** The Monkeywrench Gang - Edward Abby Perennial favorite of environmentalists and activists everywhere, myself included.
Hayduke Lives! - Edward Abby
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe Taught to me in the 12th grade as an African novel in the format of a Greek tragedy, thus completely depoliticizing it
Hitchhiker's Guide to... (several) - Douglas Adams
Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison A very sad book
Cave Dweller - Dorothy Allison A very mediocre book
-* How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents - Julia Alvarez, and another appearance of the coveted negative star
Fantastic Voyage II - Isaac Asimov Don't remember the story, just that I liked it, and I stand by that
Nightfall - Isaac Asimov I can't stand by this one, however; actually goes into the cycles of civilization and its self-destruction.
* Vox - Nicholson Baker Literary smut
Secret Lives of the Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis The hot novel of the summer of '97
Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melisssa Banks Mentions Oberlin; otherwise, middling
The Salt Letters - Christine Balint
The Catastrophist - Ronan Bennett
Remembering - Wendell Berry
Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Alvin Maker series - Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game series- Orson Scott Card
$$ The Worthing Saga - Orson Scott Card
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
Bad book series - Tom Clancy
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
* Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad Racist and sexist and otherwise a genuinely beautiful novel - quoted in my first ever Smartquote
Generation X - Douglas Coupland
Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat
Mao II - Don DeLillo
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
* A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick An excellent sci-fi novel about a cop who takes so much of a psychoactive drug he ends up narcing on himself; also a gripping account of addiction and paranoia from someone who knows what they're talking about.
$$ Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick
$$ Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K. Dick
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
* Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Camp Concentration - Thomas M. Disch Mediocre sci-fi about a fascist future where the captives are deliberately infected with a virus that makes them brilliant... before killing them. Da-duh!
* Geek Love - Kathryn Dunn How do you know if you went to a sensitive, small, private liberal arts college, or at least majored in something absurd like the Comparative History of Ideas? You read Geek Love, that's how.
Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco The novel that helped get me through a fairly bless'd trip through Korea.
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco The novel that got me through my doomed trip to Europe.
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner The book I read because my snotty 12th grade english teacher was shocked - shocked - that we hadn't read it; not that I gave him the satisfaction of knowing.
The Great Gatsby - F. Skott Fitzgerald In the hiznouse
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Princess Bride - William Goldman Better than the cheesy, cheesy movie.
A couple bad ones - John Grisham 'Nuf said.
Hannibal - Thomas Harris Secretly, I think a good ending.
Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
* Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
* The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
High Fidelity - Nick Hornsby
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Prayer for Owen Meany - Vermonter who doesn't want to pay taxes
** Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro A young woman's coming of age with an Orwellian twist.
* Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro As British as can be.
* Unforgiven - Kazuo Ishiguro More challenging, and therefore less acclaimed and successful than...
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Night Fisher - R. Kikuo Johnson
* The Known World - Edward P. Jones A black couple and their plantation in the antebellum South illustrate the costs of slavery.
The Trial - Joe Kafka
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Pyramid - Ismail Kidare
The Bean Tree - Barbara Kingsolver
* The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureshi
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
Motherless Brooklyn - Jeremy Lethem
Jar of Fools - Jason Lutes
The Giant, O`Brien -Hilary Mantel
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mendel`s Dwarf - Simon Mawer
** Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy An amazing anti-western told in extravagant brutal language
No Country for Old Men -Cormac McCarthy I didn't get it
* China Mountain Zhang - Maureen F. McHugh
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville Respectably good sci-fi
Confessions of a Mask - Yukio Mishima
Wild Horses - Yukio Mishima
* Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Six nested stories arc power's destructive trajectory from the past to the distant future
The Filth - Grant Morrison, et. al.
* The Invisibles - Grant Morrison, et. al.
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask - Jim Munroe Boy who can turn into a fly + girl who can make things disappear = trouble for The Man.
After the Quake - Haruki Murakami Decent short stories
The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami An excellent collection of disquieting short stories
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami Not very good; Murakami may have milked the whole double-world thing dry
'69 - Haruki Murakami Japanese coming of age for story 'bout a dorky Japanese kid; incidentally, his most normal novel ever.
* Sorrows of War - Bao Ninh The Vietnam war as told by a man who fought as a grunt in it, for the North Vietnamese, for over 10 years.
* Native Speaker - Chang Rae-Lee A second-generation Korean-American assimilating himself while crafting the downfall of another Asian-American.
Narnia Chronicles, all of 'em - CS Lewis Technically read to me by Mrs. Yates in the second grade.
Bone - Fae Myenne Ng
Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven
The Mote in God's Eye - Niven and Pournelle
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
* Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje
** English Patient - Michael Ondaatje Less class struggle, more white love.
* In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje Secret prequel to EP.
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Akira - Katsuhiro Otomo
** Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk Another case of a movie better than the book.
Cold Skin - Albert Sanchez Pinol
** At Close Range - E. Annie Proulx Beautiful, sad short stories.
Accordian Crimes- E. Annie Proulx
Postcards - E. Annie Proulx
** Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx Is she freaking amazing or what?
* All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
* The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
* God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Rushdie
* Moor's Last Sigh - Rushie D
* Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Mark (?) Rushdie
Sea of Tranquility - Mark (?) Russell
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
*Blindness - Joseph Saramago
The Double - Joseph Saramago
Seeing - Joseph Saramago
** We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy - Maurice Sendak My favorite children's book and second-fave novel ever.
* Caucasia - Danzy Senna
Symptomatic - Danzy Senna
David, No! - David Shannon Like all great children's books, teaches that if you break the rules your moms will still love you.
Dark Room - Rachel Sieffert
http://www.dreamwater.net/seatofkings/
* A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Soltzhenitsyn
* The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson An only ok 950 pages. I want those 20 hours back.
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
* Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Zodiac - Neal Stephenson
* The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
* The Secret History - Donna Tartt
* Goodbye, Chunky Rice - Craig Thompson A beautifully written and drawn graphic novel.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
* Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
* Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood - Rebecca Wells
The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
* Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson
Bonfire of the Vanities - Thomas Wolfe
"Krynn" series - about a hundred of 'em