Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1996

read five of these and don't want to vote for any of them

I remember The Beach being both enchanting in its depiction of an island paradise and harrowing as this turns into hell. Nb read this when I was like 16.

Game oF Thrones has huge amounts of baggage now but gotta say those books were addictive as fuck when I listened to them as audiobooks while playing Civ. Read by Roy Dotrice, and since he's passed on even if GRRM ends up finishing the series "my" song of ice and fire will always remain incomplete.

I've only read "Infinite Jest".

there's just so much jest in that book

read five of these and will vote for one of them

There are a bunch of these I’d like to read eventually, but voted for the option that will be seen (frankly) as very Basic Bro.

Yeah, thinking about it I'm going to go with The Beach, really captures a world I've known in a way nothing else really does, the first half at least.

Excession is next up in my Banks rereading project (currently running at 1 a year).

None of these really leaping out at me. I had fun with the Poppy Z. Brite back in the day so might go for that.

Embarrassing admission: I only just realised Poppy Z. Brite is a man.
Excession for me, but nothing here is top-drawer. I probably read the Pelecanos about 20 years ago. I have never read and will never read Infinite Jest.

Infinite Jest, happily, recently picked up a copy for a re-red.

The Beach by Alex Garland
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell - Catholics in Spaaaace!
253 by Geoff Ryman - "originally created as a website"
Excession by Iain M. Banks
Naive. Super by Erlend Loe
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk

My copy of The Beach was misbound, leading to a confusing reading experience - after jumping off the cliff it cut to the food poisoning bit, to me it seemed like they blacked out on hitting the water and woke up disoriented and sick through concussion, but who were all these other characters who our protagonists seemed to know already?

Tokarczuk is my new favourite author but voting Excession as probably the best Culture novel.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

lol that the two I've read are Cocaine Nights and, er, Bridget Jones' Diary. I read the latter in response to "you can't just dismiss something if you haven't read it", and it was even worse than I was expecting it to be, so eh, that lesson was not learnt. I remember the Ballard as being pretty poor, though, so not sure I want to vote for that one either.

alias grace is one of atwood's better novels.

The Debt to Pleasure is actually pretty good, don't hate me for saying so. I'm going Ballard, a good example of his late style.

I'd like to save my vote so can I have two for 1997?

All the great authors wrote Britpop songs instead.

i am gonna vote for the book that's gonna win

rereading infinite jest a few years ago was very frustrating and uneven and made me reflect a lot about what we expect from our white dude masterpieces but when i got to the last twenty or so pages i was like "yeah this is still like fucking incredible"

Those last twenty pages are woah

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Lanchester robbed. Is Fight Club off the cultural agenda nowadays?

i appreciate fight club for being gay as hell but i hate reading palahniuk's writing

Expected enough backlash for it not to come anywhere close to winning but I'll admit I didn't expect it to straight up get zero votes.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1997