Seeking out the best books

[_Blixa]

In no particular order some of my all time favorite things, mostly fiction, all prose:

Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Nana (Zola)
Cruddy (Lynda Barry)
Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
Shot in the Heart (Mikal Gilmore)
The Executioner's Song (Mailer)
Catch-22 (Heller)
The Weather in the Streets (Rosamond Lehmann)
Close to the Knives (David Wojnarowicz)
The Great War in Modern Memory (Paul Fussell)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
Lolita (Nabakov)
Babouk (Guy Endore)
Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh)
In Cold Blood (Capote)
The Last Tycoon (Fitzgerald)
The Mandarins (Simone deBeauvoir)
No Man Knows My History (Brodie)
Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto)
The Sea of Fertility (Yukio Mishima)
Hard Rain (Ariel Dorfman)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
Minima Moralia (Adorno)
Orlando (Virgina Woolf)
House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
My Year of Meats (Ruth Ozeki)
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (Sei Shonagon)
The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
Kingsblood Royal (Sinclair Lewis)
Every Day is Mother's Day (Hilary Mantel)
The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)


anyway, I just listed some of the things I've read over and over and over and over again....

[_Morley]

WHAAAAAAAT??????

I'm going to read it again tonight just to spite you.

(as Flaubert said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi.")

Try Zola's, Nana.

Agh, it certainly wasn't me.

I just downloaded Nana to my Kindle. I have about more than 60 hours of air travel starting next week. I hope Nana will help to sooth my troubled brow.


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Tribute.[/quote]

[_Blixa]

WHAAAAAAAT??????

I'm going to read it again tonight just to spite you.

(as Flaubert said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi.")

Try Zola's, Nana.

Agh, it certainly wasn't me.

I just downloaded Nana to my Kindle. I have about more than 60 hours of air travel starting next week. I hope Nana will help to sooth my troubled brow.

I hope you find it as compelling as I have, despite the crappy ending (that is also a good ending, but probably not in the sense Zola meant).

Madame Bovary though, who hasn't turned to light novels to help assuage the third best life we are so often handed? Who hasn't dreamed?

(and I'm leaving out mention of the marvelous cast of secondary characters.)

[Guest]

In no particular order some of my all time favorite things, mostly fiction, all prose:

Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Nana (Zola)
Cruddy (Lynda Barry)
Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
Shot in the Heart (Mikal Gilmore)
The Executioner's Song (Mailer)
Catch-22 (Heller)
The Weather in the Streets (Rosamond Lehmann)
Close to the Knives (David Wojnarowicz)
The Great War in Modern Memory (Paul Fussell)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
Lolita (Nabakov)
Babouk (Guy Endore)
Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh)
In Cold Blood (Capote)
The Last Tycoon (Fitzgerald)
The Mandarins (Simone deBeauvoir)
No Man Knows My History (Brodie)
Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto)
The Sea of Fertility (Yukio Mishima)
Hard Rain (Ariel Dorfman)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
Minima Moralia (Adorno)
Orlando (Virgina Woolf)
House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
My Year of Meats (Ruth Ozeki)
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (Sei Shonagon)
The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
Kingsblood Royal (Sinclair Lewis)
Every Day is Mother's Day (Hilary Mantel)
The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)


anyway, I just listed some of the things I've read over and over and over and over again....

Wow. A good and varied list. I've only heard of about half of them (and about two thirds of the authors). I've only read eleven--but of that eleven some would be on my favorites list, too.

A few there surprise me. Not surprised at Woolf or Wharton or Hardy. They'd be on any English professor's list. Mailer, Brodie, Heller, and Capote seem a little more unusual. But excellent. (Though I think Brodie only got better with time and Mailer only got worse.)

I like this list and am copying it. Thanks, Blixa.



edit: I've always had a soft spot for Woolf. Her essay, How to Read a Book, changed my reading life when I was about fourteen.


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Tribute.

[_zeezrom]

Blixa,

Which M. Bovary would you choose?

This http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102368/

or this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041615/

?

[_Blixa]

....Mailer only got worse.

I totally agree. What a waste, too. The Naked and the Dead is also very good. I suspect The Executioner's Song is much more of a collaborative work than is generally acknowledged, too. I love it for its connection to my youth (I met Mailer while he was researching it and I also worked with Amnesty International during the Gilmore execution), its amazing ability to really get Utah culture, and its wonderful use of "free indirect discourse."

(by the way, last Spring Mailer's Brooklyn Heights apartment was up for sale---and potentially all the possessions in it! I came very close to calling the rental agent for a tour, but just couldn't do it. I think because I'd be so sad I couldn't buy the whole thing. But what a wonderful place.

I've always had a soft spot for Woolf. Her essay, How to Read a Book, changed my reading life when I was about fourteen.

The Common Reader series is great. And actually, A Room of One's Own is likely my very favorite Woolf; I didn't think of it for the list because I was trying to just come up with fiction (even though I added a few nonfiction things). I don't often teach books I really, really, really love. I have no patience for hearing what yahoos say about those few things that have saved my life and made it worth living. But, A Room of One's Own is something I don't mind teaching. (The difference is probably that I only use it in classes where there is likely to be a dearth of yahoos).

[_Blixa]

Blixa,

Which M. Bovary would you choose?

This http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102368/

or this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041615/

?

This one. Francesca Annis.

[_Morley]

The Common Reader series is great. And actually, A Room of One's Own is likely my very favorite Woolf; I didn't think of it for the list because I was trying to just come up with fiction (even though I added a few nonfiction things). I don't often teach books I really, really, really love. I have no patience for hearing what yahoos say about those few things that have saved my life and made it worth living. But, A Room of One's Own is something I don't mind teaching. (The difference is probably that I only use it in classes where there is likely to be a dearth of yahoos).

God, I love this: "about those few things that have saved my life and made it worth living." For me it's so word-for-word and syllable-for-syllable true.

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Tribute.

[_Blixa]

I'm prepping this weekend for the beginning of my Detective Fiction course, so I was reminded of Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwal's excellent "Martin Beck" series of detective novels. I've never taught any of them because 1) I would have to spend too much time laying out background about Sweden and 2) you really need to read the whole series to get a sense of how politically unusual they are. (Yes, I know Stieg Larsson's works are popular, but please.)

[_hans castorp]

last Spring Mailer's Brooklyn Heights apartment was up for sale[/url]---and potentially all the possessions in it! I came very close to calling the rental agent for a tour, but just couldn't do it. I think because I'd be so sad I couldn't buy the whole thing. But what a wonderful place.

I used to live around the corner from Mailer (in a cheap, tiny studio apartment, in case you get any ideas). It was fun to see him browsing the porno tapes at the video store, taking bites from a Goldberg's Peanut Chew, or reading the racing page of the Daily News on the subway. Never did talk to him, though. I liked some of his old Esquire columns, but in the main I find him unreadable.