what should I read? and top 169 list.

[Paul Taylor]

So, I just finished 'Vineland'; throughout, I kept feeling how
unsatisfying a read it was, esp. coming off of GR... I thought that it
was a bit too choppily written, not flowing nearly as well or
naturally as GR or Crying.  It was like someone imitating TRP more
than the real thing; seemed like the Slow Learner collection was a bit
better conceived.  Is that just me, or does anybody else have an
opinion on the subject?  I thought the end picked up quite a bit, last
50-100 pages made it worthwhile again, I guess.  It just lacked
intensity and the characteristic humour was lacking slightly- half
cocked jokes.  Maybe the uber-/socio-satiric nature of the book
forecast this from the outset.  Thoughts?

--PT

On 8/8/05, Chris Crocker <cwec03 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just want to know who read 'The Story of the Vivian
> Girls ...' by Henry Darger.
> 
> --- kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for all the suggestions, everybody.  I've
> > decided to read Ulysses, since I have nothing better
> > to do with my life at the moment, followed, probably
> > by the Murakami book. When and how was the
> > below-mentioned top 169 list compiled?  I'd
> > definitely vote for a lot of the books on the list,
> > though I'd want to add a lot of others.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Gentle <gentle_family at btinternet.com>
> > Sent: Aug 5, 2005 11:31 PM
> > To: kelber at mindspring.com
> > Subject: Re: what should I read?
> >
> > ps. It's just occured to me that I never actually
> > put up the web page for
> > the
> > P-List top books list. I'm probably not going to do
> > it soon but here it is.
> > And if you can't find something worth reading here
> > then I wonder why you'd
> > subscribe to this list...
> >
> > The top 169 novels
> >   1.. Gravity's Rainbow : Thomas Pynchon : 226
> >   2.. Ulysses : James Joyce : 88
> >   3.. Moby Dick : Herman Melville : 77
> >   4.. The Recognitions : William Gaddis : 50
> >   5.. One Hundred Years of Solitude : Gabriel Garcia
> > Marquez : 50
> >   6.. Mason & Dixon : Thomas Pynchon : 45
> >   7.. JR : William Gaddis : 35
> >   8.. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : Haruki Murakami :
> > 33
> >   9.. The Magic Mountain : Thomas Mann : 30
> >   10.. Pale Fire : Vladimir Nabokov : 29
> >   11.. Lolita : Vladimir Nabokov : 28
> >   12.. V : Thomas Pynchon : 27
> >   13.. Molloy/Malone/Unnamable : Samuel Beckett : 27
> >   14.. Tristram Shandy : Laurence Sterne : 25
> >   15.. The Satanic Verses : Salman Rushdie : 23
> >   16.. Dhalgren : Samuel R. Delany : 22
> >   17.. Huckleberry Finn : Mark Twain : 20
> >   18.. Absalom! Absalom! : William Faulkner : 20
> >   19.. The Crying of Lot 49 : Thomas Pynchon : 20
> >   20.. A la recherche du temps perdu : Marcel Proust
> > : 19
> >   21.. Midnight's Children : Salman Rushdie : 19
> >   22.. Neuromancer : William Gibson : 18
> >   23.. A Confederacy of Dunces : John Kennedy Toole
> > : 18
> >   24.. Ada : Vladimir Nabokov : 18
> >   25.. Anna Karenina : Leo Tolstoy : 15
> >   26.. Vineland : Thomas Pynchon : 15
> >   27.. Foucault's Pendulum : Umberto Eco : 14
> >   28.. The Book of the New Sun : Gene Wolfe : 14
> >   29.. On The Road : Jack Kerouac : 13
> >   30.. The Master and Margarita : Mikhail Bulgakov :
> > 13
> >   31.. Bleak House : Charles Dickens : 13
> >   32.. Chimera : John Barth : 13
> >   33.. Sometimes a Great Notion : Ken Kesey : 13
> >   34.. You Bright and Risen Angels : William T.
> > Vollmann : 12
> >   35.. Death of Virgil : Hermann Broch : 11
> >   36.. Independent People : Halldor Laxness : 11
> >   37.. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas : Hunter S.
> > Thompson : 11
> >   38.. The Brothers Karamazov : Fyodor Dostoevsky :
> > 11
> >   39.. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller : Italo
> > Calvino : 10
> >   40.. The Naked Lunch : William S. Burroughs : 10
> >   41.. Too Loud a Solitude : Bohumil Hrabel : 10
> >   42.. A Scanner Darkly : Philip K. Dick : 10
> >   43.. Oliver Twist : Charles Dickens : 10
> >   44.. Under the Volcano : Malcolm Lowry : 9
> >   45.. Madame Bovary : Gustave Flaubert : 9
> >   46.. The Tin Drum : Gunter Grass : 9
> >   47.. Winter's Tale : Mark Helprin : 9
> >   48.. The Castle : Franz Kafka : 9
> >   49.. The Man Without Qualities : Robert Musil : 9
> >   50.. Candide : Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire :
> > 9
> >   51.. Blood Meridian : Cormac McCarthy : 9
> >   52.. Auto-da-Fe : Elias Canetti : 9
> >   53.. Roadside Picnic : Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky
> > : 9
> >   54.. The Red and the Black : Stendhal : 9
> >   55.. Count Zero : William Gibson : 9
> >   56.. The Age of Innocence : Edith Wharton : 9
> >   57.. Cat's Cradle : Kurt Vonnegut : 8
> >   58.. Watt : Samual Beckett : 8
> >   59.. Two Girls, Fat and Thin : Mary Gaitskill : 8
> >   60.. The Sot-Weed Factor : John Barth : 8
> >   61.. Nog : Rudolph Wurlitzer : 8
> >   62.. Cryptonomicon : Neal Stephenson : 8
> >   63.. A Book of Common Prayer : Joan Didion : 8
> >   64.. Portrait of a Lady : Henry James : 8
> >   65.. Omon Ra : Victor Pelevin : 7
> >   66.. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch :
> > Philip K. Dick : 7
> >   67.. Fathers and Sons : Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev :
> > 7
> >   68.. Hall of Mirrors : Robert Stone : 7
> >   69.. Farewell My Lovely : Raymond Chandler : 7
> >   70.. The Stars My Destination : Alfred Bester : 7
> >   71.. USA : John Dos Passos : 7
> >   72.. Ragtime : E. L. Doctorow : 7
> >   73.. Journey to the West : Anthony Yu : 7
> >   74.. Ubik : Philip K. Dick : 7
> >   75.. The Bridge Trilogy : William Gibson : 7
> >   76.. To Kill a Mockingbird : Harper Lee : 7
> >   77.. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test : Thomas
> > Wolfe : 7
> >   78.. Ficciones : Jorge Luis Borges : 7
> >   79.. Light in August : William Faulkner : 7
> >   80.. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress : Robert
> > Heinlein : 6
> >   81.. The Man with the Golden Arm : Nelson Algren :
> > 6
> >   82.. The Night (Alone) : Richard Meltzer : 6
> >   83.. Rabbit stories : John Updike : 6
> >   84.. A Hero of Our Time : Mikhail Lermontov : 6
> >   85.. House of Sleeping Beauties : Yasunari
> > Kawabata : 6
> >   86.. Underworld : Don DeLillo : 6
> >   87.. The Power and the Glory : Graham Greene : 6
> >   88.. The Counterlife : Philip Roth : 6
> >   89.. The Story of the Treasure Seekers : Edith
> > Nesbit : 5
> >   90.. Always Coming Home : Ursula LeGuin : 5
> >   91.. Catch-22 : Joseph Heller : 5
> >   92.. Crime and Punishment : Fyodor Dostoevsky : 5
> >   93.. Dune : Frank Herbert : 5
> >   94.. Dreams of Leaving : Rupert Thompson : 5
> >   95.. World's End : T.C. Boyle : 5
> >   96.. Wittgenstein's Mistress : David Markson : 5
> >   97.. Memories of the Ford Administration : John
> > Updike : 5
> >   98.. Carpenter's Gothic : William Gaddis : 5
> >   99.. Lord of Light : Roger Zelazney : 5
> >   100.. The Alexandria Quartet : Lawrence Durrell :
> > 5
> >   101.. Life of Pi : Yann Martel : 4
> >   102.. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance :
> > Richard Powers : 4
> >   103.. The Sound and the Fury : William Faulkner :
> > 4
> >   104.. The Cairo Trilogy : Naguib Mahfouz : 4
> >   105.. The Man Who Was Thursday : G. K. Chesterton
> > : 4
> >   106.. Vurt : Jeff Noon : 4
> >   107.. The Glass Bead Game : Herman Hesse : 4
> >   108.. Don Quixote : Cervantes : 4
> >   109.. Parade's End : Ford Madox Ford : 4
> >   110.. Enderby, The Poet : Anthony Burgess : 4
> >   111.. The Scarlet Letter : Nathaniel Hawthorne : 4
> >   112.. Libra : Don DeLillo : 4
> >   113.. Invisible Man : Ralph Ellison : 4
> >   114.. Harlot's Ghost : Norman Mailer : 4
> >   115.. Wise Blood (& Complete Stories) : Flannery
> > O'Connor : 4
> >   116.. The Border Trilogy : Cormac McCarthy : 3
> >   117.. Warlock : Oakley Hall : 3
> >   118.. The Diamond Age : Neal Stephenson : 3
> >   119.. The Moviegoer : Walker Percy : 3
> >   120.. Giles Goat-Boy : John Barth : 3
> >   121.. Infinate Jest : David Foster Wallace : 3
> >   122.. Beautifull Losers : Leonard Cohen : 3
> >   123.. After The Banquet : Yukio Mishima : 3
> >   124.. Beloved : Toni Morrison : 3
> >   125.. Death On The Installment Plan : Louis
> > Ferdinand-Celine : 3
> >   126.. The Things They Carried : Tim O'Brian : 3
> >   127.. White Jazz : James Ellroy : 3
> >   128.. The Trial : Franz Kafka : 3
> >   129.. Frank's World : George Mangles : 3
> >   130.. Metamorphosis (& Complete Works) : Franz
> > Kafka : 3
> >   131.. The Big Sleep : Raymond Chandler : 2
> >   132.. Love in the Time of Cholera : Gabriel Garcia
> > Marquez : 2
> >   133.. Invisible Cities : Italo Calvino : 2
> >   134.. Call It Sleep : Henry Roth : 2
> >   135.. Quo Vadis : Henryk Sienkiewicz : 2
> >   136.. Snow Crash : Neal Stephenson : 2
> >   137.. What a Carve Up : Jonathan Coe : 2
> >   138.. Revolutions Trilogy : John Banville : 2
> >   139.. Geek Love : Katherine Dunn : 2
> >   140.. Disgrace : J.M. Coatzee : 2
> >   141.. Weave World : Clive Barker : 2
> >   142.. Something Wicked This way Comes : Ray
> > Bradbury : 2
> >   143.. The War at the End of the World : Vargas
> > Llosa : 2
> >   144.. Slaughterhouse Five : Kurt Vonnegut : 2
> >   145.. The Gold Bug Variations : Richard Powers : 2
> >   146.. The Goodbye Look : Ross MacDonald : 2
> >   147.. The Lord of the Rings : J.R.R. Tolkien : 2
> >   148.. The Confidence Man : Herman Melville : 2
> >
> === message truncated ===
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
> 
>