it is Blanchot's The Unavowable Community. (He writes late afternoon books like Beckett)

This thread is turning out to be much more interesting than I thought it was going to be, and far less predictable than I would have guessed.
 
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Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Ok, I've given this shot but I'm still not too happy with it. Set myself some rules: try my hardest to avoid looking for the approval of some imagined third-party and go with what I actually like (but y'know, this could well have seeped through subconsciouly), stick with all novels for the sake of some coherence, and similarly for balance, and to avoid playing a stuck record, not allow myself anything by Alan Warner (although still, if you haven't read Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands and The Sopranos yet, what the hell are you doing with your life? ;) ).
So in no particular order:

Lewis Grassic Gibbon – A Scots Quair (or if I can only pick one from the trilogy, Cloud Howe)
James Kelman – A Chancer
Alasdair Grey – Lanark
Joseph Conrad – The Secret Agent
William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
Henry Fielding – Tom Jones
James Joyce – Ulysses (but Dubliners is close)
Albert Camus – The Plague
Joseph Heller – Catch-22
Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
(kind of wanted to include DH Lawrence - The Rainbow at some point, but didn't think it was really fair seeing as I still haven't quite finished it).
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It seems counterproductive to restrict yourself to novels, these are your favourate books after all. That makes it harder, but is also the reason it's such an interesting mental exercise. (Like, Top 20 would be too easy.)

Though I must say I omitted Jacques Henri Lartigue and Guy Bourdin monographs from my list, as well as Asterix the Legionary, so I guess I'm equally guilty of creating my own rules.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Balzac (who struck me as boring even back then)...

You must be reading a different Balzac to me.

Eliot is great, great, great. Daniel Deronda and Felix Holt, The Radical are two other favorites of mine. I think Austen and Eliot are badly overlooked in certain circles these days. But the Brontes can fuck right off.
 

Octopus?

Well-known member
In no order:

Deathtrap Dungeon
Island of the Lizard King
Space Assassin
Citadel of Chaos
Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Talisman of Death
Robot Commando
Freeway Fighter
Rebel Planet
Appointment with F.E.A.R.
:D

This list is clearly not complete without SPECTRAL STALKERS. An unforgivable oversight if ever I've seen one.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
i am taking enthusiastic notes from every list on this wonderful thread, especially the literature stuff. (good to see the Fighting Fantasy love!)
so.

Alex de Waal, Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan
Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History
José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
James Joyce, Dubliners
Joseph Roth, The String of Pearls
Graham Swift, Waterland
Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
William Shakespeare, Othello.

i consider myself at fault for being woefully under-read across vast swathes of great literature (e.g. a pal bought me The Tale of Genji for a birthday years ago and it remains unread) and for some barmy reason i am considering going back to university in that direction (and not, say, my natural politics or international affairs).

Ollie, i am about to break my Bronte duck by reading Wuthering Heights!
 

hucks

Your Message Here
In no order:

Deathtrap Dungeon
Island of the Lizard King
Space Assassin
Citadel of Chaos
Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Talisman of Death
Robot Commando
Freeway Fighter
Rebel Planet
Appointment with F.E.A.R.
:D



This list is clearly not complete without SPECTRAL STALKERS. An unforgivable oversight if ever I've seen one.

No House of Hell? Are you both mad?
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
Ollie, i am about to break my Bronte duck by reading Wuthering Heights!
aw man i love wuthering heights
almost as good as the kate bush song and that is saying something
in all seriousness i wish that was in my list
and "to the lighthouse" too
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The only way to read Woolf is as comedy. The Waves is hilarious. Unless you actually take it seriously. Hmm.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
It seems counterproductive to restrict yourself to novels, these are your favourate books after all. That makes it harder, but is also the reason it's such an interesting mental exercise. (Like, Top 20 would be too easy.)
.

well, there alot of books i have a read many many many times, b/c they are ABOUT things i am interested in, but as books themselves they aren't that great... non-fiction is a tough thing for me to rate...
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
here's my mixed-bag selection

love is a dog from hell - bukowski (poems)
wait until spring bandini - john fante (father of bukowski)
l'etranger - camus (I read this in french!)
the third reich - michael burleigh (best history book ive read)
white jazz - ellroy (token crime novel)
psychotic reactions & carbaretter dung - lester bangs (best music writer)
energy flash - simon reynolds (otm)
hunger - knut hamsun (father of bukowski)
blood meridian - cormac mccarthy (the only book I enjoyed studying at university)
the twits - roald dahl (childhood favourite)
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
here's my mixed-bag selection

love is a dog from hell - bukowski (poems)
wait until spring bandini - john fante (father of bukowski)
l'etranger - camus (I read this in french!)
the third reich - michael burleigh (best history book ive read)
white jazz - ellroy (token crime novel)
psychotic reactions & carbaretter dung - lester bangs (best music writer)
energy flash - simon reynolds (otm)
hunger - knut hamsun (father of bukowski)
blood meridian - cormac mccarthy (the only book I enjoyed studying at university)
the twits - roald dahl (childhood favourite)

i am part way though Blood M. atm thanks to yourself, Droid and Craner repping it in the Updike thread and i must say, thanks, it's utterly super. (also, Ollie, your advice may well be followed: i vacillate between thinking of going back to that or to something else.)
Camus in French, wow.

Condi Rice and her annual re-reads of War and Peace in the Russian, as Craner would tell.
 
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