Inside : a distillation of our must-have lists from the Desert Island Books thread. I'm still checking it against my e-book collection, and will post an update once I've got all (or most) of them. I may have left some out through not being able to figure out what you were talking about, or from sheer sloppiness, and if so, please feel free to amend the list. For now, though, a Shopping List for Literate Simians. Enjoy.
Adams, Douglas Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy SeriesAeschylus The Oresteia
Alexander, Christopher A Pattern Language
Alexander, Lloyd | The Chronicles of Prydain - The High King
Auden, WH | Collected Works
Austen, Jane | Pride & Prejudice
Austen, Jane | Sense and Sensibility
Banks, Iain | The Crow Road
Banks, Iain | The Player of Games
Barker, Clive | Imajica
Barker, Pat | Regeneration, Eye In The Door, and Ghost Road.
Barzun, Jaques | From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
Beckett, Samuel | Complete Plays, Novels and Short Stories (if only one novel, Watt; only one play Endgame; one short story collection, Fizzles);
Boccaccio | The Decameron
Borges, Jorge Luís | Collected Short Stories
Boswell, James | The Life of Samuel Johnson
Brin, David | Sundiver/Startide Rising/The Uplift War
Brown, John Gregory | Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
Bryson, Bill | Notes from a Small Island
Bryson, Bill | The Lost Continent
Bukowski, Charles | The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Burton, Virginia Lee | Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Camões, Luís de | Lírica (Collected Poems)
Campbell, Joseph | The Masks of God Series (Creative Mythology)
Camus, Albert | The Stranger
Capote, Truman | In Cold Blood
Capra, Fritjof | The Tao of Physics
Capstick, Peter Hathaway | Death in the Long Grass
Card, Orson Scott | Ender's Game series
Carver, Raymond | The Stories of Raymond Carver (Picador, 1985)
Carver, Raymond | What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand | Journey to the End of the Night
Cervantes, Miguel de | Don Quixote
Chaucer | Canterbury Tales.
Cornwell, John | Hitler's Pope
cummings, ee | i, six nonlectures
Dante | Divine Comedy
Dante | The Divine Comedy
DeLillo, Don | Great Jones Street.
Delillo, Don | White Noise
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor | Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor | The Brothers Karamazov
Eggers, Dave | A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Eliot, George | Middlemarch
Eliot, T. S. | The Four Quartets
Ellison, Ralph | Invisible Man
Eugenies, Jeffery | The Virgin Suicides
Faulkner, William | A Light in August
Faulkner, William | Absalom, Absalom!
Faulkner, William | Sound and the Fury
Faulkner, William | The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald, F. Scott | The Great Gatsby
Flaubert | Madame Bovary
Fry, Stephen | Paperweight
Gaiman, Neil | Sandman
Gaiman, Neil and Dave McKean | The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch: A Romance
Gibbon | Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire
Gibran, Kahlil | The Prophet
Gibson, William | All Tomorrow's Parties
Gibson, William | Neuromancer
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins | The Yellow Wallpaper
Ginsberg, Allen | The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971
Goethe | Faust
Guevara, Che | Che: A Revolutionary Life
Hamilton, Edith | Mythology
Hamsun, Knut | Pan
Heinlein, Robert | Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert | Time Enough For Love
Heller, Joseph | Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest | Omnibus
Hemingway, Ernest | Complete Short Stories
Herbert, Frank | Dune
Herge | Tintin series
Hesse, Hermann | Siddhartha
Hofstadter, Douglas | Godel, Escher, Bach
Homer | The Illiad and The Odyssey. (Robert Fitzgerald's)
Hugo, Victor | Les Miserables
James, Henry | Portrait of a Lady. ( the 1881 text. )
Johnson, Crockett | Harold and the Purple Crayon
Joyce, James | Finnegan's Wake
Joyce, James | Ulysses
Kafka, Franz | The Complete Stories
Kawabata, Yasunari | Complete Short Stories
Kent, Jack | Dooley and the Snortsnoot
Kerouac, Jack | Scripture of the Golden Eternity
Kerouac, Jack | On the Road
Kerouac, Jack | The Subterraneans
Keyes, Daniel | Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen | Pet Semetary
King, Stephen | The Stand
Kingsolver, Barbara | Animal Dreams
Kirkland, Gelsey | Dancing on My Grave
Klima, Ivan | Love and Garbage
Koontz, Dean | Strangers
Kundera, Milan | The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Kundera, Milan | The Joke
Lamott, Anne | Traveling Mercies
Lao Tzu | Tao Teh Ching
Lee, Harper | To Kill a Mockingbird
LeGuin, Ursula | Earthsea books
Lethem, Jonathan | Motherless Brooklyn
Lewis, CS | Narnia series
Lightman, Alan | Einstein's Dreams
Lynch, Thomas | The Undertaking: Life Stories From the Dismal Trade
Malamud, Bernard | The Natural
Mansfield, Katherine | Complete Stories.
Markson, David | Wittgenstein's Mistress
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia | One Hundred Years of Solitude
Maso, Carole | Ghost Dance, Ava
Maugham, W. Somerset | The Razor's Edge
May, Julian | They lived in the ice age.
McCullers, Carson | Ballad of the Sad Café
Mcluhan, Marshall | Understanding Media
McMurtry, Larry | Lonesome Dove
Mieville, China | Perdido Street Station
Miller, Henry | The Rosy Crucifixion
Miller, Henry | Tropic of Cancer
Milne, A.A. | Pooh/Poetry Omnibus
Milosz, Czeslaw ed. | A Book of Luminous Things
Milton | Paradise Lost
Moorcock, Michael | The Warhound and the World's Pain.
Moore, Alan and Eddie Campbell | From Hell
Morrison, Toni | Beloved
Murakami, Haruki | Hardboiled Wonderland and The End Of The World
Murakami, Haruki | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Nabakov, Vladamir | The Defense
Nabakov, Vladimir | Lolita
Nin, Anais | Complete Diaries
O’Connor, Flannery | The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
O'Connor, Flannery | Everything That Rises Must Converge
Oe, Kenzaburo | A Personal Matter
Parker, Dorothy | Poems
Percy, Walker | Love in the Ruins
Percy, Walker | The Moviegoer
Perelman, S.J. | The Most Of S.J.P.
Pirsig, Robert | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Plato | The Dialogues
Poe, Edgar Allan | Complete works of Poe
Portis, Charles | Dog of the South
Powers, Richard | The Goldbug Variations
Pratchett, Terry | The Colour of Magic
Pratchett, Terry | The entire Pratchett Collection
Proust, Marcel | A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Puso, Mario | The Godfather
Pynchon, Thomas | Gravity's Rainbow
Pynchon, Thomas | V
Réage, Pauline | The Story of O
Rice, Anne | Vampire Series
Rilke, Rainer Marie | Collected Works
Roy, Arundhati | The God of Small Things.
Rushdie, Salman | Fury
Rushdie, Salman | The Satanic Verses
Salinger, JD | Catcher in the Rye
Salinger, JD | The Catcher in the Rye
Sappho (Barnestone translation), et al | The Greek Anthology
Sedaris, David | Me Talk Pretty One Day
Self, Will | Great Apes
Shakespeare, William | Riverside Complete Works
Shakespeare, William | The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Shelley, Mary | Frankenstein
Simmons, Dan | Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion
Singer, Isaac Bashevis | The Collected Stories
Smiley, Jane | A Thousand Acres
Smith, Adam | Wealth of Nations
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander | The Gulag Archipelago
Some Biblical Guys | The Bible & Aprocrypha/Septuagint
Some Mohammedans | The Koran
Some Rabbis | The Torah
Spiegelman, Art | Maus & Maus II
Spinrad, Norman | The Void Captain's Tale
Steinbeck, John | East of Eden
Steinbeck, John | The Grapes of Wrath
Stephenson, Neil | Cryptonomicon
Stevens, Wallace | Collected Poems
Stokstad, Marilyn | Art History
Strunk & White | The Elements of Style
Suzuki, D. T. | Manual of Zen Buddhism
Thompson, Hunter S | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Tolkien, JRR | Lord Of The Rings
Toole, John Kennedy | A Confederacy of Dunces
Vachss, Andrew | Everybody Pays
Válery, Paul | Complete Poems, Stories and Journals (the whole Pléiade; if only 2 volumes; The Cahiers);
Various | Also, Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe
Various | Unabridged Oxford English Dictonary
Vasquez, Jhonen | JTHM complete
Vasquez, Johnny | Johnny the Homocidal Maniac
Vonnegut, Kurt | Mother Night
Vonnegut, Kurt | Bluebeard
Vonnegut, Kurt | Cat's Cradle
Vowell, Sarah | Take the Cannoli
Warren, Robert Penn | All the Kings Men
Waterson, Sam | Calvin and Hobbes
Welty, Eudora | The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Whitman, Walt | Leaves of Grass.
Whitman, Walt | Notebooks
Wilde, Oscar | The Importance of Being Earnest
Williams, William Carlos | The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams 1909-1939
Wilson, Robert Anton | The Illuminatus trilogy
Wittgenstein | Complete Works
Wittgenstein | Culture And Value
Wolfe, Thomas | Look Homeward, Angel
Wolfe, Tom | Bonfire of the Vanities
Wolfe, Tom | The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Wyss, Johann David | The Swiss Family Robinson
Yourcenar, M. | Memories of Hadrian
Posted by at September 28, 2002 10:07 AM
I *heart* Stav, Wonderchicken Extraordinaire.
Also, I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Started reading it before I went to bed; when I next looked at the clock, it was 6 am. Excellent book.
I just started Don DeLillo's Underworld two nights ago, and will probably develop well toned biceps from propping it up before I finish it. But it looks like it'll be worth it.
Thanks for the list, Senor Wonderpollo.
Man. Late to the party.
At least I can take this with me to the library.
That's quite a piece of work, stav.
Take a fifty out of petty cash and buy a huge bottle of whatever.
*sneaks into Desert Island library and squeezes George Saunder's books between Sappho and Sedaris.*
Posted by: liam on September 28, 2002 12:11 PMI ♥ stavros. Especially when he's drubk and has ebooks for us all!
Posted by: adampsyche on September 28, 2002 12:20 PMif u have room, could you put Jose Saramago's Baltazar and Blimunda in too?
oh, and Peter Carey's The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith?
great list!
That's a great list!
Kudos to our fine feathered friend!
Holy frijoles! Bravo, stav. I'm too hungover to pour over the list with any real intelligence, but my god it's a great resource!
Posted by: readymade on September 28, 2002 04:31 PMMan. That was kind of funny, but maybe a little variety would have helped!
Posted by: kafkaesque on September 28, 2002 06:13 PMMan. That was kind of funny, but maybe a little variety would have helped!
um. a lot!
In addition, I recommend that we all read "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind. It's a nice history of sex, drugs, and film in the 60/70s.
Posted by: krimur on September 29, 2002 06:24 PMI would just like to point out that I posted the Viking kitty thing on 9622 a full five hours before it showed up as a post on the blue pages.
I, for one, welcome our new Viking kitty overlords.
Where's my beloved Jack Vance? My fault for not visiting here often enough...
Posted by: interrobang on September 30, 2002 04:40 PMOooh... I have one that I forgot during the original thread - "The Princess Bride", by William Goldman. Dang, how could I have missed that one?
(Incon-thee-vable!)
We worship the inexorable god known as Dangott.
Strangers are automatically heretics, and so are fed
to the sacred apes.
- Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
After perusing the Big List, I placed a hefty Amazon order, including The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I might have screwed up - is this part of a series, and is there another Murakami book I should read first?
Readers, please hope me!
No, it's stand-alone Tizzie.
However, it is quite different from his other books. I would have started with Wild Sheep Chase or Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
Thank you, kaf. I haven't started it yet, so I'll follow your suggestion.
it's sooooo quiet in here today.... maybe putting my picture in the croquet thread scared everyone away!
Nah. I just decided to do a day's work for a change.
Posted by: kafkaesque on October 1, 2002 02:09 PMActually, tizzie, it's not you that scared everyone away, it was all those huge dogs surrounding you.
Posted by: witchstone on October 1, 2002 02:19 PMThe only thing scary about them is how much they shed. Big softies.
Posted by: tizzie on October 1, 2002 02:39 PM"I thought you said your dog did not bite."
"That is not my dog."
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