The only stipulation I used was that I had to have finished the book to include it:
1) Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
2) The Road – Cormac McCarthy
3) Candide – Voltaire
4) The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
5) Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
6) The Greenlanders – Jane Smiley
7) Night – Elie Wiesel
8) The Four Fingers of Death – Rick Moody
9) Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
10) 1984 – George Orwell
11) White Teeth – Zadie Smith
12) The Crying Lot of 49 – Thomas Pynchon
13) The Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson
14) House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski
15) The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
Honorable Mentions (because it’s my list and I can):
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy, Absurdistan – Gary Shteyngart, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers, We – Yevgeny Zamyatan, The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolano, Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay – Michael Chabon, The Human Stain – Philip Roth, Then We Came to the End – Joshua Ferris, The Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Invisible Monsters – Chuck Palahniuk, Wieland – Charles Brockden Brown, Less than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis, The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway, The Broom of the System – David Foster Wallace, Angels – Denis Johnson
Next up will be my 10 favorite short story collections.
Well, I’m only missing 5 off the main list and 6 off the honorable mentions.
I’m honestly surprised there are any titles on the list you haven’t both purchased and read! Keep in mind, lots of kick ass books would be on here/ will be on here once I finish them!
Which 5?
No matter how many “must reads” you read, there are always others. That’s a good thing though.
As of yet, I havent gotten to:
5) Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
6) The Greenlanders – Jane Smiley
8) The Four Fingers of Death – Rick Moody
11) White Teeth – Zadie Smith
14) House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski
or
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers, We – Yevgeny Zamyatan, The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolano, Wieland – Charles Brockden Brown, The Broom of the System – David Foster Wallace, Angels – Denis Johnson
Whoops. That’s 7 off the honorable mentions, not 6.
I highly recommend the 5 from the main list and would definitely put the ones from HM on your “to-read some time in the future” list lol!
Some of them already are. I’ll have to remember to check back next time I need ideas for books to get. For the moment I’m pretty stacked up on stuff I need to read. So many good books, so little time.
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