Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Only read two of those so far. I need to go get my scarf and get reading!

Went to TFA looking for Vonnegut, leaving satisfied.

/So the went with obvious choice: Slaughterhouse 5
//Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle are better books though.
/// Know what this is a picture of?: *

Looks like I'm bookmarking this reading list.

squegeebooo: Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Yeah... I agree. I had to put it down. I'm guessing we're supposed to laugh at Ignatius, but I just found him so unbearable and obnoxious that I didn't want to read anymore of the book.

Seems like Hemingway is really getting a lot of love for The Sun Also Rises lately. Don't really understand it. I have to go with Old Man and the Sea every time.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a good read. I was pleasantly surprised and glad to see it included here.

I've read 18 of them. Slaughterhouse Five is on my short list of best books ever.

d3: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a good read. I was pleasantly surprised and glad to see it included here.

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is my alltime favorite book, but while reading Kavalier and Clay I thought it might just win out. Then it turned out to be only great.

/No Infinite Jest?

That's actually a decent list.

I would add Infinite Jest, though I'm not sure that qualifies as "cool." Regardless, it's my favorite book and I'm seriously not a hipster pseudo-intellectual douche bag.

/really, I'm not.

Dafatone: /No Infinite Jest?

I came here to ask this.

Also to ask "people still read Bret Easton Ellis?"

This list seems to be mostly things that they told us were cool in 1980 combined with a few trendy things from 1980-1995. If I had to guess I'd say that the list was compiled by a geezer who's roughly my age. It reminds me a little of those 'best guitarists of all time' lists we see every few years.

Perfect timing. I was about to start looking for some new reading material for my travels.

Obvious hipster list is obvious, hipster.

/perhaps a dozen of them are actually good.
//not cool

shivashakti: squegeebooo: Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Yeah... I agree. I had to put it down. I'm guessing we're supposed to laugh at Ignatius, but I just found him so unbearable and obnoxious that I didn't want to read anymore of the book.

I know taste is taste, but I can't understand not liking this book. I love every sentence. Serious question, do you hate new orleans?

Dafatone: d3:

/No Infinite Jest?

Oops, one post ahead of me, and good call sir.

The list at least reminded me that I need to go back and re-read a few those, especially Neuromancer. Love that book.

Because I don't own a TV, I have read each and every one of these books. I often discuss them in depth with my other friends studying liberal arts in graduate school, after I invite them to my loft to listen to obscure European bands on vinyl.

I've not seen an Iain Banks novel on sale in the US during my travels, and I'm on the road a lot. I'm sure most Americans have no idea who he is. The Wasp Factory is excellent, but my vote would go to The Crow Road.

I'm in the love Confederacy of Dunces camp, and also in the sprawling favela called WTF, Ayn Rand?

Are they still cool if no one is there to watch you read them?

johnny queso: shivashakti: squegeebooo: Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Yeah... I agree. I had to put it down. I'm guessing we're supposed to laugh at Ignatius, but I just found him so unbearable and obnoxious that I didn't want to read anymore of the book.

I know taste is taste, but I can't understand not liking this book. I love every sentence. Serious question, do you hate new orleans?

No issue with New Orleans, only been there once, I just hated the main character, and in general not a fan of bathroom humor, so the constant talk about his stomach issues was the final negative mark for me.

I'm unhappy because I used to smoke a pipe because I enjoyed it. Farkin' hipsters.

I would liked to have seen Martin Amis on there. However, I'm sure we all have novelists that we think should replace Rand.

runcible spork: Obvious hipster list is obvious, hipster.

/perhaps a dozen of them are actually good.

Agreed. But this is better than all of them put together:

jamdug - are you serious about 'secret history'? One of the most marketed debuts in history and over a million copies sold in the US? Or am i taking some bait...

Now wait.... What would increase your smug level more? if you read these books on an iPad or Nook? Or if you refused to read these classic novels on modern e-readers because these books can "only be read on traditional paper"?

Rascuache: Seems like Hemingway is really getting a lot of love for The Sun Also Rises lately. Don't really understand it. I have to go with Old Man and the Sea every time.

See, Ive always been a "Farewell to Arms" kinda guy. Just because the ending was essentially.. "ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND fark you. Yes. You. The guy who just read my book. fark you right in the face". That makes me happy.

22/50, including some of the bad ones. Missing:

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. Geez, a guy dies and you forget all about him.
V. my personal favorite Pynchon novel.
You Bright and Risen Angels, William T. Vollmann. His only book that I would consider "fun".
Great Apes, by Will Self. Planet of the Apes done right.
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, or I Smell Esther Williams, by Mark Leyner. He's trying too hard in his later books, but these are both very funny.
One Hundred Years of Solitude...

some interesting looking stuff, bookmark.

squegeebooo: johnny queso: shivashakti: squegeebooo: Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Yeah... I agree. I had to put it down. I'm guessing we're supposed to laugh at Ignatius, but I just found him so unbearable and obnoxious that I didn't want to read anymore of the book.

I know taste is taste, but I can't understand not liking this book. I love every sentence. Serious question, do you hate new orleans?

No issue with New Orleans, only been there once, I just hated the main character, and in general not a fan of bathroom humor, so the constant talk about his stomach issues was the final negative mark for me.

I couldn't stand it either, for exactly the same reasons. I find this is a good litmus test for whether I want to avoid the topic of literature with someone.

Actually surprised to not see Brave New World or The Stranger.

jake_lex: One of the disadvantages of owning a Kindle or a similar reading device is that no one can tell you're reading a cool book like on this list.

One of the advantages of owning a Kindle is that no one can see you're a 30 year old man reading a Twilight book.

I KNOW, right. I love my kindle, wouldn't trade it for anything. But it sure kills the whole "conversations that start about the book you're reading" thing. Maybe I missed my soul mate on the bus the other day because she didn't KNOW I was reading her favorite book.

Problem is easily solved by adding a second screen to the back of the kindle that only displays the cover of the book you are currently reading. I call it "the pretentious book snob" screen and I would buy 5 of them.

Rustico: Disappointed that it has multiple Ayn Rand (really, one is enough)


It's too bad that all these barely literate Tea Party assholes have turned Atlas Shrugged into wanking material. Anthem is a fun addition to the dystopian future genre, and Fountainhead is a solid book. I think objectivism can work as a personal philosophy, especially when you're dealing with something like art and aesthetic taste. Roark liked designing buildings a certain way, told everyone else to fark off and eventually found people that liked his designs. Fair enough.

But Rand's philosophy just completely fails as a large-scale economic system. Atlas Shrugged is essentially a thousand pages of back-to-back strawman arguments in narrative form.

27/50 though I'm of the camp that would hardly consider Ayn Rand cool. I've seen movies of a couple/few others, but am I honestly expected to spend my time reading Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk? I'll sacrifice the cool points then.

Martstar: 27/50 though I'm of the camp that would hardly consider Ayn Rand cool. I've seen movies of a couple/few others, but am I honestly expected to spend my time reading Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk? I'll sacrifice the cool points then.

Id suggest reading Rant by Palahniuk because there is little to no way that book is even remotely film able.

27/50. None of which made me any cooler. But I enjoyed most of them.

Some random reader bullet points.

•No Infinite Jest, wtf?
•I hated Diary for the first 100 pages, until it sank its teeth into me.
•Hey Nostradamus moved me more than Generation X
•Sometimes a Great Notion by a small amount over One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest. They are both very good.
•I haven't read Ayn Rand but I have read plenty of political commentary from some of her fans. Let's leave it at 'do not want'.
•I loved Underworld for the first hundred pages. Then it let me off the hook.
•Nabokov's Pale Fire for honorable mention at least. I guess I like footnotes in mah books.
•If you're going to mention Gibson, why not add Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash?

laserhan:

Id suggest reading Rant by Palahniuk because there is little to no way that book is even remotely film able.

Only one I've read by him is Survivor, and I enjoyed it. I wanna say there's someone on Fark calling themselves Tender Branson as well, maybe (?).

Also on Ayn Rand: I read Anthem when I was 17 or so, and liked it.

shivashakti: squegeebooo: Confederacy of Dunces? Really? Terrible book.

Yeah... I agree. I had to put it down. I'm guessing we're supposed to laugh at Ignatius, but I just found him so unbearable and obnoxious that I didn't want to read anymore of the book.

That's why his character is so well written. He's supposed to annoy the hell out of you. How much critical acclaim have we given to actors for portraying thoroughly unlikable and nerve-grating characters?

Granted, I'm biased towards the book because I'm a New Orleanian. But I'd probably still love it if I were from Buffalo.

The whole list for those who want it quickly:

American Psycho
Less Than Zero
A Clockwork Orange
One The Road
Naked Lunch
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse-Five
Gravity's Rainbow
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth
The Dice Man
Generation X
A Confederacy of Dunces
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Everything is Illuminated
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Fear of Flying
Crash
Money
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
The Sun Also Rise
Perfume
Neuromancer
Factotum
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Atlas Shrugged
Trainspotting
Black Hole
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
The Wasp Factory
The Fountainhead
Morvern Callar
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Fight Club
The Secret History
Middlesex
In Cold Blood
The Crying of Lot 49
Watchmen
Diary
Ghost World
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Last Exit to Brooklyn
Howl
Dharma Bums
The Great Gatsby
Blood Meridian
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
American Tabloid
Underworld

I've read enough of these to establish myself as a hipster douchebag.

The movie sucked to high heaven.