10: Ulysses – James JoyceRead it while being in ireland, so did a bit of the route of the day, i personally think it is more of a riddle than a book, but it was a great experience battling with it, especially if you've got a good annotated edition..
It really is an experiment what you can do with the artform, as craig says.. SA, i don't agree with that being an enjoyable read is the sole purpose of a novel, it may challenge you, but has to manage expectations, i mean everybody who starts Joice 102 years after Bloomsday should know by know what to expect, shouldn't he?
9: Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkienagree here, mostly, liked 'the Hobbit', but this was something i can appreciate grandness of, but it didn't really do it for me.. and the films were 2 hours too long each.
8: For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingwayliked it, but not too impressed.. i was dating a catalan girl at the time, and it was a good start to talk with her about the spanish civil war. Talking about that war with spaniards is an immense taboo, they haven't even begon coming to terms with it (anyone ever seen franco's large tomb in a mountain, it's very scary)
7: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu – Marcel ProustEvery sentence is a feast that makes you happy. Every analogy makes you dream. Every recollection makes you think. The booklet i have called "How Proust changed my life" might have overstated it a bit, but it is one of the books that can reach everyone of your senses, the biscuits are just the most known example..
6: The Dice Man – Luke Reinhart5: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson4: The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolffnever heard of
3: War and Peace – Leo Tolstoythink i would go see the movie, but i scared away from it, read some other stuff by him, and basically he's isn't a patch on Dostoevsky, whose Crime and Punishment is about the best book i've ever read (my son isn't called Jens Fjodor Lindeman for nothing). Everyone should experience russian literiature though, it is rather unique and does away with the notion that humans are rational beings, dead souls by Gogol is another prime example of this
2: The Iliad -- HomerThe very idea that you are somehow culturally incomplete without knowledge of Homer is ridiculous. No it isn't. Homer laid down all fundamentals of novels and poems. Many obscure references relate to him. You need him, even you find him boring (hey, i did classic greek high school, may i defend my self.. andrai moi ennepe, pollutropon hos mala.....)
1: Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austenagree here, that whole austin and bronte ouevre are not that much more than school girl novels.
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto EcoRead it both in Dutch and in Italian, which showed that the dutch translation is rather poor. E.g. there is a whole chapter which revolves around Trombare.. in Italian both meaning making music and south-italian (Barese) slang for f*cking. The Dutch translation manages to miss that completely (And I do wonder about the English translations, some languages just don't translate to each other well, and things I read in Italian, and then saw some English translation of (Dante, e.g.(would have expected him on this list, as I don't expect the writer of this article to get him), but as prime
example Dino Buzzatti's Giro, which I couldn't find in either Italian or Dutch, and ordered the English version, with every drop of soul removed (that it was about Cycling probably didn't help either ))
Eco's novels are mountains to climb culturally at times, but he doesn't do it to show of. if you compare him with the work of Mulish (a dutch writer whose Discovery of Heaven (filmed with steven Fry as lead actor), can be likened as a mix between Ulysses and the Pendulum), you see he really has built a house, where you can find something new in every room.
Cloud Atlas by whoever it was who wrote it. It's just a collection of short stories split in two and not very good ones.
no discussion here
Atomised by Michel Houillebecq or however you spell his name. Fucking shit with a capital S.
I loved
Particules Elementaires (Elementary particles?), as it really was a beautiful mirror for my dad's generation, but later on he became a bit of an angry frustrated man
Cien años de soledad - Garcia Marquez
Forgot the english title, but if you ever go to South America, please read it, novels like this, but also Jorge Amado's Gabriela, Cloves and Cinamon, are essential to get under the skin of south americans. Of course, nothing much happens, but understanding how that works here, makes you realise what Mañana really means..,read
here for example