Books: Your top-25 books

[WhiskeySeven*]

That is probably the best book I have ever read. It's a masterpiece into the mind of evil. It didn't have a single redeeming character. I know they have tried to make it into a movie and couldn't.

I am surprised it's on a list because of all the arcane words, most dense language I have ever read, and the lack of redeeming characters, even though it was written in such rich detail and has some quotes that are just off the charts awesome.

The Judge, should go down as one of the greatest villains ever written. If they can ever figure out how to write a workable script, I can't imagine how chilling it would be to see him come to life on the big screen.

I just finished reading Blood Meridian last night and I truly don't find the appeal. It's so tedious to read, and the plot is meandering and aimless.

The language isn't dense (for instance, in the way Heart of Darkness is dense) but just meandering and all over the place. How many times does he describe the mountains in the distance, and the flowers, and rocks, and all this other minutiae? We get it Cormac, they're in the desert. You've described this desert a few times, we get it. Nothing's changed, the desert hasn't changed, the character's haven't changed - why don't you spend some more time telling us what these characters are up to?

They live together and camp and hunt and die together and we barely witness any interaction between 'em... but have to endure ~200 pages of description of mud houses and adobe houses and desert flowers and all these other things that, at some point, don't even set the scene but distract from it.

The Judge is the most meme character I've come across. He's the embodiment of evil in man, he's the devil, he's lucifer - yeah, we get it. He does everything, can speak everything, knows everything, so it's plainly obvious (to the reader) when he says things like "That which exists without my knowledge, exists without my permission." - holy crap Cormac, we get it! He's a seven foot tall, entirely hairless, often naked monster of a man... so he's a inhuman looking beast. Wow so subtle.

You have to capture the spirit of the original. You can't just write a simple version of it. Ultimately, the words he uses not only have to further the story, but carry similar connotations. The book is what it is. And it's fiction, not non fiction. It doesn't need to be able to explain.

Lolita was written in English and is often considered as one of the best examples of quality prose. Nabokov's word choices, his sentence structure, his tone and voice - damn near perfect for what he set out to do.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I just finished reading Blood Meridian last night and I truly don't find the appeal. It's so tedious to read, and the plot is meandering and aimless.

The language isn't dense (for instance, in the way Heart of Darkness is dense) but just meandering and all over the place. How many times does he describe the mountains in the distance, and the flowers, and rocks, and all this other minutiae? We get it Cormac, they're in the desert. You've described this desert a few times, we get it. Nothing's changed, the desert hasn't changed, the character's haven't changed - why don't you spend some more time telling us what these characters are up to?

They live together and camp and hunt and die together and we barely witness any interaction between 'em... but have to endure ~200 pages of description of mud houses and adobe houses and desert flowers and all these other things that, at some point, don't even set the scene but distract from it.

The Judge is the most meme character I've come across. He's the embodiment of evil in man, he's the devil, he's lucifer - yeah, we get it. He does everything, can speak everything, knows everything, so it's plainly obvious (to the reader) when he says things like "That which exists without my knowledge, exists without my permission." - holy crap Cormac, we get it! He's a seven foot tall, entirely hairless, often naked monster of a man... so he's a inhuman looking beast. Wow so subtle.


Lolita was written in English and is often considered as one of the best examples of quality prose. Nabokov's word choices, his sentence structure, his tone and voice - damn near perfect for what he set out to do.

Although a bit excessive, I found McCarthy's descriptions of the desert was more enthralling then Nabokov's description of the American mountainside.

 

[Saturated Fats]

With Lolita, the word choice is Nabokov's way of making Humbert out to be, to quote invictus, an intellectual bunch of asterisks.

He spends the novel trying to justify his illicit sexual desires to the reader... and among the tactics he uses is over-inflating his stance as an intellectual. If you believe he's a learned intellectual based on the sheer mass of his vocabulary, you may begin to think that what he's doing with Dolores is more than just lurid, primal instinct - even acceptable. It's one of the many reasons the novel is the level of genius it is.

[/UniversityLitLesson]

 

[Spring in Fialta]

With Lolita, the word choice is Nabokov's way of making Humbert out to be, to quote invictus, an intellectual bunch of asterisks.

He spends the novel trying to justify his illicit sexual desires to the reader... and among the tactics he uses is over-inflating his stance as an intellectual. If you believe he's a learned intellectual based on the sheer mass of his vocabulary, you may begin to think that what he's doing with Dolores is more than just lurid, primal instinct - even acceptable. It's one of the many reasons the novel is the level of genius it is.

[/UniversityLitLesson]

Yeah, that's how I justified as well in my earlier posts. It still makes for a more tedious read though, I found. Although I still found it an excellent book, his obsession with Lolita was enthralling and his prose at certain points, particularly when he's explaining his lust for nymphets in general knocks you on your ass to the point where you can read the same passage 2-3 times.

 

[Ceremony]

I just finished reading Blood Meridian last night ... word choices, his sentence structure, his tone and voice - damn near perfect for what he set out to do.

This is about my assessment too. Although I'd need to read it another few times to get everything out of it.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Agreed ^

Here's a cool interview of Harold Bloom talking about Blood Meridian: http://www.avclub.com/article/harold-bloom-on-iblood-meridiani-29214

 

[Osprey]

I just finished reading Blood Meridian last night and I truly don't find the appeal. It's so tedious to read, and the plot is meandering and aimless.

The language isn't dense (for instance, in the way Heart of Darkness is dense) but just meandering and all over the place. How many times does he describe the mountains in the distance, and the flowers, and rocks, and all this other minutiae? We get it Cormac, they're in the desert. You've described this desert a few times, we get it. Nothing's changed, the desert hasn't changed, the character's haven't changed - why don't you spend some more time telling us what these characters are up to?

McCarthy sure does seem to describe things simply for artistic reasons, not to actually draw a picture in the readers' heads or move the story along. He loves to leave out things like verbs and pronouns. I think that he fancies himself a poet. A line like "The wind on the rocks" is something that you'd expect to see in a poem, but that sort of "sentence" is common in the novels of his that I've read. Now, an actual sentence like "The wind whistled on the rocks" would paint a bit of a picture, but just "The wind on the rocks" tells you nothing more about the setting than that there is wind and there are rocks. That's like what you were saying about the desert features. There are mountains, flowers and rocks, but how do they relate to the character or story? What you could do is describe how the way that the heat and dryness affects them is also slowly affecting the character (ex. how the surfaces of the rocks are almost as dry as his parched tongue or how the mountains in the distances dance in the heat... i.e. both relate to the character). I think that that would display more narrative skill than just describing things and dropping verbs and thinking that it counts as artistry.

Whatever you do, don't read The Road. It's even worse. There are about 50 pages of plot and 200 pages of McCarthy repeatedly describing what the protagonist ate for breakfast, found on the side of the road that day and then thought about as he went to bed. It's as if there's a good short story in there that's been heavily padded with daily mundanity to qualify as a novel.

With Lolita, the word choice is Nabokov's way of making Humbert out to be, to quote invictus, an intellectual bunch of asterisks.

He spends the novel trying to justify his illicit sexual desires to the reader... and among the tactics he uses is over-inflating his stance as an intellectual. If you believe he's a learned intellectual based on the sheer mass of his vocabulary, you may begin to think that what he's doing with Dolores is more than just lurid, primal instinct - even acceptable. It's one of the many reasons the novel is the level of genius it is.

[/UniversityLitLesson]

That's fascinating. I've never read it, partly because of the subject matter, but long wondered why it was considered genius prose. Yours is the first understandable explanation that I've read.

This is about my assessment too. Although I'd need to read it another few times to get everything out of it.

For a moment there, I was wondering which of us totally missed his message... then I realized that you, probably inadvertently, spliced his lead-in about Blood Meridian, which he didn't like, with his description of Lolita, which he did like, making it look like he liked Blood Meridian .

 

[Ceremony]

For a moment there, I was wondering which of us totally missed his message... then I realized that you, probably inadvertently, spliced his lead-in about Blood Meridian, which he didn't like, with his description of Lolita, which he did like, making it look like he liked Blood Meridian .

I found it funny that his praise for Lolita mirrored my opinion of Blood Meridian and McCarthy, even though he was criticising one novel and praising the other for doing the same thing.

 

[Hippasus]

I think George Orwell has been said to be a writer with good style. In fact, he wrote an essay that contains writing tips.

 

[WhiskeySeven*]

Yeah, that's how I justified as well in my earlier posts. It still makes for a more tedious read though, I found. Although I still found it an excellent book, his obsession with Lolita was enthralling and his prose at certain points, particularly when he's explaining his lust for nymphets in general knocks you on your ass to the point where you can read the same passage 2-3 times.

In my group of friends, in college, we adopted the term Nymphets to refer to freshmen or others who were younger than us. "Ah man, I'm not sure about this bar, it's full of nymphets" It's so inherently creepy.

McCarthy sure does seem to describe things simply for artistic reasons, not to actually draw a picture in the readers' heads or move the story along. He loves to leave out things like verbs and pronouns. I think that he fancies himself a poet. A line like "The wind on the rocks" is something that you'd expect to see in a poem, but that sort of "sentence" is common in the novels of his that I've read. Now, an actual sentence like "The wind whistled on the rocks" would paint a bit of a picture, but just "The wind on the rocks" tells you nothing more about the setting than that there is wind and there are rocks. That's like what you were saying about the desert features. There are mountains, flowers and rocks, but how do they relate to the character or story? What you could do is describe how the way that the heat and dryness affects them is also slowly affecting the character (ex. how the surfaces of the rocks are almost as dry as his parched tongue or how the mountains in the distances dance in the heat... i.e. both relate to the character). I think that that would display more narrative skill than just describing things and dropping verbs and thinking that it counts as artistry.

Whatever you do, don't read The Road. It's even worse. There are about 50 pages of plot and 200 pages of McCarthy repeatedly describing what the protagonist ate for breakfast, found on the side of the road that day and then thought about as he went to bed. It's as if there's a good short story in there that's been heavily padded with daily mundanity to qualify as a novel.

I've read The Road - it isn't as tedious as Blood Meridian because, I think, the subject matter is so much more stark and there is so much more dialogue.

The problem I had with Blood Meridian was with the imbalance between the heavy lyrical prose and the spurts of violence/plot and the scant exposure to the characters. Something about it didn't sit right with me. They pretty much criss-cross the desert seven-ten times, I think that's just too many times to do so without a) changing the prose regarding the crossing or b) changing what happens during these crossing or c) changing how much character interaction we witness during these crossings. It was just too little of one thing, too much of another.

Spoilers : And the Judge was so damn obvious. I can't get over it. Cormac is pretty much hitting you over the head with it by the time it gets to the Judge's coin trick over the fire, the last scene is overkill (but necessary - as there was so little character development otherwise). "I CAN NEVER DIE" he said. Yeah, we get it man.

I think the Kid embracing the Judge is metaphorical and not really sodomy. The judge appears as a figure beyond physical corruption, so I think the Kid embraced the Evil and killed that bear-girl.

I found it funny that his praise for Lolita mirrored my opinion of Blood Meridian and McCarthy, even though he was criticising one novel and praising the other for doing the same thing.

Lolita is written through a narrative layer, where that creep Humbert Humbert is trying to come across as X, Y, and Z and convince the reader of his qualities. It's an act of seduction as a narrative tool. Very clever stuff. Blood Meridian is more... lyrical. I didn't like the Verse-Chorus-Verse balance, I guess.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

In my group of friends, in college, we adopted the term Nymphets to refer to freshmen or others who were younger than us. "Ah man, I'm not sure about this bar, it's full of nymphets" It's so inherently creepy.


I've read The Road - it isn't as tedious as Blood Meridian because, I think, the subject matter is so much more stark and there is so much more dialogue.

The problem I had with Blood Meridian was with the imbalance between the heavy lyrical prose and the spurts of violence/plot and the scant exposure to the characters. Something about it didn't sit right with me. They pretty much criss-cross the desert seven-ten times, I think that's just too many times to do so without a) changing the prose regarding the crossing or b) changing what happens during these crossing or c) changing how much character interaction we witness during these crossings. It was just too little of one thing, too much of another.

Spoilers : And the Judge was so damn obvious. I can't get over it. Cormac is pretty much hitting you over the head with it by the time it gets to the Judge's coin trick over the fire, the last scene is overkill (but necessary - as there was so little character development otherwise). "I CAN NEVER DIE" he said. Yeah, we get it man.

I think the Kid embracing the Judge is metaphorical and not really sodomy. The judge appears as a figure beyond physical corruption, so I think the Kid embraced the Evil and killed that bear-girl.


Lolita is written through a narrative layer, where that creep Humbert Humbert is trying to come across as X, Y, and Z and convince the reader of his qualities. It's an act of seduction as a narrative tool. Very clever stuff. Blood Meridian is more... lyrical. I didn't like the Verse-Chorus-Verse balance, I guess.

I wish I had my copy of Lolita with me right now but I had to come in at work this morning and get some paperwork done. There's a passage in the book where Humbert Humber talks about capturing the '' magic of nymphets '' that is absolutely stunning prose-wise. I'll post it later. And yes, you are absolutely correct that Humbert Humbert tries to seduce his fictional reader as to assuage his guilt but the book does highlight's Humbert's failure to do so (as in, numerous times throughout the story, Humbert can't help himself to show how truly despicable a person he is, consistently berating and insulting Lolita for reasons as benign as her love for low-culture and as awful as her not wanting to indulge him in his sexual cravings). For all his attempts, the abuse he inflicts on Dolores is transparent. But I think that's what I took issue with in the book. It's too clever. I don't like writing that's showoff-y. It fit Humbert's character, but I still found it relatively annoying. I think it also doesn't help that Nabokov was a pompous ass and I'm letting it cloud my judgement of the book's vocabulary.

As for Blood Meridian, from what I understand, The Judge really did kill The Kid. There's nothing throughout the book (from what I can remember) that gives off the idea that The Judge isn't an actual physical being (Although, I also do not think he's human, but perhaps God personified, as pointed out by his '' Whatever in creation...'' line). Many characters interact - and even threaten - with him throughout the story. I mean, even at the end, when The Judge tells The Kid that despite his disposition to violence, he always had clemency in his heart and that it disappointed him, the reader isn't given a hint that The Kid embraces The Judge's thoughts (quite the opposite, in fact, he just wants to be left alone). The Judge is perverse and violent from beginning to end. He attempts to kill The Kid decades before their fateful encounter at the end of the story. I don't see any reason to think the gruesome act was a metaphor.

 

[Sonic Disturbance]

Nabokov's deliberately uses certain "fancy" words in Lolita for several reasons. A lot of the words help Humbert mask the vile actions he is performing a 12-year old girl. For example in one section where he is grabbing her ass, he writes something like "Desperate, dying Humbert patted her clumsily on her coccyx" which doesn't sound nearly as bad. He also substitutes penis for "my great white scepter" or something like that one time. These words also make the text nice-sounding and brings out the phonetic beauty of the prose. A lot of alliterations. Didactic writing was not Nabokov's main focus (except maybe in Invitation to a Beheading/Bend Sinister). He wanted to feel (his readers too) "aesthetic bliss" while reading/writing. Plus he was kind of a egomaniac who liked to show off. His vocabulary wasn't as big as he wanted it to seem. There are stories of him sending his wife Vera to look through the thesaurus while writing his novels.

 

[Sonic Disturbance]

My List:

1. Romance of the Three Kingdoms/三国演义 - Luo Guanzhong
2. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
3. Dao De Ching/道德经 - Lao Zi
4. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
5. The Story of the Stone／红楼梦 - Cao Xueqin
6. The Zhuangzi／莊子 - Zhuang Zi
7. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
8. Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov
9. The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
10. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
11. Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
12. Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (mostly "Self-Reliance") - Ralph Waldo Emerson
13. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
14. Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
15. The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
16. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
17. Glengarry Glen Ross (technically a play, but I read the script) - David Mamet
18. The Trial - Franz Kafka
19. The Stranger - Albert Camus
20. Black Boy - Richard Wright
21. The Counterlife - Philip Roth
22. The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce
23. Despair - Vladimir Nabokov
24. The Russian Years & The American Years - Brian Boyd
25. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Nabokov's deliberately uses certain "fancy" words in Lolita for several reasons. A lot of the words help Humbert mask the vile actions he is performing a 12-year old girl. For example in one section where he is grabbing her ass, he writes something like "Desperate, dying Humbert patted her clumsily on her coccyx" which doesn't sound nearly as bad. He also substitutes penis for "my great white scepter" or something like that one time. These words also make the text nice-sounding and brings out the phonetic beauty of the prose. A lot of alliterations. Didactic writing was not Nabokov's main focus (except maybe in Invitation to a Beheading/Bend Sinister). He wanted to feel (his readers too) "aesthetic bliss" while reading/writing. Plus he was kind of a egomaniac who liked to show off. His vocabulary wasn't as big as he wanted it to seem. There are stories of him sending his wife Vera to look through the thesaurus while writing his novels.

That's the issue to me personally. His use of words does not make his story sound phonetically beautiful. On the contrary, I believe it makes it sound more clunky, as far as the prose goes, which does not help the flow of Humbert Humbert's words. It makes you roll your eyes at Humbert's words and you cannot help but see Nabokov (or his wife) digging his nose into a dictionary looking for the bragging word to use. That's not an aesthetically pleasing sight.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

And for Christ's sake, has Nabokov ever done a televised interview without looking down at a sheet of paper? What an annoying *******. He literally had to write his interview answers down before said interviews.

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

Not in order

1. William Faulkner - Light in August
2. HG Bissinger - A Prayer for the City
3. J Anthony Lukas - Common Ground
4. Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
5. John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
6. Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
7. Adrian LeBlanc - Random Family
8. John Heilemann - Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
9. William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!
10. John Lewis: Walking with the Wind
11. Mark Stevens - de Kooning: An American Master
12. Legs McNeil - Please Kill Me
13. George Packer - The Unwinding
14. Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name
15. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
16. Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
17. Philipp Meyer - The Son
18. Ben Hamper - Rivethead
19. Simon Reynolds - Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978 - 1984
20. Brene Brown - Daring Greatly
21. Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies (short stories, but still)
22. Roland Huntford - The Last Place on Earth
23. Griftopia - Matt Taibbi
24. Lester Bangs - Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
25. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

 

[jacobhockey13]

Not in order

1. William Faulkner - Light in August
2. HG Bissinger - A Prayer for the City
3. J Anthony Lukas - Common Ground
4. Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
5. John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
6. Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
7. Adrian LeBlanc - Random Family
8. John Heilemann - Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
9. William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!
10. John Lewis: Walking with the Wind
11. Mark Stevens - de Kooning: An American Master
12. Legs McNeil - Please Kill Me
13. George Packer - The Unwinding
14. Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name
15. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
16. Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
17. Philipp Meyer - The Son
18. Ben Hamper - Rivethead
19. Simon Reynolds - Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978 - 1984
20. Brene Brown - Daring Greatly
21. Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies (short stories, but still)
22. Roland Huntford - The Last Place on Earth
23. Griftopia - Matt Taibbi
24. Lester Bangs - Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
25. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

I love Ferrante. Reading the Neapolitan novels ATM.

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

I love Ferrante. Reading the Neapolitan novels ATM.

Yeah, they're incredible.

 

[LarKing]

Anyone have any suggestions on motivational books? Looking for a few new reads.