I was very tempted by the
Infinite Summer project that tons of my friends on all ends of the country are doing right now -- I attempted the book a few years back when my roommate had a copy and insisted it was his Favorite Book Ever. But I'm pretty sure I didn't get even 50 pages in before I stopped and I'm certain I'll never get through it without a good reason (peer pressure). In the end I opted out, but as a result ended up downloading
White Noise on my Kindle. I've been on a bit of a crusade to get through the
100 Greatest Novels of All Time, or, more honestly, using the list to find my personal Great books that I never got around to reading, since, not being graded for the assignment, I'm not going to force myself to choke down everything just to say I did it (**cough**Lord of the Rings**cough**).
So anyway, I started White Noise a couple weeks ago, and barely 30 pages into it I knew it was going to be one of my top five favorite books. I also find myself wishing I'd read it in a college course, where we discussed it and were forced to sit and write papers on its themes. The dialogue and laugh-out-loud humor are enough to make it great, but as I'm reading it on the Metro (laughing embarrassingly to myself), or just speed-reading in bed because it's so good I need to keep going, I most assuredly feel that I am, well, not getting it the way I need to be. There are themes and innuendo up the wazoo, and I'm sure if I sat down and wrote a 10 page essay on it (or was involved in a nationwide sit-and-read), it would all come together, but as it is, I just want to keep plowing through to read more of his amazing/hysterical prose. Although it's on my Kindle, I suspect I may end up buying a hardcopy of this to re-read and dog-ear (I've been using the highlight feature on the Kindle copiously). I'll also be voraciously hunting down essays and cliffnotes on it when I'm finished.
Anyone feel like going through the 100 with me, or as many as you can? Here's the list, and don't worry, I don't have a very good head start. Feel free to recommend books you loved that I should move to my short list.
The Adventures of Augie March
All the King's Men
American Pastoral
An American Tragedy
Animal Farm
Appointment in Samarra
Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret
The Assistant
At Swim-Two-Birds
Atonement
Beloved
The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin ** short list; I've read The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake and loved them both **
Blood Meridian
Brideshead Revisited
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Call It Sleep
Catch-22 ** tried and failed a few years ago **
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
The Crying of Lot 49
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
A Death in the Family
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers
Falconer
The French Lieutenant's Woman
The Golden Notebook
Go Tell it on the Mountain
Gone with the Wind
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity's Rainbow **on my ambitious short list **
The Great Gatsby
A Handful of Dust
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart of the Matter
Herzog
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
I, Cladius
Infinite Jest ** sigh **
Invisible Man
Light in August
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ** heck yeah, the whole series! **
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings ** no thank you **
Loving
Lucky Jim ** thumbs down, give me his son anyday **
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight's Children ** almost bought this the other day, but ended up buying
Satantic Verses instead; close enough! **
Money ** LOVE Martin Amis (hello I named my cat after him, sort of), but this was actually not my favorite novel of his **
The Moviegoer
Mrs. Dalloway
Naked Lunch
Native Son
Neuromancer ** big thumbs up! **
Never Let Me Go
1984
On the Road **
short list **
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ** hated the movie, this will be toward the end of my list **
The Painted Bird
Pale Fire
A Passage to India
Play it as it Lays
Portnoy's Complaint
Possession
The Power and the Glory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rabbit, Run
Ragtime
The Recognitions
Red Harvest
Revolutionary Road
The Sheltering Sky
Slaughterhouse-Five
Snow Crash ** moved to short list on recommendation **
The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sound and the Fury ** good lord, talk about needing cliffnotes **
The Sportswriter
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Sun Also Rises
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
To Kill a Mockingbird
To the Lighthouse
Tropic of Cancer
Ubik
Under the Net
Under the Volcano
Watchmen
White Noise ** almost done! **
White Teeth
Wide Sargasso Sea