{"id":3935,"date":"2009-06-10T05:00:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T09:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3935"},"modified":"2009-06-01T06:18:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T10:18:03","slug":"0-fer-20th-century-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-20th-century-edition","title":{"rendered":"0-fer 20th century edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because I’m not some commie pinko, I don’t listen to NPR. So I don’t know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He organized the list in terms of “how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and how it stuck with me.” He listed Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em> at #1, and History of Love<\/em> by Nicole Krauss (0-fer!) at #100.<\/p>\n

I, on the other hand, reorganized his list in terms of whether I’ve read ’em, whether I’ve at least read something<\/em> by the author, and whether they’re on my 0-fer list.<\/p>\n

Since some authors have multiple books on his list, the 0-fer numbers won’t add up to 100, but hey:<\/p>\n

I’ve read 32 of the books on his list, at least something by 12 other authors, and my 0-fer list is a remarkable 50 titles! (but only 45 authors, because of dupes)<\/p>\n

Wanna see what’s what? Just click “more”!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read It<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>, James Joyce<\/li>\n
  2. The Great Gatsby<\/em>, F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/li>\n
  3. The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, J.D. Salinger<\/li>\n
  4. Heart of Darkness<\/em>, Joseph Conrad<\/li>\n
  5. Lolita<\/em>, Vladimir Nabokov<\/li>\n
  6. All the King’s Men<\/em>, Robert Penn Warren<\/li>\n
  7. American Pastoral,<\/em> Philip Roth<\/li>\n
  8. The Remains of the Day,<\/em> Kazuo Ishiguro<\/li>\n
  9. The Sun Also Rises,<\/em> Ernest Hemingway<\/li>\n
  10. The Moviegoer,<\/em> Walker Percy<\/li>\n
  11. All the Pretty Horses,<\/em> Cormac McCarthy<\/li>\n
  12. Appointment in Samarra,<\/em> John O’Hara<\/li>\n
  13. Franny and Zooey,<\/em> J.D. Salinger<\/li>\n
  14. Animal Farm,<\/em> George Orwell<\/li>\n
  15. Chalotte’s Web,<\/em> E.B. White<\/li>\n
  16. The Secret Sharer,<\/em> Joseph Conrad<\/li>\n
  17. The Day of the Locust, <\/em>Nathanael West<\/li>\n
  18. Ironweed,<\/em> William Kennedy<\/li>\n
  19. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,<\/em> John Le Carr\u00c3\u00a9<\/li>\n
  20. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,<\/em> Robert Pirsig<\/li>\n
  21. Tarzan of the Apes,<\/em> Edgar Rice Burroughs<\/li>\n
  22. Howard’s End,<\/em> E.M. Forster<\/li>\n
  23. The Killer Inside Me,<\/em> Jim Thompson<\/li>\n
  24. The English Patient,<\/em> Michael Ondaatje<\/li>\n
  25. Portnoy’s Complaint,<\/em> Philip Roth<\/li>\n
  26. Tender is the Night,<\/em> F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/li>\n
  27. A Confederacy of Dunces,<\/em> John Kennedy Toole<\/li>\n
  28. A Fan’s Notes,<\/em> Frederick Exley<\/li>\n
  29. The Maltese Falcon,<\/em> Dashiell Hammett<\/li>\n
  30. Double Indemnity,<\/em> James Cain<\/li>\n
  31. Seize the Day,<\/em> Saul Bellow<\/li>\n
  32. Breakfast of Champions,<\/em> Kurt Vonnegut<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Read Something Else by the Author<\/em><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Humboldt’s Gift,<\/em> Saul Bellow<\/li>\n
    2. A Passage to India,<\/em> E.M. Forster<\/li>\n
    3. To the Lighthouse,<\/em> Virginia Woolf<\/li>\n
    4. The Untouchable,<\/em> John Banville<\/li>\n
    5. Beloved,<\/em> Toni Morrison<\/li>\n
    6. Light in August,<\/em> William Faulkner<\/li>\n
    7. Midnight’s Children,<\/em> Salman Rushdie<\/li>\n
    8. Atonement,<\/em> Ian McEwan<\/li>\n
    9. A Soldier of the Great War,<\/em> Mark Helprin<\/li>\n
    10. The Big Sleep,<\/em> Raymond Chandler<\/li>\n
    11. Blood Meridian,<\/em> Cormac McCarthy<\/li>\n
    12. Roscoe,<\/em> William Kennedy<\/li>\n
    13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,<\/em> Ken Kesey<\/li>\n
    14. Black Dogs,<\/em> Ian McEwan<\/li>\n
    15. The Sunlight Dialogues,<\/em> John Gardner<\/li>\n
    16. Pnin,<\/em> Vladimir Nabokov<\/li>\n
    17. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,<\/em> John Le Carr\u00c3\u00a9<\/li>\n
    18. A Man in Full,<\/em> Tom Wolfe<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      0-ferriffic!<\/em><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Brave New World,<\/em> Aldous Huxley<\/li>\n
      2. The Grapes of Wrath,<\/em> John Steinbeck<\/li>\n
      3. Angle of Repose,<\/em> Wallace Stegner<\/li>\n
      4. U.S.A. Trilogy,<\/em> John Dos Passos<\/li>\n
      5. To Kill a Mockingbird,<\/em> Harper Lee<\/li>\n
      6. Rabbit at Rest,<\/em> John Updike<\/li>\n
      7. Of Human Bondage,<\/em> W. Somerset Maugham<\/li>\n
      8. My Antonia,<\/em> Willa Cather<\/li>\n
      9. A Lesson Before Dying,<\/em> Ernest Gaines<\/li>\n
      10. Rabbit, Run,<\/em> John Updike<\/li>\n
      11. Babbitt,<\/em> Sinclair Lewis<\/li>\n
      12. The Jungle,<\/em> Upton Sinclair<\/li>\n
      13. The Bell Jar,<\/em> Sylvia Plath<\/li>\n
      14. The Sportswriter,<\/em> Richard Ford<\/li>\n
      15. The Lay of the Land,<\/em> Richard Ford<\/li>\n
      16. Sons and Lovers,<\/em> D.H. Lawrence<\/li>\n
      17. Aloft,<\/em> Chang-Rae Lee<\/li>\n
      18. So Long, See You Tomorrow,<\/em> William Maxwell<\/li>\n
      19. Winesburg, Ohio,<\/em> Sherwood Anderson<\/li>\n
      20. Lucky Jim,<\/em> Kingsley Amis<\/li>\n
      21. The Forsyte Saga,<\/em> John Galsworthy<\/li>\n
      22. The Good Soldier,<\/em> Ford Maddox Ford<\/li>\n
      23. Crossing to Safety,<\/em> Wallace Stegner<\/li>\n
      24. Felicia’s Journey,<\/em> William Trevor<\/li>\n
      25. Lonesome Dove,<\/em> Larry McMurtry<\/li>\n
      26. In the Lake of the Woods,<\/em> Tim O’Brien<\/li>\n
      27. A Coffin for Dimitrios,<\/em> Eric Ambler<\/li>\n
      28. The Caine Mutiny,<\/em> Herman Wouk<\/li>\n
      29. The Killer Angels,<\/em> Michael Shaara<\/li>\n
      30. The Human Factor,<\/em> Graham Greene<\/li>\n
      31. Paris Trout,<\/em> Pete Dexter<\/li>\n
      32. Fabulous Small Jews,<\/em> Joseph Epstein<\/li>\n
      33. Charming Billy,<\/em> Alice McDermott<\/li>\n
      34. Lord of the Flies,<\/em> William Golding<\/li>\n
      35. Razor’s Edge,<\/em> W. Somerset Maugham<\/li>\n
      36. Lying Awake,<\/em> Mark Salzman<\/li>\n
      37. Light Years,<\/em> James Salter<\/li>\n
      38. Spartina,<\/em> John Casey<\/li>\n
      39. Scoop,<\/em> Evelyn Waugh<\/li>\n
      40. Blood of the Lamb,<\/em> Peter De Vries<\/li>\n
      41. Empire Falls,<\/em> Richard Russo<\/li>\n
      42. The Ginger Man,<\/em> J.P. Donleavy<\/li>\n
      43. Rabbit Is Rich,<\/em> John Updike<\/li>\n
      44. Deliverance,<\/em> James Dickey<\/li>\n
      45. The Bird Artist,<\/em> Howard Norman<\/li>\n
      46. City Boy,<\/em> Herman Wouk<\/li>\n
      47. Advise and Consent,<\/em> Allen Drury<\/li>\n
      48. Sophie’s Choice,<\/em> William Styron<\/li>\n
      49. The Godfather,<\/em> Mario Puzo<\/li>\n
      50. History of Love,<\/em> Nicole Krauss<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Because I’m not some commie pinko, I don’t listen to NPR. So I don’t know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century. He organized the list in terms of “how much the book hit me, … <\/p>\n

        Continue reading “0-fer 20th century edition”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[568,4],"tags":[696],"class_list":["post-3935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-0-fer","category-literature","tag-dick-meyer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-11t","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3895,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cinc0-fer-de-mayo","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":0},"title":"Cinc0-fer de Mayo","author":"Gil","date":"May 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of \"Drink Corona (or whatever Mexican beer you choose) Day,\" I thought I'd go find some well-regarded Mexican authors whom I've never read a word of. Only having thought up this idea this morning, I decided to dive into the \"canonical appendixes\" of Harold Bloom's Western Canon, since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1573225142","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3813,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-pulitzer-edition","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":1},"title":"0-fer of the week: Pulitzer edition","author":"Gil","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Evidently, this year's Pulitzer Awards come out soon. In fact, they may've been awarded already. I'm not really sure, because I don't give a crap about awards. But, so, hey, I came across a link to this AbeBooks list of the Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels, and guess what?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a= 0679766529","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3597,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-94","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":2},"title":"0-fer-94","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a copy of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon that I take down from the shelf every year or so. I like to look through its four appendices and check off the \"canonical\" books that I've read. There are 37 pages of these lists, broken down into four Vico-esque\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1573225142","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bea-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":3},"title":"BEA 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"June 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing \"that paltry, pitiful sum\" of $9.99. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag: At a panel of authors speaking mainly to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3668,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wednesday-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":4},"title":"Wednesday 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"You may not have realized it, dear reader, but I've actually been adhering to a somewhat regular schedule with some of this blog's features. Monday is What It Is day, Tuesday's are for Lost in the Supermarket, Wednesday is 0-fer day, and Friday brings us Unrequired Reading! (Since Friends went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4148,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/get-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":3935,"position":5},"title":"Get 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"July 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's literary 0-fer? Elmore Leonard! Anyone have a suggestion for which of his books I should try?","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3935"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3997,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3935\/revisions\/3997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}