NOMINATIONS: ILX Greatest Novels of All Time

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This will be open to any and all novels! For the purposes of making things a little easier, this will only include works that have the traditional novel style, i.e. no Shakespeare plays or The Canterbury Tales.

I'd limit the number of nominations, but honestly there are too many novels to work with, and I'd like to make this open to as many as possible. Let's try to be realistic, though; I'll include Tom Clancy novels on the list of nominees if they're picked, but c'mon guys...

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:06 (twenty years ago)

Actually, this should work more as a thread for discussion than nomination, since the point was raised that people should just vote for whatever they want, without having to choose from a list.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

Emile Zola's Germinal
Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:11 (twenty years ago)

I would like to mention right away The Master and Margarita, since that was the novel that inspired this poll!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

The Valley of the Dolls is the only novel in the top ten best sellers of all time, so there you go:
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bestsellerFARQ.html

― andy --, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

Ok, so we're only doing nominal nominations, but I nominate Saul Bellow's Seize the Day*

*I am not nominating this because he just died. I first read the book about 6 years ago and have read it at least two or three more times since.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

The Man Without Qualities - Musil

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:19 (twenty years ago)

I'll just be really obvious and get Ulysses, Lolita and Mason & Dixon out of the way.

― Failin Huxley (noodle vague), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:20 (twenty years ago)

Moby Dick
War and Peace
The Brothers Karamazov
Gravity's Rainbow (do i get to nominate this one?)
The Moviegoer

― ryan (ryan), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

The Trial

― ryan (ryan), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

okay, screw it. I'll go with nominations, just because otherwise I'll go mad. Limited the poll slightly might make the tallying a little easier in the end and provoke some entertaining discussion once the results unfold.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:23 (twenty years ago)

Ulysses

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:23 (twenty years ago)

So, we're nominating OK, so I nominate:

Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
Thomas Pynhcon, V
Philip Roth, American Pastoral

It's hard to believe you will get enough votes for any single book unless you narrow the process somehow, like people have done with the album and film polls (i.e. "20th Century novels" or "Novels in English" or something--those are just examples because my picks fit into those categories, but they could be anything).

― Scott CE (Scott CE), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

Vladmir Nabokov- Lolita
Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The House of Mirth - Wharton
Underworld - DeLillo
Love - Toni Morrison
Paradise - Toni Morrison

more incoming...

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:30 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking of limiting it to a particular period, but decided to keep it wide open to any and all periods.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:33 (twenty years ago)

tristram shandy
the marquise of o--
summer (edith wharton)
elective affinities
pale fire

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Resentment - Gary Indiana
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

I was already beaten to Lolita and Gravity's Rainbow, so I guess I'll go for a fringier one and say The Quick and the Dead, by Joy Williams.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Beckett's Trilogy

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

well i guess marquise of o-- is a novella.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

I suppose I'm also misreading "the greatest" as "your favorite," so, yeah.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

Oh, that was an x-post.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

include author names please! (i mean i presume i'm not the only one who has no idea what "Elective Affinities" is?)

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:38 (twenty years ago)

I Served The King of England - Bohumil Hrabal
They Came Like Swallows - William Maxwell
Loving - Henry Green

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:39 (twenty years ago)

another vote for Ulysses (tho I'd also accept Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also). As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice, Joyce has got to be the winner.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

elective affinities is goethe

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

1984 - george orwell
winesburg, ohio - sherwood anderson

― Michael B, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:41 (twenty years ago)

also does proust count?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:41 (twenty years ago)

Joyce did not invent the first person narrator!

which reminds me that "Heart of Darkness" by Conrad should be on the list and used the format in 1902.

xp - why wouldn't Proust count?

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:46 (twenty years ago)

Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice, Joyce has got to be the winner

What does this mean?

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

"Notes from Underground" - Dostoyevsky (1864, also first person narrator)

i'm also nominating this.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

The Wanting Seed - Anthony Burgess
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Stranger - Albert Camus

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:54 (twenty years ago)

"As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice"

Joyce was the first author (that I know of) to have the writing itself reflect the personality/voice of the main character. The first few lines of "Portrait of the Artist" are written w/the language of a child, for example. As the narrator grows older, the writing changes and grows with him, etc. Then there's the fact that those first couple sentences also contain all the major themes and imagery of the rest of the book... Joyce was the first person to really integrate all these things together, to frame the novel as a unique narrative experience, its own self-contained world where style and substance were completely intertwined.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:55 (twenty years ago)

The Centaur in the Garden - Moacyr Scliar
The Last of the Just - Schwartzbart
Midnight's Children - Rushdie

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)

other authors had written first-person narration, but stylistically the language was still conventional "novel" language - there were no stylistic abberations designed to reflect the mindset/interior language of the narrator.

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:57 (twenty years ago)

fuck the predictable "classics".

i'll nominate hunter s thompson's 'the rum diary', bukowski's 'factotum' and plath's 'bell jar' and suskind's 'perfume'.

― katharine (katharine), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

If you're gonna pick 'The Stranger', I'm gonna pick 'The Plague'. Actually, scratch that, 'The Fall'.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)

hmmm, actually now that I think about it Twain may have beaten him to the punch with "Huckleberry Finn" and Huck's unique voice, use of slang, etc. But Joyce still completely opened up what was possible with writing and how a novel could manipulate and integrate linguistic and structural experiments into a narrative.

*backpedals furiously*

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)

Getting these out of the way...

William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

I have never understood why "Perfume" is so highly thought of. Also, this is a disturbingly Eurocentric list. Where's the nominations for Cortazar, Mahfouz, etc.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:01 (twenty years ago)

i see what you're getting at, shakey, although "portrait..." isn't written in the first person either.

many xposts - it seems like a good idea for another thread though?

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:03 (twenty years ago)

the third policeman by flann o'brien

nostromo by joseph conrad

the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain

coming up for air by george orwell

the new york trilogy by paul auster

traditional novel style may be funny.

crossposts

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

It's an interesting point, Shakey. I'd say that Swift and Sterne had given Joyce clues in that direction (Lemuel Gulliver's about as unreliable as narrators get), and Wilde and Huysmanns and Conrad were pushing towards it (or Baudelaire and Lautreamont, outside the novel) but I can't think of an example pre-dating Joyce (he does the same thing in Dubliners but not as dramatically).

― Failin Huxley (noodle vague), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

that sounds horribly patronising and isn't meant to be, sorry

xpost

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

I know it isn't strictly speaking in the first person jed, I can't think of a term that describes what Joyce was doing - where the form of the text is tied directly to the content...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Nowhere Man - Aleksandar Hemon

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

so, uh, make some nominations for them (xposts re eurocentrism)

"Fathers & Sons" - Turgenev
"A Minor Apocalypse" - Konwicki
"My Brother" - Jamaica Kincaid (this might be disqualifiable based on criteria in that it is biographical but written novelistic style?)
"The Reader" - Bernhard Schlink

― Allyzay do not obtain to make download of yours MP3 (allyzay), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:06 (twenty years ago)

The Confidence Man

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:07 (twenty years ago)

great expectations by charles dickens

: )

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

Ooh, New York Trilogy. Good one, RJG.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:09 (twenty years ago)

I'm sorry to keep harping on this point, but Joyce's leap seems like such a massive step forward to me - the first time where someone wrote a novel that wasn't just a bunch of stuff happening to someone. Instead it was this fully formed thing where the language, the typesetting, the structure of the chapters, the book itself formed a completely integrated work - this made so many other things possible for so many writers after him, many already mentioned on this thread (Faulkner, Beckett, Burroughs, Cortazar, Brandao, etc.) He's like the mother of the modern novel, he mapped out what was possible.

(I can't decide which Mahfouz book to nominate, there are so many great ones - maybe Midaq Alley? or Echoes of an Autobiography? As far as Cortazar goes, "Hopscotch" is the obvious choice. Also, on the Asian end I gotta give it up to Kobo Abe for "Woman in the Dunes" and "Face of Another".)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:10 (twenty years ago)

obvious ones:

invisible man by ralph ellison
as i lay dying by william faulkner

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:13 (twenty years ago)

surprised no one's nominated any Murikami either. I don't like him, but many others seem to...

I'm sticking with Joyce or Burroughs as my nominees.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:14 (twenty years ago)

i think you can nominate as many as you like. within limits i suppose.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:17 (twenty years ago)

yeah, no fucking Left Behind. even as irony!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:18 (twenty years ago)

I nominate the following 10:

1. Ulysses - James Joyce
2. Naked Lunch - WS Burroughs
3. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
4. Three Trapped Tigers - G. Cabrera Infante
5. The Cornelius Chronicles - Michael Moorcock
6. Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
7. Zero - Ignacio Loyola de Brandao
8. VALIS - Philip K. Dick
9. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
10. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

oh and Jose Saramago's "Blindness"

(I can't stop the nominatin - can you tell I was raised by a librarian and a history teacher yet?)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

Respect to Dom, but I'm pushing Pale Fire as the better Nabokov. I'll come up with more later, but several of my favorites have already been nominated.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

― Ian John50n (orion), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

ooh yeah, Pale Fire! Nabokov slays - Lolita is great, but I don't think its his best.

another nomination: Ishmael Reed's "Mumbo Jumbo"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

"Lolita" is kind of a personal choice, as it was the first "classic" I ever read without being told to by a teacher.

Enrico Brizzi- Jack Frusciante è Uscito Dal Gruppo

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

nominations:

1. Cervantes, Don Quixote
2. Gaddis, The Recognitions
3. Faulkner, Light in August
4. Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
5. Vollmann, You Bright and Risen Angels
6. Selby, Last Exit to Brooklyn
7. Crews, A Feast of Snakes
8. Ballard, Crash
9. Camus, The Plague
10. Kennedy, Ironweed
11. Meltzer, The Night (Alone)
12. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
13. Amis, Money
14. Welsh, Trainspotting
15. Vollmann, Fathers and Crows
16. Warren, All the King's Men
17. Dos Passos, The U.S.A. Trilogy
18. Kafka, Amerika
19. Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
20. Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
21. DeLillo, White Noise
22. Wright, Native Son
23. Nabokov, Bend Sinister
24. Fleming, Casino Royale
25. Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
26. Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
27. Heller, Catch 22

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

oh and

28. Achebe, Things Fall Apart

sorry my list is so heavy on the white dudes

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

light in august is another of my favourites.

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:56 (twenty years ago)

rjg i was glad you picked coming up for air - much better orwell than the usual suspects 1984 and animal farm.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

he wrote the usual suspects?????

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

Ones I don't think have been nominated yet--

Utopia--Moore
Gargantua & Pantagruel--Rabelais
Don Quixote--Cervantes
Wuthering Heights--Bronte
The Mill on the Floss--Eliot
Madame Bovary--Flaubert
Hunger--Hamsun
Sister Carrie--
Mrs. Dalloway--Woolf
USA--Dos Passos
The Great Gatsby--Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms--Hemingway
Miss Lonelyhearts--West
At Swim-Two Birds--O'Brien
The Lord of the Rings--Tolkien
Gormenghast/Titus Groan--Peake
The End of the Road--Barth
Last Exit to Brooklyn--Selby
Childhood's End--Clarke
Dune--Herbert
100 Years of Solitude--Garcia-Marquez
The Book of Daniel--Doctorow
The Dead Father--Barthelme
Ceremony--Silko
Song of Solomon--Morrison
An Artist of the Floating World--Ishiguro
The Kafka Chronicles--Amerika

(maybe they have?) xpost

― Mayor Maynot, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

sorry xx

crosspost

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:01 (twenty years ago)

woolf - to the lighthouse
woolf - mrs dalloway
pynchon - crying of lot 49
kerouac - on the road
kerouac - big sur
joyce - portrait of the artist as a young man

― elwisty (elwisty), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

stence beat me to Dos Passos...

Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert
Sister Carrie -- Theodore Drieser
Heart of the Matter -- Graham Greene
Appointment in Sammara -- John O'Hara
Flaubert's Parrot -- Julian Barnes
The Innocent -- Ian MacEwan
Lucky Jim -- Kingsley Amis
The Ice Age -- Margaret Drabble
The Cry of the Owl -- Patricia Highsmith
A House for Mr. Biswas -- VS Naipaul
The Horse's Mouth -- Joyce Cary

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:06 (twenty years ago)

crying of lot 49 is an expanded novella.

wokka wokka, rjg

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:07 (twenty years ago)

Gogol--Dead Souls

De Assis--Epitaph of a Small Winner

Dickens--Bleak House

Tolstoy--Anna Karenina

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:12 (twenty years ago)

OK, I'm pretty naive and have barely even read a novel in years so this is pretty high school/1st-year undergrad but:

John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Simone de Beauvoir - The Blood of Others
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Jennifer Johnson - Shadows On Our Skin
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Michael Ondaatje - Coming Through Slaughter
Virginia Woolf - Orlando
Ursula LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness

xposts Oh cool I was thinking of Dead Souls too.

― Sundar (sundar), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

look homeward angel thomas wolfe
roxanne daniel defoe
the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy douglas adams

― Ian John50n (orion), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:14 (twenty years ago)

I know one that Martin will nominate tomorrow, and I don't want to deprive him of the pleasure, otherwise I'd nominate it now.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:26 (twenty years ago)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

― a banana (alanbanana), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

Oh, how could I forget To the Lighthouse? I bawled my eyes out, for a reason I can't entirely recall.

― kirsten (kirsten), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:37 (twenty years ago)

Good call on Hitchhiker's!

Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business

― Sundar (sundar), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:47 (twenty years ago)

Yes, Robertson Davies! I haven't read anything by him that wasn't wonderful, esp. the Deptford and Cornish trilogies.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:49 (twenty years ago)

haha, I forgot my standard "favourite book?" answer:

tender is the night by f. scott fitzgerald

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:51 (twenty years ago)

I have a copy of Tender Is the Night covered in RJG's blood. It's true.

― kirsten (kirsten), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:53 (twenty years ago)

Amos Tutuola The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye
Juan Rulfo Pedro Paramo
Jorge Amado Tereza Batista, Home From the Wars
Betsy Byars The 18th Emergency
Julio Cortazar 62: A Model Kit
Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson
Haruki Murakami Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (someone had to)
Edgar Allan Poe The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:54 (twenty years ago)

I forgot how much I like tender is the night.

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:56 (twenty years ago)

Would it be retarded to nominate Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix??

― Ian John50n (orion), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

James Baldwin - Another country
T Coraghessan Boyle - Tortilla Curtain
James M Cain - Postman always rings twice
Jaroslav Hasek - The good soldier Schweik
Jack London - Call of the wild
John Updike - Rabbit redux
Ian Fleming - Casino Royale

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:19 (twenty years ago)

Harriet The Spy (Louise Fitzhugh).
Something or other by P.G. Wodehouse.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

Instead it was this fully formed thing where the language, the typesetting, the structure of the chapters, the book itself formed a completely integrated work - this made so many other things possible for so many writers after him, many already mentioned on this thread (Faulkner, Beckett, Burroughs, Cortazar, Brandao, etc.) He's like the mother of the modern novel, he mapped out what was possible.

Or, arguably, he created a new genre which was not a novel at all.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

Billy has me seconding The Good Soldier Schweik, the funniest novel ever.

Gear has me seconding The Tartar Steppe.

Robertson Davies, esp Deptford Trilogy is great, but which novel? This must be considered for Powell, Proust, etc...

I have never understood why "Perfume" is so highly thought of. Also, this is a disturbingly Eurocentric list. Where's the nominations for Cortazar, Mahfouz, etc.

I ~~am such a Europhile~~ mentioned a Brazilian Jew, Dammit. How about Mahfouz's Beginning and the End? Or the Wedding Song? Sorry, those are the only ones I've read.

Gatsby maybe a huge part of the canon, but I dare anybody to tear it down.

Tanizaki's Diary of an Old Man.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:38 (twenty years ago)

So many posts before someone mentions "Gatsby." Hmm.

I like Larry McMurtry's stuff. "The Last Picture Show," "Moving On," "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers."

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:41 (twenty years ago)

Camus "The Outsider"

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

Fifth Business was part of the Deptford Trilogy, right? (It's the one I nominated.) I haven't actually read the others.

― Sundar (sundar), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:45 (twenty years ago)

My gf says The House of Mirth cannot be over-rated though she says A Hundred Years of Solitude was the most amazing.

The History of The World in 10 1/2 Chapters - Barnes
Brideshead Revisited - Waugh
Middlesex - Eugenides
Appointment in Samarra - O'Hara

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:47 (twenty years ago)

Heavy Weather - Wodehouse

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:48 (twenty years ago)

My gf says she prefers Tender is the Night to Gatsby, "it's more adult."

God of Nightmares - Paula Fox
The Black Dahlia - Ellroy
gf says The Maltese Falcon - Hammett
Indian Nocturne - Tabucchi

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:54 (twenty years ago)

My gf:

Love in a Cold Climate - Mitford

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:56 (twenty years ago)

The Joke is a better book than Unbearable Lightness of Being IMO so I will nominate it

Kundera - The Joke

Also
Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero

SORRY

― Allyzay do not obtain to make download of yours MP3 (allyzay), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:56 (twenty years ago)

The Flounder - Gunter Grass

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

wise blood - flannery o'connor
franny and zooey - j d salinger

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:07 (twenty years ago)

the sound and the fury - william faulkner

i clearly don't read enough novels, those were all i could come up with!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:11 (twenty years ago)

In Our Time - Hemingway
A Box of Matches - Baker
Berlin Diaries - Isherwood
Desolation Angels - Kerouac
Post Office - Bukowski

― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:16 (twenty years ago)

Busconductor Hines - Kelman

― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:16 (twenty years ago)

which reminds me...

Baker "The Mezzanine"

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:17 (twenty years ago)

Oops, In Our Time is not a novel, so I'll sub:

For Whom the Bell Tolls

― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:18 (twenty years ago)

Surprised to see Kafka's Amerika, but not The Trial.

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:20 (twenty years ago)

Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried
Michael Herr - Dispatches
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:24 (twenty years ago)

Isn't The Things They Carried a short story and a story collection?

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:25 (twenty years ago)

It's a series of vignettes with the same narrator and cast of characters.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 02:28 (twenty years ago)

whoa, can't believe i forgot this too:

Melville, Moby Dick

and there doesn't seem to be any Henry James fans here. Not that i'm complaining, i don't like him at all, but i just find it surprising.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:08 (twenty years ago)

Milan Kundera - Life is Elsewhere
Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman - Good Omens
Margaret Attwood - the Handmaids Tale

.. too busy to think of others right now. I'm not gonna pretend to be a literate snob, I'm just not, I'm afraid.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)

one small, perhaps pedantic request: if people could list the books in this manner:

Milan Kundera - Life is Elsewhere
Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman - Good Omens
Margaret Attwood - the Handmaids Tale

that would be wonderful. I'll be listing the books alphabetically by author first name when the nominations close (let's say Friday at midnight), and listing them as such will make my job a lot easier, when it comes to copying and pasting and organizing. Some of the books listed I've got to look up online, because the author's last names are the only ones included!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:23 (twenty years ago)

author first name? not to be a dick but that seems kinda weird. but hey it's your poll.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:26 (twenty years ago)

I nominate 'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun. It has poverty, philosophy, silliness, excellent narration, sort of poetic too.

― ms, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:30 (twenty years ago)

fuck it I'm tired, that makes no sense. I should do it by title.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:30 (twenty years ago)

I'm not gonna pretend to be a literate snob, I'm just not, I'm afraid.

Dead set. Last year I tried reading Swann's Way and got 30 pages in before having to fight off the urge to gnaw off my own arms.

I nominate:

- Good Omens [nice one!]
- Nineteen Eighty Four [George Orwell]
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]
- Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [Douglas Adams]
- The Bridge [Ian Banks]
- Day of the Triffids [John Wyndham]
- Imajica [Clive Barker]
- Misery [Stephen King]
- Clockwork Orange [Anthony Burgess]
- War of the Worlds [H. G. Wells]
- Ein Neverendingen Storyen [Michael Ende]
- Dice Man [Luke Reinhardt]

Some of these are predictable pleb choices but fuck it, I'm nominating these based purely on how entertaining/immersive/emotive/gripping they are.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:34 (twenty years ago)

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest (there are reasons to be scared off by it, but these reasons hold no weight in the face of how unbelievably entertaining this book is)
Samuel Richardson - Clarissa (ditto, in a very different way)

― Douglas (Douglas), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:43 (twenty years ago)

This is what I've got so far, thoroughly disorganized, to be organized at a later date, ugh,

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:56 (twenty years ago)

the anal librarian me sez last name, title. i'm good at alphabetizing stuff (OCD CITY) so maybe i can help. or not.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 05:58 (twenty years ago)

i guess i should just up and nominate "faust" then huh?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 06:04 (twenty years ago)

stencil I will keep track of all the nominees and if you can just collate them into that librarian order after the noms are done, I will be in your debt!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 06:19 (twenty years ago)

sure, i can do that.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 06:23 (twenty years ago)

http://www.packagedice.com/images/Shake-Hands.gif

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 06:25 (twenty years ago)

Julian Barnes, "A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters."

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 07:06 (twenty years ago)

american tabloid, james ellroy
the book of evidence, john banville

― Michael B, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 07:13 (twenty years ago)

War and Peace Tolstoj

― misshajim (strand), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 08:08 (twenty years ago)

Michael Faber - Under The Skin
John Wyndham - Day of The Triffids
JG Ballard - Hello America
Kurt Vonnegut - Bluebeard
Kenneth Graham - The Wind In The Willows
Alain Fournier - Le Grand Meaulnes

― Bill A (Bill A), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 10:10 (twenty years ago)

Connie Willis: Doomsday Book
A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Number 5
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:03 (twenty years ago)

For some reason this hasn't been mentioned yet:

Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:06 (twenty years ago)

A lot of the ones I would have chosen seem to have been taken. Ones I haven't seen include:

Nausea - J-P Sartre (better than Camus)
A Void - Georges Perec
The White Hotel - D.M. Thomas
The Unfortunates - B.S. Johnson
Ask The Dust - John Fante

Apologies if I've repeated any.

― emil.y (emil.y), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:34 (twenty years ago)

Henry Fielding - Tom Jones
William Makepiece Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Jane Austen - Pride and Predjudice
Anthony Trollope - Dr Thorne
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
William Boyd - An Ice Cream War
Andre Malraux - La Condition Humaine (Man's Estate)
Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March
J P Donleavy - The Ginger Man
John Updike - In the Beauty of the Lilies
Giuseppe di Lampedusa - The Leopard
Luther Blissett - Q

That'll do for starters.

― andyjack (andyjack), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:40 (twenty years ago)

Italo Svevo - The Confessions of Zeno
Evelyn Waugh - Scoop
John Barth - The Sotweed Factor
... all my other nominations have been nabbed already.

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:47 (twenty years ago)

John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor
Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye

― adam (adam), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:48 (twenty years ago)

argh xposted on the Barth

― adam (adam), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:49 (twenty years ago)

I was xposted on The Leopard... just passing it on.

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

Has Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" shown up yet?

― Pradaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:52 (twenty years ago)

Steve Erickson - Arc D'X
Lorrie Moore - Anagrams
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
Saul Bellow - Herzog
Donald Barthelme - Snow White
Charles Portis - Dog of the South

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 12:03 (twenty years ago)

In addition to the above

Viktor Pelevin - the Clay machine gun
Daniel Defoe - robinson crusoe
Jonathon Swift - Gulliver's travels

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 12:12 (twenty years ago)

I would vote for Germinal if it wasn't for the half-dead shag down a mine scene.

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 12:26 (twenty years ago)

Boris Pasternak-Dr. Zhivago
Robert Graves-I, Claudius
Willa Cather-O Pioneers!

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 12:34 (twenty years ago)

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Watership Down - Richard Adams

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:02 (twenty years ago)

absalom, absalom - faulkner. I think Light in August and the Sound and the Fury are both better reads, but Absalom, Absalom has a more interesting narrative and a better "fuck you reader" style

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:07 (twenty years ago)

Murasaki Shikibu-The Tale of Genji
Mary Shelley-Frankenstein
Vladimir Nabokov-Ada, or Ardor
Henry James-The Turn of the Screw

― Arachne, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:10 (twenty years ago)

Most of mine are already up. I will add some stuff that no one will ever vote for if we ever do actually vote:
The Comforters - Muriel Spark
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
The Hundred Brothers - Donald Antrim
And can we go ahead and save some time by nominating every single Nabokov novel ok thanks bye.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:19 (twenty years ago)

John Fante - Wait Until Spring, Bandini

― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:22 (twenty years ago)

Michael Ondaatje-The English Patient
Emily Bronte-Wuthering Heights

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:25 (twenty years ago)

Kurt Vonnegut - Galapogos

― diedre mousedropping (Dave225), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

Michael Ondaatje - In the Skin of a Lion
Jonathan Snobran Foer - Everything is Illuminated

And the last 15 pages of Finnegans Wake. No more, no less.

― Organized Crime (Leee), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:33 (twenty years ago)

gear, we (!) should consider a cut-off date.

ray bradbury, something wicked this way comes and dandelion wine

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:42 (twenty years ago)

Barbara Kingsolver-The Poisonwood Bible

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

The Time of the Hawklords--Michael Moorcock

― steve hise, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

I haven't read The Sot-Weed Factor yet, but I lurve and am nominating Giles, Goat-Boy, if it hasn't already been nominated above.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 14:05 (twenty years ago)

Michael Ende: The Neverending Story

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:16 (twenty years ago)

Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
James Baldwin - Go Tell It On the Mountain

― j c (j c), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

Didn't see these anywhere yet:

Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education
Balzac - Cousin Bette & Old Goriot
Voltaire - Candide
W.G. Sebald - Austerlitz

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:37 (twenty years ago)

Just since this one hasn't been said yet:
Mother Night - Vonnegut

Also:
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

― dan m (OutDatWay), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

another more recent fave:

Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:44 (twenty years ago)

are there gonna be votes tallied or something? (people are nominating some silly shit, it seems like)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

Is Me Talk Pretty One Day a novel? I thought all D. Sedaris was autobiographical essay stuff.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

john steinbeck, east of eden
oscar wilde, the picture of dorian gray

― Michael B, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)

Alasdair Gray - Lanark

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

While we're on the subject of "what is a novel," would Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas count? (Not that I'd necessarily nominate it.)

― Organized Crime (Leee), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:51 (twenty years ago)

Knut Hamsun - Mysteries
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Knut Hamsun - A Wanderer Plays On Muted Strings
Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums
Yasanuri Kawabata - Sound of the Mountain
Haruki Murakami - Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Tove Jansson - Moominland in Midwinter
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:55 (twenty years ago)

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Breakfast at Tiffanys - Truman Capote
Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder

― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

I forgot: Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away

Would J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun constitute as a work of fiction or not? Much of it was inspired by his own experience but I don't recall whether or not it's completely autobiographical.

And I'll throw in Goncharov's Oblomov because I'm surprised no-one's thrown in a book where it takes 80 pages to tuck someone into bed.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 16:01 (twenty years ago)

Apologies for any multiple voting:

Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto
Baudolino - Unmberto Eco
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni
The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
The World According to Garp - John Irving
The Cider House Rules - John Irving
Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Secret Hitory - Donna Tartt
The Basic Eight - Daniel Handler
Raspberries on the Yangtze - Karen Wallace
Dracula - Bram Stoker

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 16:04 (twenty years ago)

Cut off is midnight this Friday, Pacific time!

Voting will begin as soon as this list can be organized.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

Well, 32 of my shortlist have already been nominated (some of them several times - have I missed the purpose in this?), but I have a few left. Thanks to William for not nominating, I am guessing, Dhalgren, but as long as it's on the list, I don't really mind.

J.G. Ballard - High-Rise
John Barth- The Tidewater Tales
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
James M. Cain - Double Indemnity
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Arthur C. Clarke - The City And The Stars
Michael Coney - Gods Of The Greataway
Sam Delany - Dhalgren
Sam Delany - Babel-17
Philip K. Dick - Confessions of a Crap Artist
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Philip K. Dick - The Man In The High Castle
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip
Philip K. Dick - Ubik
Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Steve Erickson - Tours Of The Black Clock
Anatole France - Penguin Island
Alan Garner - Elidor
Alan Garner - The Owl Service
Alan Garner - Red Shift
William Golding - Lord Of The Flies
William Golding - Pincher Martin
William Golding - The Spire
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Charles Harness - The Rose
M. John Harrison - Light
Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
Stefan Heym - The Wandering Jew
Chester Himes - Blind Man With A Pistol
Alice Hoffman - Illumination Night
Alice Hoffman - Seventh Heaven
Alice Hoffman - White Horses
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris
Yashar Kemal - Memed, My Hawk
A.L. Kennedy - Everything You Need
Damon Knight - The Man In The Tree
Carson McCullers - The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Larry McMurtry - The Last Picture Show
China Mieville - Perdido Street Station
China Mieville - The Scar
Yukio Mishima - Spring Snow
Joyce Carol Oates - Expensive People
Georges Perec - Life A User's Manual
Marcel Proust - A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (mentioned, but I'm not clear whether it was nominated)
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife
Leone Ross - Orange Laughter
Muriel Spark - The Ballad Of Peckham Rye
Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
Muriel Spark - The Hothouse By The River
Muriel Spark - Loitering With Intent
Richard Stark - Point Blank (as it's generally now titled)
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Jim Thompson - The Getaway
Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich
John Updike - Rabbit At Rest
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Time Of The Hero
Donald Westlake - Bank Shot
Patrick White - Voss
P.G. Wodehouse - Summer Lightning
Emile Zola - The Beast In Man
Emile Zola - L'Assomoir

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

I could easily find another hundred to nominate if everyone feels that I should...

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

Only if you want to, Martin. You might come up with something some meant to think of but either didn't or couldn't properly recall it.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

if we're all just gonna start listing our "favorite books" my list would be waaaaaaaaay heavier on the sci-fi and probably several pages long.... let's not go down that route folks.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

BTW Martin, I want to thank you for talking about Muriel Spark on some other thread and leading me to her incredible books. I have read three or four of them and they have all been fantastic!

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

My pleasure, Nick!

Mo, I don't know how I would assess the greatest novels ever as opposed to my favourites, so I don't worry about that. I'm not going to let canons stop me nominating Arthur C. Clarke or Donald Westlake. I'm not interested in trying to argue that they belong in the same greatness league as War And Peace, but I'm not going to be voting for any Tolstoy.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

if we're all just gonna start listing our "favorite books" my list would be waaaaaaaaay heavier on the sci-fi and probably several pages long.... let's not go down that route folks.

This comment makes no sense.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

(xpost)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

Also, Shut Up And Eat Your Snowshoes!, Jack Douglass.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

I guess I'm also trying to factor in impact/influence on the form itself (*gasp*) when calling something "the greatest". To me "the greatest novel of all time" has got to be something that's had a profound impact on the form of the novel (from spirituality to politics to aesthetics to excellent storytelling and all points in between), something that encompasses a wide scope of the human experience, and that pushed the boundaries of what the printed word is capable of accomplishing. I'm trying to weigh aesthetic criteria that are a little more stringent than a simple "hmm, that was fun for me to read".

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:32 (twenty years ago)

I mean I might have technically personally enjoyed reading "Ubik" more than "Ulysses" just cuz it was easier to read - but I consider "Ulysses" the far superior work because it is so much denser, and can be approached in so many different ways, because it is constructed with such a deliberate and painstaking attention to detail, and because it had a massive impact on the literary world and on numerous great books written afteri it. In the end it is the more rewarding work, there is just MORE to it.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

I guess I'm a little hung up on formal innovation...

(first person to call me a rockist wins a copy of Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination")

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

Shakey OTM. I could list a couple dozen of my favorite novels that I know for a fact wouldn't get any votes on this ballot but my own -- that have no place in a realistic list of "Greatest Novels of All Time." The list is sort of near and dear to my heart, and pbbbtttthhh! I'm not sharing it with you lot. (Well, maybe a couple.)

I think that's related to why I wanted to leave Dhalgren for Martin to nominate, because my passion for the book has waned a little over the last decade, and I don't think his has.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

I guess I'm also saying I'd rather read arguments of why someone thinks a particular novel is "the greatest of all time" rather than read a bunch of random lists.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:39 (twenty years ago)

whoops I fucked this up: this should read -

To me "the greatest novel of all time" has got to be something that's had a profound impact on the form of the novel, something that encompasses a wide scope of the human experience (from spirituality to politics to aesthetics to excellent storytelling and all points in between)

misplaced my parenthetical statement there

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

Mo, I am happy to talk about why I think particular novels are wonderful, but the people who can select what are the greatest, if anyone can in a meaningful way, don't have a big overlap with users of this messageboard. I'm not up to that job. But the accidental example that William cites (Dhalgren) is one where I could put up a good case, other than on the grounds of important influence (which tends to make canons self-perpetuating, stagnant and dull anyway). Maybe not as good a case as for Ulysses (which was on my shortlist and will make my final votes), but I personally could make a far better argument for Dhalgren as great, complex, innovative and so on than I could for, say, Middlemarch.

But complaining about people offering lists on a thread that is asking for lists seems a bit pointless. You know I've participated in plenty of literary discussions here and on ILB, but where is the harm in a list/voting thread?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

I will defend my vote later. Right now I'm just tossing stuff out there. This is the nomination thread after all. Some of my selections are based on selective enjoyement. Some are based on my take on how important or influential they were.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

good points Martin (and I agree a strong case could be made for Dhalgren - even tho I personally didn't enjoy reading it). sorry if I'm being overly bitchy...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

Apologies for any re-noms:

Something Happened-Joseph Heller
Disturbing The Peace-Richard Yates
The Easter Parade-Richard Yates
The Long Goodbye-Raymond Chandler

― Doobie Keebler (Charles McCain), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:01 (twenty years ago)

Ooh! I can't believe I forgot Joan Didion's A Book of Common Prayer!

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:02 (twenty years ago)

I gotta add:
Franz Kafka - the Castle
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude
George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:11 (twenty years ago)

Hrm.

I think I am more interested in a different question than the one Mo is proposing!

More nominations (which I might have missed):

Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing
David Feinberg, Eighty-Sixed
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey or Emma

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:15 (twenty years ago)

i'm glad that "The Easter Parade" was nominated.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

Homage to Catalonia is not a novel. Cosmicomics has already been nominated (I nominated If on a Winter's Night a Traveller as well)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:59 (twenty years ago)

i see invisible cities and the baron in the trees, but no cosmicomics. anyway, it could also be argued that cosmicomics is more of a short story collection than novel.

so i'll throw in:
Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
Philip K. Dick - Dr. Bloodmoney (b/c there aren't enough of his on the list already)

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:07 (twenty years ago)

Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude

It's depressing how few people I have met who have read this.

Shakey, has anybody nominated The Cloven Viscount?

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:09 (twenty years ago)

oops right, I was thinking of Invisible Cities. Has anyone seen the Invisible Cities viewmaster reels? AMAZING. I gotta go back and read some of those Calvino books, they really blew me away back in the day...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:16 (twenty years ago)

give this woman all your money: http://www.vladmaster.com/calvino.html

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:17 (twenty years ago)

holy shit!! that is amazing!!

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:23 (twenty years ago)

my wife surprised me w/them several months ago, they look fantastic. the 3-D effect is put to excellent use.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

Very cool.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

I had never thought of reading Clarissa! I think I might, now that it's been nominated like that.

Most stuff I love is already nominated yay but:

Clarice Lispector - The Hour Of The Star
George Eliot - Romola
William Gibson - Count Zero
Peter Hoeg - The History of Danish Dreams
Lemony Snicket - The Vile Village

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:57 (twenty years ago)

herman hesse- demian
ray bradbury- fahrenheit 451

(apologies if i repeated)

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:19 (twenty years ago)

Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar

Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men In a Boat

― Cathy (Cathy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:22 (twenty years ago)

three great war novels that I think haven't been mentioned yet.

Tim O'Brien - Going After Cacciato
Norman Mailer - The Naked and The Dead
Joseph Heller - Catch-22

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:32 (twenty years ago)

make that four

James Jones - From Here to Eternity

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:35 (twenty years ago)

William Burroughs - Cities of the Red Night
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show
Umberto Eco - Foucaults Pendulum
John Fowles - The Magus
Lenny Bruce - How to talk dirty and influence people

― A / F#m / Bm / D (Lynskey), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:53 (twenty years ago)

How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is not a novel.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:00 (twenty years ago)

I see other Ballard, I don't think I see:

J.G. Ballard--Crash

Norman Rush--Mating
Vladmir Nabokov--The Gift
Stendhal--The Charterhouse of Parma
Nathanael West--Day of the Locust

my two cents, I dunno about pre-1900, but for my money the best novels since then are "Lolita" and "Ulysses, " obvious choices, but I can't think of any better.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

Maybe this is a horribly complex way to go about this, but I'm just hoping this poll will get more people to read some of the lesser-known novels that will presumably fill out the lower half of the top 100. Or perhaps the upper half, since I think there's certainly less of a hivemind mentality in literature than in cinema and music.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:09 (twenty years ago)

Lenny Bruce was REAL?

― A / F#m / Bm / D (Lynskey), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:11 (twenty years ago)

Gear, when the results are announced, and maybe even before, I'm going to take an inter-library loan list to my local library that will make them weep and gnash.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:34 (twenty years ago)

This is actually the exact way I've been using those "top 100 singles/albums of the year/half-decade/etc" threads, so yeah!

Some stuff that hasn't been mentioned:

Samuel Beckett - Watt
Witold Gombrowicz - Ferdydurke

― OleM (OleM), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 23:21 (twenty years ago)

I need to read more Hrabal. I've only read Closely Watched Trains (which doesn't count here as it's a novella) and debatably my favourite book. The movie's fantastic, too. I'm going to look for a thread on it.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 23:27 (twenty years ago)

novella's should count, no? although i think i'd be pushing it to include Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" (which is possibly my favourite work of fiction ever).

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 00:39 (twenty years ago)

Novellas are okay with me.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 00:42 (twenty years ago)

argh! random apostrophe strikes again!

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 00:44 (twenty years ago)

There are big problems with this idea. Too many books nominated, and too many obvious. No slight on any nominations so far: most of what I like is obvious also.

But the poll will be as exciting in the end as a Revolver/Pet Sounds tie, with Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow the only likely winners, and after that just an essentially random list of fucking Penguin classics.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

fewer books/less obvious = no one votes 'cos they ain't read the books.

i don't really anticipate that many penguin classics type books overall.

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:17 (twenty years ago)

I mean the silver-spined Penguin 20th century classics, rather than the black-spined 20th century ones. At least 60 out of 100 will have silver spines, I'd be prepared to bet.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:23 (twenty years ago)

black-spined 20th century ones

pre-

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

I'm guessing a fair number of Vintage and New Directions trade paperbacks

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

(I can't believe Vladmaster got mentioned on this thread. I've seen her do the bug one, which was excellent.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 02:49 (twenty years ago)

Oh also:

Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood.
Samuel Beckett, Ping.
Doug Nufer, Never Again.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 02:55 (twenty years ago)

how to talk dirty and influence ppl is supposed to be pretty fictionalized. unfortunately it's hard to sort out truth from fiction since the only actual biography of lenny bruce is by albert goldman! anyway i'm in favor of leaving it in.

heh, i'm afraid my final list is gonna be pretty dull - can we have like an extra month to read as many of these books as we can?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 07:18 (twenty years ago)

OKAY, this is the list so far. There are undoubtedly books that have been nominated two or three times apiece. Again, sorry for the disorganization at this juncture...

Emile Zola - Germinal
Pat Frank - Alas, Babylon
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
The Valley of the Dolls
Saul Bellow - Seize the Day
The Man Without Qualities - Musil
James Joyce - Ulyssess
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
The Moviegoer
Franz Kafka - The Trial
Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
Thomas Pynhcon, V
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Vladmir Nabokov- Lolita
Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth
Don Delillo - Underworld
Toni Morrison - Love
Toni Morrison - Paradise
tristram shandy
the marquise of o--
Edith Wharton - summer
elective affinities - goethe
Vladimir Nabokov - pale fire
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Resentment - Gary Indiana
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
The Quick and the Dead, by Joy Williams
Samuel Beckett's Trilogy
'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun
I Served The King of England - Bohumil Hrabal
They Came Like Swallows - William Maxwell
Loving - Henry Green
1984 - george orwell
winesburg, ohio - sherwood anderson
Heart of Darkness" by Conrad
Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
"Notes from Underground" - Dostoyevsky
The Wanting Seed - Anthony Burgess
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Centaur in the Garden - Moacyr Scliar
The Last of the Just - Schwartzbart
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
hunter s thompson's 'the rum diary'
bukowski's 'factotum'
plath's 'bell jar'
suskind's 'perfume'
'The Fall' - camus
William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
the third policeman by flann o'briennostromo by joseph conrad
the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain
coming up for air by george orwell
the new york trilogy by paul auster
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Nowhere Man - Aleksandar Hemon
"Fathers & Sons" - Turgenev
"A Minor Apocalypse" - Konwicki
"My Brother" - Jamaica Kincaid
"The Reader" - Bernhard Schlink
The Confidence Man - melville
great expectations by charles dickens
Kobo Abe for "Woman in the Dunes" and "Face of Another"
invisible man by ralph ellison
as i lay dying by william faulkner
3. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
4. Three Trapped Tigers - G. Cabrera Infante
5. The Cornelius Chronicles - Michael Moorcock
6. Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
7. Zero - Ignacio Loyola de Brandao
8. VALIS - Philip K. Dick
9. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
Jose Saramago's "Blindness"
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Ishmael Reed's "Mumbo Jumbo"
Enrico Brizzi- Jack Frusciante è Uscito Dal Gruppo
1. Cervantes, Don Quixote
2. Gaddis, The Recognitions
3. Faulkner, Light in August
4. Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
5. Vollmann, You Bright and Risen Angels
6. Selby, Last Exit to Brooklyn
7. Crews, A Feast of Snakes
8. Ballard, Crash
9. Camus, The Plague
10. Kennedy, Ironweed
11. Meltzer, The Night (Alone)
12. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
13. Amis, Money
14. Welsh, Trainspotting
15. Vollmann, Fathers and Crows
16. Warren, All the King's Men
17. Dos Passos, The U.S.A. Trilogy
18. Kafka, Amerika
19. Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
20. Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
21. DeLillo, White Noise
22. Wright, Native Son
23. Nabokov, Bend Sinister
24. Fleming, Casino Royale
25. Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
26. Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
27. Heller, Catch 22
28. Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Utopia--Moore
Gargantua & Pantagruel--Rabelais
Wuthering Heights--Bronte
The Mill on the Floss--Eliot
Madame Bovary--Flaubert
Hunger--Hamsun
Sister Carrie--
Mrs. Dalloway--Woolf
USA--Dos Passos
The Great Gatsby--Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms--Hemingway
Miss Lonelyhearts--West
At Swim-Two Birds--O'Brien
The Lord of the Rings--Tolkien
Gormenghast/Titus Groan--Peake
The End of the Road--Barth
Last Exit to Brooklyn--Selby
Childhood's End--Clarke
Dune--Herbert
The Book of Daniel--Doctorow
The Dead Father--Barthelme
Ceremony--Silko
Song of Solomon--Morrison
An Artist of the Floating World--Ishiguro
woolf - to the lighthouse
pynchon - crying of lot 49
kerouac - on the road
kerouac - big sur
joyce - portrait of the artist as a young man
Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert
Sister Carrie -- Theodore Drieser
Heart of the Matter -- Graham Greene
Appointment in Sammara -- John O'Hara
Flaubert's Parrot -- Julian Barnes
The Innocent -- Ian MacEwan
Lucky Jim -- Kingsley Amis
The Ice Age -- Margaret Drabble
The Cry of the Owl -- Patricia Highsmith
A House for Mr. Biswas -- VS Naipaul
The Horse's Mouth -- Joyce Cary
Gogol--Dead SoulsDe Assis--Epitaph of a Small Winner
Dickens--Bleak House
Tolstoy--Anna Karenina
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Simone de Beauvoir - The Blood of Others
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Jennifer Johnson - Shadows On Our Skin
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Michael Ondaatje - Coming Through Slaughter
Virginia Woolf - Orlando
Ursula LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness
look homeward angel thomas wolfe
roxanne daniel defoe
the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy douglas adams
The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
tender is the night by f. scott fitzgerald
Amos Tutuola The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye
Juan Rulfo Pedro Paramo
Jorge Amado Tereza Batista, Home From the Wars
Betsy Byars The 18th Emergency
Julio Cortazar 62: A Model Kit
Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson
Haruki Murakami Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (someone had to)
Edgar Allan Poe The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
James Baldwin - Another country
T Coraghessan Boyle - Tortilla Curtain
James M Cain - Postman always rings twice
Jaroslav Hasek - The good soldier Schweik
Jack London - Call of the wild
John Updike - Rabbit redux
Ian Fleming - Casino Royale
Harriet The Spy (Louise Fitzhugh).
Tanizaki's Diary of an Old Man
Camus "The Outsider
Larry McMurtry "The Last Picture Show," "Moving On," "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers."
The History of The World in 10 1/2 Chapters - Barnes
Brideshead Revisited - Waugh
Middlesex - Eugenides
Appointment in Samarra - O'Hara
The House of Mirth - wharton
Heavy Weather - Wodehouse
God of Nightmares - Paula Fox
The Black Dahlia - Ellroy
gf says The Maltese Falcon - Hammett
Indian Nocturne - Tabucchi
Love in a Cold Climate - Mitford
Kundera - The Joke
Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero
The Flounder - Gunter Grass
wise blood - flannery o'connor
franny and zooey - j d salinger
the sound and the fury - william faulkner
In Our Time - Hemingway
A Box of Matches - Baker
Berlin Diaries - Isherwood
Desolation Angels - Kerouac
Post Office - Bukowski
Busconductor Hines - Kelman
Baker "The Mezzanine"
For Whom the Bell Tolls - hemingway
Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried
Michael Herr -
Milan Kundera - Life is Elsewhere
Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman - Good Omens
Margaret Attwood - the Handmaids Tale
Good Omens [nice one!]
Nineteen Eighty Four [George Orwell]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [Douglas Adams]
The Bridge [Ian Banks]
Day of the Triffids [John Wyndham]
Imajica [Clive Barker]
Misery [Stephen King]
Clockwork Orange [Anthony Burgess]
War of the Worlds [H. G. Wells]
Ein Neverendingen Storyen [Michael Ende]
Dice Man [Luke Reinhardt]
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
Samuel Richardson - Clarissa
Julian Barnes, "A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters."
american tabloid, james ellroy
the book of evidence, john banville
War and Peace Tolstoj
Michael Faber - Under The Skin
John Wyndham - Day of The Triffids
JG Ballard - Hello America
Kurt Vonnegut - Bluebeard
Kenneth Graham - The Wind In The Willows
Alain Fournier - Le Grand Meaulnes
Connie Willis: Doomsday Book
A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Number 5
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
Nausea - J-P Sartre
A Void - Georges Perec
The White Hotel - D.M. Thomas
The Unfortunates - B.S. Johnson
Ask The Dust - John Fante
Henry Fielding - Tom Jones
William Makepiece Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Jane Austen - Pride and Predjudice
Anthony Trollope - Dr Thorne
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
William Boyd - An Ice Cream War
Andre Malraux - La Condition Humaine (Man's Estate)
Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March
J P Donleavy - The Ginger Man
John Updike - In the Beauty of the Lilies
Giuseppe di Lampedusa - The Leopard
Luther Blissett - Q
Italo Svevo - The Confessions of Zeno
Evelyn Waugh - Scoop
John Barth - The Sotweed Factor
Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" -- Pradaismus (dadaismu...), Steve Erickson - Arc D'X
Lorrie Moore - Anagrams
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
Saul Bellow - Herzog
Donald Barthelme - Snow White
Charles Portis - Dog of the South
Viktor Pelevin - the Clay machine gun
Daniel Defoe - robinson crusoe
Jonathon Swift - Gulliver's travels
Boris Pasternak-Dr. Zhivago
Robert Graves-I, Claudius
Willa Cather-O Pioneers!
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Watership Down - Richard Adams
absalom, absalom - faulkner.
Murasaki Shikibu-The Tale of Genji
Mary Shelley-Frankenstein
Vladimir Nabokov-Ada, or Ardor
Henry James-The Turn of the Screw
The Comforters - Muriel Spark
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
The Hundred Brothers - Donald Antrim
John Fante - Wait Until Spring, Bandini
Michael Ondaatje-The English Patient
Emily Bronte-Wuthering Heights
Kurt Vonnegut - Galapogos
Michael Ondaatje - In the Skin of a Lion
Jonathan Snobran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
ray bradbury, something wicked this way comes
ray bradbury dandelion wine
John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar
Barbara Kingsolver-The Poisonwood Bible
The Time of the Hawklords--Michael Moorcock
Giles, Goat-Boy
Michael Ende: The Neverending Story
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
James Baldwin - Go Tell It On the Mountain
Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education
Balzac - Cousin Bette & Old Goriot
Voltaire - Candide
W.G. Sebald - Austerlitz
Mother Night - Vonnegut
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
john steinbeck, east of eden
oscar wilde, the picture of dorian gray
Alasdair Gray - Lanark
Knut Hamsun - Mysteries
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Knut Hamsun - A Wanderer Plays On Muted Strings
Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums
Yasanuri Kawabata - Sound of the Mountain
Haruki Murakami - Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Tove Jansson - Moominland in Midwinter
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Breakfast at Tiffanys - Truman Capote
Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
I forgot: Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun
Goncharov's Oblomov
Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto
Baudolino - Unmberto Eco
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni
The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
The World According to Garp - John Irving
The Cider House Rules - John Irving
Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Secret Hitory - Donna Tartt
The Basic Eight - Daniel Handler
Raspberries on the Yangtze - Karen Wallace
Dracula - Bram Stoker
J.G. Ballard - High-Rise
John Barth- The Tidewater Tales
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
James M. Cain - Double Indemnity
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Arthur C. Clarke - The City And The Stars
Michael Coney - Gods Of The Greataway
Sam Delany - Dhalgren
Sam Delany - Babel-17
Philip K. Dick - Confessions of a Crap Artist
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Philip K. Dick - The Man In The High Castle
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip
Philip K. Dick - Ubik
Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Steve Erickson - Tours Of The Black Clock
Anatole France - Penguin Island
Alan Garner - Elidor
Alan Garner - The Owl Service
Alan Garner - Red Shift
William Golding - Lord Of The Flies
William Golding - Pincher Martin
William Golding - The Spire
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Charles Harness - The Rose
M. John Harrison - Light
Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
Stefan Heym - The Wandering Jew
Chester Himes - Blind Man With A Pistol
Alice Hoffman - Illumination Night
Alice Hoffman - Seventh Heaven
Alice Hoffman - White Horses
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris
Yashar Kemal - Memed, My Hawk
A.L. Kennedy - Everything You Need
Damon Knight - The Man In The Tree
Carson McCullers - The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Larry McMurtry - The Last Picture Show
China Mieville - Perdido Street Station
China Mieville - The Scar
Yukio Mishima - Spring Snow
Joyce Carol Oates - Expensive People
Georges Perec - Life A User's Manual
Marcel Proust - A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (mentioned, but I'm not clear whether it was nominated)
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife
Leone Ross - Orange Laughter
Muriel Spark - The Ballad Of Peckham Rye
Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
Muriel Spark - The Hothouse By The River
Muriel Spark - Loitering With Intent
Richard Stark - Point Blank (as it's generally now titled)
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Jim Thompson - The Getaway
Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich
John Updike - Rabbit At Rest
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Time Of The Hero
Donald Westlake - Bank Shot
Patrick White - Voss
P.G. Wodehouse - Summer Lightning
Emile Zola - The Beast In Man
Emile Zola - L'Assomoir
Shut Up And Eat Your Snowshoes!, Jack Douglass.
Something Happened-Joseph Heller
Disturbing The Peace-Richard Yates
The Easter Parade-Richard Yates
The Long Goodbye-Raymond Chandler
Joan Didion's A Book of Common Prayer!
Franz Kafka - the Castle
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude
George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia
Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing
David Feinberg, Eighty-Sixed
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey or Emma
Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
Philip K. Dick - Dr. Bloodmoney
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude
Clarice Lispector - The Hour Of The Star
George Eliot - Romola
William Gibson - Count Zero
Peter Hoeg - The History of Danish Dreams
Lemony Snicket - The Vile Village
herman hesse- demian
ray bradbury- fahrenheit 451
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar
Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men In a Boat
Tim O'Brien - Going After Cacciato
Norman Mailer - The Naked and The Dead
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
James Jones - From Here to Eternity
William Burroughs - Cities of the Red Night
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show
Umberto Eco - Foucaults Pendulum
John Fowles - The Magus
J.G. Ballard--Crash
Norman Rush--Mating
Vladmir Nabokov--The Gift
Stendhal--The Charterhouse of Parma
Nathanael West--Day of the Locust
Samuel Beckett - Watt
Witold Gombrowicz - Ferdydurke
Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood.
Samuel Beckett, Ping.
Doug Nufer, Never Again.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 07:20 (twenty years ago)

I'm going cross-eyed scanning the list for these:

Hardy - Jude the Obscure
Carrol - Alice Through the Looking Glass
Dickens - Hard Times
Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus
Barry Hines - A Kestral For a Knave
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Paul Theroux - My Secret History
David Mitchel - Cloud Atlas
Iain Banks - Complicity
Golding - Lord of the Flies
Stienbeck - Of Mice and Men
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
Henry Millar - Sexus
Hubert Selby Jr - The Demon

― David Merryweather (DavidM), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 09:59 (twenty years ago)

Sorry if I missed these and they are duplicates, but:

The Counterfeiters - Andre Gide
Strait is the Gate - Andre Gide
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
Doktor Faustus - Thomas Mann
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
Under Western Eyes - Joseph Conrad
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Rainbow - D H Lawrence
Women in Love - D H Lawrence
Sons and Lovers - D H Lawrence
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Bostonians - Henry James
What Maisie Knew - Henry James
Washington Square - Henry James
The Ambassadors - Henry James
The Golden Bowl - Henry James
La Nausee - Sartre
Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
Cancer Ward - Solzhenitsin
Therese Raquin - Zola
Cousin Bette - Balzac
A Dance to the Music of Time - Powell
Anglo Saxon Attitudes - Angus Wilson
Body and Soul - Frank Conroy
Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
The Inheritors - Golding
The Spire - Golding
Morvern Callar - Alan Warner
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Madame Bovary - Flaubert

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 10:37 (twenty years ago)

isn't it a bit silly, to nominate six by henry james, etc? especially for one person to.

I don't mean to pick on you, frankiemachine--lots of others have nominated a bunch by one author.

why not just choose your favourite or, even, the one you think is the best?

two or, even, three would not be very very silly.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 10:53 (twenty years ago)

I see your point. But if you think Henry James wrote 6 of the greatest novels of all time shouldn't you nominate them all? I haven't nominated anything that I don't feel is significantly better than many of the novels nominated so far.

I could have taken the view that there's no point in nominating stuff that I don't think will get many votes, which would cut down the work of compiling, but that also seems against the spirit of this exercise.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 11:11 (twenty years ago)

it seems i have no original thoughts of my own, so i will just have to second:

Maltese Falcon
Brothers Karamazov
Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Tender Is The Night

― Lee F# (fsharp), Thursday, 28 April 2005 07:28 (twenty years ago)

I am too lazy to check if any of my own choices have already been nominated.

Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
Alasdair Gray, Lanark
Hilary Mantel, An Experiment In Love
Alan Warner, Morvern Callar

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:42 (twenty years ago)

laclos, les liaisons dangereuses

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:54 (twenty years ago)

that was cathy's

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:55 (twenty years ago)

Matthew Kneale, English Passengers

― beanz (beanz), Thursday, 28 April 2005 11:27 (twenty years ago)

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 28 April 2005 12:24 (twenty years ago)

ooh, and The Unconsoled by Ishiguro. two great books, right there.

― Lee F# (fsharp), Thursday, 28 April 2005 12:29 (twenty years ago)

ive got to read his others, but the one is fantastic.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 28 April 2005 12:42 (twenty years ago)

You have another 35 1/2 hours to nominate!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Thursday, 28 April 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

Jeff Rovin - The novelization of 'Cliffhanger'.

― latebloomer: But when the monkey die, people gonna cry. (latebloomer), Thursday, 28 April 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

"Pat the Bunny" by Dorothy Kunhardt

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 28 April 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Thursday, 28 April 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors
James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Walker Percy, The Last Gentleman
TH White, The Once and Future King

And, I guess it isn’t necessary, but I’ll second (or third, or fourth) the following nominations:

Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

― Cherish, Friday, 29 April 2005 04:38 (twenty years ago)

flaubert - madam bovary
flaubert - sentimental education
roth - portnoy's complaint
roth - the human stain
david lodge - small world
zadie smith - white teeth

― Sym Sym (sym), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:07 (twenty years ago)

Douglas Coupland- Microserfs

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:18 (twenty years ago)

Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away

At first glance I thought this might be a children's book about ursine anger management.

― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:22 (twenty years ago)

nicholson baker - the mezzanine
saliner - raise high the roof beams, carpenter
fitgearld - the last tycoon

― Sym Sym (sym), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:23 (twenty years ago)

No Doris Lessing yet? I loved "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell"

― Maria :D (Maria D.), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:49 (twenty years ago)

Par Lagerkvist - The Sybil

― Maria :D (Maria D.), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:52 (twenty years ago)

Evelyn Waugh - A Hanful of Dust
William Gaddis - JR

― Not Thaat Chuck, Friday, 29 April 2005 17:45 (twenty years ago)

too late to add

Beckett - Nohow On

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:50 (twenty years ago)

two weeks pass...

so I take it we gave up on tabulating any kind of consensus...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 22:26 (twenty years ago)

Goodbye to Berlin
Confessions of Zeno
Baron of the Trees

― Remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 25 May 2005 00:22 (twenty years ago)

I didn't think there was anything to tabulate - wasn't this just nominating a voting list?

As it happens I have read and liked all three of those, Remy, but I do in general get irritated when people don't bother mentioning the author.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 25 May 2005 11:13 (twenty years ago)

two weeks pass...

bump

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Monday, 13 June 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

REVIVE!

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 21 July 2005 20:59 (twenty years ago)

I nominate every Harry Potter book ever, even the one that hasn't been written yet.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Thursday, 21 July 2005 22:27 (twenty years ago)

Harry Potter and the Forest of Discomfort?

― Hotman Paris Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 21 July 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

Baron of the Trees

Is that what it's called in English? I thought it was the 'Baron in the Trees'.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 21 July 2005 22:30 (twenty years ago)

i suppose they are all just approximations and depend on the translator/ country of release. My copy of the Svevo book is called "Zeno's Conscience".

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 21 July 2005 22:47 (twenty years ago)

Sniglets 4: Even More Sons of Sniglets

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 21 July 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

Hadji Murat- Leo Tolstoy
short but powerful.

― burna (burna), Friday, 22 July 2005 00:46 (twenty years ago)

two weeks pass...

Barrrumpah bump bump!!!

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Sunday, 7 August 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

Gear is pretending this thread doesn't exist.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 8 August 2005 19:45 (twenty years ago)

http://www.btinternet.com/~wellmother/alabaster/forgetful.jpg

― gear (gear), Monday, 8 August 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

haha - since tabulation doesn't seem to have begun...

I am shocked, shocked, to see that Under The Volcano has not made this list. I hereby nominate it.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:05 (twenty years ago)

rogermexico OTM

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

oooh, i want to throw
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
into the dogpile

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:56 (twenty years ago)

I nominate The Monster At The Ond Of This Book by Grover. Also, Hop on Pop.

― The Original Jimmy Mod: A Negro (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

haha i seriously only opened this thread to nominate the monster at the end of this book!!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

Great book.

― The Original Jimmy Mod: A Negro (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 01:34 (twenty years ago)

David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

re: The Monster At The End Of This Book

Amen. This was the crucial text in one of my most triumphant PhD-skool moments. Mostly Mal d'Archive and apocalypse and epistemology and stuff, but G. Monster held his own with J. Derrida (if more as a practicioner than a theorist).

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 04:25 (twenty years ago)

Seriously, people. Everything you need to know about the structure of knowledge is in there.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 04:26 (twenty years ago)

it's not a Novel.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:00 (twenty years ago)

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:01 (twenty years ago)

Patrick McCabe-The Butcher Boy

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:20 (twenty years ago)

it's not a Novel.

Hmm. That is an excellent point.

Greatest Little Golden Books of All Time?

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 14:18 (twenty years ago)

George Eliot – Daniel Deronda
Henry James – Portrait of a Lady
Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 14:35 (twenty years ago)

http://www.bump.com/

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Saturday, 13 August 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

um, no love for agee?

death in the family and let us now praise famous men!

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:09 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

bump.

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

John Le Carré - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (& Honourable Schoolboy & Smiley's People)
Richard Price - Clockers
Irvine Welsh - Marabou Stork Nightmares

― recovering optimist (Royal Bed Bouncer), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 00:28 (twenty years ago)

predicted winners of an ile poll:

1) gravity's rainbow
2) moominland midwinter
3) dhalgren
4) catcher in the rye
5) lolita

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

S.E. Hinton: "Rumble Fish"

― shookout (shookout), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 02:47 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

whatever happened to this?

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Saturday, 29 April 2006 07:16 (nineteen years ago)

Ayi Kwei Armah - Two Thousand Seasons

― jared, Sunday, 30 April 2006 15:50 (nineteen years ago)

I can't believe there was a whole discussion on how great The Monster At The End Of This Book is that I didn't start. I've been prosyletizing about that book for years here.

It's actually by Jon Stone. The sequel, which features Elmo, is awful.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 30 April 2006 17:33 (nineteen years ago)

I can't believe there was a whole discussion on how great The Monster At The End Of This Book is that I didn't start. I've been prosyletizing about that book for years here.

I have to second this--it was my FAVORITE book when I was growing up, had it read to me every night.

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Sunday, 30 April 2006 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

I was going threw this thread and amazingly enough, didnt find those great masterpieces (correct me if im wrong):

Elsa Morante - The history
Ginter Grass - Tin Drum
Zeigfred Lenz - Lesson In German
Primo Levi - Il sistema periodoco
Melcolm Lowry - Under The Volacano
Proust - Remembrance of Things Past
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Dostoyevsky - crime and punishment
Perec - life
Sabato - about graves and heroes
Celine - Journey to the end of the night
Balzac - Le pere goriot

― emekars (emekars), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:24 (nineteen years ago)

wrong

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:42 (nineteen years ago)

explain why

― emekars (emekars), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:47 (nineteen years ago)

Ctrl+F

― a.b. (alanbanana), Monday, 31 July 2006 00:29 (nineteen years ago)

ok.ctrl+5.so this is the updated list:

Elsa Morante - The history
Zeigfred Lenz - Lesson In German
Primo Levi - Il sistema periodoco
Melcolm Lowry - Under The Volacano
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Perec - life
Sabato - about graves and heroes
Celine - Journey to the end of the night

― emekars (emekars), Monday, 31 July 2006 01:06 (nineteen years ago)

My three favourite aren't here:

Siddartha - Hermann Hesse
Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Island - Aldous Huxley

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Monday, 31 July 2006 13:29 (nineteen years ago)

its "quixote," emekars.

― S-L-U-G (plsmith), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

and its already there

― S-L-U-G (plsmith), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

it's quite commonly Quijote w/ spanish speakers.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:47 (nineteen years ago)

Elsa Morante - History: A Novel

is a fabulous, fabulous, book.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:48 (nineteen years ago)

Vera Britten - A Testament of Youth
Rebecca West - Return of the Soldier

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

"Elsa Morante - History: A Novel
is a fabulous, fabulous, book. "

yes.it is one above everything else probbaly.
a person who doesnt cry during reading this book is not a human being.
so much compession and hu,anity and so well written, and also importend, it's probably the best novel of the last 100 years.
it is everything you ecer wanted from a a novel and more.
more a "classic" than a "modern" book - it's style dont resemble most of the best books of the century, more of Tolstoyevsky sort of style, but again, with much more compession for humanity.also the best novel on world war 2, though almost not dealing with it directly.

― emekars (emekars), Monday, 31 July 2006 22:46 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

So this'll never come to anything, huh?

― Fetchboy, Tuesday, 5 January 2010 15:30 (fifteen years ago)

Get thee to the ILX Books of the 00s voting thread - plenty of novels there, some very good, and the nearest we're going to get to this for a while. Just one week of voting to go!

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 5 January 2010 17:11 (fifteen years ago)

wish he'd done the poll before he left ilx : /

― A™ machine (sic) (omar little), Tuesday, 5 January 2010 17:44 (fifteen years ago)

seven years pass...

So many books

― viborg, Friday, 7 July 2017 16:00 (eight years ago)

But which one is the best? Other than Ulysses.

― viborg, Friday, 7 July 2017 16:01 (eight years ago)

https://images.contentful.com/g8qtv9gzg47d/image_post_38524/d8112e3b21907a454af9e3c8b33f53c1/Slider_1_-_Naomi_Campbell_Is_Psychic__Also__A_Novelist_?fl=progressive&fm=jpg&q=80

― more polls about food and reactionary art (Noodle Vague), Friday, 7 July 2017 16:52 (eight years ago)

doesn't surprise me anymore that it's the books that sell the least that are the greatest

sure, there are a lot of contenders, but this one is definitely top 5, at the very least

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781451623758/a-shore-thing-9781451623758_hr.jpg

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Friday, 7 July 2017 17:13 (eight years ago)

honestly thought that read 'the blackout member of the cast' & didn't think twice

― johnny crunch, Friday, 7 July 2017 17:21 (eight years ago)

six months pass...

Anyone up for this

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:08 (seven years ago)

What piques my interest is someone describing what they like about a book, not the bare fact that they like it. And all of ILX is cordially invited to I Love Books to trade burbles about books they like, whenever the urge strikes them. Just compiling a bare list of titles/authors seems rather pointless to me. Then again, listicles are an evergreen feature of newspapers, magazines and the web, so I seem to be in the dour minority.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:20 (seven years ago)

i think this would be fun, not least because i feel like this would be a genuinely unpredictable poll -- i have no idea what a top 10 novels list on ilx would look like, but i doubt it'd be the modern library list

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:51 (seven years ago)

at one point i would've said gravity's rainbow would top the list but i think that era of ilx has come and gone

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:51 (seven years ago)

My serious choice would, of course, be something too rockist for modern day ilx

― infinity (∞), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:55 (seven years ago)

would vote in and rly enjoy this, esp if the voting base ended up big

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:29 (seven years ago)

pynchon's got a votesplitting problem i think. feel like dead souls has an outside chance

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:36 (seven years ago)

holy shit this thread has the monster at the end of this book talk! only thinking about that partic masterpiece more frequently as we fall faster

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:40 (seven years ago)

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