Pale Fire, Nabokov Nostromo, Conrad Under Milk Wood, Thomas At-Swim-Two-Birds, O'Brien Catch-22, Heller Bleak House, Dickens
I know that's six but I couldn't decide which to leave out. I'd just have to roll a die and let one go at random. (Unless it came out as Pale Fire, in which case I'd roll again.)
Posts: 1606 | From: John McGlynn's bouncy army | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Six for me as well, although in an air balloon and shark infested water scenario one would have to be first out of the basket.
Crime And Punishment-Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Blue Hammer-Ross McDonald. Maltese Falcon-Dashiell Hamnet. The Big Sleep-Raymond Chandler. Swag-Elmore Leonard. The World Cup Murder-Pele(with Herbert Resnicow)
Posts: 1754 | From: The Magic Carpet. | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
So five novels, yeah? Because otherwise it would all have to be Latin poetry.
1. The Seducer by Jan Kjaerstad 2. Can I please have The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. I think it counts. 3. The Good Apprentice, Iris Murdoch 4. The End of the Affair, Graham Greene 5. The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
Things that are already 'classic'. Again forgetting Greek and Latin
1. Madame Bovary 2. Villette 3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 4. Middlemarch 5. Moby-dick
Novel sequences/series
1. Alms for Oblivion/The First Born of Egypt by Simon Raven 2. The Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian 3. The Dalziel and Pascoe series by Reginald Hill 4. The Earthsea novels by Ursula le Guin 5. The Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke
can I also just say that I HATE the Great Gatsby. Urgh. Hate it.
Posts: 2387 | From: Arcadia | Registered: Aug 2006
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevski 1984 by George Orwell
Posts: 995 | From: my Valladolid exile | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:1. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez <...chin trembling, defiantly...>. 2. Immortality - Milan Kundera 3. Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin 4. The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway 5. At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
Now;
quote:1.Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov 2.Ill Seen, Ill Said - Samuel Beckett 3.The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood 4.At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien 5.Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End Of The World - Haruki Murakami
Darkmans is pretty close, but I'd need to read it again. And I'm not sure #s one and two are in the right order.
Posts: 17027 | From: your gaff, nicking stuff. | Registered: Oct 2002
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Well, HBWATEOTW is my favourite Murakami, rather than the best.
Posts: 17027 | From: your gaff, nicking stuff. | Registered: Oct 2002
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Yeah but one of them is George Eliot, who's an honorary man on the grounds of actually being good.
Posts: 1606 | From: John McGlynn's bouncy army | Registered: Sep 2006
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Yep. Superb writer. Oryx and Crake is the book Michel Houllebecq wishes he could write, without the cuntishness.
Definitely check out The Blind Assassin; she spends four hundred pages basically telling you what the twist is going to be, and it's so breathtakingly audiacious when it happens that you are nevertheless shocked by it.
Posts: 17027 | From: your gaff, nicking stuff. | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
Oryx and Crake happens to be the only one of hers I've read. And I suppose you might say it was a little bit like that one of Houllebecq's that I can't even remember the name of.
Both of them were okay, without doing much for me. (Though they were both spoiled a bit by rather crass scientific gaffes.)
You have managed to make The Blind Assassin sound sort of intriguing there, though.
posted
duncan - why do you include around the world in 80 days?
the only atwood i've read is surfacing. it's the kind of book that can put you off an author for life. all i remember about it is the crashing boredom that enveloped me and made me wish i was at the bottom of one of those unsullied canadian lakes with water weeds wound tightly around my neck.
Posts: 13290 | From: murphyia | Registered: May 2002
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posted
having said that, surfacing is one of her first novels. i suppose what i am doing is a bit like someone dismissing philip roth because they didn't like when she was good. maybe i will try the blind assassin...
Posts: 13290 | From: murphyia | Registered: May 2002
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