By which they, of course, mean novels. All but two written in English (I include Trainspotting). All but one written after WW2.
Of which I have read approx. 12. To wit (and in Shortlist's order):
On The Roadand halves of Middlesex and The Crying of Lot 49.
Naked Lunch
Slaughter-House-Five
Generation X
A Confederacy of Dunces
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Trainspotting
Fight Club
Watchmen
The Great Gatsby
I make no apology for the remainder, nor any judgement on the issue of 'cool'. The caveats and small print one might apply to such a list, however (any list of this nature, but this one in particular), would/probably ought to include books I regret bothering with (Naked Lunch); books that have certainly deterred me from reading anything else by the same author (Lot 49) and/or books I have no intention of reading (Dice Man, Fear of Flying, Neuromancer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Wasp Factory, Morvern Callar, The Secret History); authors I have persevered with but whose books turn out all to be remarkably similar (Kerouac, Coupland); authors not represented here by their best work (Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, HST); authors by whom I have read other works (Hemingway, Calvino, Heller, Ballard, Amis, Bukowski, Murakami, Orwell, Capote, Wolfe, Franzen, Chabon, DeLillo); and books I have consumed, instead, as film (American Psycho, Clockwork Orange, Perfume, One Flew..., Nineteen Eighty-Four, and - if it can be counted - Howl).
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