Pointless Adventures in Literature-Browsing the NYT 100 Best Books Part 1: RGBIB 423
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- We all go on a pointless adventure together! In two pointless parts that could easily be mistaken for one another!
Grand total: 18 books on the list that I either read, or read enough of to know I didn't like them!
I had not read Dennis Johnson books before. I just finished Nobody Move, Fantastic, all great. I wanted more.
They're all good but I love that one most... s
This list is basically a compilation of books that won a prize such as The Booker, The Pulitzer, The Womens Prize, Hugo ect... Occasionally they get one right.
Yeah these lists are always about confirming what "everybody" already decided. Take care in the bathtub! s
The Hilary Mantel you mentioned is Beyond Black. I recently read it. I’ve been skirting around the Cromwell books for some time, reading Mantels earlier work instead. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read so far.
Yeah that was it, I want to read more Mantel too... Unusual and beautiful prose style... s
@@Scottmbradfield Would like to see your review of Wolf Hall
100. Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke
99. Ali Smith: How to Be Both
98. Ann Patchett: Bel Canto
97. Jesmyn Ward: Men We Reaped
96. Saidiya Hartman: Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments
95. Hilary Mantel: Bring Up the Bodies
94. Zadie Smith: On Beauty
93. Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven
92. Elena Ferrante: The Days of Abandonment
91. Philip Roth: The Human Stain
90. Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer
89. Hisham Matar: The Return
88. Lydia Davis: The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
87. Torrey Peters: Detransition, Baby
86. David W. Blight: Frederick Douglass
85. George Saunders: Pastoralia
84. Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Emperor of All Maladies
83. Benjamin Labatut: When We Cease to Understand the World
82. Fernanda Melchor: Hurricane Season
81. John Jeremiah Sullivan: Pulphead
80. Elena Ferrante: The Story of the Lost Child
79. Lucia Berlin: A Manual for Cleaning Women
78. Jon Fosse: Septology
77. Tayari Jones: An American Marriage
76. Gabrielle Zevin: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
75. Mohsin Hamid: Exit West
74. Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge
73. Robert A. Caro: The Passage of Power
72. Svetlana Alexievitch: Secondhand Time
71. Tove Ditlevsen: The Copenhagen Trilogy
70. Edward P. Jones: All Aunt Hagar’s Children
69. Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
68. Sigrid Nunez: The Friend
67. Andrew Solomon: Far from the Tree
66. Justin Torres: We the Animals
65. Philip Roth: The Plot Against America
64. Rebecca Makkai: The Great Believers
63. Mary Gaitskill: Veronica
62. Ben Lerner: 10:04
61. Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead
60. Kiese Laymon: Heavy
59. Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
58. Hua Hsu: Stay True
57. Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
56. Rachel Kushner: The Flame Throwers
55. Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower
54. George Saunders: Tenth of December
53. Alice Munro: Runaway
52. Denis Johnson: Train Dreams
51. Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
50. Hernan Diaz: Trust
49. Han Kang: The Vegetarian
48. Marjane Satrapi: Perseopolis
47. Toni Morrison: A Mercy
46. Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch
45. Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts
44. N. K. Jemisin: The Fifth Season
43. Tony Judt: Postwar
42. Marlon James: A Brief History of Seven Killings
41. Claire Keegan: Small Things Like These
40. Helen Macdonald: H Is for Hawk
39. Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad
38. Roberto Bolano: The Savage Detectives
37. Annie Ernaux: The Years
36. Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me
35. Alison Bechdel: Fun Home
34. Claudia Rankine: Citizen
33. Jesmyn Ward: Salvage the Bones
32. Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
31. Zadie Smith: White Teeth
30. Jesmyn Ward: Sing, Unburied, Sing
29. Helen DeWitt: The Last Samurai
28. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
27. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah
26. Ian McEwan: Atonement
25. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family
24. Richard Powers: The Overstory
23. Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
22. Katherine Boo: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
21. Matthew Desmond: Evicted
20. Percival Everett: Erasure
19. Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing
18. George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo
17. Paul Beatty: The Sellout
16. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
15. Min Jin Lee: Pachinko
14. Rachael Cusk: Outline
13. Cormac McCarthy: The Road
12. Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
11. Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
10. Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
9. Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
8. W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz
7. Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
6. Roberto Bolano: 2666
5. Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
4. Edward P. Jones: The Known World
3. Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
2. Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns
1. Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend
Roberto Bolano's 2666 looks intriguing
It comes highly recommended by many of our bathing buddies! s
Basically, an irrelevant list. They also put together a readers' list, which is beyond depressing.
Yeah lists are pretty stupid anyway, but maybe they get people excited about talking about their own favorite books. Stay safe in the tub, Jack! s
Just needed something pointless. Thank you!
We can't make many promises here at the bathtub, but if you're looking for "pointless" rambling about books, we've got you covered!
As a member of the Denis Johnson cult, I was irate to see him at one hundred!
Shorter length Johnson is a much better experience, Train Dreams being a good example and my favorite, Fiskadoro.
When We Cease to Understand the World blends fact with fiction about many European physicists, showing how looney they were.
Heisenberg had repeated religious breakdowns, Dostoevsky level stuff. And the less said about Schrodinger the better.
The Lyndon Johnson bios by Robert Caro are great! Four volumes showing how a man who changed America so positively was, as a person, corrupt and repellent.
Enjoyed Plot Against America also.
The Mantel novel you mention is called Beyond Black, and it is, imho, much better than any of the Wolf Hall trilogy. Sorry
That's it! I never read WOLF HALL but will try it eventually. Thanks for dropping by the tub! s
The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver. 😅 You are right. The writing was just so pretentious. And palindromes?! 😂
That was it! What crap. The white men were all evil and the women and Africans were all really good and connected with nature. Prose was dense and unreadable, I never got her at all.
As for good old Denis Johnson, I'd say that Angels is his best novel and Largesse of the Sea Maiden is a perfect collection. Loved the Elvis conspiracy story. And loved the Ukiah and Santa Rosa stories. Wow. I spent an awful month in Ukiah one night. I think that's an old Jonathan Winters line or something.
absolutely....angels is brilliant...and Largesse is as good as american story short story gets....the fact that Largesse isnt on the list shows how idiotic the list is...
Yeah I like all those, but NOBODY SHOOT still my favorite... His book set in northern Cal is really good too, ALREADY DEAD?
Dodo is so cute 😂
Dear Master Bather, I say this as a compliment, not as a condemnation, but you seem to be very out of tune with the post-2010 “literary” zeitgeist. Ignorance (or, in this case, mere indifference) really does seem like bliss!
@@samferguson9171 thanks for dropping by the bathtub, Sam. Yeah I try to stay out of the way of any Zeitgeists, which is probably why I spend so much time in the tub! S
No one cares about my opinion, but Hilary Mantel should be far higher up this list for the Cromwell Trilogy. My feelings about Saunders are unmixed so far, and I loved the Tenth of December collection. You’re the second reliable source I’ve seem dismiss Kingsolver. Just the concept of Demon Copperhead was enough to deter me.
@@emilypearson5484 we, your bathing buddies, care about your opinion! I plan to try Wolf Hall soon… as for Saunders, I have enjoyed a couple long stories of his and can’t get into others…he often reminds me of Tom Disch’s stories which I mostly love…
demon copperhead is waaaaaay over rated...agree about the cromwell trilogy..loved all three ...all brilliantly written and imagined...waaaaaay better on all levels than the 3 books by the italian mystery writer who is #1...a roman writing about naples...go figure...hahah
8:35 😂😂 but why not? 🤭
"Why not?" is our entire philosophy in the bathtub, Gypsy! And yes, Dodo is cute when she'd not being an almighty pain in the butt! A
A bird in the hand is worth.......
I’d love to hear your mixed feelings on Saunders. I also have mixed feelings about him.
@@adamalegria3947 welcome to the bathtub, Adam! My mixed feelings aren’t very articulate. I really enjoyed two long stories of his, the PHIL one and Pastoralia, and couldn’t get interested in most other stuff I read of his…that’s it!
Manual for cleaning women by Berlin is excellent. I like Mantel but Wolf Hall was tedious.
Also, Roth and Saunders get two books on the list so far: is groupthink a thing for book reviewers?
I love Pastoralia and Tenth of December (which are both excellent collections). In Persuasion Nation has some excellent and hilarious stories as well ("Jon" and "The Red Bow" come to mind immediately), but I'm not a fan of his earlier or latest work. Most of them seem very emotionally manipulative and repetitive with their ideas/forms. The emotional climaxes rarely feel organic or earned (or even truly transformative).
I'd be curious to hear your reasons for your mixed reception of him.
@@absurdistoxymoron Yeah I'll try him again... as I mentioned to someone else, he always reminds me of Thomas Disch stories that were always a bit wickeder and funnier... but I did like two of his long stories a lot. s
Most of this list is garbage but Benjamin Labatut’s books are amazing. Super- compelling and extremely well-written.
@@haroldniver cool. Thanks for your suggestion!
I read part of the book on the list, very compelling, right up my alley. The problem is he says his stories are based on historical facts. But the more you read you start to question what is fact and what is fiction. It would be better if his writing was just call historical fiction.
@@garyrussell5373 yeah, parts are based on actual events, but it veers into fiction as well. I actually like that about it, that it kind of straddles the line between fact and fiction, and jumps back and forth. It makes for very compelling storytelling.
Agree with you completely about Lydia Davis. I read one of her collections (Samuel Johnson is Indignant) and found it to be underwhelming (to say the least). There were about two I found interesting, but I just don't understand her angle/appeal; she's a flash fiction writer who sacrifices almost everything but language yet fails to construct effortlessly playful/interesting/memorable sentences or passages. I guess if people enjoy the literary equivalent of being condescended by a bunch of stuffy New York intellectuals who have forgotten how to genuinely laugh, it's the perfect book for them.
If it means anything, big fan of the Lucia Berlin stories, definitely not phony.
Does the 21st century belong in the bathtub? I have serious doubts. Can any of these stand up to Clark Ashton Smith? Brian Moore??
OMG....i havent listened yet, but cant wait...their list is AWFUL...i mean really, Franzen top 10 BEST...NO POETRY...and almost no books from other parts of the world...no genre books, it is the WORST list i've seen....DODO COULD COME UP WITH A BETTER LIST and one more repsentative of the great books being written in this century from around the world....and My Brilliant Friend (i read) THE BEST NOVEL OF THE 21st century.....my big bath-clean butt it is....hahahah anyway, more after i watch your vid SB
You're right, no poetry at all? That is weird/stupid.
hey sb, well, i finally got around to watching (just returned from our anniversary dinner)...so, as you mentioned, no serious writer or reader every takes this kind of bullshit list at all serious...and the list is not only idiotic but is just, as you pointed out, just a publishing gimmic to sell books and to sell books that already are selling well...some of the best and most important writers and books are left off....of course, no pynchon, no poetry, no enard, no etc....anyway, i want even go that much farther...there are great books and writers on the list, of course, but it is totally pointless and meaningless....btw, Berlin's short story collection is brilliant and she was totally unknown and this collection is posthumous...very special writer, ignore the pompous description...2ne hand time is towering, READ IT...really...all her books, nobel winner, but 2nd hand time is sui generis....stay true is my fave non-fiction of last year (pulitzer) and he is a california boy, read it....anyway, i wont go further...ive read more than half of the books and most of the fiction and, well, ho hum...but, im only writing cause, as. buddy, im here to share; here is the full list without numbering where they ranked....okt.....www.goodreads.com/list/show/203571.NYT_The_100_Best_Books_of_the_21st_Century
OK you got me on keeping up with what's happening lately, lots of stuff I'll try to remember but I just keep going back to old books and writers... the no-poetry in the list is pretty weird, is there any disclaimer in the list's description? (i.e. Who reads poetry?!)
@@Scottmbradfield Are you saying we are all in the bath bubble?....I'll see myself out.
@@excelsiorathletic Just don't slip on the wet tiles! s