Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Let's call it 43 Best Books for now

-- that way we can shoehorn a poetry collection and a translation into the mix, okay? Okay.

I'm sure I'll think of more, so this isn't final (I'm still reaching for 100). And I'm not going to rank them, just list them, with five exceptions:

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. This gets my vote as #1.

Collected Poems/Selected Poems, by WH Auden. This is a tie for #2, so it takes up two slots. You have to get both, because there's stuff in Selected (like "September 1, 1939") that's not in Collected. Don't ask.

Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable) by Samuel Beckett. #4. I'm counting this as one novel instead of three separate novels because it's my list, so it's my rules.

The Public Burning by Robert Coover. #5.

Here's the other 38 in no particular order:

HERZOG by Saul Bellow
THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 by George Orwell
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut
NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs

THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo
THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY by Robertson Davies

THE ROBBER BRIDE by Margaret Atwood
BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien

THE CREAM OF THE JEST by James Branch Cabell
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John le Carrè
BURR by Gore Vidal

THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler

HERLAND, THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER AND SELECTED WRITINGS by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER by William Styron

JOY IN THE MORNING by PG Wodehouse
THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG by Norman Mailer
THE PAINTED BIRD by Jerzy Kozinski
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett
THE GREEK PASSION by Nikos Kazantzakis
THE GOLDEN SPUR by Dawn Powell
THE HEARTS AND LIVES OF MEN by Fay Weldon
MATING by Norman Rush
ANY HUMAN HEART by William Boyd

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