Here, according to Shortlist.com are
the 50 coolest books in existence.
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 Road
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
and halves of
Middlesex and
The Crying of Lot 49.
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).
