girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An incomprehensive list of books I like. Note before the entry... I was kind of trying to make this some kind of vaguely comprehensive list of books I like here, but it's simply not possible and I started to feel really, well, like a wanker going on and on about books, so I kind of stopped and it's not comprehensive in the least. Please, read on... Well, seeing as several people are talking about books right now in their diaries (you'd think it was getting cold outside or something), and as refluence said I should put up a list of good books, I'm going to put up a list of books. However, my team of crack lawyers has advised me to call it "Books I Liked", in case any angry people who've actually paid attention to what I've said start to demand I refund their Amazon bill or something. Right then, I'll start with books from the past I remember (and I've got such a bad memory, that I guess that means I really liked them)... Donna Tartt - The Secret History (and if you've not read it and you do now and you love it, you won't have to wait ten years to read her next novel like the rest of us have cos it's out on October 28) Douglas Coupland - Generation X (and if you thought it was just some zeitgeisty shit, I picked it up again the other weekend, and it was still really good. So there) Joseph Heller - Catch 22 John Irving - I've only read The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I think he's awesome. Truman Capote - mostly anything he's written, but especially In Cold Blood Arnold Bennett - Anna of the Five Towns (always meant to read more, haven't got around to it) Christopher Isherwood - Farewell to Berlin Martin Amis - London Fields Classics (as defined by Penguin right, I'm not interested in any debates about the canon of English literature) Any Jane Austen Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre (I was never such a huge fan of Emily's Wuthering Heights, but I guess plenty of people would think the other way around) Charles Dickens - Great Expectations Gustave Flaubert - Emma Bovary Stuff I've read this year and loved: Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones Alan Warner - Morvern Callar (this could be on of those books you use to judge people by... like "You can only be my friend if you like this book." Well, maybe) Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich Memoir/biography etc (cos we're not the only diarists) Andy Warhol Diaries Norman Lewis - Naples '44 Gore Vidal - Palimpsest George Plimpton - Edie, an American biography Irene and Alan Taylor (editors) - The Assassin's Cloak, which is a cool volume of extracts from diaries from the last four hundred years or so) Works in progress: Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections Tom Robbins - Still Life With Woodpecker These are the authors I wish I'd read... James Joyce (always get stuck at "scrotum tightening sea" when I start Ulysses); Dostoyevsky; some big stuff by Tolstoy; Nabakov's Lolita (cos so many men I know say it's their favourite novel); the complete works of Shakespeare (mostly so I can be really boring and brag); Proust's In Search of Lost Time (I started it)... seriously, this could on forever. .......... Well, if you're still with me, feel free to tell me what a fool I am and what terrible taste I have (or even that I've got OK taste). And never let it be said that there is nothing to read. 6:33 p.m. - 2002-10-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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