books'n'books

I'm just going to come right out and say it without comment: I have kept a list of all the books I've read since graduating from high school in 1996—not counting books I had to read for school or for work (which for several years was, again, school). Looks like there are 327 of them, making an average of about 25 a year...which doesn't take into account the, let's see, 34 of 'em that I read twice in that period, the looks like 5 of 'em that I read three times, and the one (The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme) that I read four times...?

I can't tell whether this is bragging or listing symptoms to help you diagnose my psychological disorder.

Anyhowser,* here, for no reason, is a fairly haphazard selection of some of the most noteworthy or unusual books I've read in the past 13 years, with a dramatic deliberate slant toward the less obvious (which means this is not specifically a list of favorites). For no reason, I'll limit it to one book per author, and I'll indicate if I read the book more than once.† I'll also try not to list anything that I don't think is worth reading—so as to pretend there's actually some purpose to my listing this shit (as opposed to the real answer, which is that it's all—all of this—essentially or effectively a kind of a brain-dump‡).

Et voilà:§

Jonathan Ames — Wake Up, Sir!

Donald Antrim — The Verificationist

Apuleius, Lucius — The Golden Ass

Nicholson Baker — The Mezzanine

John Barth — The Floating Opera (x2)

Donald Barthelme — City Life (x2)

Samuel Beckett — Molloy (en français!)

Saul Bellow — The Adventures of Augie March

Harold Bloom — Jesus vs. and Yahweh

Alain de Botton — How Proust Can Change Your Life

Wesley Brown — Tragic Magic

Martin Buber — I and Thou

Charles Bukowski — Women

Mikhail Bulgakov — The Heart of a Dog

David Byrne — The New Sins (x2)

Italo Calvino — t zero

Albert Camus — The Myth of Sisyphus

Robert Coover — Gerald's Party

Jim Crace — Being Dead

Don DeLillo – Great Jones Street

Annie Dillard — The Writing Life (x3)

Frederick Exley — A Fan's Notes

Richard Fariña — Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Henry Fielding — Tom Jones

Thomas Frank — One Market Under God

Mary Gaitskill — Veronica

John Gardner — Grendel (x2)

Witold Gombrowicz — Cosmos (x2)

Robert Graves — I, Claudius

Oakley Hall — Warlock

Knut Hamsun — Hunger

Barry Hannah — Airships (x2)

John Hersey — Hiroshima

Michel Houellebecq — Platform

Denis Johnson — Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

Jerzy Kosinksi — Steps

Mark Leyner — The Tetherballs of Bougainville

Anatol Lieven — America Right or Wrong

Norman Mailer — The Spooky Art (only read Part I)

David Mamet — Sexual Perversity in Chicago

Thomas Mann — Buddenbrooks

Ben Marcus — Notable American Women

Cormac McCarthy — Blood Meridian

Tom McCarthy — Remainder

Jay McInerney — Story of My Life

Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain — Please Kill Me

Stephen A. Mitchell — Can Love Last?

Robert Musil — The Confusions of Young Törless

Vladimir Nabokov — King, Queen, Knave

Flannery O'Connor — Everything That Rises Must Converge

Michael Ondaatje — The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Grace Paley — The Little Disturbances of Man

Petronius — The Satyricon

Dawn Powell — Turn, Magic Wheel

Thomas Pynchon — Vineland (x2)

Philip Roth — The Counterlife**

J.D. Salinger — Franny and Zooey (x3)

George Saunders — The Braindead Megaphone

Gary Shteyngart — Absurdistan

Terry Southern & Mason Hoffenberg — Candy††

Gore Vidal — Myra Breckinridge

DFW — Everything and More: A Compact History of [infinity sign]

Chris Ware — Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Nathanael West — The Dream Life of Balso Snell

Tune in next week, when we'll return to matters not 100% self-indulgent.

* It is always dangerous to use words or jokes you pick up from your friends because (as captured in The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, which I read in I think 1998–1999 but which did not make it onto this list) your friends are likely quoting somebody you don't know—which means that without meaning to, you might be going around referencing, like, Dane Cook or something.

† Again, this does not count if the other times I read it were for school or for work.

‡ That is not a toilet joke or toilet metaphor. Agatha Christie!

§ French: and see here. (Innit?)

** Actually in the running for my favorite of the—let's see—18 Philip Roth books I've read?

‡‡ Recommended by a T.A. who later denied it (it's pornographic; she's a woman).