another one
Jul. 9th, 2008 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedSorry! List memes are what you guys get when I am too sleep-deprived to think straight.
This time it's The Telegraph's 50 Best Cult Books. As always, bold the titles you've read, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish, and astersk** the ones you always meant to read but somehow never got around to.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) **
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968) **
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958) **
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000) **
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974)
I think the trick with this list is NOT to have read everything on it, but only, you know, the good stuff. (Or at least the not-crazy stuff.) There are way too many sixties books on here, also.
Favorites: Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22. What always impressed me about Catch-22 is that the chapters, while not in chronological order, are in novelistic order, that is, they build to a climax. Slaughterhouse-Five is the same way, though I can never remember the details of that book. (My favorite Vonnegut novel is Sirens of Titan, which I think has the best use of science fiction to explore ideas.) These two books combine a time (WWII) I'm interested in with a format (nonlinear) I like reading in and a voice (absurdism to stave off depression) I enjoy.
For some reason I haven't been able to finish the other "puzzle" books on this list (Gravity's Rainbow, The Golden Braid). I think probably the emphasis on genius and how smart you must be to enjoy the books has been putting me off. The strange thing is that these books aren't pretentious in a "can you spot that literary reference?" way, but more math-puzzly, which means I'd probably like them. At some point I should finish getting over the feeling that admitting that you read books like this will make everyone hate you. (Alternately, maybe I'm not smart enough! This is also a possibility.)
Most influenced by: Labyrinths, 100 Years of Solitude (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, not on this list). Where by "influenced by" I mean "if these books had not been lying around the house, it would have been YEARS before I read any magical realism," leading to the thought, "and then I would not have been reading Tin's fanfiction at neutralred.org, and then I might never have gotten a livejournal". (Though I probably would have anyway, only it would have been later.)
Most interested in reading: Catcher in the Rye. I'm probably the only person here who hasn't read it yet.
Didn't like (though in this case it's more "thought were okay"): The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird. These are also, not coincidentally, the only two books on this list I read for school. For Kill a Mockingbird I remember thinking "This is too simple!" (completely missing the point). The Stranger annoyed me because it was illogical -- again missing the point.
Kids should still be forced to read books they don't understand, though! It's good for them.
Blog reactions to books on the list:
The Bell Jar
Dune
Testament of Youth
Justine
This time it's The Telegraph's 50 Best Cult Books. As always, bold the titles you've read, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish, and astersk** the ones you always meant to read but somehow never got around to.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) **
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968) **
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958) **
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000) **
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974)
I think the trick with this list is NOT to have read everything on it, but only, you know, the good stuff. (Or at least the not-crazy stuff.) There are way too many sixties books on here, also.
Favorites: Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22. What always impressed me about Catch-22 is that the chapters, while not in chronological order, are in novelistic order, that is, they build to a climax. Slaughterhouse-Five is the same way, though I can never remember the details of that book. (My favorite Vonnegut novel is Sirens of Titan, which I think has the best use of science fiction to explore ideas.) These two books combine a time (WWII) I'm interested in with a format (nonlinear) I like reading in and a voice (absurdism to stave off depression) I enjoy.
For some reason I haven't been able to finish the other "puzzle" books on this list (Gravity's Rainbow, The Golden Braid). I think probably the emphasis on genius and how smart you must be to enjoy the books has been putting me off. The strange thing is that these books aren't pretentious in a "can you spot that literary reference?" way, but more math-puzzly, which means I'd probably like them. At some point I should finish getting over the feeling that admitting that you read books like this will make everyone hate you. (Alternately, maybe I'm not smart enough! This is also a possibility.)
Most influenced by: Labyrinths, 100 Years of Solitude (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, not on this list). Where by "influenced by" I mean "if these books had not been lying around the house, it would have been YEARS before I read any magical realism," leading to the thought, "and then I would not have been reading Tin's fanfiction at neutralred.org, and then I might never have gotten a livejournal". (Though I probably would have anyway, only it would have been later.)
Most interested in reading: Catcher in the Rye. I'm probably the only person here who hasn't read it yet.
Didn't like (though in this case it's more "thought were okay"): The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird. These are also, not coincidentally, the only two books on this list I read for school. For Kill a Mockingbird I remember thinking "This is too simple!" (completely missing the point). The Stranger annoyed me because it was illogical -- again missing the point.
Kids should still be forced to read books they don't understand, though! It's good for them.
Blog reactions to books on the list:
The Bell Jar
Dune
Testament of Youth
Justine