“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
(click to enlarge)
Book With Wings
Anselm Kiefer
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Yesterday I sussed out my first three Desert Island Books – I’ll finish out the list here.
I started out making a list of possibilities: LOTR, The Riverworld Series, Sputnik Sweetheart, The War of the Rull, Jealousy (by Alain Robbe-Grillet)….
As I was thinking, number four popped into my mind.
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A slam-dunk – although I liked Love in the Time of Cholera almost almost as much.
And that’s how I completed the ten. I kept listing books and every now and then one would jump out at me. I wrote: Lolita, Pale Fire, Under the Volcano, Absalom, Absalom, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1Q84, The Brothers Karamazov, A Clockwork Orange… – all worthy candidates, but the ones that I selected (and will change constantly):
5. Moby Dick
Of course
6. Dune
Of course
7. Crash
The J.G. Ballard novel
8. The Sound and the Fury
One of my Difficult Reading Book Club selections – the second on the list.
9. On the Road
10. Catch-22
So, What do you think? What have I missed? What have I not read?
You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.” ― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
Call Me Ishmael
I just finished a book last night… finished one for a Science Fiction Book Club that meets this Saturday. It wasn’t very good – though, in the end, I sort-of liked it… interesting… all though it wasn’t very well written.
So I was thinking… make a list of my favorite novels – maybe ten… ten Desert Island Novels. Right off the top of my mind, three stand out.
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
I love McCarthy and this is his Magnum Opus. I’ve been working through a five hour YouTube summary/review of the book, it reminds me how amazing and horrible the thing is:
This one took me by surprise – an innovative structure – it packs a wallop over time. It really resonated with me. I remember when I read it, I thought it was unfilmable – then they made the movie and I discovered I was right.
Three down… seven to go. I have two pages of notes… I’ll edit them down and type them up tomorrow.
Bill Chance 