Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Next 26 Books I Read

I've been having a great deal of trouble deciding what next to read. Things keep being added to my book 'queue' and I haven't been able to pick where to start. So, I've fallen back on the oldest organisational system known to the Phoenicians: alphabetizing. Picking one book for each letter by author, here are the next twenty-six books I intend to read.

Or rather, the next twenty-two - I've been having difficulty coming up with anything appealing for U, X, Y, and Z. Any suggestions? Otherwise I'll be plowing through the autobiographies of Xeno and Brian Urlacher.

  1. The Music Of Chance, Paul Auster
  2. Paradise, Donald Barthelme*
  3. Tell No One, Harlan Coben
  4. Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
  5. Strange Killings, Warren Ellis
  6. The Hippopotamus, Stephen Fry
  7. Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
  8. The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
  9. The Transfiguration Of Benno Blimpie, Albert Innaurato
  10. No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
  11. 4.48 Psychosis, Sarah Kane
  12. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
  13. Lamb, Christopher Moore
  14. Ada, Vladimir Nabokov
  15. Days Of Awe, Achy Obejas
  16. V., Thomas Pynchon
  17. Fortress Besieged, Zhongshu Qian
  18. The Wu-Tang Manual: Enter The 36 Chambers, Vol. 1, The RZA
  19. Soft Power, Matt Segur
  20. Ashtrays, Lukas Tomin
  21. ?
  22. Rising Up, Rising Down, William T. Vollman
  23. The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson
  24. ?
  25. ?
  26. ?
*bizarrely, 'B' was probably the most difficult letter upon which to make a decision. Contenders included Storm Front by Jim Butcher, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, Playing Shakespeare by John Barton, The Empty Space by Peter Brook, The Collected Ambrose Bierce, Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Dispossessed by John Berryman, What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson, Mother Courage And Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, and Post Office by Charles Bukowski. 'S' also put up a good fight: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, The Coast Of Utopia Trilogy by Tom Stoppard, Pericles by William Shakespeare, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, and Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman. And hey, I can't guarantee I won't stray from the path here and there. Maybe I'll get to a few letters and linger. I'm not known for my regimentality anyway.

2 comments:

iainfisher said...

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It influenced Orwell and 1984. I recommeded it.

I have not read him but Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize in 2000. Soul Mountain sounds interesting and is on my list.

Let us know what you think of Sarah Kane (which is how I found your site).

Iain

Dan Stearns said...

When you get to them, you are welcome to my copy of Nabokov (in hardback), and Zamyatin, if you like.