The Plague was fucking excellent, way better than The Stranger IMO.
― get money fuck witches (HI DERE), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:24 (fifteen years ago) link
One day I will add Lolita and Pale Fire to Pnin. Seeing as Pnin, my only Nabokov, is in my all-time top 3, I feel I may well enjoy them. Quite a lot.
Rest of all-time top 3:
Iain Sinclair - White Chappell, Scarlet TracingsCharles Maturin - Melmoth The Wanderer
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:25 (fifteen years ago) link
The Stranger's good and all but yeah it definitely feels like an illustrative parable compared to his other novels.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:25 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah. i like the stranger and i think it's good it was the first camus i read. i understand why it's the term-paper favorite. but his other novels i love more.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:26 (fifteen years ago) link
xp to LJ Always wondered about Melmoth- good is it?
― Achtung Blobby (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:26 (fifteen years ago) link
i love the plague and i can't believe i forgot: richard wright, native son
― harbl, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:26 (fifteen years ago) link
oh shit, hrbl OTM re Native Son
also: Ellison's Invisible Man
― get money fuck witches (HI DERE), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:27 (fifteen years ago) link
someone snuck "speak, memory" (nabokov's memoir) into their list here, and i gotta say, i thought it was fantastic.
xp i'm really glad to read these posts about camus, because i read "the stranger" in my teens, loved it, but never got around to his other stuff. now i have some camus to look forward to.
― collardio gelatinous, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:27 (fifteen years ago) link
x-post Invisible Man!!
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:28 (fifteen years ago) link
I've got a copy of Invisible Man I keep meaning to read but my books are mostly being stored at a friend's house at the mo.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Moby Dick The Sot-weed Factor (so happy this got mentioned!)The Brothers Karamazov
I can't think of two more I really, really love, and I feel like I'm forgetting shorter beautiful books I've read. I actually remember some of the young adult books I read over and over and over better than most of the books I've read in the last few years. Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle and Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery were totally my favorites.
Can I put "the first half of Smilla's Sense of Snow? Or does a novel have to be considered as a whole?
― Maria, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Maria - there are no rules here. You can put whatever you want!
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:32 (fifteen years ago) link
the first half of smilla's really is great. then it turns all robert ludlum. second half is compulsively readable, but totally loses the mystery and vibe of the copenhagen section.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:33 (fifteen years ago) link
I enjoyed Red Harvest a good deal more than Maltese Falcon, but I think that's largely due to the fact that the Continental Op is a better protagonist than Sam Spade.
For Chandler, Farewell My Lovely may be his best IMO but Long Goodbye is very close to it
― giovanni & ribsy (elmo argonaut), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:33 (fifteen years ago) link
my favorite parts of smilla were when she would go sit alone in her apartment and cry, passages like that from the copenhagen section. then when it turned into an action adventure novel i was really upset!
― Maria, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:36 (fifteen years ago) link
Charterhouse of Parma - StendhalLolita - NabokovOld Goriot - Balzac (after reading it I told myself I'd go on and read all of Balzac's novels ... kind of failed, stopped after four or five even though I really enjoyed them all)Life: a user's manual - Pérec Journey to the end of the night - CélineTender is the night - Fitzgerald
― Jibe, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:36 (fifteen years ago) link
(xpost ps - i actually picked up another peter hoeg book that was action adventure all the way through just to get that crushingly sad beautiful atmosphere. it worked, i was stuck in this sad wistful quiet mood for days, even though the book wasn't very good.)
― Maria, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:37 (fifteen years ago) link
Neil S it is giant and wondrous and yeah pretty anti-Catholic and even at one point fairly crude in its understanding of Hindu ritual; its overall argument against persecution in the name of religion was incredibly forward-thinking for its time, and that's before I start on the insane multi-layered story structure, the awesome narrative, and the unceasing post-Gothic tension. Truly the Gerard Manley Hopkins of novelists, a story with a moral and with the conviction of a religious man whose religion above all represented the fortitude of humanity rather than unquestioning faith in a higher agency to put things in their place.
Besides, the figure of Melmoth himself, flitting in and out of the story, a human agent tainted with a Satanic curse he cannot quite control, is one of the great novelistic characterisations. Impervious to everything except his own doom, irresistible to everything except those he must pass the curse onto...
It's just a fabulously exciting and imaginative bit of writing.
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:38 (fifteen years ago) link
Plus, his grandson, John Melmoth, makes for a cracking detective hero, all getting into scrapes with the Inquisition, surviving by the skin of his teeth, and slowly piecing together the vast and implacable truth: nobody will succumb to Melmoth. In fact, as Melmoth preys upon the increasingly desperate, it is never outright spoken, but it is sung of. By the last third MTW is practically a prose-poem.
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:46 (fifteen years ago) link
relative dearth of hemingway on this thread is interesting. for whom the bell tolls is probably in my 2nd or 3rd tier of favorites -- probably 3rd tier, all the macho mythmaking is a bit much. but i bet the demographic equivalent of ilxors 20 or 30 years ago would have had a lot more hemingway love.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Who's saying it's special?
― collardio gelatinous,
You.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 14:52 (fifteen years ago) link
american tabloid - james ellroythe dead school - pat mccabethe buddha of suburbia - hanif kureshitender is the night - f. scott fitzgeraldone flew over the cuckoos nest - ken kesey
― Michael B, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:00 (fifteen years ago) link
xp to LJ okay that sounds pretty amazing, I will look out a copy!
― Achtung Blobby (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:04 (fifteen years ago) link
I think I'd add Andre Maurois' Fattypuffs and Thinifers to this list plus the 2 Alice books.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:07 (fifteen years ago) link
Will add Three Men In A Boat to my own list because it is funnier than any other book
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:07 (fifteen years ago) link
and if I have to choose a PG Wodehouse (staple, unsurprisingly, of my youth), let it be either The Code Of The Woosters or Hot Water
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:08 (fifteen years ago) link
joy in the morning for wodehouse.
― darraghmac@nebbmail.com (darraghmac), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:09 (fifteen years ago) link
I need to read some Wodehouse, a lot of my fave writers were Nazis.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:09 (fifteen years ago) link
Wodehouse has a fascist character he regularly lampoons - he is not Nazi
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:10 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh wait I forgot...100 Years of Solitude duhhhh, read it at 13 and it exploded my little brain
And I also forgot Tristram Shandy!!! Shit!!! That's top 5 for sure.
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:11 (fifteen years ago) link
FUCK how could I forget Shandy
xxpost
Except when he was doing propaganda broadcasts for the Germans?
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:13 (fifteen years ago) link
Roderick Spode is a great character, and a very precise skewering of Oswald Moseley.
― Achtung Blobby (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:13 (fifteen years ago) link
Despite what Wodehouse may have gone on to do.
― Achtung Blobby (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:14 (fifteen years ago) link
Reading the transcripts of the broadcasts now and I can see there might've been another side to it but really, unless he was doing them at gunpoint, it was ill-advised. Anyway like I said this has nothing to do with his merits as a writer.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:15 (fifteen years ago) link
― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
sigh. [saying something is] not equal to [saying it's special].
― collardio gelatinous, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:16 (fifteen years ago) link
My favourite poet had a bit of a problem with the old "not doing propaganda broadcasts for fascist regimes" thing too.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:16 (fifteen years ago) link
John Hegley?
― ledge, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:18 (fifteen years ago) link
The fact that I have to include every book B.S. Johnson ever wrote over and above almost everything else kind of forced me to exclude some of the other books which I will love forever - both Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote would be in there, along with Pale Fire and Ben Marcus' Notable American Women (I prefer The Age of Wire and String but it's sometimes marketed as short stories - it is better taken as a novel, I think).
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:19 (fifteen years ago) link
xp I think he means me.
― Ezra # (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Who the heckers is Ezra Hash?
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh I think Possession might be one of my fave novels ever too.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:21 (fifteen years ago) link
Ezra Octothorpe
― ledge, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:21 (fifteen years ago) link
lol on american keyboards, the pound stirling sign on the 3 key comes out as a hash when shift-pressed
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:21 (fifteen years ago) link
Wtf, you guys call it a hash?
― great gabbneb's ghost (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:26 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah. And we call muffins snuggle-dumplings.
― my so-called trife (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:27 (fifteen years ago) link
wait isn't that what we call "the pound sign?" makes sense that you'd have to call it something else in england!
― Maria, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:27 (fifteen years ago) link
Britain makes a hash of it again amirite
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:27 (fifteen years ago) link
I think Diary of a Nobody by Grossmith deserves an honourable mention of all novels not yet listed.
― b!tchass, birdchested bastard sees a dude bigger than he (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Thing is that Three Men In A Boat completely pwns Diary Of A Nobody in the whole Victorian lulz stakes, without remorse or mercy
― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:29 (fifteen years ago) link