Fifty Nifty Books: your favorites?

Fifty is too many--it's more fun to try to narrow it down to ten, or even five. (Under five, no way.)

Didn't we already have a thread to narrow it down to 3?

I apologize--I tried to find the other thread and couldn't. Slowlearner asked for a list of fifty. There WAS a fifty thread once, wasn't there? I didn't post anything on it at the time.

ANYWAY....

Any list of poetry titles should probably include Dylan Thomas. And many of my favorite books are collections of short stories. Science fictions writers can usually sustain a gripping narative in shorter format without lapsing into dry, explanatory dialog. Joyce's best work can be found in Dubliners. Hemmingway consistantly hit his mark in the Nick Carter stories. I defy anybody to find a more rewarding volume than Great Russian Short Stories where one confronts top notch writing and compelling yarns of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and more.

I endorse pepektheassasin's choice of anything Bradbury. My favorite one on his list - The Martian Chronicles is basically a group of short stories with a single theme. The Illustrated Man is similarly an amalgamation of linked stories. Dandelion Wine is a series of vignettes from Bradbury's childhood.

Ouch! I MEANT to include Dylan Thomas. He is absolutely the BEST! (When I was 17 0r 18 I intended to memorize ALL his poems--didn't quite make it.) I love "Under Milkwood," and his short stories as well. Also James Joyce's "Dubliners" can't be beat. And yes, I think that Great Russian Short Stories are fine reading.

Okay, fifty works of prose fiction I love totally (some cheating in here, but who cares?)(and I'm inclined not to list 20 by Dick and 20 by Wodehouse and so on, to get some variety in here, so I've stuck with only one by any author, except for the cheating):
A Thousand Nights And A Night, or whatever you like to call it
Jane Austen - Pride And Prejudice
Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy
J.G. Ballard - High-Rise
John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy
Donald Barthelme - Sixty Stories
Samuel Beckett - trilogy
Lawrence Block - the Chip Harrison omnibus
Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
James M. Cain - Double Indemnity
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Arthur C. Clarke - The City And The Stars
Michael Coney - The Celestial Steam Locomotive
Susan Cooper - The Dark Is Rising (series)
Robert Coover - Spanking The Maid
Samuel Delany - Dhalgren
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime And Punishment
Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Steve Erickson - Arc d'X
Mick Farren - The Song Of Phaid The Gambler
William Faulkner - The Sound And The Fury
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Anatole France - The Revolt Of The Angels
Max Frisch - Homo Faber
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez - One Hundred Years Of Solitude
Alan Garner - Red Shift
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Charles Harness - The Rose
M. John Harrison - Viriconium series
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
Stefan Heym - The Wandering Jew
Chester Himes - Blind Man With A Pistol
Alice Hoffman - Seventh Heaven
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
James Joyce - Ulysses
Yashar Kemal - Memed, My Hawk
A.L. Kennedy - Everything You Need
Damon Knight - The Man In The Tree
Ursula LeGuin - The Left Hand Of Darkness
Stanislaw Lem - Tales Of Pirx The Pilot
Primo Levi - If This Is A Man (not actually fiction, but who cares?)
Carson McCullers - The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove tetralogy
China Mieville - The Scar
Yukio Mishima - tetralogy
Joyce Carol Oates - Black Water
Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood
Georges Perec - A Void
Marcel Proust - A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials trilogy
Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon
Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume
Leone Ross - Orange Laughter (an ex of mine, but this really is great)
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia
Muriel Spark - Not To Disturb
Richard Stark - Slayground
Lawrence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Jim Thompson - The Getaway
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
John Updike - Rabbit tetralogy
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Time Of The Hero
Donald Westlake (another cheat) - Bank Shot
Patrick White - Voss
Oscar Wilde - The Picture Of Dorian Gray
P.G. Wodehouse - any Blandings novel
Emile Zola - The Beast In Man

Okay, that's more than 50, but I can hardly bear to edit it. If I did I would be inclined to take out those that everyone here knows are great ("You think Proust and Dostoyevsky are worth reading, Martin? Gosh") but that would then not stand as some sort of list of favourites by me, so I'll let it go.

Also: some series that are always terrific that don't get a mention above: R.K. Narayan's Malgudi books, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct (early ones are best), Wodehouse's Jeeves of course, James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels, Andrew Vachss' Burke novels, all of Block's series characters, Chandler's Marlowe stories, Le Guin's Earthsea series.

do you love 'everything you need', martin?

Indeed - did you not see my review on FT (in the last couple of weeks)? I should thank you, because I'm not absolutely sure if I would have read any more by her after my rather tepid reaction to the first I read - I think your enthusiasm might have tipped the balance.

I think that 'so I am glad' is her best work. I think I've read them all now except 'now that you're back' and mysteriously own two copies of 'everything you need' (??).

Have you read Perec outside of "A Void"?

Also: "Mason & Dixon" for Pynchon, eh? I'm not a huge Pynchon fan -- "Lot 49" was the only one I finished, and I only got maybe 2/3 the way through "M&D" -- but I might agree with you about this being his most interesting. (Although at the same time I wouldn't include any Pynchon, personally.) (But you've read my list for Cozen and saw that I didn't suggest he read any, so.)

I've read the pynchon guy.

I don't think I should compile one of these lists.

I might though.

You should wait until you're an old fart.

21 Things You Might Not Have Read and I Have

1. D. Paterson, "Nil Nil"
A. L. Kennedy, "So I am Glad"
M. Sinker, "The Rise & SPRAWL of HORRIBLE Noise"
R. Barthes, "A Barthes Reader"
5. M. Foucault, "Governmentality"
W. Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library"
C. Portis, "The Dog of The South"
R. Yates, "Revolutionary Road"
L. Farmer, "The Obsession With Definition"
10. L. Moore, "Birds of America"
P. Larkin, "High Windows"
P. Farley, "The Boy From the Chemist Is Here to See You"
J. Rhys, "Good Morning, Midnight"
J. Galloway, "Blood"
15. F. Spufford, "I May Be Some Time"
P. Morley, "A Salmon Screams"
Deleuze & Guattari, "Nomadology"
Francis Ponge, "Selected Poems"
20. D. Young, "Skid"
Hardt & Negri, "Empire"

Criteria for getting on the arbitrary 21 for this week was the ability to provide me with the thrill of special-like... like, all gushy fanlike, like... [finish it yourself; one word.]

I have Now That You're Back on my shelf, to get to some time. I've read a couple of other Perecs - I nearly put Life: A User's Manual instead. Also, I hesitated over M&D or GR for Pynchon, but I think I enjoyed the former a bit more.

Yes, my waiting until I was an old fart was a good move. I've been hanging around here for 20 years wanting to post such a list, but I had to wait until I hit 45, obviously.

I haven't read any of Cozen's books (though someone has been trying to push L. Moore on me for years). I've never even heard of "Governmentality".

some are essays, not books.

some articles, some short stories, one manifesto.

I recommend Lorrie Moore too - again, I wrote about her on Freaky Trigger some months ago, after recommendations from Jerry The Nipper and The Pinefox.

"Birds Of America" was the book Sedaris was pimping on his last book tour. I felt ultra-cool because I'd already read and loved it.

The Benjamin has a great title.

I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am.

also, as a counterpart, or an anxiety visited invisible, people should read r. meltzer's vom, cum, and all rail against his library, his record collection, peeling each record that ever loved him from his shelf and shouting. it's called 'vinyl reckoning' and is available online. (google.)

I was just talking with friends who are staying with us about how they get nostalgiac while packing whereas I get nostalgiac while unpacking, since unpacking requires you to "find a place" for this object. I suppose better packing also requires that but we are not better packers. Anyway to "find a place" for something you need to understand it, and to understand it you need to be reacquainted with it, you need to touch it, you need to interact with this object which has spent the last year on a shelf.

I'm looking forward to unpacking.

vinyl reckoning.

pepektheassassin -- thank you! I've been away on vacation and internetless and am so happy to see your posting now that I'm home.

The reason I asked you to add your 50 is because you have many times mentioned books that I like very much, so I selfishly hoped to clue into other books for me to read by studying your library. Kind of like being able to browse the shelves of a friend with very good taste, eh? So, now, I want to read Chance in the House of Fate... and Things Invisible to See.. and that Willard & Yolen book of poems sure looks good...and...(greedily stuffing books in her knapsack and looking around for a cup of coffee and a hidden, quiet spot to read)

anyway thanks for the recommendations, many are new to me.

p.s. some of the books / authors you mention are also my favorites: Up Country (I love Woodchuck), Dillard of course, Eiseley, T. T. Williams.

fifty is too much!

1.firbank - vainglory
2.eric de kuyper - dag stoel naast de tafel (flemish novelist essays on everyday life)
3.petronius - satyricon
4.couperus - noodlot (dutch novel abt a decadent "menage a trois" with homo-erotic undertones, written in 1890)
5.hanlo - go to the mosk (dutch poet's account of a holiday in tangier)