Time's 100 Top Books

THE COMPLETE LIST: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

So because I actually have nothing of substance to say, and my face hurts, diverting my attention, here's Time's 100 top books from 1923 to 2000, with my witty and occasionally verbose commentary. (Note: I also might make uninformed, stupid, and perhaps inadvertently racist comments about books that I have not actually read. You just never know.)

1. The Adventures of Augie Marsh--Saul Bellow

2. All the King's Men--Robert Penn Warren. I keep thinking I've read this book because I've read half of All The President's Men, the nonfiction novel about the Watergate scandal. This is not that book. This book is about the South and corrupt politics, which are both things that intrigue me, so I should probably read this book at some point.

3. American Pastoral--Philip Roth. I've read Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, and while I like it, it did not convince me to ever read another Roth novel. Shortsighted? Perhaps. I have no idea what AP is even about.

4. An American Tragedy--Theodore Dreiser. I'm pretty sure I've read this. It's about a golddigger guy, right? And he murders his lover with a boat oar? Does that sound correct?

5. Animal Farm--George Orwell. I'm pretty sure I'm the only American to ever read this that wasn't assigned to do so in English Lit class in high school. It was okay. Frankly I liked it better than 1984, which I've always found somewhat overrated in a modern context. Yeah, I get that it BLEW MINDS when it came out in the 40's, and the whole "Big Brother" concept transcends time and space (plus I find it really fun to say things are "doubleplusgood," etc.) but it's no Brave New World, you know? It's not even Animal Farm. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah: I like AM because talking animals are cool and so are allegories, especially ones about talking animals. The Garden of Eden! The life of St. Margaret! Those things are cool. Also it always makes me think of the song "Piggies" by the Beatles, which is really not that great of a song but I'm still in love with.

6. Appointment in Samarra--John O'Hara

7. Are You There God? It's Me Margaret--Judy Blume. There is nothing I can say about this book that hasn't already been said, or would like, contribute to the world's consciousness about this book in any real way. It takes about BRAS and stuff. Ew. A classic when you're 12 but otherwise pointlessly unreadable.

8. The Assistant--Bernard Malamud

9. At Swim-Two-Birds--Flann O'Brien. I like these wild cards that the editors are throwing around. This one has a very catchy title.

10. Atonement--Ian McEwan. I haven't read this but Shana and I rented the movie and it has literally the most depressing movie ending I have ever seen. IT ATE MY SOUL. It was a happiness a-bomb. Don't watch it unless you want to cry so much that your tear ducts shrivel up and fly away.

11. Beloved--Toni Morrison. This is one of the books I think of when I think of "fem lit." This is not to be confused with that disgusting moneymaking behemoth, "chick lit"--the reading equivalent of watching whatever's on TV. " It's about slaves or something. It's like Uncle Tom's Cabin for women who find it hard to read old-timey books.

12. The Berlin Stories--Christopher Isherwood.

13. The Big Sleep--Love. This. Book. So fantastic. I saw the movie first (which, spoilers: has a much different ending than the book, as the movie was primarily a Bogie/Bacall vehicle, so of course they ended up together at the end) and was interested enough to go through a short novel noir sort of phase; I read this and The Thin Man and a handful of short stories. Nowadays it's a bit hard to read this sort of thing without giggling slightly at all the hardboiled detective cliches--the shadowy rooms, the dames, the whiskey. But remove yourself from that and appreciate the well-plotted action, and it's a good book.

14. The Blind Assassin--Margaret Atwood. I have not read this but I generally like Atwood, so I should keep this in mind. She's one of the only science fiction authors I can consistently stomach.

15. Blood Meridian--Cormac McCarthy. Fuck this book so hard. This is my least favorite book ever. With two different authors (McCarthy and Tom Robbins) have I had the experience of people assuring me, "Read this! This is great." I read book X, hate it, and then listen to someone (often a different person) say, "No no, read book Y! It's great! Different, yet the same, as book X!" Let me tell you something: If you hate a book (and I mean HATE. Hate like you would smack it if it were a person and gossip viciously about it behind its back, girl-style), don't bother reading anything anything else the author has written. Your life is too goddamned short to put yourself through that gorey rigamarole. At least mine is. This book is 1) Archaic for no particular reason 2) Contains no real character development, plot, QUOTATION MARKS, etc etc. 3) Is like 300 pages long, and as far as I can tell, every chapter is basically interchangable with one another. It BAFFLES me, the popularity of this book. It basically is just talking about murdering people (mostly committed by a 14 year old named The Kid) under a sunset and there's a desert, it's really hot, blah blah blah. I've been to the desert. I know it's hot there. Just thinking about reading this book makes my blood pressure rise. I also read two more books by this author, No Country For Old Men and The Road (and no, I have not seen either of these movies) and saw the film version of "All The Pretty Horses." And every moment devoted to these endeavors was wrung from me like Jesus crying tears of blood onto the stones of Gethesename. Fuck McCarthy.

16. Brideshead Revisited--Evelyn Waugh. Jesus sent me a little present just now by putting this book next on the list. This book is great! I love Brit Lit, I really do. And I think the microgenre of this would be "between-the-wars", which seems delightlfully Mitfordian. This is the story of Charles Ryder, a poor, somewhat confused (about sex, about youth, the war, his artistry...) young man who befriends a family of aristocrats and spends the next 20 years weaving in and out of their lives. There is also an excellent film version with Emma Thompson playing the matriarch, Lady Marchmain, Mrs. Flyte. I've also been told the BBC miniseries is good, too, though I've never seen it. The movie version plays up the possibly-gay angle much harder, and some Waugh purists decry this, but for me it makes the whole thing hang together much better in a way that I think Waugh would have appreciated. It throws the whole Catholicism thing into better relief. Waugh apparently decried this book in later years, saying it was overwrought, but I really feel it's a cornerstone of 20th century British literature. As the title suggests, you can't go home again.

17. The Bridges of San Luis Ray--Thorton Wilder

18. Call it Sleep--Henry Roth

19. Catch-22--Joseph Heller. Yes! Yes! This book. The definitive book of World War II. Rejected by 25 different publishers before acceptance, taking over a decade to complete. A landmark in American satire, poking fun at WWII-era "Americanism" and xenophobia, something that all of us who came of age in a post 9/11 environment can sympathize with. This is the book that all authors, would-be and established, should apsire to write.

20. The Catcher in the Rye--JD Salinger. Have there ever been more split opinions about any book than this one? When I was a youth and read this, I hated it violently. (And probably by this point, you should realize that my opinions on books run towards the violent.) But that was about a decade ago, and since then I've come to appreciate Salinger's other major works, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey. Being that, I can't really be sure I am an accurate judge of this book anymore. Also it features the insult "crummy," delivered in a manner that makes me think that Salinger was using deadly force with it, like calling someone a "cunt" today.

21. A Clockwork Orange--Anthony Burgess. Things you might not know about Burgess, and this book: The author was a linguist, and the book was partly written in an exercise of language, much like Tolkein's LOTR trilogy. Somewhere along the way, probably when Stanley Kubrick got his dirty little hands on it, CO became a byword in "omg the youth of today!!!" and by all accounts, Burgess spent the rest of his life regretting he'd ever put pen to paper on the whole subject.

22. The Confessions of Nat Turner--William Styron

23. The Corrections--Johnathan Franzen. Um. I got about 30 pages into this and put it down. Did not want. At this point in my life I'm somewhat over the whole white boy, middle class, O WOE IS ME I have it soooo hard sort of thing. Yeah, I get it, you want to feel marginalized by society because minorities have such a fun time, living in their ghettos and reservations, and you want a slice of that pie. That's fine. Take it. But please don't be a whiny jerk about it who blows the rest of the money in their bank account on leather pants while you're at it. At least have some self-deprecation.

24. The Crying of Lot 49--Thomas Pynchon. Fuck you, Pynchon. You will never be Ray Bradbury. Why would you even want to be? He sucks too.

25. A Dance to the Music of Time--Anthony Powell


I will do more of this when I'm in a more giving mood and can write things more explanatory than "Fuck you, Pynchon."