ILX BOOK OF THE 00s: VOTING, lobbying and boostering thread (voting closes 11 January) - all welcome, please join in!

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The nominations are here

1. Your Ballot

You may vote for up to twenty books. You get a total of up to 231 votes to allocate. There are two ways of allocating them:
- Ordered ballot: rank them 1-20 (or 1-however-may-you've-selected). The #1 gets 40 votes, the #2 gets 30 votes, the #3 gets 24, then it goes 20, 16, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, and 3 each for #19 and #20.
- Unordered ballot: you still have to pick a #1. It gets 22 votes. All the others get 11.

If you can't stretch to twenty books, vote anyway! The ordered list is heavily top-weighted, so if you can only stretch to six or seven books, you'll still get to allocate two-thirds of your 231 votes.

2. How to vote

Put your ballot in an email, making it clear what your #1 is and whether the list is ordered or unordered. Include your username (or an alias) for the purposes below. Title your email something like 'ILX books of the 00s'. Then send it to:

ismaelklata (at) googlemail (dot) com

This is a new account that I've just set up. It seems to be working fine, but in case there's any problems I will acknowledge all ballots either here or by return. If you don't get a reply, post here and I'll get back to you. Do not post your ballot here.

The final order will be determined by the following criteria:
a. total votes received
b. number of #1s received
c. number of ballots featured on
d. earliest #1 received
e. earliest vote received
So there's a small incentive to vote early. You have the rest of the decade to vote - voting closes 31 December (Aleutian time).

3. Blurbs

I'm going to be quite firm about this. I want to make the final rundown as good a resource as I can, basically so I can use it as a reading list myself for the next few years, so I am going to insist that you include recommendations for, say, three of the books you vote for. I will include them in the final chart, with due acknowledgements. I'm not insisting on much - a single sentence "I liked [title] because..." will be fine - but I'd like everyone to contribute.

4. Horse trading

Campaigning is an important part of the voting process, so use this thread for it. But I want to keep it fairly limited lest we make the final order too obvious, so here's the rules:
- you may lobby for one book
- you can go as over-the-top as you like for your book
- but once a book has a lobbyist, nobody else can lobby for it
- however, you can discuss it and ask questions, so long as you keep it relatively subdued and don't cross the line into lobbying yourself.

The Human Stain is reserved, I believe, but everything else is up for grabs.

5. Now get stuck in!

is this where i get to say

John Gray - Straw Dogs (2002) - WTF!

I nominated that! I don't plan to lobby for it, but man if we're just wtf-ing at books in the nom list there are plenty that leap out at me before Straw Dogs.

Don't hold back, fellows.

One thing I sort of forgot - I don't suppose it needs clarified, but for the benefit of our slower contributors: YOU MAY ONLY VOTE FOR THINGS WHICH ARE ON THE NOMINATIONS LIST.

xp i suppose it will be interesting to see if it gets any support but it seems far too daily mail for ilx's liberal sensibilities.

Its total gloom & pessimism about humanity may pick up a few votes. I mean yes it's not liberal, but I don't think that makes it Mail-y (Gray argues that trad-values-based conservatism is as fucked as everything else iirc).

There was some back-and-forth about it on the most recent What Are You Reading thread.

Thanks. frankiemachine nailed it pretty well there, it's the argument style - or lack of - as much as the content that riled me. but anyway, enough anti-lobbying.

Been meaning to read Straw Dogs a go for a while, maybe I'll give it a whirl over Christmas.

I've received the first ballot and passed it to my team of gollums for processing. Pleasingly, a book I absolutely hated is the early frontrunner.

Wanna finish Perdido Street Station before I submit. Should be easy enough over xmas.

Nominitpick: D F Wallace's Oblivion belongs under "short stories".

Nominitpick: Charles Burns - Black Hole (2005) belongs under "Graphic Novels".

Sorted. I bumped Straw Dogs into politics while I was at it, in light of the above.

Another nominitpick: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion should be memoir/autobiography, not pop sci.

Some good-looking stuff on the noms list. I'll probably try to read a bit more of the poetry before voting, maybe one or two of the others (that Spinoza book is tempting) if I get to a library before Christmas.

Consider the Lobster should probably be in culture rather Fiction, since it's like non-fiction essays about lobsters and porn and such.

Oh man. Serves me right for having categories.

To add to the nominitpicking (I feel guilty for having caused you to create the category, burdening you with more work), I believe the following are all short story collections:

T.C. Boyle – Tooth & Claw (2006)
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007)
Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage (2001)
Alice Munro – Runaway (2005)
Kevin Moffett - Permanent Visitors (2006)
George Saunders - Pastoralia (2000)
George Saunders - The Brief And Frightening Reign Of Phil / In Persuasion Nation (2006) (<-well, the former is a novella, the latter short stories)

So is John Grey more Emile Cioran (as essayist), or Lewis Mumford/Kirkpatrick Sale? I'm intrigued.

Incidentally, I've managed to read only 22 of the titles in the nominated list, and have another 6 judging me disapprovingly from my shelves... Its perhaps optimistic to expect anyone outside of bedridden New Yorker/Science/Economist subscribers to have anything like an overarching view of what's really happened in literary culture.

Derelict: literary prowess apart, I fear you may be describing a disconcertingly large proportion of the ILX demographic there.

dg: no problem, it's actually relatively easy to shuffle the odd entry around - compiling the thing in the first place was the backbreaking part.

I know few of you will ever read the Satyajit Das book Traders, Guns and Money, but its notable for 1) describing to outsiders what a mess derivatives were, 2) coming out in 2006, a year before the MBS/CDS markets collapsed, and 2 years before the global stock market collapse, and 3) being funny as hell. Scan editorials for the author's name, as they're always entertaining reads.

‘The sexier side of finance ... at last’ Corporate Financier
‘a page turning quality more reminiscent of a John Grisham novel’ FINASIA
‘....more riveting than the Da Vinci Code...in the mould of Liars' Poker’ Goola Warden, The Edge
‘this is possibly the best insider account of a career in investments since Michael Lewis's book Liar's Poker’www.dna.bloggingstocks.com
‘... a scalpel of a book’ Financial Engineering News

His latest pronouncement: "The best way to look at it is that we'll be living in a capitalist economy with Chinese characteristics, certainly for most of next year and maybe 2011," Mr. Das says from his home base in Sydney, Australia. "But you can only defy gravity for so long. That's as long as you've got jet fuel. A jumbo jet out of fuel is not a pretty sight."

^v good lobbying - makes me want to read it

I will look around for that - am interested in books on the crisis - I think I'm sort of waiting for John Lanchester's book on it (called Whoops, I think), since I've enjoyed his LRB articles explaining things to me.

I will try and answer your question on Gray. A bit of both, but more establishment (Oxford don, government advisory). Must leave work though.

Someone on the other thread was looking for books about the financial crisis - that sounds like a good 'un. Pretty impressive to have got it out before the ship went down.

More nitpicking: Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem is short stories. I was going to say something about the filing of A Secular Age under "Popular Science" but I guess it makes as much sense there as anywhere else.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself that I've read 19 of these.

I struggled a bit with The Disappointment Artist too, and it was my nomination! It could've been under culture, short stories or autobiography, depending on mood. These categories create more problems than they solve.

Sounds like you need a quickfire twentieth to round out your ballot. I've heard Straw Dogs is pretty good.

Das is not unique in identifying the OTC derivatives issues (plenty of people were screaming from rooftops if one looked beyond mainstream broadcasts). Only in providing a humorous look at the insides of investment banks as math/physics PhD quantitative finance geeks were being promoted over trader jocks and overseen by clueless managers. If I had to recommend a single good book about the crisis it would be Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever, about John Paulson, the hedge manager who personally made almost $6 billion in 2007/2008 by shorting mortgage backed securities.

Sounds like you need a quickfire twentieth to round out your ballot. I've heard Straw Dogs is pretty good.

I have it on my Christmas wishlist, so if I get it, I guess that will be a sign that I need to read it before the 31st.

Suddenly thought I should have nominated a Robert Irwin novel, then realised he hasn't written any this decade. Shame.

I will try and answer your question on Gray. A bit of both, but more establishment (Oxford don, government advisory).

So to clarify this, he aims for Cioran condition-of-humanity pessimism, especially in Straw Dogs, but many of his more concrete positions & arguments fit with one green viewpoint (disclaimer: I know jack about the shades of green thought) - skeptical of progress, man just another animal, reason has limits, The Enlightenment isn't a simple good. But his roots are in classic (and Oxbridgey) political philosophy traditions - Hobbes, Mill, Oakeshott, Berlin. Writers with a touch of mardy modernism like him - Ballard, Banville, Will Self.

Only just noticed: David Thomson's The Whole Equation has been misfiled under popular science. It's actually a history of Hollywood. (The title is a quote from Fitzgerald's Last Tycoon.)

Haha rumbled - must confess I got lazy towards the end and started guessing. Will fix. I can't claim I misread it as 'popular scientology' or anything.

The ballots are literally starting to trickle in now. No shape to the voting whatsoever as yet, so you can still make all the difference!

What is interesting, to me at least - there were a very few books that I thought might scoop the ultimate prize, but I've only just received the first vote for any of them. There is also one book that has featured on every ballot so far, and it absolutely isn't one that I'd've predicted.

My copy of the Book of Disquiet has copyright dates of 1991 and 1998. What qualifies it for this list? Just curious.

I voted. Thanks for doing this.

Ballot sent, blurbs for my top 10 forthcoming soon.

My dad told me a bunch of authors that I think he knows he likes (or has liked in the past): jeffrey deaver, john cook, john sanford, ken follett, john kellerman, john buchan, anthony horowitz, james patterson, john grisham, tom clancy, clive cussler, and dean koontz. Could any of you recommend any of the books from this ILX list that might be similar?

Ballots received, thanks guys. I think you've finally taken us beyond an x-way tie on 40 points for the leader, so that's Target One achieved.

wmlynch: I've become aware that there's a couple of errors in there. I'm duly gutted, but it's too late to kick them out. I'll have to find another solution for them, maybe have a couple of half-places for the renegades.

CaptainLorax: there isn't very much like that on the list - it's unfortunate and I remarked on it at the time, but no-one here likes that stuff enough to put it up. You could try George Pelecanos, I've quite enjoyed the one or two things of his that I've dipped into. Otherwise, anything with the title in embossed silver type should do the trick.

Thank you

Ah, it appears that the earlier English translation of the Pessoa was incomplete and a (more) complete one appeared in 2001. Thanks for putting this together.

gonna try and knock out either Marilynn Robinson's Home or Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke over xmas before i vote. anyone recommendations on which one???

nm it was Gilead that was nominated, not Home. so Tree of Smoke it is!

Well, I was up sick almost the whole night and am lying in my bed, very miserable. Why not cheer Ismael up by sending him your ballot today? Only nine days to go!

I've just counted up the books I've read on the nominations list and was quite pleased that I'd managed 25 given that the majority of the books I read, particularly fiction, tend to be published before 2000. I wondered how this would compare to other contributors and I see that it compares favourably to those who have commented - so far 19 and 20 I think. I wonder though if I am at 32 years older than those contributors and therefore have had more time to read those books. If you are 22 years old now, for example, you would have started the decade at 12 years old and would not have been reading the books on this list. I'd be interested to learn the ages of other contributors, and the number of books they've read on this list.

44, plus a very few abandonments. I actually thought I might've done a bit better than that - I read mostly modern fiction and was getting through 30-40 a year before tailing off a bit recently. I'm 33 by the way.

i've read ~39 or so...i'm 30 yrs old

Well, I feel humbled by your 44. I like to think I make up for it with books published pre-2000 but in reality the gap probably widens a bit more. I'll need to make some cuts to my work and private life to catch up!

I'm compiling my voting intentions right now. The first two are easy for me as they pick themselves really. Then 3 to 10 is pretty straight forward but it's tricky to know which order to put them in as they are all very close. I would probably put them in a different order if I repeated the exercise tomorrow or next week. Also, I think some books I read say 8 years ago suffer because I can't remember them as well as more recent books. For example, some of Gladwell's books will appear on my list but the more recent his publications the higher up they will be. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that the more recent book sticks in my mind more clearly than his earlier ones. It's also tricky comparing a great popular science book against a great work of fiction. It's difficult to find reasons to distinguish them in the rankings. I suppose at the end of the day you have to go with your gut feeling about it.

Oh, another observation on categories. I thought that the Plotz "Good Book" might be better in the history section than in the "Culture and Sport" section. Much of the Old Testament is admittedly not historical fact but some of it is or at least reflects historilogical facts. And in many ways the book takes a look at Jewish history through the prism of the Jewish bible.

Who is lobbying for Roth's "Human Stain"? I was looking forward to reading the lobbying for it and commenting if appropriate. It would be a crying shame if it was not discussed prior to voting closing.

I have ... just forgotten how many as I came to post it. 50-something. 69 if you count stuff I didn't finish. I am 24.

This is going to make voting harder than I thought. Didn't I nominate Javier Mariaz?

thomp, that's an amazing number. Is that 50-odd (or 69) of the books on the nomination list for this competition? Or do you mean 50-odd (or 69) books published since 2000 (including ones which did not make this shortlist)?

the list. i have no idea how many books published since 2000 i have read

I have just read the Junot Diaz and fucking LOVED it. So, um, yeah.

Likely also to vote for 'The Corrections', 'The Road', 'Atonement', 'On Beauty' and 'Kafka on the Shore' also. I'm middlebrow like that. There's a couple of others on the list I may vote for.

Middlebrow's good I say - the right blend of craft and entertainment. But then I'm a poptimist. I'd had Nabokov down as a fine example of the type, until a friend persuaded me to try Pale Fire - I lasted about three pages.

Red: thomp's also the chap(ette) who's placed more than a hundred separate orders with Amazon this year alone.

Have read about 35 at about 35 (36 to be precise, but that spoils the balance). Maybe ten more abandonments. I'm not that interested in contemporary stuff, but it trickles in, one way or another.

I tend to know a bit about contemporary fiction though, partly for professional reasons, partly from old habits (following the press, shouting at the press, wasting time in bookshops). Fascinated to see how this poll comes out: I'm hoping for some real strangeness.

(Voting over Xmas, btw, Ismael. Have a list, just need to write blurbs, think through the order).

Middlebrow's good I say - the right blend of craft and entertainment. But then I'm a poptimist.

Poptimism surely = robust defences of Rowling, Dan Brown, Martina Cole etc. Franzen Chabon Z Smith world looks rockist to me. (alternatively, mapping lit to music = trouble)

Very good. I've no idea how many ballots I might get, but it's a little bit slower than I'd hoped so far. On the plus side, if we're going to get a runaway winner, it's stubbornly refusing to emerge!

Early days of course, and it is Christmas - but I'd encourage everyone to pitch in, even if you can only muster a handful to vote for. The more ballots, the better the countdown will be.

Ha yes xp, that's a point - I suspect my definition of poptimism isn't the usual (i.e. correct) one - Rage Against The Machine were definitely the pop choice last week in my book

can i just use all my votes against freakanomics

I'm not going to start posting people's ballots or anything, but I think I can reveal that you're not the only person suggesting something v similar! What's not to like?

well the freakaproblems are multiple

1 having to hear people talk abt this typa i just read abt this counterintuitive theory thats so real shit at parties - even tho i find him no more convincing than freakanomics on this level i much prefer malcolm gladwell cause i totally believe other people succeed because of luck and privilege and i dont like to think things through

2 here is the real problem: freakanomics method of choice multiple regression is a fucking joke when applied to the endlessly complex social phenomena they dabble in - in order for it to be able to tease out effects like legal abortion causing the declining murder rate you have to be able to identify measure and control for every other variable that could possibly have anything to do w/it - they actually claim to do this - ridiculous!

more by a real science guy http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/mythsofmurder.htm

3 bullshit global warming denial in their new book SUPERFREAKNOMICS - at this point theyre not even pretending to do science - theyre just wandering around assuming whatever pov is counterintuitive and proves that the big problems everyone is worried abt are actually just how things should be

in order for it to be able to tease out effects like legal abortion causing the declining murder rate you have to be able to identify measure and control for every other variable that could possibly have anything to do w/it - they actually claim to do this - ridiculous!

hear, hear.

why do apparently serious people parrot this rubbish?

i have not read enough current books this decade. can't think of a really, really good film book -- either page-turner or game-changer -- from that time. i can think of many terrible film books, though.

haven't actually perused david thomson's 'the whole equation' so will have to hold back from calling it lazy, badly researched, poorly written, flatulent, etc., though it's almost certainly all of those things.

j. hoberman's 'the dream life' was okay. i hear good things about 'scenes from a revolution', which would probably be the consensus pick "out there", and i'm surprised, going on rep, that it didn't get a nommo. 'down and dirty pictures' was diverting enough but no 'easy riders, raging bulls'.

the abortion/crime study is particularly bad because after freakonomics was published mistakes were found in the coding which got rid of any correlation -- so levitt cooked up a slightly different formula which got the result he wanted.

freakanomics is p stupid i guess but it provides easily grasped answers to complex issues that seem 2 have been proved using equations which is p authoritative. like it has 2 be true they r using numbers and it requires no real knowledge or understanding of a subject just like *BAM* poor babbies cause murder -done-

and 2 poke holes in their theories u kind of have to know actual things - most ppl like me dont - otherwise the sophistry of your logic wilts before their mathematics

i cant remember what i was tyrna say. oh yah ive read a lot of these - got 2 70 and stopped counting - almost all the short fiction and all of the graphic novels lots of fiction & pop sci none of most of the other categories. oh yah "you are not a stranger here" is short fiction not that it really matters, i guess.

iii am 30 centuries old and will never die

also loooool @ sum1 nominating death note all votes/points/lobbying is now on behalf of shaman king

haha why is shaman king your go-to manga for this sort of thing always?

This is distressing news. I really enjoyed it and found it plausible and amusing on things like sumo and kids' names. The crime stuff, if neat, seemed no less plausible than any other explanation.

xpost

im in the middle of reading it is all - cant really say what the best manga of last decade is mb aria really into red snow um theres a bunch. oh was uzumaki this decade - it was in translation anyway - i was p into that

shaman king is objectively p bad but i like the characters in a childish way - i keep wanting to play a sk fighting game where i can be that russian chik - the way the series quantifies the special moves/magic is also appealing

enjoyed freakonomics that is - no view on shaman king

ha i wouldn't try and pronounce on the objectively-best manga of last decade. death note seemed to combine 'widespread cultural penetration' w/ 'actually being pretty interesting/good' though

think uzumaki is pretty old? would have said like '95 myself

yah - i checked its old

i dont think death note was all that good - i am gonna do something completely random and retarded oh i predicted that oh i knew u knew yah well i knew u knew i knew is that so... well i KNEW u knew u i knew i u knew and thats why *dies*

btw how do u guys manage to read books and keep up w/the internet - i prob read more books in 1998 than ive got through in the last five years - on the other hand ive prob read more words per year in the last five years than ever before - these are original concepts i know

Read 32 of these, mostly novels. Just sent ballot in.

Got it, eephus - thanks. Nice set of blurbs too. The rest of you - ^ this guy knows how it's done.

i have read a shitload of books this decade but not very many FROM this decade probably because 8 years of this decade involved me going to high school and college and reading "old ass" books

i dont particularly remember what books i read this decade i just know that not many of them are on the list

srsly i just looked and i read 12 - id only feel good abt voting for like three of them for anything more than "this book was pretty good"

i probably read too much - there a bunch of things on that list that i know ive read but have no real memory of - but i prefer reading new fiction over ancient things

also i didnt/dont have 2 read books for school really so i could just read in my spare time w/enthusiasm

naw books are so amazing i kinda wish i could read them all

I haven't read very many of these things at all. Wish I'd nominated some natural history/outdoors books, cos this was a good decade for books in that genre - The Wild Places, Mountains of the Mind, Wildwood, Beechcombings, Findings...

oh i predicted that oh i knew u knew yah well i knew u knew i knew is that so... well i KNEW u knew u i knew i u knew and thats why *dies*

^ totally loved this crap though. kind of went downhill afterwards

l's disciples killed the series qed

i voted! kindve sad that no1 else will vote for a lot of those books thomp did/will u vote for erikson/martin/melville? i doubt were enuff tho

thought probably not with mieville (might have voted for iron council, would probably have been the only one)

will probably vote for martin, i am actually reading that at the moment. only got as far as book two with erickson, i have *issues* with him ~

its worth sticking it out to memories u can reasonably drop him afterwards since things become deeply abhorrent by the end

I really like Erikson and Mieville (though I agree Iron Council is the best) so I'll give 'em props here. I do love Martin but won't vote for him because he'll find out about it and use it as just another reason not to finish the damn series. If he spent half as much time writing as he did going to conventions he'd be done by now.

anyone want to lobby for tree of smoke? just started and i'm really not sure i want to keep going. only liek 20 pages in tho

Am reading perdido st station now, it's enjoyable but hard to take seriously. It's a bit like discworld played straight, and that makes it all the more ridiculous.

Now I'm confused. Seen this mentioned a few times, and the book I had pictured could not be described as 'discworld played straight'. I was imagining a sultry 1920s Cuban romantic novel.

it is 'dark fantasy'

in some ways the discworld books have been increasingly 'played straight' for a decade or two themselves tbh

Rather disappointed to find that I have only read 20 books on the list (I am 31 but would add that I usually read classics) - however on the plus side, it should make voting easier.

Since 2004, I have had the same New Year Resolution - to read 52 books: once again I have failed!!!

That's a fine resolution. I slowed up when I got my laptop, then even more since I discovered this place - and then even more again when I began driving to work instead of getting the train (and now when I do get the train, my reading suffers death by iPhone).

It's a real problem. I used to read about 30-40 a year. Now even easy books take forever. I've had Paul McCartney's autobiography on the go since about October and it's slooww progress - even though I'm dead interested, read it every other night, it's great fun and not difficult, I just cannot get through it.

it is 'dark fantasy'

Dark, and silly. Insect people and cactus people and steampunk AI and magick and intra-dimensional spiders and an Ambassador to Hell, which was what reminded me of Pratchett most of all.

Read 60 books last year, but I didn't have a job. Far fewer in the years before that, 32 this year. 26 from the list all told.

I submitted my own ballot this afternoon, so I figured that it was finally safe to get counting. There's some good news and some bad news:

The Good news
It's very close. Three points in it between first and second, and five or six books within another dozen or so. However, this is partly because of...

The Bad News
The trickle has dried up with Christmas and all, and it's still taking embarrassingly few good scores to get high up on the leaderboard. I know there's at least a few ballots still to come, but I really have no idea how many. If things don't pick up, I'm going to have to come up with a plan B. As things stand, we're not really viable.

There's no getting around it - we need more votes

I think it might be worth extending the deadline tbh

Hm, that could be right - I'd originally thought people would have more time to laze about on here during the holidays, but it certainly doesn't work that way for me. It did also take ages to compile my own ballot - so extra thanks to all of you who've already made the effort.

Also, although I gather that a last-minute voting rush can be traditional, I've never run one of these polls before and have no idea whether I can rely on such a thing here. I just want to make sure we get a decent rundown at the end of it all.

Forgive me if I sound too shrill - but I am getting a bit nervous.

Yes, I think extending the deadline is a very good idea. I've just got back home after a week away, and have had little to no time on the internet, never mind to actually compile a list (even though I've probably only read about 15 on the nominations, so it shouldn't be too hard). Also, even though my blurbs probably won't be too long, I want to take some care over them so they're not completely insulting to my English degree.

Gotta admit that I have no intention of voting. I'm generally only really interested in the nomination part of these threads, not so much the final results. I.e. I use the nominations to hear of stuff I might otherwise miss.
So thanks a bunch for that thread - and I look forward to seeing the blurbs people have written for their votes.

Why not wait to extend until you see how many you get by the deadline? Otherwise you may just be postponing the last-day rush by a week.

Right, enough gloom. There's a chance that I'll be very busy workwise in the first week of the year, in which case it'd make sense to extend the deadline because it'd be silly to have to leave a gap in the middle of the countdown.

I should find out more tomorrow. In the meantime, keep those votes a-comin'.

I demand your vote, Øystein - this is ILX, not communist Russia

Another couple of ballots received today - thank you very much chaps, you know who you are. It's tightened up even more as a result - there are now three books within three points at the top.

I'm feeling a lot happier tonight now that the ballots are overlapping a lot more. I think it was the way I was updating my overall list last night, it got awfully depressing writing down title after title each with a single vote. That's happening less and less as books get their first mention out of the way, and the list is starting to take on proper shape.

So tantrum over, toys back in the pram, and looking forward to more contributions!

I got one book for my Christmas: Orhan Pamuk - The Museum of Innocence

Any views on this fellow? We have Snow and My Name Is Red on our list.

I tried Snow earlier this year, and got about a quarter of the way through before abandoning. It was by no means a bad book, in fact it was quite interesting and shouldn't've been dull - it just felt very sloww. I'm used to reading punchier novels, and it felt like there was a lot of looking and contemplating going on, but not much actually happening, and eventually I ran out of patience. It felt quite Kafkaesque - but where Kafka keeps things moving by wrongfooting you all the time, Pamuk seemed static. I wondered if a leaden translation might be to blame.

Well I did get Straw Dogs for Christmas after all, but I've accepted the fact that I'm not going to read it before Dec. 31, so I'll have to submit my ballot with only 19 books.

Also, it is rubbish.

Pretty certain that I'm going to have to extend the deadline now anyway - just waiting for confirmation of one thing. So read on

Well, I haven't started it, tbh. It's probably best if I go ahead and send in the ballot, so I don't forget.

Can't argue with that - all ballots always gratefully received!

There is a book that has been so dear to me and it's been overlooked on a lot of 'best of graphic novels' roundups, I think bcz it is so new:

Bottomless Bellybutton

silent trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttqP8BBTGSY

Thanks for that Abbott. It also has the best title on our list, though I think it has to share that honour with The Trial of Colonel Sweeto.

A small statistical milestone just reached - 174 separate books have now received votes, which I think is exactly half of the total.

I've had it confirmed that I'll be away, or otherwise onerously occupied, nearly the whole first week of the new year. No point in attempting to start the countdown then, so I'll extend voting to 11 January. I've requested a title change accordingly.

Thank you kindly mod.

Well that was a quiet ol' day yesterday ... just because the deadline's been pushed back, that doesn't mean you need to hold off on your ballots!

News from the count: the last few ballots have now been entered. We had even more bunching at first - five books were neck & neck at one point - before one broke clear to be our clear leader. The big mover is one that had been lurking right at the bottom of the table, but then scored heavily several times in a row to now lie second.

http://www.ocgop.org/UserFiles/Image/ReaganNewYear12312009.jpg

Phew, what a night that was. Why not carry on the good work, and make yourselves feel good into the bargain, by making it your resolution to vote in this poll? Get your ballot in quickly for the early win, and your 2010 is off to a flyer!

Ballot done, just trying to write some blurbs.

Found something I should have spotted earlier tho. Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog isn't 2001, it's 1992!

I'm glad you said that. I was sure an ex-colleague of mine read it in about 1995 and was mystified as to how it wasn't even published until several years after I left that job.

There's no way round this, it was 1992. It even got a Booker nomination and won something called the 'Betty Trask Award' in 1993. Apologies all, but I blame Derelict who seems to have managed to sneak it in under my radar. It's picked up a few votes too - so I guess it's earned its place in the final countdown. I'll have to mark it '7a' or something.

Given that it's not actually a proper part of the poll, I suppose I can ask if it's any good? I did buy his The Thought Gang many years ago, but never actually got round to reading it - so my only knowledge of the bloke is his fantastic review of Martin Amis' Yellow Dog (which would've been eligible, had anyone nominated it)

Hey, Abbott, how did you put your youtube link on the site here like that?

I can't seem to do the same thing. Anyway, here is a link to the trailer of the film adaptation of the book, "The Human Stain". Have any of you seen this film and how does it rate compared to the book which is really exceptionally good?

The Human Stain-Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzXqXfBlfcM

Ah cool, it worked, just copied the window on youtube. you can't see it in the "add a post" box but it appears on the blog after you've posted it.

The 'show formatting' link vv down there vv helps with all your formatting

needs

I loved The Human Stain, now you mention it - and I remember being so excited that there was a film coming, but it kind of dissipated by the time it was released and I never bothered. I think maybe it initially got bad reviews, so it only ran a week or two.

I did see another Roth film, Elegy, maybe eighteen months ago, which I enjoyed - but it was only chance that I heard about it in time - they don't seem to get much publicity.

I can't seem to get into Roth - read the Professor of Desire which was ok. I really didn't like The Plot against America. Should I have read other Roth novels first? I am reluctant to try The Human Stain due to my previous experiences. Is it worth reading or should I be looking at other books on the nomination list?

I think you should give The Human Stain a try. It's Roth's best book in my view. Almost as good as Updike's Rabbit books.
I would also strongly recommend Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty" as it's a beautifully written perspective on English society in the 80s. Has anyone on this blog read any of Hollinghurst's previous books? If so, what was your impression of them?

I liked the Human Stain OK but it seems impossible for any novelist to come within 1000 feet of topics like "political correctness in academia" and maintain the virtues of prose fiction. "American Pastoral" is I think very much the best of the latter-day Roth books (hard to believe it's more than 10 years old already and thus ineligible for this poll.) I think people should start with that if they want to feel serious and "Goodbye, Columbus" if they be dazzled by a young writer completely in command of his craft, firing cannons of whimsy.

An uneasiness has crept into my relationship with Roth. As I have read more (ten now), I've come to see his career in three acts: the first, as eephus! puts it, is "a young writer completely in command of his craft, firing cannons of whimsy"; the long second sees him exploring metafiction; and in the late third act Roth gets intense, zooming in on individuals washed up by the historical currents that have shaped his life.

I was lucky enough to reach the third act first, and agree that American Pastoral is his best. Other than the marvellous plots, what's best here is when Roth picks on a thread and runs and runs with it, so you get these long, long passages on what other writers would treat as just background detail - the glove industry, or picking up women on the subway in 50s New York, or playing baseball on Sundays with a hot shower afterwards. Fascinating and entertaining. The first act is fine too, though because it lacks the element of absorption and reflection it is harder to relate to - the context is at one remove from the reader today.

It's the second act I have problems with. The stories here seem to be mostly pegs for musings on the nature of fiction or on jewish identity. They're still well-crafted and any individual scene can be lovely to read, but it's hard to care when you don't have a particular investment in the subject-matter. Particularly so when done as farce - nothing dates as badly as old in-jokes. I should caveat this by saying that I haven't dipped into the Zuckerman books, which may be more serious. And also by acknowledging that Roth here is still far above the likes of Amis on Stalin or the holocaust, where the writer has no investment in the subject-matter (even if I quite enjoy some of that), but too often I just find it confusing and don't know why I'm supposed to care.

To answer the question, to me Roth only becomes truly satisfying when he snapped back into telling stories for their own sake. I think Sabbath's Theater (1995) onwards is what to concentrate on.

Just stumbling into your thread to say I have read v. few of these (though several are sitting unfinished and in many cases unstarted on my shelves, oh the shame) but am totally looking forward to the results and blurbs so I can get some recommendations on where to start being a little better-read. (Will look through this and the nomination thread too for persuasive lobbying and boostering, of course.)

Thanks guys!

think i've read only four novels published this decade. that's bad. they were:

'the human stain'
'1977'
'never let me go'
'the rotter's club'

'1977' definitely the worst of these. was really not impressed by the prolix 'human stain'. 'never let me go' is ok, a bit forced. so i guess that makes 'the rotter's club' the best of 'em? can't remember it too well, but it was not as good as 'the house of sleep'.

Get your ballots in anyway, chaps - the voting's deliberately weighted so that even if you only have four or five to vote for, you'll still be allocating about half your votes. No bias in favour of the 'better read' here!

No new ballots so far today, but I am now receiving some spam - which is heartwarming, but sadly doesn't take us any further forward

Red: I've read Hollinghurst's The Spell (1998). It's about a bloke's mid-life crisis, set against a kind of coming-of-age story around his son. It was okay I suppose, and I did like some of the descriptions of the mundane parts of gay life, though there are the expected clubbing and general hedonism scenes too.

It did seem totally inconsequential after reading The Line of Beauty first, though, and I haven't been tempted to try anything else - I've seen them described as 'deathly boring', which I can too-easily believe.

I guess it's interesting that he should have made such a leap between the two books - I mean, there's not a clue in The Spell that something era-defining is coming up next.

Also, I didn't know he'd first made his name as a poet (albeit, it seems, a largely unpublished one). Again, I don't see much indication of poetry showing through in either book, really

It's become apparent that the nominations list needs to be more prominent. It follows in full:

Poetry:
Simon Armitage - Gawain And The Green Knight (2007)
Charles Bernstein - Girly Man (2006)
John Burnside - The Asylum Dance (2000)
John Burnside - The Light Trap (2002)
Ciaran Carson - The Inferno Of Dante Alighieri (2002)
Paul Farley - The Ice Age (2002)
Mark Halliday - Jab (2002)
Zbigniew Herbert - The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 (2008)
Geoffrey Hill - A Treatise Of Civil Power (2007)
Christopher Logue - War Music (2001)
Christopher Logue - Cold Calls (2005)
Czeslaw Milosz - Second Space (2004)
Geoffrey Nutter - Water’s Leaves & Other Poems (2005)
Sean O’Brien - Downriver (2001)
Alice Oswald - Dart (2002)
Michael Palmer - The Promises Of Glass (2000)
Don Paterson - Landing Light (2003)
Don Paterson - Orpheus (2007)
Bob Perelman - IFLIFE (2006)
David St. John And Cole Swensen, Eds. - American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology Of New Poetry (2009)
Keston Sutherland - Hot White Andy (2007)
Keston Sutherland - Stress Position (2009)
Hugo Williams - Dear Room (2006)
Dean Young - Skid (2002)
Dean Young - Elegy On A Toy Piano (2005)
Jane Yeh - Marabou (2005)

Graphic Novels:
David B. - Epileptic (2002)
Alison Bechdel - Fun Home (2006)
Charles Burns - Black Hole (2005)
Nicholas Gurewitch - The Perry Bible Fellowship: Trial Of Colonel Sweeto And Other Stories (2008)
Bryan Lee O’malley - Scott Pilgrim (2004-2009)
Tsugumi Ohba And Takeshi Obata - Death Note (2005-2007)
Joe Sacco - Safe Area Goražde (2000)
Marjane Satrapi - The Complete Persepolis (2007)
Dash Shaw - Bottomless Bellybutton (2008)

History:
Peter Ackroyd - London, The Biography (2001)
Peter Ackroyd - Thames: Sacred River (2008)
Anne Applebaum - Gulag: A History (2004)
Herbert P. Bix - Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan (2001)
Douglas A. Blackmon - Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement Of Black Americans From The Civil War To World War II (2009)
Kevin Boyle - Arc Of Justice: A Saga Of Race, Civil Rights, And Murder In The Jazz Age (2004)
Taylor Branch - At Canaan’s Edge: America In The King Years, 1965-68 (2006)
Timothy Egan - The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story Of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl (2006)
Caroline Elkins - Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story Of Britain’s Gulag In Kenya (2006)
Niall Ferguson - “Colossus: The Rise And Fall Of The American Empire” (2005)
Niall Ferguson - “Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World” (2004)
Saul Friedlander - The Years Of Extermination: Nazi Germany And The Jews, 1939-1945 (2008)
Anna Funder - Stasiland (2004)
Rebecca Goldstein - Betraying Spinoza (2006)
Ian Kershaw - Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (2007)
David Kynaston - Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (2007)
David Kynaston - Family Britain, 1951-1957 (Tales Of A New Jerusalem) (2009)
Diane Mcwhorter - Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle Of The Civil Rights Revolution (2002)
Simon Sebag Montefiore - Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar (2003)
Rick Perlstein – Nixonland (2008)
Russel Shorto - The Island at the Centre of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan (2004)
Gore Vidal - Inventing A Nation (2004)

(Auto)Biography:
Martin Amis - Experience (2000)
David Attenborough - Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002)
Julian Barnes - Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008)
Gregoire Bouillier - The Mystery Guest (2006)
Robert A. Caro - Master Of The Senate: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson (2002)
Emmanuel Carrére, I Am Alive And You Are Dead - A Journey Into The Mind Of Philip K. Dick (2005)
Jung Chang And John Halliday - Mao: The Unknown Story (2005)
Ron Chernow - Alexander Hamilton (2004)
Jonathan Coe - Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story Of B.S. Johnson (2004)
Joan Didion - The Year Of Magical Thinking (2005)
William Donaldson - Brewer’s Rogues, Villains And Eccentrics (2002)
Carlos Eire - Waiting For Snow In Havana: Confessions Of A Cuban Boy (2003)
William H Gass - Tests Of Time (2002)
Annette Gordon-Reed - The Hemingses Of Monticello: An American Family (2008)
Walter Isaacson - Einstein: His Life And Universe (2007)
Jonathan Lethem - The Disappointment Artist (2005)
James Mann - The Rebellion Of Ronald Reagan (2009)
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards (2005)
Julie Phillips - James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (2007)
Mark Rowlands - The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons in Love, Death, and Happiness (2009)
David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)
T. J. Stiles - The First Tycoon: The Epic Life Of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009)
Jean-Yves Tadie - Marcel Proust (2000)
Anna Whitelock - Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (2009)

Culture and Sport:
Michael Azzerad - Our Band Could Be Your Life (2001)
Nicholson Baker And Margaret Brentano - The World On Sunday: Graphic Art In Joseph Pulitzer’s Newspaper (1898-1911)
Peter Biskind - Down And Dirty Pictures (2004)
Roberto Calasso - Literature And The Gods (2001)
Ray Carney Ed./John Cassavetes - Cassavetes On Cassavetes (2001)
Tony Cascarino - Full Time (2000)
David Cavanagh - The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize (2001)
Bill Drummond - 45 (2000)
Bob Dylan - Chronicles (2004)
Mark Harris - Pictures At A Revolution (2008)
Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game (2006)
Paul Morley - Nothing (2000)
Paul Morley - Words And Music (2003)
David Plotz, “Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous And Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word Of The Bible” (2009)
Matthew Randazzo V - Ring Of Hell (2008)
Simon Reynolds - Rip It Up And Start Again (2005)
Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise: Listening To The 20th Century (2008)
William Shaw - Westsiders (2000)
Alberto Siliotti - Sinai Diving Guide (2005)
Ben Thompson - Ways Of Hearing: A User’s Guide To The Pop Psyche, From Elvis To Eminem (2001)
David Thomson - The Whole Equation (2006)
Jonathan Wilson - Inverting The Pyramid: A History Of Football Tactics (2008)

Politics and Money:
Giorgio Agamben - State of Exception (2005)
Paul Berman - Terror and Liberalism (2003)
Rajiv Chandrasekaran - Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (2006)
Nick Cohen - What’s Left (2007)
Steve Coll - Ghost Wars: The Secret History Of The CIA, Afghanistan, And Bin Laden, From The Soviet Invasion To September 10, 2001 (2005)
Satyajit Das - Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns And Unknowns In The Dazzling World Of Derivatives (2006)
Yoram Dinstein - War, Aggression And Self-Defence (2003)
Michael R. Gordon And Bernard E. Trainor - Cobra II: The Inside Story Of The Invasion And Occupation Of Iraq (2006)
John Gray - Straw Dogs (2002)
Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine (2007)
Martin Meredith - The State Of Africa (2005)
Samantha Power - “A Problem From Hell”: America And The Age Of Genocide (2003)
Tim Weiner - Legacy Of Ashes: The History Of The CIA (2007)
Evan Wright - Generation Kill (2004)
Lawrence Wright - The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11 (2007)
Walter Yetnikoff And David Ritz - Howling At The Moon (2004)

Popular Science:
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion (2006)
Jared Diamond - Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed (2004)
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink (2005)
Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers (2009)
Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point (2000)
Steven Johnson - Everything Bad is Good for You (2005)
Steven Levitt - Freakonomics (2005)
Pamela Nagami - Bitten: True Medical Stories Of Bites And Stings (2004)
David Quammen - Monster Of God: The Man-Eating Predator In The Jungles Of History And The Mind (2003)
Mary Roach - Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers (2003)
Andrew Solomon - The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression (2001)
Rory Stewart - The Places In Between (2006)
Nasim Taleb - Fooled By Randomness (2001)
Charles Taylor - A Secular Age (2007)
David Foster Wallace - Consider The Lobster (2008)
Francis Wheen - How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World (2004)
Linda Williams, Ed. - Porn Studies (2004)
Carl Zimmer – Parasite Rex (2000)

Short Stories:
Peter Altenberg - Telegrams Of The Soul (2005)
JG Ballard - Complete Stories (2001)
David Bezmozgis - Natasha: And Other Stories (2003)
T.C. Boyle – Tooth & Claw (2006)
Deborah Eisenberg - Twilight Of The Superheroes: Stories (2006)
Amy Hempel - Collected Stories (2006)
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007)
Jonathan Lethem - Men And Cartoons (2005)
Jana Martin - Russian Lover And Other Stories (2007)
Kevin Moffett - Permanent Visitors (2006)
Lorrie Moore - The Collected Stories (2008)
Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage (2001)
Alice Munro – Runaway (2005)
James Salter - Last Night: Stories (2005)
George Saunders - The Brief And Frightening Reign Of Phil/In Persuasion Nation (2006)
George Saunders - Pastoralia (2000)
Jim Shepard - Like You’d Understand, Anyway: Stories (2007)
Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls: Collected Stories (2007)
Wells Tower - Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories (2009)
David Foster Wallace - Oblivion (2004)

Fiction A to C:
Andre Aciman - Call Me By Your Name (2009)
Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger (2008)
Chris Adrian - The Children’s Hospital (2006)
Cesar Aira - An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter (2006)
Cesar Aira – Ghosts (2009)
Cesar Aira - How I Became A Nun (2007)
Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati (2008)
Monica Ali - Brick Lane (2003)
Nadeem Aslam - Maps For Lost Lovers (2004)
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin (2000)
Nicholson Baker - A Box Of Matches (2003)
Nicholson Baker – Checkpoint (2004)
Iain M. Banks - Look To Windward
Iain M Banks - Matter (2008)
John Banville - The Sea (2005)
Mischa Berlinski - Fieldwork: A Novel (2008)
Thomas Bernhard - Frost (2006)
Robert Bingham - Lightning On The Sun (2000)
Luther Blisset - Q (2003)
Roberto Bolaño
 - 2666 (2008)
Roberto Bolaño - By Night In Chile (2000)
Roberto Bolaño - Savage Detectives (2007)
William Boyd - Any Human Heart (2002)
Michael Bracewell - Perfect Tense (2001)
Christopher Brookmyre - The Sacred Art Of Stealing (2003)
Geraldine Brooks – March (2005)
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code (2003)
Shannon Burke - Black Flies (2008)
Peter Carey - My Life As A Fake (2005)
Peter Carey – The True History Of The Kelly Gang (2001)
Mircea Cărtărescu - Nostalgia (2005)
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
Michael Chabon – The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
Kate Christensen - The Epicure’s Lament (2004)
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004)
Jonathan Coe - The Rotter’s Club (2001)
Paulo Coelho - The Devil And Miss Prym (2000)
JM Coetzee - Diary Of A Bad Year (2007)
JM Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello
 (2003)
JM Coetzee – Youth (2002)
Daniel Coshnear - Jobs And Other Preoccupations (2001)
Douglas Coupland - Hey Nostradamus! (2003)

Fiction D to H:
Mark Danielewski - House Of Leaves (2000)
Samuel Delany - Dark Reflections (2007)
Kieran Desai – The Inheritance Of Loss (2006)
Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007)
Gerard Donovan - Julius Winsome (2007)
Roddy Doyle – Oh, Play That Thing! (2004)
Tom Drury - The Driftless Area (2006)
Maggie Dubris - Weep Not My Wanton (2002)
_
Jean Echenoz – I’m Off (2001)
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)
James Elroy - Cold Six Thousand (2001)
Anne Enright – The Gathering (2007)
Steven Erikson - Memories Of Ice (2005)
Steve Erickson - Zeroville (2007)
Jeffrey Eugenides – Middlesex (2004)
Percival Everett – Erasure (2001)
_
Michael Faber - The Crimson Petal And The White (2002)
Sebastian Faulks - Engleby (2007)
Sebastian Faulks - On Green Dolphin Street (2002)
Tibor Fischer - Under The Frog (2001)
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections (2001)
_
Mary Gaitskill – Veronica (2005)
Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances (2008)
William Gibson - Pattern Recognition (2003)
Julia Glass – Three Junes (2002)
Michelle Goldberg - The Means Of Reproduction (2009)
Myla Goldberg - Bee Season (2000)
Olga Grushin - The Dream Life Of Sukhanov (2006)
_
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (2003)
Steven Hall - The Raw Shark Texts (2007)
Adam Haslett - You Are Not A Stranger Here (2002)
Shirley Hazzard – The Great Fire (2003)
Aleksandar Hemon – Nowhere Man (2002)
Sheila Heti – Ticknor (2005)
Andrew Holleran – Grief (2006)
Alan Hollinghurst - The Line Of Beauty (2004)
Michel Houellebecq – The Elementary Particles/Atomised (2000)
Michel Houellebecq - Platform
 (2003)
Siri Hustvedt - What I Loved (2003)

Fiction I to L:
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)
_
Denis Johnson – The Tree Of Smoke (2007)
Edward P Jones - The Known World (2003)
Susanna Jones - The Missing Person’s Guide To Love (2008)
_
Chris Killen - The Bird Room (2009)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy Of Resistance (2000)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War And War (2006)
Benjamin Kunkel- Indecision (2005)
Hari Kunzru – My Revolutions (2008)
Andrei Kurkov - Death And The Penguin (2001)
_
J Robert Lennon - Pieces For The Left Hand (2006)
Jonathan Lethem - Fortress Of Solitude (2003)
Sam Lipsyte – Homeland
 (2004)
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast Of The Goat (2001)

Damnit. Missed this until now. Lots to like on the nominations list, but would that I could go back in time and nominate Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai. My favourite of the decade by a country mile.

Fiction M to N:
Patrick McCabe - Call Me The Breeze (2003)
Colum McCann – Let The Great World Spin (2009)
Cormac McCarthy – The Road (2006)
Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men (2005)
Tom McCarthy - Remainder
 (2007)
Nick McDonell – Twelve (2003)
Ian McEwan - Atonement (2001)
Ian McEwan – Saturday (2005)
Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall (2009)
Ben Marcus - Notable American Women (2002)
Yann Martel – Life Of Pi (2001)
George Martin - Storm Of Swords (2000)
Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country (2008)
James Meek - The People’s Act Of Love (2005)
Stephanie Meyer - Twilight (2005)
China Miéville - Perdido Street Station (2000)
China Miéville - The City & The City (2009)
China Miéville - The Scar (2003)
David Mitchell - Black Swan Green (2006)
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas (2004)
Toni Morrison - A Mercy (2008)
Toni Morrison – Love (2003)
Walter Mosley - The Man In My Basement (2004)
Horacio Castellanos Moya - Senselessness (2008)
Haruki Murakami - Kafka On The Shore (2005)
_
Patrick Neate - City Of Tiny Lights (2005)
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise (1942/2004)

Fiction O to P:
Catherine O’Flynn - What Was Lost (2007)
Joseph O’Neill – Netherland (2008)
Patrik Ourednik - Europeana (2005)
Cynthia Ozick - Heir To The Glimmering World/The Bear Boy (2004)
_
Chuck Palahniuk - Fugitives And Refugees (2003)
Chuck Palahniuk - Haunted (2005)
Orhan Pamuk - My Name Is Red (2001)
Orhan Pamuk – Snow (2004)
Ann Patchett - Bel Canto (2001)
David Peace - GB84 (2004)
David Peace - The Damned United (2006)
Jack Pendarvis – Awesome (2008)
Eliot Perlman - 7 Types Of Ambiguity (2004)
Fernando Pessoa - Book Of Disquiet (2001)
Arthur Phillips - The Egyptologist (2004)
DBC Pierre – Vernon God Little (2003)
Daniel Pinkwater – The Neddiad (2007)
Salvador Plascencia - The People Of Paper (2005)
Richard Powers - The Echo Maker (2006)
Richard Price - Lush Life (2008)
Francine Prose - Blue Angel (2000)
Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass (2000)
Thomas Pynchon - Against The Day (2006)
Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice (2009)

Fiction R to S:
Jonathan Raban – Surveillance (2006)
Alasdair Reynolds - Revelation Space (2000)
Marilynne Robinson – Gilead (2004)
Philip Roth - The Human Stain (2000)
Phillip Roth - The Plot Against America (2004)
Philip Roth - Everyman (2005)
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2000)
Norman Rush - Mortals (2003)
Richard Russo – Empire Falls (2001)
_
Edward St Aubyn - Mothers Milk (2006)
Ian Sansom - Ring Road (2004)
Jose Saramago - Death With Interruptions (2008)
W.G. Sebald – Austerlitz (2001)
Jim Shepard - Project X (2004)
Gary Shteyngart - Absurdistan (2006)
Gary Shteyngart - Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2003)
Hubert Selby Jr - Waiting Period (2002)
Stacy Sims - Swimming Naked (2004)
Rebecca Smith - A Bit Of Earth (2007)
Zadie Smith - Autograph Man (2002)
Zadie Smith - On Beauty (2005)
Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2000)
Dag Solstad - Shyness And Dignity (2006)
Neal Stephenson - Anathem (2008)
Elizabeth Strout – Olive Kitteridge (2001)

Fiction T to end:
Studs Terkel - Will The Circle Be Unbroken (2001)
Colm Toibin – Brooklyn (2009)
Colm Toibin - The Master (2004)
William Trevor – Love And Summer (2009)
Lily Tuck – The News From Paraguay (2004)
_
Mati Unt - Things In The Night (2006)
John Updike - Rabbit Remembered (2001)
_
Enrique Vila-Matas - Bartleby & Co. (2005)

Enrique Vila-Matas - Montano’s Malady (2007)
William Vollman - Europe Central (2005)
William Vollman - The Royal Family (2000)
_
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith (2002)
Sarah Waters – The Night Watch (2006)
Peter Watts - Blindsight (2006)
Colson Whitehead - Sag Harbor (2009)
Jincy Willett - Winner Of The National Book Award (2003)
Tim Winton – Breath (2008)
Robert Charles Wilson - The Chronoliths (2001)
Tobias Wolff - Old School (2003)

That's your lot. 348 or so total, 193 of which have now received votes.

Alex: tell us about The Last Samurai - I've acquired a few blurbs for things which for various reasons won't make the final 50 (or how ever many I can stretch it to). Some of them are pretty good, and I'd like to include them as special bonus entries.

Only five-and-a-bit days to go! I'm doing some counting just now, will try to find some statistical quirks and oddities to amuse and entertain you all while you get scratching those heads.

best books of the decade imo:

Austerlitz - Sebald
2666 - Bolano
Human Stain - Roth
The Feast Of the Goat - Llosa
The Wind Whistling in the Cranes - Jorge
The Sea - Banville (most underrated of them all probably)

Can I vote for 2666 just because I think I will probably like it? (I have a different Bolano in my list already.)

I promise I will get my ballot in soon. Honest.

if you liked Savage Detective - you will like it for sure.
it has similiar elements to Savage, but it's very different (and better) than his novellas imo.

Oi! Boostering allowed and encouraged, but keep those lists private! Emails to ismaelklata (at) googlemail (dot) com please.

I was wondering how long it would take discussion of Bolano to arise. I've got a couple of his myself, but have yet to attempt them because there's something very intimidating and intense there. Convince me.

Emil.y: I don't mind why anyone votes for anything, so long as they do have a reason - I think I'd draw the line at entirely random ballots. I'm even cool with voting on the basis of the film, since plot is a pretty important part of any book and those don't change too much. Same goes tenfold for covers (speaking of which, my 2666 has a really cool one, with a hole in it and a grinning skull goggling out from underneath)

Haha, okay then, I WILL add it to my list. And I WILL go and attempt to finish off my blurbs right now.

While I'm here and you've mentioned blurbs: I've got quite a lot of these now, including some really superb efforts. I'm grateful to everyone who's made the effort, and I'll make sure I include everything somehow, even if the book it belongs to doesn't place highly.

But it's also become clear that some people don't like the idea much - if that's you, that's fine. Don't let it put you off voting. Like I say, I've mostly got enough to run with, and I can do like Tuomas and Johnny have done on their recent albums polls and dip into the archives to fill gaps.

The only Bolano I've read is a short one: By Night in Chile. Kind of interesting, but also a bit austere in a way that has put me off wanting to attempt the epics.

I kind of think that voting based on book covers should be kept to the "Best Book Cover" poll, but I guess I'm a crusty old fuddy-duddy.

Ha! I'm assuming that most people won't have taken that or the film comment too literally, but then how would I know? If piles of Da Vinci Code votes start rolling in now, then I'll start getting suspicious (not least 'cos the film is terrible)

I know I promised you stats - but there were quite a few votes today and I've been writing them in an old-fashioned notebook instead of one of them fancy computer spreadsheet things, and I'm just too damned tired to do all the adding up now.

I had a quick glance at the top running totals, though. Last time I counted things were starting to stretch out, but now it's tightening up again. The top four are currently covered by less than twenty points, then there's another bunch a little further back. Things can, and do, change with every ballot received.

So every vote counts. Keep 'em coming.

this is in no way mathematical, but how much do you think the points system will determine the running order? might there be a dramatically different order if it was one point per vote?

I watched "The Human Stain" film adaptation of Roth's novel tonight. It stars Hopkins as Colman Silk and Kidman as his mistress, Faunia Farley. It was a pretty weak adaptation of a really extraordinary novel. I was disappointed as if one just watched the film one would conclude that the novel might not be worth reading. I don't know whether the screenplay was just rubbish or whether it might not be possible to adapt it to such a different art form. If that is the case might that be why Updike's Rabbit stories were not adapted to the screen? Perhaps if one ever tried to do that one could adopt the Peep Show approach to it - Rabbit taking on the Mark Corrigan role and Janice the Jez role!!

What do all of you think of Pamuk as a writer? Does anyone rate "My Name is Red"? I haven't read it. Does anyone have a reason for me as to why I should?

I've only read The White Castle, which was fine but not great. It made me want to read Calvino or Schulz or someone to be honest. I don't understand why Pamuk's so well thought of.

Schlump: interesting question. Short answer is that there'd be a lot more ties, and the list'd be a lot more predictable.

The real big winners from the weighted system are the books which few have read, but which are really beloved by those who do. There are actually five books together at the top now - two are like this, two have picked up a lot of smallish votes, and one is kind of in-between. One only has four or five votes, but scores extraordinarily heavily when it does appear. It wasn't my conscious intention, but I'm really happy with this outcome - these passionately-loved things are what I want to be hearing about.

Here's a statistic for you:

I've just noticed that The New York Dolls landed at no.41 in Johnny Fever's ongoing 1970s albums poll with a very similar score to that much-beloved book I was just talking about - 121 points,from 4 votes. Here that currently gets you about no.5.

More stats:
Ballots received: 30
Number of no.1 votes cast: 30
No.1s currently receiving no other votes: 6
Those six are currently at this place in the overall list: 41st=
If I give those six half-points as per my original plan, they appear at: 88th=
This is what being beloved gets you - one book with only two votes is currently placing: 12th

Thirty ballots is pretty good, but there're still four days to go. Can we do better?
http://i50.tinypic.com/2exr0yg.png

You'll have worked out from the stats that the shape of the poll is much flatter than you get in the music polls - if they're like climbing a mountain, this is more like climbing a fairy cake with a joobjoob on top.

I think it's partly because we have fewer ballots so far, but more importantly because there mostly aren't the really big communal experiences and trendsetters that hog the votes in music polls. Maybe if the 00s had a Grapes of Wrath or To Kill A Mockingbird it would've been different, but the ones that are showing most are the ones that provoked really intense personal experiences.

Meaning that every vote can have a huge effect - if you were to target it right and get lucky, theoretically you alone could take your favourite from 88th to the edge of the top ten in one go,

In case it isn't clear from the above posts, what I really mean is - GET THOSE BLOODY VOTES IN.

Not that it really matters, but if they had been nominated (or if I had actually bothered to nominate something) I would have voted for these as well as the few that I did vote for:
John Irving - The Fourth Hand
John Irving - Until I Find You
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Mark Haddon - A Spot of Bother
Tobias Jones - The Dark Heart of Italy
John Harris - The Last Party
Jeremy Whittle - Bad Blood
and probably some others...

I was surprised nobody nominated the Bryson one. I've read one or two of his non-travel books, and they've been excellent.

I remember not caring for it very much, but I don't remember specifically why.

I've been murder busy the last day or two, but I had a quick look at the stats just now and something else caught my eye:

Out of 348 books on the list, 211 have scored at least one point - about two-thirds of the total. That's pretty much the same as the music polls, but from a smaller number of ballots - and arguably it's an even wider spread because I started the noms process off with a list of about 150 books which may have no support here at all.

Meaning that the list as a whole has a very wide spread and a low summit - and a quite personal feel to it, which I like. But if the idea was to create some kind of canon, I don't think that's what we're going to get.

I had considered limiting the results to a top forty, by which time the ones with only three or four votes have mostly dropped away - but I think I'll have a go at a top 100 anyway, and if some single-votes scrape in the bottom, so be it.

http://a.espncdn.com/media/ncb/2004/0315/photo/cheerleader_i.jpg

If you haven't voted yet, let this sexy cheerleader urge you on. Rules are simple:

1. pick up to twenty books from the nominations list
2. put them in order - or not - but make sure you nominate a #1
3. email to ismaelklata (at) googlemail (dot) com

Here is a photo of the front cover of the Sinai Diving Guide. Don't forget about this book whilst voting - it's amazing and beautifully crafted with beautiful and very useful underwater 3D dive maps which also chart where you are in relation to the land - most of the Dahab dives are beach dives.

http://www.divenow.nl/sinai%20dive%20guide%20writen%20by%20Siliotti%20pyublished%20by%20Geodia.htm

The Sinai is reputedly the best diving spot in the world. It's certainly the most spectacular I've been to. I especially liked it around the Dahab area - the Blue Hole, the Canyon, El Bells, Eel Gardens, the Lighthouse, the Islands, and also the Thistlegorm Wreck dive in Ras Mohammad National Park.

Here's two examples of some of the dives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-LN0T2-YEk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAYWCMa7NcA&feature=related

Try and get your hands on this beautiful book - you won't be disappointed.

Haha! I was GIS'ing for more "Sinai Diving Guide" pictures. I got a few turtles, but also this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Tony_Cascarino.jpg

it's from our nomination thread - your book is so niche that the mere mention has turned it into one of the top hits.

I take it you've been on these dives, Red?

i have submitted my ballot, because i don't think i will have internet access again before the deadline. are you planning to post the results immediately after, or will there be a break? i've been delaying because i wanted to write blurbs for a few of mine, but time has been kind of sparse

also, i do hope everyone who has read it voted for notable american women

don't worry it's cool i'll be providing blurbs explaining why i gave up on each of the top 100 entries i gave up on, inc. notable american women

I was planning to get cracking straightaway on Tuesday, if I can - I thought I'd have an empty week after Monday, though there's a chance I could be snowed. There are a few film & music polls coming up too, I'd like to avoid the competition.

Will you be around? Don't worry about the blurbs, I've got a lot of good ones by now - but I do want your contributions, your well-readité would be most useful.

Other books that I'd have nominated that are worth a gander

Thomas Wharton - Salamander
Wonderful book about the quest to create the perfect book. Picaresque travelling from location to lcoation across the world, beginning with the fall of Quebec and ending up everywhere. Includes a castle in Croatia with moving walls and bookshelves that travel the hallways, and stories inside stories inside stories
He also wrote The Logogryph, which is a more abstract and stranger meditation on the same sort of issues, which I haven't gotten to yet, but is supposedly quite something.

Edward Carey - Observatory Mansions
Bunch of strange and isolated individuals living in a boarding house, whose lives slowly become exposed to change. Um. It's really hard to explain how great this is...it's a tonal masterpiece - Carey manages to very uniquely capture the voices of his eccentrics. A claustrophobic story, and a claustrophobic read, but a very good one.

Helen DeWitt - The Last Samurai
Words can't do this justice. A single mother and her 5 year old genius son living in London, travelling on the circle line while he reads the Illiad in Greek and the Kalilah wa Dimnah in Arabic, with well-meaning bystanders offering her advice. She slept with his father because there was no polite way to end the conversation, informing the reader of this fact while Ludo interrupts her with the naming of increasingly multi-legged octopus (NONAPUS, DEKAPUS, etc. etc.). To provide him with strong male role models, they watch Kurosawa's Seven Samurai over and over. The first part is Sybilla, depressive and rational to a fault and darkly hilarious. The second is Ludo (Steven? David?) on a quest for his (or possibly just a) father, exposing us to increasingly strange and fascinating potential candidates, and endless iterations of the same conversation. Multilingual, hilarious, pedantic, perfect. I have done an awful job of saying what the book is ABOUT, but it's been too long since I've read it to try and have a go at it.

Ismael, I did indeed do all of those dives. Has anyone else on this board done them? The drift dive between El Bells and the Blue Hole was my favourite. You start from the rocky cliffs leading onto a small pool and you descend directly down into a long and narrow crack on the rock shelf which is just under the water line. You go straight down for about 18 metres and through some arches. Then you follow the massive coral wall all the way along to the Blue Hole - it takes about 30-40 minutes to do this part and it is lovely. You have the vast blue Red Sea on your left shoulder and the massive coral wall on your right shoulder. The part of the coral wall you can see at any one time is as tall as a large building in London and there is much beneath that you can't see as it goes down so far. It's like swimming along the side of the buildings on the Strand until you get to Trafalgar Square except the underwater buildings have beautiful coral all over them, and sword fish, eels, lion fish etc all swimming alongside you and feeding in the coral. There are literally hundreds of thousands of goldfish around you on the dive. You end up at a part of the Wall that allows you entry into the Blue hole. We swam upwards over the coral Wall and entered the Blue Hole at a depth of 7 metres. Those who have lots of experience and are qualified to a very deep level can enter the Blue Hole by descendng to about 52 metres and swimming 26 metres along a narrow tunnel into the Blue Hole, entering at about 62 metres. Below 30 metres one begins to suffer from nitrogen narcosis - the effect is like drunkeness. Many Russian divers dive outwith their experience and qualifications and a large number have unfortunately died. When sufficiently narced one can thrown away one's oxygen supply and buouyancy jacket and laugh hysterically. it never ends well though. Here is a link to the Blue Hole entry on wikipedia where there are some lovely photos of the dive - the Sinai Dive Guide is obviously much better. If I had a scanner I would post some of them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Hole_(Red_Sea)

Blue Hole seen from above. The area towards the sea is not "The Arch" but a shallow bank called "The Saddle".

File:BlueHole Rohscan bearb 150d.jpg
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Alex: thanks. A couple of other folk have been kind enough to send me recommendations for things that missed the nominations list. I'm going to sprinkle the countdown with these bonus entries, time permitting.

http://www.bigbluedahab.com/index_files/Bluehole.jpg

Red, you can post the image direct if you put (img) and (/img) tags, but with square brackets instead of round ones, round the image address. See the 'Show Formatting Help' link at the bottom of this page, under the 'Submit Post' button.

Is that an image from the Sinai Diving Guide? I'm not sure I follow it - do you start by descending to 32m and then sort of corkscrewing across and up out of The Blue Hole? What is The Blue Hole anyway, is it like an underwater chimney? I must confess I don't see the attraction of something that dangerous - I've only dived/dove once, in calm water to about six metres, and it really hurt my ears. We saw a cool massive turtle though.

I'm going to submit a ballot, and it'll be in in time.

^ a good person

^an English major.

^ a proper english major would casually submit it thirty minutes late.

also ismael, i will write you that extra blurb and get it to you in the next day or two, but this last week was a real disaster for doing productive things so it just hasn't happened yet. i will probably have time to do a couple others too if you need/want it. i'm really looking forward to the results although i suspect that they're going to be pretty random.

To back that up - I think only one book so far has picked up more than one #1 vote (possibly even less than you'd expect from a random distribution). The results will inevitably look a bit random when everyone has a different favourite book.

Disaster - I've just counted the votes and there are only two points in it between first and second. The bad news is that I voted for one of them. I want a comprehensive victory, not a cliffhanger - I don't want to feel like the guy who clinched it/didn't do enough.

You see my problem here, right?

not really, tbh

I can submit my ballot today still, right? I'll do so this afternoon, I promise!

Indeed you can. Voting closes at midnight today, your time.

A couple of people have pointed out that I need to clarify the rules. Sorry for making it look more complicated than it is. Here's what to do:

1. look at the nominations list
2. pick your favourites - you can vote for up to twenty
3. mark your #1
4. indicate whether you want the rest of your list to be ordered or unordered (ordered scores graduated points from 40 down to 3; in an unordered list everything scores 11, with your #1 scoring double)
5. email your ballot to ismaelklata (at) googlemail (dot) com

Thanks!

Do my choices have to be from that list?

They do - we ran the nominations thread back at the start of December. You can write a piece on a different book and I'll include it as a bonus (a few people have done this), but it won't score any points.

I am extraordinarily ill-read in the 00s, it seems.

Anyway, I'm sending a ballot of 10, almost all sci fi & fantasy.

My nom that would have perhaps been my no 1, had I bothered to nominate, is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I may attempt a bonus blurb if I get time.

Also, I second whoever it was above who said Iron Council should have been on the list rather than the other two Bas-Lag Mieville novels. It's so good.

Even tighter at the top today than we were last night - 7 points covering the top three now.

Is it okay if I just send my ballot without blurbs in the end? If my picks get in I'll definitely comment on them within thread, but I think I've been too ambitious in attempting to write full critical reviews, and I'm not happy with anything I've written so far.

Scuba diving, followed closely by porn studies and human cadavers

O man I have totally fallen for this Ismael/Redray sock diving guide publicity scam.

Golly, I feel like the villainous fairground operator who is unmasked at the end of each episode of Scooby Doo...

I don't know why I even feigned interest - I'm never diving again after my 6m near-death experience. The royalty from this book won't even nearly make up for it.

emil.y: of course you may submit without blurbs. I've got lots now. One or two chaps made a huge effort - I'm sure they'd be honoured to have you freeloading on their coattails.

Okay, sent.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y126/paradorlounge/9780330452236-01.jpg

10. Don DeLillo - Falling Man
(no votes, no points)

Virginia Plain: Jun 1, 2007
"I'm almost through with Delillo's Falling Man--it's much better than I thought it would be."

jaymc: May 8, 2008
"I liked Falling Man better than the last two, but that ain't saying much."

9. Henry Kissinger - Does America Need A Foreign Policy? (2001)
(no votes, no points)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Henry_and_Nancy_Kissinger.jpg/180px-Henry_and_Nancy_Kissinger.jpg

I wouldn't invite either over for dinner. I'd rather grudgingly have a drink with Kissinger though. He had some tiny amount of charm.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:10 AM (5 years ago)

If I had one bullet and couldn't line them both up together, Kissinger just about gets the nod because he liked football was the monkey, not the organ grinder.
― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, February 25, 2004 10:30 AM (5 years ago)

As for the question Kissinger was way funnier and inspired Dr. Strangelove. But he's still the evillest.
― Sym (shmuel), Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:59 AM (5 years ago)

The surprising thing about that one is that the answer is 'No'.

8. Martin Amis - Yellow Dog (2003)
(no points, no votes)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HZc7gUUMY0c/R0UP4X4YJ-I/AAAAAAAAAlg/B367xiys9iU/s400/dr_martin_amis.jpg

I have started reading Yellow Dog by Martin Amis. At first I thought it was absolutely appalling, just so inaccurately observed & clumsy & showily pompous. Then I started wondering what I'd make of this if it were by no-one in particular and I thought well dammit there's a good bit of life there and british fiction could do with more stupid caricatures and ott sentences. I'm now about 60pp in and enjoying it. It's not like actual lols, but it rolls along entertainingly. Been a while since I read any Amis (my teen fave) fiction - maybe I've been missing it.

one of Amis's weaknesses is that he isn't content to be a good writer, he wants to be profound; the drawback to profundity is that it's like being funny, either you are or you aren't, straining doesn't help). This ache for gravitas has led to much of Amis's weaker work: Time's Arrow and his writing on nuclear war (it's horrible, isn't it?).

So, so OTM from Fischer. I was trying to put my finger on it while reading Yellow Dog, but ended up on the parallel problem: he wants to be Bellow or Roth or Updike or some humane giant, but he's absolutely not equipped to be. I think he'd also like to have fled a tyrannical regime at some point.

― Parenthetic hound (woofwoofwoof), Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:43 AM (2 weeks ago)

To wrap up the voting, this is just a dry run to get the format right. These are some of the books that won't be troubling our final countdown.

7. Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
(no points, no votes)

http://bluespriite.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/book-cover_bb.jpg

Not that it really matters, but if they had been nominated (or if I had actually bothered to nominate something) I would have voted for these as well as the few that I did vote for:
...
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
...
and probably some others...
― Home Taping Is Killing Muzak (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Friday, January 8, 2010 9:54 AM (3 days ago)

I was surprised nobody nominated the Bryson one. I've read one or two of his non-travel books, and they've been excellent.
― Ismael Klata, Friday, January 8, 2010 3:48 PM (3 days ago)

I remember not caring for it very much, but I don't remember specifically why.
― girl moves (Abbott), Friday, January 8, 2010 5:56 PM (3 days ago)

6. Oracle Night - Paul Auster
(no points, no votes)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rg7l1SsAh0Q/So0sWoEjRxI/AAAAAAAABP0/TlnFt1i9vZs/s200/Paul+Auster+-+Oracle+Night.jpg

I haven't read his latest, but the one before, Oracle Nights, was poor. Tired sloppy writing ridden with cliché, stereotypes rather than chartacters, unfunny wisecracks, lumpy plot, yet another outing for lone, existential NY writer protagonist-cum-alter ego etc etc. (and yet I guess ultimately readable, since I did finish it).
― Revivalist (Revivalist), Wednesday, October 11, 2006 10:17 AM (3 years ago)

I loved "The Music of Chance", I also read "Oracle Night" tho which I thought was pretty crap.
― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, November 8, 2006 6:34 PM (3 years ago)

James Wood rips Auster another one:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/30/091130crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all
I always thought I didn't have much time for Wood as a critic but I have to say I agree absolutely with him here. Auster gets away with murder.
― Zelda Zonk, Wednesday, November 25, 2009 3:50 PM (1 month ago)

5. John Lennon - Philip Norman (2009)
(no points, no votes)

http://img.skysports.com/08/01/218x298/Aaron_Lennon_629622.jpg

So, is the forthcoming Philip Norman book the "lives of John Lennon it's ok to discuss now"?
― Mark G, Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:12 PM (1 year ago)

Solid and comprehensive bio, readable enough, but I doubt anyone would consider it literature. I was long ago forced to accept that Lennon, a childhood hero for me, was not a particularly nice man. All the same, some of this tarnished my opinion of him still further, which made it a mildly depressing read.
― frankiemachine, Wednesday, January 14, 2009 6:52 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark

4. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson (2008)
(no points, no votes)

http://leisurelylady.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo.jpg

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? (I read that one actually, it was decent but kinda weird. Like two separate books ... a corporate techno-thriller with a Silence of the Lambs grisly detective story sandwiched in the middle.)
― dmr, Saturday, January 9, 2010 6:17 PM (2 days ago)

Have twice tried to start "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," but both times glazed over after only a few pages. Is there a point at which it gets better?
― Hey Jude, Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:03 PM (2 months ago)

Daar kun je eventueel nog Millennium Part 1 voorzetten, naar de detectivereeks waarop dit gebaseerd is. In Amerika heet de film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, deze professioneel hacker gespeeld door Noomi Rapace is inderdaad wel het meest opvallend aan de film. Eerst nog even zeiken, de meid wordt geintroduceerd als stoere lesbo, maar later krijgt ze dan alsnog wat met het andere hoofdpersonage gespeeld door Michael Nyqvist.
― Ludo, Monday, November 9, 2009 8:17 AM (2 months ago)

3. London A to Z (2001 edition)
(no points, no votes)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511BCYYAFML._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I'm not kidding when I say that I've probably got more out of reading this book than any other.

2. Ravelstein - Saul Bellow
(no points, no votes)

http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ravelstein3-96x150.jpg

I think Ravelstein is a great place to start. Straightforward, clear and pretty concise, but wonderful nonetheless.
― M Carty (mj_c), Monday, September 8, 2003 10:12 AM (6 years ago)

1. Sinai Diving Guide - Alberto Siliotti (2005)
(231 points, 1 vote)

http://www.duikboeken.nl/contents/media/t_alberto_siliotti_sinai_diving_guide.jpg

O man I have totally fallen for this Ismael/Redray sock diving guide publicity scam.
― Parenthetic hound (woofwoofwoof), Monday, January 11, 2010 4:37 PM (5 hours ago)

Okay, I think I've got it now. To bed I go. Voting closes at midnight your time - since I can't tell what that is, I'll leave it open until the whole planet has passed into Tuesday. All votes welcome!

In case we do have any last-minute entrants, here are the rules:

1. look at the nominations list
2. pick your favourites - you can vote for up to twenty
3. mark your #1
4. indicate whether you want the rest of your list to be ordered or unordered (ordered are ranked on a set scale from 40 down to 3; in an unordered list everything scores 11, with your #1 scoring double)
5. email your ballot to ismaelklata (at) googlemail (dot) com

Haha! I can't believe my 'comment' (re: Bill Bryson) merits a blurb.

That fake rundown made me laugh pretty hard.

My ballot has been sent.

Voting is now closed - I'll get counting & verifying later today. I've picked a bad week to get busy, so while I'd like to start the countdown tonight it might have to wait a day or two to get the results thread up.

Thanks to all the (I think) 39 of you who voted!

I look forward to the coronation of the Sinai Diving Guide in due course.