Here we go again, another booklist.
What can I say, I love these. (I don’t quite know why.)
From Flavorwire.
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath (1963)
- Herzog – Saul Bellow (1964)
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (1965)
- Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (1966)
- The Master and Margharita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion (1968)
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (1969)
- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume (1970)
- The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor (1971)
- Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino (1972)
- Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (1973)
- The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin (1974)
- The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (1975)
- Speedboat by Renata Adler (1976)
- The Shining by Steven King (1977)
- The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978)
- The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1980)
- Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak (1981)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
- Cathedral by Raymond Walker (1983)
- Money by Martin Amis (1984)
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
- Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (1986)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
- Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (1988)
- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
- Possession by A.S. Byatt (1991)
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1993)
- The Ice Storm by Rick Moody (1994)
- Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
- Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
- Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (1998)
- Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee (1999)
- Pastoralia by George Saunders (2000)
- Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (2001)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)
- The Epicure’s Lament by Kate Christensen (2004)
- Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (2005)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
- Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (2008)
- Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr (2009)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
- Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
- Building Stories by Chris Ware (2012)
- The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (2013)
The fifteen titles in bold are ones I’ve read.
An interesting list: novels, memoirs, short story collections, graphic novels, essay collections. Books I’ve heard of, others I haven’t. The original post lists other recommended titles for each year as well, and as the post’s author says:
Of course, this is by its very nature an absurd undertaking, and many books have gotten the short end of the stick — there’s no other way to do it. The choices here are influenced by the following: the stipulation that any specific author should not be chosen for more than one year, a general focus on fiction over other genres, and the tastes/whims/glaring prejudices of Flavorwire’s literary editor.
More for the never-ending To Read List.