2009 Reading Oscars

With three weeks left of the year, it's time to start assessing our reading for 2009.

Between 26 December and 31 December ONLY you are invited to post your personal nominations for the following categories:

1 Best new author an author whom you 'discovered' in 2009 and intend to read more of
2 Best poetry
3 Best non-fiction book
4 Best fiction
5 Best reread

and the main prize:

6 Best overall read Please provide a detailed, thoughtful, description of why this is your BOR.

Suggestions for further categories welcome.

I'll participate !
But posting only after 26 ?

whoops

lol you can post more categories before then, but only make your nominations between 26 and 31, when the stars are right and all the signs agree.

I agree with the right stars !

Where is my Tux ?

Kate Winslet has just oh so magnanimously accepted my invite to attend w/me the 2009 Le Salon Oscar Ceremony. Who will be accompanying you, Mac?

Sorry TomcattMurr. I thought I saw the planets align, but it was just an airplane.

I am being hounded by invitations from all these starlets. Damn it, I told them once and I will tell them a thousand times: I am going with Michelle Pfeiffer and that's all there is to it.

Me ? I'll be with that new Brazilian hermaphrodite babe who is making a blast in the new Herodotus adaptation for the big screen : "Get it Greeks"

Its 12/28 - where is everybody? Mine will be up before 1/1/2010.

I completely forgot about this thread myself. Thanks for the reminder slick!

1. BEST NEW (to me) AUTHOR

The nominees:

JG Ballard
Mikhail Bulgakov
Clarice Lispector
Philip Roth
Thucydides

The winner: Philip Roth. The sombre, sensitive touch he displayed tracing the unraveling of a good man's suburban dream in American Pastoral, and his compassion toward the ludicrous, unsustainable, beautiful worldview that gave rise to them, mean I have a lot of time to read what else Roth has to say.

2. BEST POETRY

The nominees:

William Blake, Milton: A Poem
John Clare, Collected Works
Ted Hughes, Wolfwatching
George Meredith, Collected Works
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

The winner: Clare's Collected Works. I knew this guy previously only as a dead ringer for my friend Caitlin. But when I came to his fresh-bread-and-clear-water rural poetry, like a verse rendering of the country sap in Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd minus the irony and plus a bracing social commitment, it made me want to watch ducks all day and then bring my neighbour the first winter turnips.

3. BEST NONFICTION

nominees:

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1000 Plateaus
Hans Kurath, Linguistic Atlas of New England
Peter Ladefoged, A Course in Phonetics
Karl Renner, State and Nation
Thucydides, A History of the Peloponnesian War

winner: 1000 Plateaus. Is there a better model of idea creation and interrelation (your classical "great conversation", your Romantic inspiration, your structuralist structure, your poststructuralist everything-in-its-opposite) than the perfect fecund topless bottomlessness of the rhizome? I suggest that there is not.

4. BEST FICTION

noms:

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

winner: The Master and Margarita. Roth v. Bulgakov in both categories, different winners? It's partially a copout because I can't decide, but if Roth winning the new author category implies I'm less interested in hearing more from Bulgakov, it's merely because of the stunning completeness of The Master and Margarita's vision. Hard-eyed and immediate and totally without the fruitiness that infuses so many magic-realist draughts, this is a mythoclastic fable that skewers hypocrisy and makes one of the 20th century's darkest regimes meet the reader on--Bulgakov's? Reason's? Satan's? At any rate, not Stalin's terms.

5. BEST REREAD

the nominees:

Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, New Mutants Classic vol. 2
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality part 1: The Will to Knowledge
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!
Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo, Fantastic Four: Imaginauts

the winner: Illuminatus!.I want to honour Marx and Engels in this category, but rereading Illuminatus for the first time in 21 years was just too much fun. These books are a psychedelic freakout; they had a pile of weird implications for my youthful sexual sensibility, for good and ill; they're not gener fiction (shitty) nor literature (prissy), but something all their own. They have a yellow submarine. They're just fun.

AND THE WINNER . . . .

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Okay, maybe this is a bit cheatery, because surely the overall winner has to win its category (fiction) too. And this story may be less vivid as narrative than The Master and Margarita. And it may be less sensitive and human than American Pastoral. But no book I've ever read, maybe, has hit me on the somatic level that The Magic Mountain does. Step 1: As Hans Castorp ascends the mountain, settles in, starts to feel the fog descending over strong limbs and limpid mind, the same thing happens to you too--no matter how warm the night, how busy your life, all you want to do is carefully tuck your blanket around your legs, sip your hot chocolate with a little bit of schnapps, and lose yourself in this endless, lugubrious, future-fearing ramble. Because the future's always a bit shit compared to how you expect it to be anyway, right? And the end is violently premature or a matter of slow, undignified decline, for man and all his works. Let's just contemplate the march of aeons and make that hot chocolate last; we're ill, after all.

Like nothing else I read this year, The Magic Mountain was a total immersive experience. New life goal: Read it auf Deutsch.

This was fun.

2008

BEST NEW AUTHOR: MM Bakhtin
BEST POETRY: Anonymous, Beowulf (Seamus Heaney trans.)
BEST NONFICTION: MM Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination
BEST FICTION: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
BEST REREAD: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

BEST OVERALL: Moby-Dick.

2007

BEST NEW AUTHOR: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
BEST POETRY: According to my LibraryThing I did not read any poetry in 2007, philistine that I am
BEST NONFICTION: Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word
BEST FICTION: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
BEST REREAD: John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

BEST OVERALL: War and Peace.

1 Best new-to-me author: Stefan Zweig
2 Best poetry: Heinrich Heine's Travel Pictures which contained poetry and old-skool German poetry slams, was really sly. Loved it and Peter Wortsman's translation.
3 Best non-fiction book: Zweig's Twelve Historical Miniatures in the Bangerter translation. Zweig selects twelve very different tiny slices of history and brings them to life - with the focus on a particular individual. Zweig is dead, so I was going to send a mash note to Bangerter. It was that good.
4 Best fiction: Infinite Jest edges Master and Margarita. Pickwick Papers is right behind.
5 Best reread: N/A

Recommended less common reads: Robert Irwin's Mysteries of Algiers and Robert Kelly's The Scorpions.

I am going to plead for mercy and an extension. I am travelling until the night of the 31st. I am just checking in briefly from a hotel computer station. I would love to post my picks, but it won't happen til January 2.

Extension is hereby granted to you comrade polutropos.

I think it's my duty to step in and strongly suggest this thread remain open throughout January 2010, in order for members to finish reading what they're reading in 2009, and then have time to A) recover from their holiday travels; B) recover from their New Year's hangovers; and, C) to further contemplate (and perhaps even revise) their undoubtedly difficult-to-decide-upon, Reading Oscar selections.

1 Best new author (an author whom you 'discovered' in 2009 and intend to read more of)

Gogol : The collected stories

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/08/reviews-from-absurdistan-part-...

I intend to tackle Dead Souls and the Inspector General soon

2 Best poetry

( none this year )

3 Best non-fiction book

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War editeted by Robert B. Strassler in an edition of Freepress

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/08/ultimate-summer-read-thucydyde...

The Strassler edition really makes this great book accessible to the modern reader

4 Best fiction

Bulgakov : Master and Margarita

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/08/master-and-margarita-exercise-...

Exciting book

5 Best reread

Every year the same title : The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

6 Best overall read

Pincher Martin by William Golding

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/04/25-28-march-2009-pincher-marti...

The Siege of Krishnapur by by Farell

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/10/siege-of-krishnapur-by-jg-farr...

1 Best new author an author whom you 'discovered' in 2009 and intend to read more of: Jane Gardam

2 Best poetry: Sixty Sonnets by Ernest Hilbert

http://www.librarything.com/work/9182796/reviews/52957418

3 Best non-fiction book: Oranges & Peanuts for Sale by Eliot Weinberger

http://www.librarything.com/work/8687685/reviews/52957291

4 Best fiction: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis

5 Best reread: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis

http://www.librarything.com/work/297286/reviews/16482760

6 Best overall read: Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report by Iain Sinclair

http://www.librarything.com/work/7834562/reviews/47838487

I've added a few categories of my own.

I. Best new (to me) author: John Banville (The Sea)
Runner-up: Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping)

II. Best poetry: The Iliad by Homer
Runner-up: Metamorphoses by Ovid

III. Best drama: Alcestis by Euripides
Runner-up: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

IV. Best non-fiction: Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne (from The Complete Works)
Runner-up: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

V. Best collection of stories or novellae: Four Novels by Marguerite Duras
Runner-up: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

VI. Best novel (not re-read): Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
Runner-up: The Sea by John Banville

VII. Best completed series of novels: The Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope
Runner-up: The Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker

VIII. Best re-read: The Iliad by Homer
Runner-up: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

IX. Favorite overall book: The Iliad by Homer
Runner-up: The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne

Txs Steven, you allowed me to complete my TBR list 2010

Oh dear, this looks like so much fun! I do so love lists—now I'll spend hours agonizing over my choices. Do you see what things like this do to the minds of innocent little Salonistas, tomcat?

innocent Salonistas ? contradictio in terminis !

OK -- I've been dithering:

Best new author -- Olga Tokarczuk -- House of Day, House of Night was gorgeous.

Best poetry -- The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
runner up: The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth

Best non-fiction -- I didn't read much, but I was surprisingly moved by Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father -- eloquently written and insightful

Best reread -- lots of them this year, but 1st place goes to Beloved by Toni Morrison
with honorable mention to The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Best overall novel -- I have to give 1st place again to Beloved -- for me, this is THE American novel. Revelatory and transcendant.

It's so interesting to read what everyone has been reading this year! Strong recommendations, therefore, for the Magic Mountain, it would appear. Cap'n Mac, do you read it every year?

Steven, which translations of Homer did you read? did you read the same translation as you read before, or was it a different one?

Here is my list. (I'm adding a new category - I like steven's new categories.)

1. Best new author.
Difficult category for me this year, as I have not read many new authors. Diderot. Jacques le Fataliste really blew me away. Goncharov also is a strong contender in this category, but as far as I know, only one book of his -Oblomov- is available in English. Tatyana Tolstaya (On the Golden Porch) is also a writer I will be returning to.
Winner: Diderot

2. Best poetry.
I dip in and out of poetry all the time, reading single poems, usually old favourites or new poems by old writers. This year has been lots of Russian poetry, of course in translation. However, overall best poetry collection this year goes to Derek Walcott, whose poetry continues to delight and inspire me.
Winner: Derek Walcott's The Star Apple Kingdom.

3. Best non-fiction
I'm going to cheat massively here, as my best overall winner for the year was a non-fiction, so I am going to allow myself two non-fiction Oscars (it is Christmas after all, so why not self-indulge?). Strong contenders are Isiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers, T.J. Binyon's fantastic biography of Pushkin, and Billington's The Icon and the Axe.
Winner: The Icon and the Axe.

4. Best fiction
The most difficult category as this has been a year of sublime fiction reading: lots of Dostoevsky, Hoffmann, Gogol and Turgenev. The winner, though, has to be Oblomov. This magnificent and wise book came up from behind and knocked the wind out my sails. It was an unexpected masterpiece. I will definitely be reading this again and again.
Winner: Oblomov.

5. Best reread
Again, a difficult category, as I have reread lots of things this year. Looking back at my list, though, I see I have not read any Dickens this year, for the first time in ages. A shocking lapse. Strong contenders here were Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead, an incredible book, and The name of the Rose which I understood much more, and on a completely different level this time.
Winner: The life and opinions of the Tomcat Murr. Naturally.

6. Worst dud.
Not many contenders here, as I tend to choose my reading carefully, and know what I like. Also, if a book is a dud, I usually don't finish it.
Winner (loser?): Doctor Copernicus by John Banville. I enjoyed The Untouchable immensely last year, and thought I would try some more by this writer. I love historical novels, but this one was just crap. Full of anachronisms, madly overwritten, and I am still no nearer knowing anything about Doctor C than I was before I read it.

7. Best overall read
I knew the minute I started it that this was the best book of the year (I am still ploughing through it, so it might also be next year's winner as well!).
Winner: Nabakov's commentary on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.
There are some books that are so dense and packed with erudition, that you can just dip in and out to glean pearls of wisdom and insight on every page: books like: the Anatomy of Melancholy, Fraser's Golden Bough, Ambrose Pierces' Devil's Dictionary. This commentary is rather like that. At the same time, the shine and depth that the commentary gives to the poem is wonderful, bringing a non-Russian reader as close as is possible to a Russian experience of reading Pushkin. I will be writing more about this magnificent book.

In reply to #24 re: translation of Iliad

I read the Fagles translation. It is a highly readable verse translation. I also read his translation of the Odyssey.

The first time I read the Iliad was (egad!) more than 40 years ago in college. It was the Lattimore translation.

Now you've made me curious to compare them. Here are the first few lines in Lattimore's 1951 translation:

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which puts pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus."

And in Fagles's 1990 translation:

"Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles."

Ah -- it's that rage that defines The Iliad -- the uncontrollable passion that destroys not only Achilles but the House of Atreus.

I must say I have a great fondness for Lattimore's version based more on loyalty, probably, than anything else, although I like his hexameters.

I will try the Fagles next time I read it. It reads well in that excerpt.

Oh this is tough! Why tomcat, why?! dost thou torture us, seconding ncgraham's sentiment, w/making such painful decisions?

the nominees for best new author to me in 2009:

Steve Erickson: The Sea Came in at Midnight
Haruki Murakami: The Wind up Bird Chronicle
Fleur Jaeggy: Last Vanities

Loved them all, but there can be only one winner....

in a surprise upset, Steve Erickson defeats Haruki Murakami!

The Sea Came in at Midnight is one of those novels that's really difficult to wrap your mind around: surreal, atmospheric, warped characters, dark circular plot, full of dreams and a survivor of a mass cult suicide (not to mention a cable antenna "terrorist" who paints, under cover of midnight, cable antennas black). It was weird but highly readable - a postmodern page turner. It was twisted, but not torturous to get through, like Gravity's Rainbow, say. I vainly tried to review it, only to find I hadn't fully grasped it, but had grasped enough of it to know I was reading something good, really good (great) but something I'd need to read again before attempting to summarize or elaborate on. Since this author is hard to find, even secondhand, I'll definitely be ordering more of his work in 2010.

Oh dear, my wife needs the computer....so I'll be back w/the rest of my picks either late, late tonight, or tomorrow....

> 24 Indeed "The magic Mountain" by Mann has been since many years my "livre de chevet". It is for me the book of books.

There are two English translations: One by Lowe-Porter, it is the classic one but with quiet some errors in it and the other one by John Woods which is better. Woods unfortunately translated a whole chunk of the book that was meant to remain in French too.

My advice is to read Woods and to switch to Lowe-Porter for the French passages.
As a companion, (for the second reading) Stephen Dowden’s book is genial.

My quick-and-dirty list. I hope you won't chastise me, Cat, for not providing detailed, thoughtful descriptions.

Best new-to-me author: George Eliot

Best non-fiction book: It would be Essays of Montaigne if I had finished them all, but with many more to go next year, I give the award in this category to: Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster.

Best poetry: I have not been much of a poetry reader but did manage some Walt Whitman this year, so he wins the prize.

Best drama: King Lear

Best fiction: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Close behind was Middlemarch, and Les Misérables fell toward the top, too.

Funniest book: Jane Austen's Emma

Best worst book: The Riddle of the Traveling Skull by Harry Stephen Keeler, a book so bad it's totally brilliant

Worst dud: The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry, closely followed by Barbara Pym's Excellent Women.

Best overall: Proust.

I just HAVE to get this done or it will get lost and forgotten. I am attempting to not have an apoplectic fit after my trip to Washington when the airline lost our luggage not only on the way there, but also on the way back, and I am waiting for the courier to bring it, and keep being postponed and my rage is rising.....

On to memories of books and reading:

1) Best Author New to Me:
Nominees: Italo Calvino for both Mr. Palomar and Baron in the Trees
and Mary Renault for Bull from the Sea.
I would like to split just about all my awards between at least two authors, but will try to resist.
Winner: Mary Renault by a whisker. The Greeks just totally do it for me. I am thrilled to know there are other Mary Renault titles out there which I have yet to look forward to.

2) Worst Book of the Year:

Winner: Two books which make me feel I wasted every second I spent on them, Barnacle Love by Anthony De Sa and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

3) Best Non-fiction:

Deadheat between two books dealing with two of my favorite topics, food and France.

Winners: Heat by Bill Buford and Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart

4) Best Fiction:

Fortunately the list of potential nominees is long. There are four which stand out: Double Hook by Sheila Watson, Straight Man by Richard Russo, The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan and The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather.
Winner: By a half-note Song of the Lark sings its way past other most worthy nominees.

5) Best Re-read: Once again a long list of worthy nominees: Le Grand Meaulnes, The Metamorphosis, L'Etranger, The Iliad, The Odyssey.

Winner: The Odyssey I return time and time again, look at different translations and my heart soars. A perennial winner.

6) Best poetry:

This has most definitely been a year of poetry. I think I read more this year than any other, ever. I have reacquainted myself with old favorites, been enchanted with rereadings as well as new poets. Some of the great many nominees are Mark Doty, Mary Oliver, Beowulf in the Heaney translation, Cavafy, Rilke, Gilgamesh, Mallarme, Szymborska, Milosz, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Miroslav Florian, Milan Rufus and Jaroslav Seifert.

Winner: Impossible call really, but Jaroslav Seifert is the one with whom I have spent most time and will continue to spend most time, because I love his work and I am translating a large part of his oeuvre. A First Among Equals winner.

7) Best Overall Read:
Winner:

The Odyssey

I also loved the Carhart, but found his latest (a novel, his first) lacking. Which Odyssey translation do you prefer?

Andrew- I've said it a dozen times before on LT, but I'll say it again: I just love Richard Russo's Straight Man.

You did some excellent reading in '09.

What's that? I'm a member of a group?!

Best New Author: David Markson, after a quick read of Wittgenstein's Mistress which straddled the turn of this New Year.

Best Poetry: Poetry, you say? Well...ahem...ah...let me refer you to my associate...

Best Nonfiction: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer, as all other choices were introductions to chess or photography.

Best Fiction: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon. I turned pages.

Worst Fiction: The Path of Minor Planets: A Novel, Andrew Sean Greer. A little bit of astronomy does not a great book make.

I Started This In 2008 But It Took So Long To Read I Didn't Finish It Until 2009: The Tunnel, William H. Gass.

Best Reread: None of note.

Best Overall: Anna Karenina. Oh, the humanity!

Krakauer's thin air is indeed a very good book.

1 Best new author an author whom you 'discovered' in 2009 and intend to read more of
Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), close Roberto Bolaño (2666)

2 Best poetry
Against Forgetting andthology edited by Carolyn Forsche (a reread) and the Dance Most of All Jack Gilbert (new)

3 Best non-fiction book
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

4 Best fiction
Out Stealing Horses by Pers Petterson, close Home by Marilynne Robinson, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, The Road by Cormac McCarthy

5 Best reread
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

I'm really late doing this, but that seems to be the way I roll these days.

1. BEST NEW AUTHOR
Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief, etc.
Patricia Hampl, The Florist's Daughter
Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Perilous Gard
Winner: Probably Hardy, although it's a very close call

2. BEST DRAMA
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Winner: Much Ado

3. BEST NONFICTION
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (hey, I had to fit it somewhere!)
The Name Above the Title by Frank Capra
The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl
The Last Prima Donnas by Lanfranco Rasponi
Winner: Screwtape, although the categorization is questionable

4. BEST REREAD
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (partial)
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Winner: Narnia

5. BEST FICTION (NEW)
The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip
Winner: Sealey Head

Wow, that's mostly genre stuff. I feel so out-of-place: I am not worthy! :p

You know, ncgraham, we need more genre stuff in here. Nothing wrong with having some actual fun while we read every now and then. I don't know who's idea it was around here that we had to read sola literatura around here all the time. I think someone should start some genre threads.

Screwtape is one of those books, dependent on your religious worldview, it can be fiction or non-fiction. I've read it as both in my lifetime.

Now if you'll excuse me, I see I've been asked to perform a psych eval on a fictional character....

I think Lewis (as well as myself) would have viewed the subject matter as nonfiction, but he uses a fictional framework, with characters and situations that come out of his mind, even if there are direct correlations with real life. That's where the difficulty lies. So I can see why those of other religious persuasions might see it as completely fiction, but I don't think anyone could say that it's completely nonfiction.

Anyway, that's enough about that. Carry on, chums!

Whatever else you can say about Screwtape Letters, they are definitely not genre fiction. I read them twice and enjoyed them a lot each time. I read them as fiction both times, though it was kind of philosophical. It was more fun that way.

Hardy isn't exactly genre fiction, either. I read him for the first time a few years ago and I, too, enjoyed The Mayor of Casterbridge. Much more than Jude the Obscure which was just wrong. It was so depressing. I bet it would give Miss Lonelyhearts a run for its money.

Nope, those would be the exceptions. And though I want to read more Hardy, I plan to avoid Jude.

In Washington, DC where my son and I just spent three days we saw a dramatization of Screwtape which I read probably thirty years ago. My son and I both loathed it. We have probably both moved way too much into a skeptical/cynical/atheistic worldview and did not care for the hit-you-over-the-head proselytizing.

quite.

There was nothing about Jude that would not have benefit from a slap upside the head. Most of Hardy's protagonists could have benefit tremendously by this technique. Sort of like Pip, being raised by hand.

>46 geneg: I nominate Gabriel Oak for an exception. Can't stay mad at that big dumb goof.

Looks like I'm late, too!

1. Best new author:
-Solaris by Lem
-Moby-Dick by Melville
-Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner
-A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole
Winner: Absalom, Absalom! (WOT A SURPRISE MIRITE?)

2. Best poetry:
-Death of a Naturalist by Heaney
-All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Brautigan
-Lay the Marble Tea by Brautigan
-The Octopus Frontier by Brautigan
Winner: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Jeez, I thought I read a lot more poetry than just Brautigan, Heaney, and a few really bad ones.)

3. Best non-fic.:
-What is the What by Eggers
-On the Road: The Original Scroll by Kerouac
-Zeitoun by Eggers
-A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by Wallace
Winner: What is the What (I know it and On the Road are not technically classified as non-fic., but screw off.)

4. Best fiction.:
-blahblahblah Absalom, Absalom! again.

5. Best re-read:
-The Road by McCarthy
Winner: The Road

Overall: What is the What! (Eat it, book snobs, eat it!)

44 - I wonder whether what you loathed was in the interpretation rather than the original. It has been awhile since I read the Screwtape Letters, but I was a non-Christian at the time, and the book didn't put me off. I actually found it more psychological than religious (though characters, of course, were religious). Though I have been put off by Lewis when he talks about the role of women in his Prelandia science fiction works - i.e. the bible says we should serve man.

Though I have been put off by Lewis when he talks about the role of women in his Prelandia science fiction works - i.e. the bible says we should serve man.

But he's absolutely right. I love serving men. I prefer them medium well, but medium rare will do if necessary.

Zing!

(Cannibal jokes before 10 AM. What does this portend for my day?)

Good one, Med!

"So, how do you like children, Mr. Fields?"

"Fried."

#51: Yep, that has long been one of my favorites. :)

you guys are feelin' it!

48> Listen here, Todd, there are no snobs among us, there's another group specifically for them, but it ain't here.

What is the What over A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again? Screw YOU college boy! Yeah that's right, you heard me. What a horrible way for me to wake up on what should be a relaxing Sunday morning in sunny Southern California, only to see virtual darkness, DFW gettin' dis'd like dat.

I swear I'm about to head over to Le Salon du Fockner and champion "Hills Like White Elephants" over "A Rose for Emily" unless I witness an immediate and repentant retraction....