Again, the only stipulation I used was that I had to have finished the book to include it:
1) Girl with Curious Hair – David Foster Wallace
2) Demonology – Rick Moody
3) Collected Stories – Amy Hempel
4) Where I’m Calling From – Raymond Carver
5) Jesus’ Son – Denis Johnson
6) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Wells Tower
7) Lost in the Funhouse – John Barth
8) Stardust, 7-Eleven, Route 57, A&W and So Forth – Patricia Lear
9) Forty Stories – Donald Barthelme
10) Civilwarland in Bad Decline – George Saunders
11) Oblivion – David Foster Wallace
12) Refresh, Refresh – Ben Percy
13) The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami
14) A Kind of Flying – Ron Carlson
15) Through the Safety Net – Charles Baxter
Airships – Barry Hannah, Five Skies – Ron Carlson, Brief Interview with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God – Etgar Keret, In Persuasion Nation – George Saunders, Slow Learner – Thomas Pynchon, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night – John Barth, Drown – Junot Diaz, The Question of Bruno – Aleksander Hemon, War by Candlelight – Daniel Alarcon, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
Next up will be my favorite nonfiction books.
This one I’m not as good on apparently. I’m missing 9 of the best:
1) Girl with Curious Hair – David Foster Wallace
2) Demonology – Rick Moody
6) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Wells Tower
7) Lost in the Funhouse – John Barth
9) Forty Stories – Donald Barthelme
10) Civilwarland in Bad Decline – George Saunders
11) Oblivion – David Foster Wallace
12) Refresh, Refresh – Ben Percy
14) A Kind of Flying – Ron Carlson
and 7 of the unnumbered:
Five Skies – Ron Carlson, Brief Interview with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace, In Persuasion Nation – George Saunders, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night – John Barth, The Question of Bruno – Aleksander Hemon, War by Candlelight – Daniel Alarcon, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
Of course, I don’t see:
The Nimrod Flipout- Etgar Keret, The Girl on Top of the Fridge- Etgar Keret, Are We Not Men- Brent Spencer, The Things They Carried O’Brien, The Lottery- Shirley Jackson, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers- Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Self Storage Mary Helen Stefaniak, Dubliners- James Joyce, Gorilla, My Love- Toni Bambara, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges- Nathan Englander, The Lone Ranger and Tanto Fistfight in Heaven- Sherman Alexie, The House on Mango Street- Sandra Cisneros, No One Belongs Here More Than You- Miranda July, Larabi’s Ox- Tony Ardizonne, A Good Man is Hard to Find- Flannery O’Connor, Haunted- Chuck Palahniuk
and many others I might expect to see. Who knows? Maybe you have read them and just don’t go for these ones as much.
I love A Kind of Flying. Some great stories in there …
I own No One Belongs Here More Than You, The Things They Carried, Dubliners, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Haunted, but I haven’t read them. The others you mentioned I don’t have and haven’t read but will now have to!
A Kind of Flying does rock! Kate Gale recommended it to me at the Winter 2009/10 Residency.
You also forgot “Frog and Toad are Friends” by Arnold Lobel.
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