The good news is that I thoroughly agreed with a woman at the book club where this was discussed when she said that the book could have used a good editor.
The bad news was that, just after I thought we’d found some real common ground, she went on to explain how “the blacks” all move into one area of town together, and how “the Mexicans” do the same thing, one moves in and then their whole family and friends are around all the time all of a sudden.
I have to say, it’s really hard for me when a crazy person takes a stand that I find reasonable, then rounds it out with something insane.It makes me question my own sanity, which I don’t much care for.It would be like Hitler and I agreeing on one aspect of life that I find really important, like the fact that there is no reason to have one of those stupid silverware separator things in your kitchen drawers.But then you stop for a minute and say, “He agreed with me and felt the same way about the silverware thing.But on the other hand…there was all the, you know, maniacal genocide stuff.”
I left the book feeling like I could have done with a little less, that’s all.There’s a particular section where the author takes a road trip with a very strange woman (with whom I MUST agree on some other point of life because that would only make sense) that drags on way too long.Honestly, the weirdo was more sympathetic at first, but by the end I got sick of her.It was like I had spent so much time with her that it killed what little sympathy I had.Granted, that’s not a deep well to begin with, but I definitely made the complete transition from feeling for her to hoping that she would melt.Just melt right where she stood.
I stayed up until 2:30 last night reading this book.
Staying up until 2:30 isn’t that unusual for me, but there was (almost) no booze involved, no poorly filmed amateur video of the unspeakable involved, and really no other reason to be up.
In short: Loved it. Another of Pete's top 10 of 2011.
Okay, the first fifty pages or so left me unsure.There’s a fine line between referencing geek culture in an effort to trick geeks into reading your book and paying genuine tribute to all things geek.And geeks are sensitive to this.There’s nothing a geek hates more than having their stuff co-opted by people who don’t know what they’re doing.Seeing the wrong kind of person in a Mario t-shirt boils my blood so hard.If only I could harness my rage enough to rip a giant radish out of the ground and take those bastards out…
But before long, I was convinced.Sold.It was total loving tribute, and it was handled in such a way that I couldn’t stop reading.
If you’re a geek, especially a gaming or 80’s culture geek, this is a MUST-read.If you’re not, read the damn thing anyway.It’s very accessible, and below I’ve made a list of some of the stuff mentioned in the book specifically, so bomb on over if you’re having trouble picking up on what’s going on.
The following elements are involved in this book: a severed limb, a diamond heist, a mid-air collision between two airplanes, and a mummified corpse.
Wouldn’t you think at least ONE of those would be exciting on some level?
If you’re human, you would.And Mr. Hillerman would owe you an apology.Probably even an apology involving baked goods.An apolo-cake. An aPielogy.At least that way you would walk away with SOMETHING.
There were two female characters in this book that I didn’t even realize were separate characters until about halfway through.This is not a good thing.If you’re on a date with someone and only halfway through do you realize that the person you picked up earlier in the evening is not the person you are currently sharing movie popcorn with, I would question how well the date was going.You should immediately end this date.And probably make some hospital appointments.
Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my natural distaste for mysteries.It’s not that I’ve read a lot of them, but the idea of surprise, in general, is very unappealing to me.I don’t care about surprise parties, I don’t care if I know what I’m eating for dinner, and I always snooped around the house and found my Christmas gifts early.Which is a really good thing because sometimes your mom gets you a guitar, and sometimes you see it and say, “Oh shit!” because you asked for a guitar months ago, but now you REALLY don’t want a guitar because you know you’re going to suck at it.So thank god you looked around in her bedroom before Christmas morning because at least now you can put on a brave face.
Mystery and surprise are overrated, in my opinion.And some of the best things in life don’t have mystery in them.I like pizza.I know I like pizza.No mystery there, yet time and again I order pizza.Sex.There can be some level of mystery there, but rarely is there a twist ending, and usually when there is someone is really unhappy about it and spends the evening with an ice pack.
The other problem is that I’m supposed to discuss this with a book club tomorrow.What the hell am I going to say?I have a couple potential ideas:
“Hey, wasn’t that a neat book?”
“I didn’t think that book was so neat?What about you?”
“That cover sure is neat.”
I really can’t think of one good reason to read this book.I mean, come on.A severed arm!And nothing!?If you can’t make something happen with a severed arm, you have no business on my bookshelves
If you’re a book person, a bookie, but not the kind that puts money on horses, you’ve almost certainly come across a post along the lines of “The BBC claims that most people will have only read 6 of these books.”Then, your pretentious friends will go through the list and highlight each of the books they’ve read.
First off, I’d like to point out that this Facebook list and the BBC list are not actually the same thing.
The BBC did a Big Read list, one of those stupid votey things, and it looks as though that list was the basis for the 6/100 thing.However, the claim of having only read 6 titles was not from the BBC, and although they share a number of titles, the Facebook meme list has 37 original titles.Read a more thorough explanation here, if you’d like.
The list and its origins have caused some controversy.The most annoying, to me, are posts like this that say, “Many years ago Esquire published a list of the ten or however many books you should have read if you have any pretension to being a civilized, educated adult. That was a list with some meat on it. I don’t recall the entire list, but I remember that it included The Canterbury Tales. In Middle English. And Boswell’s Life of Johnson (BOO-YAH!).”Hey, great.I’m sure someone somewhere made a worse list of everything.If you wanted a list of things required to be an asshole, it would include the Canterbury Tales AND bowties, so you, blogger, would be really ripping up the charts.
The real point of the whole thing, as I interpret it, is that people will say, “Those accented assholes think they’re so damn smart.I’ll show them.I bet I’ve read more than 6 of these.”And, to be honest, most people who would bother to scroll through a list of 100 titles probably have.
Something like this crops up every so often, and something else will crop up again.It’s an endless debate.Though I can’t end the debate, I can give my final word on it.So here we are:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
This is not the fun kind of prejudice.The kind with slurs.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Uh, any book that involves a volcano as a central plot point is not serious.Bold statement, I know.But that’s what we do here.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Three books in and already two are those kinds of books that spend an awful lot of time describing the three F’s:Food, Furniture, and Fops.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Harry Potter series isn’t really a “book,” now is it.4100 pages?And how many times do you have to read the rules for Quidditch re-explained clumsily?(Ay ‘Arry, ‘ow is it you play Quidditch, eh wot?I hit me head and cannae remember a bloomin’ thing!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
It was the butler.Sorry to ruin it for you.
6 The Bible
I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Both Brontes in the first ten.Praise the aforementioned lord.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
I think we’re pretty much living 1984 voluntarily through social networking, so maybe we can call it a day on this one.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Why is it that the world where you can ride polar bears is never cross-pollinated with polar bears that shoot machine guns?Am I alone in this one?
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
This gave me an idea: Have cereal mascots do booktalks.How were the Expectations?Grreeat!Plus, they already shot that commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios that’s A Christmas Carol in about four seconds.They still run this damn thing every year, even though it looks like it was filmed in 1989.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
This book would have been better if the women were littler.If I was the editor, every time Lou came back with a draft, I’d say, “It’s good.But can you make them littler?I’m talking palm-of-your-hand.”Because why not?
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
How the fuck do you say this title?Duh-oobervilles?Doobervilles?
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
I hate how often people misuse the phrase “Catch 22.”Lesson:
“Catch-22” refers to a sort of weird military logic in the novel.The protagonist is a fighter pilot, and the fighter pilots fly more and more missions, which reduces their chances of survival.There is a way out of the military, and it’s through a little clause called Catch-22, which basically says that you can get out of missions by being declared unfit to fly.Logic would say that only someone suicidal would do this job, and anyone suicidal is psychologically unfit to fly.However, in order to get out of flying one has to be declared unfit by a professional.By making the appointment with the professional, the main character proves that he recognizes the danger of flight and that he is not suicidal.Therefore, the professional declares him fit to fly.
In short, a catch-22 is a logical problem where there is no proper solution because in order to qualify for the solution, you disqualify yourself from the problem in the first place.
So, when I hear you say, “I want to go to the mall, but if I go to the mall I can’t go to the beach.Catch-22” I might blow my head off.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
Okay, again, not really a thing, a unified piece here.How about we pick the Tempest?I feel like that one has the potential for the coolest special effects.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Hopefully we don’t continue naming books on first names alone.I’m not really looking forward to Kyle or Bridget: the Book.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien This book has songs in it.If books with songs in it belong on this list, I would say that the songbook for just about any Dream Theater album is as interesting as the Hobbit.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
Read for you on audiobook by an actual bird.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Funny story:Because the title of this is kind of misleading, I confused it with Field of Dreams as a young man.It turns out that they are not so much similar.Far fewer ghost baseball players in the Rye.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Yeah, a book about a guy who travels back in time and cultures his own wife as a child.That’s not creepy at all.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
I would prefer it if this were called Mediummarch.More contemporary.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Or, as I call it, Mustaches and Slaves.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald You know what that F stands for?You know what that goddamn F stands for?I'll give you forty billion guesses, and you won't need hardly any of them.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Well that just sounds delightful.It's bleak, there's a house.There are a lot more high-interest words they could put in there instead of "bleak.""Haunted," for example. Or "of pancakes" helps too.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
I recommend one half of this book.I'm not going to say which half.But I will say that I'd rather hear about a guy's head being blown apart than someone kissing tenderly in beams of morning light coming through a window in Tuscany.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Oh, not the whole series this time?Just the one?Because the list won’t be impossible to finish if you only include single books as opposed to whole freakin’ series.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Is the brideshead the same thing as a...you know, maidenhead?If so, how is it revisited?Because it's not really something you get a second shot at.You can't have that paper banner the basketball team runs through and then have them run through a second time a little later.No amount of tape can fix a banner/vagina.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Little known fact, this is sort of the template for Law and Order.You know, with less cum visible under blacklight.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
This book must be responsible for more punny food names than any other written material on the planet.I've seen Crepes of Wrath.There must be 40 wines with this name.Let's just go ahead and retitle this to Steinbeck IV.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Official declaration:Moratorium on creepy remakes of this.It's done, it's over.Shit, even Tim Burton had a crack at it.Let's all let it go for the next 40 years.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
If this guy was white, which I assume he is because he wrote a book about a badger that drives a car, It must have been extra fun to call him cracker with that last name of his.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Interesting name formula.Very normal first name, insane last name that sounds like you're shivering in the arctic every time you say it.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
HUGE HEADS-UP:this has nothing to do with that 90's magician.Nothing.Also, it's boring and bullshit.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Bible was already listed, kay?
34 Emma - Jane Austen
Boy.Oh boy.I suppose it's only reasonable to have one Jane Austen book on here.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
Aw, really?Right in a row like that?You couldn't find 100 authors here?100 different authors as selected from ALL TIME?
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Chronicles of Narnia was listed above.Is this not part of Narnia?Is this like how people say the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are two different things, even though one leads directly into the other?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Yeah, this one is going to hold up well.Cinderella in the Middle East.Good one.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
What is he a captain of, why does he have a mandolin, and why do I care about the answers to either of those two questions?Can someone get this guy a fucking guitar?Does anyone have enough respect to get this man, this man who served his country somehow, a goddamn guitar?
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
She would have included the chapter about what Captain Corelli did to her, but he bashed her over the head with his goddamn mandolin and she forgot the whole thing ever happened.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Amongst these tales of enniu in the roaring 20's and parables for the great political movements of human existence, we have a story about a bear whose butt is too large to fit through a hole.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
Okay, so he doesn't like animal government, he doesn't like future government, and he doesn't like the version of government that made him shoot that camel or elephant or whatever that was.I, for one, would like to hear what he was in favor of.It's always negativity with this guy, and I've had my fill, thanks.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Wow.Is this one just a gimme or something?Something that lets us discuss Tom Hanks' worst haircut choices?
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Titled for exactly what it would take to make me say, "Oh, fuck it" and pick up this book.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Kind of the Forrest Gump of books.Or that movie where Sean Penn did the handicapped voice.I am Sam.And Milk.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
I think we get it based on the title.There's a woman, she's in white.Not fun at parties.Pow, done.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Uch.What is going on with these books where a girl is in the prairie and shit?Enough.Girly books all involve a girl who lives out in the boonies or lives in the city and works for a magazine.Where are all the stories about midwestern girls?Someone is operating that cigarette store just across the Indiana border, and I want to know who it is and what she has to say.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Good.God forbid there be a crowd, or an event, or action of any kind.That would make for a terrible book.Just an awful read.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Sorry, but if "handmaid" wasn't a nice word for the people who do happy ending massages before, it is now.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding A fat whiner with glasses is crushed with a rock.The boys trapped on the island may have taken things a little far, but that kid definitely deserved an ass-stomping at the very least.What’s the alternative? Get off the island and still have to go through ten more years of school with this idiot?This was their one chance to smash him, and maybe they did the right thing.You might call it homicide, I call it Project Managment.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
It's a stretch, but based on the trailer for the movie based on the book, this thing looked like a Nicholas Sparks novel taken to a slightly more epic level.No thanks.I don't watch movies where the old sleep on park benches and Mandy Moore is a virgin.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
I never got the appeal of this book.A kid trapped on a boat with magical animals?Come to think of it…Harry Potter…Narnia…Wind in the Willows…Animal Farm…this list is obsessed with magical animals.Downright obsessed.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
People always complain how the series was never finished.This thing must be a thousand pages.It's finished.It's like taking the SAT's, and you put your pencil down and you're finished regardless of how far in you were.He said plenty, it's goddamn finished.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
That sounds like a place where you could get some really good ice cream.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Are you shitting me?Again?Am I to understand that of all the literature that is meant to be read, Jane Austen has written three percent of it?Fuck that.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
aka Title of Most Dubious Craigslist Ad Ever Posted.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Oh, how poetic.Unless this is a kung-fu move, I'm going to need a new title.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Can I pick the cities?What season is this in?Because that has a lot to do with which cities I'm into.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Can someone please repurpose the Aladdin song for this book."A Whole New World" becomes "A Brave New World.""One step, ahead of the [something]" becomes, "One sniff, ahead of depression.""Don't you dare close your eyes" becomes...eh, that one can stay.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon This book does teach a very important mathematical lesson about how to play a gameshow with three doors.And it explains it so that even I can understand it, so it DOES have useful information.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In a word: Phlegmy.
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck If you don’t already know the end of this, you dumb.The real key reveal: the weird guy who wears a glove filled with Vaseline to keep his hands soft.“For his woman.”This is, for most students, their first exposure to the character who would later come to be known as The Gimp in the motion picture Pulp Fiction.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
This is ripe for a teen movie remake.Some old fuck as the narrator.Miley Cyrus as the girl.Original score by Miley Cyrus.Me not seeing it: again, responsibility Cyrus.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Of what?Shit, someone needs to manufacture magic book covers so that when you read this one, the second you finish the "Secret" part vanishes and it just says, "The History."That would be fucking badass.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold People, this is about a ghost whose killer ends up dying because an icicle hits him in the head and he falls off a cliff.Apparently this poor girl was killed by Wile E. Coyote.I just saved you two hours, you’re welcome.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Or, as one guy asked me for, The Count of Monte Crisco.He was searching for the movie, though, so maybe there was an endorsement deal going on.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac Have you ever read the list of 30 essentials this guy set down for his writing style?A few key ingredients:
Be in love with yr life
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
So he invented the idiotic shorthand of texting and wrote the sort of crap I see on Facebook updates day in and day out.If only he’d invented a script that created a glittering rose, he really would have predicted the shittiest parts of the future. 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
In a perfect world, this would be the autobiography of Rude Jude.
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
I would argue that any of these where Renee Zelwegger could potentially star in the movie version should be striked (stricken?Strucked?) from the list.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
I don’t know that this is about vampires, but it should be.“They call themselves Midnight’s Children…”
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
I bet there are a lot of intrepid youngsters who write “is a” with pen in between those two words.Because we are very much over that kind of music.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Oliver’s Twists, a new candy.Yes, you can have some more.
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker You will be amazed how boring vampires could be before we hit on the idea of making them hot teens.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Isn’t every woods a secret garden?Just a bunch of shit growing untended and unnoticed by polite society?
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Bryson's Note to Self:I’m kind of a prick.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
You could read this, or you could try and absorb the information the old fashioned way, by drilling a hole into a teenage boy's head and seeing what comes out.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath I did read this in middle school.It was a little depressing.It did not make it easy to go back to school and reassemble cut-out paper dinosaur bones.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
This one sounds pornographic, and I suspect it's a trick.A dirty trick.
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
The German translation of the screenplay for the Terminal.I'm a little shocked it made the list, but good for Emile, I guess.
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Read it every month.
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Have to say, some of these are much better album titles than they are book titles.Possession is a song I would listen to, but not something I'd be psyched to see on an ENG 111 syllabus.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Did you watch the damn video?
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Starts with weird native people, somehow arrives at weird robotic future.Never have I declared, What the Fuck, to so many pages of the same book.
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
How in the fuck, what in the world is going on that so few editions of this book have purple covers?How do book designers not recognize such a total slam dunk when they see one?
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
This guy must have been terrible to have meals with.Just when everyone finishes up, he looks down at the table, "Ah.The remains of the meal."Depress the shit out of you, you know?
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
I always thought this would be a great name for a cow.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
It's a fine balance between having an interesting name and one that's...oranges?Apples?Oh, wait, I know what I'm thinking of!Bananas!And fucking insanity!
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
Question:Why would someone immediately assume that a pig had created a spider web out of its ass rather than checking the barn for a spider so intelligent that it could not only write but could also understand the plight of a pig headed to slaughter?And is this not amazing enough?And if we're being realistic, doesn't the pig deserve to die, seeing as he doesn't really do shit?
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
For me, they'll probably be much like the people I meet in a fancy nightclub.The guy at the front who doesn't let me in (1).Someone in the bathroom who sees me come in through a window and rip my pants on a rat corpse in the alley (2).A girl who starts dancing with me and then quickly changes her mind (3).Someone who discovers that I don't have a wristband and don't belong inside (4).The guy who throws me out (5).
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
How do I solve mysteries?A piece of glass on a stick.Give it a rest.You barely lived to be 25 back then anyway, so killing someone who was 22 really isn't that bad.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
More than any of the other titles, I wish this was a thing.That way we could have the trees to make the air and shit, but we wouldn't have to have them all around us, providing shelter for bats.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad If someone drops an Apocalypse-now-related knowledge bomb on me one more time here, I'm just going to pretend that I've never heard of that movie, nor Vietnam, nor conflict, in general.Then get very nervous and excuse myself in a hurry.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
I think that rather than summing this up, I'll let this video do it for me:
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
This explains a lot.Is there some way we can negotiate with this factory, or is it in North Korea and created just to make us miserable?
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
Fun as it may be, bunnies killing each other always feels liks small potatoes next to humans creating the automobile.Seriously, they must watch that footage of Fords rolling off the assembly line the way we watch concentration camp footage.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole The story of a dummy who works a hot dog cart.The only complaint I have is that this takes away 68% of the material penned for my autobiography.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
Geez.This sounds like the title of a poem I would have written when I was really sad.Something about how the town named Alice was beautiful, but at night it was scary and I didn't know my way around and the bars closed way too early.
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
They warranted a candy bar.That’s something.And now that I mention it, Dumas also wrote Count of Monte Cristo, which is a sandwich.I would say his next product should be an energy drink named after one of his lesser-known works: Wolf-Leader.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Again, goddammit, we already listed the complete works of Shakespeare.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Well, if you got this far and were reading the list in order, this would be a nice relief.But the fact that someone built a Harry Potter land and yet nobody has built a Chocolate Factory (the fun kind with slides and shit, not depressed probation workers standing over hot conveyor belts) is very sad.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Or, as my American brothers know it, The Miserables.
Cover My Ass Time: This is all happening in a magical, fictional universe. Any resemblance to anything ever is strictly the product of a weak imagination, for which I apologize.
