/lit/ - Literature

>>13856889
>no houellebecq
>no pynchon

>>13856889
>Sapiens
good literature

>>13856889
>no dfw

>>13856899
They said best books not literature

Literally not a single french book (or maybe I missed one ?)...

>>13856947
Persepolis was written in French by an Iranian person, but it's a comic, not a book.

Somebody tell the Guardian that the 21st century started in 2001.
The list is shit btw.

By anglos for anglos...

Here's the top 10:
1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
3. Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (2013), translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
5. Austerlitz by WG Sebald (2001), translated by Anthea Bell (2001)
6. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2000)
7. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
8. Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)
9. Cloud Atlas David Mitchell (2004)
10. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

>>13856983
Austerlitz ... bretty gud

>>13856895
Major yikes if true

>dude black womyn lmao
>No Houellebecq
>No Bolaño
>No Pinecone
>No Kindly Ones
Do these people even read books?

>>13857032
They probably READ more than most people on here... they just have shit taste and shittier politics. And they’re anglos.

>>13856983
I haven’t read those particular books by Alexievich or Ishiguro, but I can dig them being on the list. Sebald seems to be well liked on /lit/, I should check him out already.

>>13857032
Houellebcq and Littell over Chevillard

Clearly it’s still a matter of translation as far as international lit is concerned. It’s too early for those sorts of lists.

>>13856889
lol its all pop socsci

Are we allowed to feel bad for poets in this day and age ?

>>13857077
Poets transitioned into singer-songwriters in the 60s. Leonard Cohen was a poet who learnt guitar because it was better exposure for his poetry. All the best poetry has been through lyrics since around the mid 60s.

>>13857088
Cohen is boudoir-poetry man... Also even Newsom reads like an amateur next to Ammons or something. I don’t know man... can’t agree at all.

>>13856983
>women, darkies
of course

>>13856983
>4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
I've read that. The film was better, there were problems with the book that were rectified in the film (Ishiguro was involved). It's arguably about the dehumanisation of third world subjects in the wake of the globalisation of labour.
The film was breddy gud, the book was okay-ish, it made me want to check out Remains of The Day by him on the proviso that it was better than Never Let Me Go.
Haven't read any of the other ones. I don't really like the Guardian very much as a UK resident, I could summarise them as "a left without the working class". Not that I worship the working class, most of them are lazy, unrefined and reactionary (not that it's necessarily their fault).I read the Spectator mainly, though sort of as a pisstake.

>>13856889
I hate that they didn’t distinguish between fiction and non-fiction.

>>13856889
me locking in on the anglosphere

/ourgirl/ Rooney is now canon you guys. Top 25. We’ve made it !

>>13857118
I haven't read the book and i didn't think the film was any good. I felt it was a melodramatic sob-fest at the end.

>>13856889
Has any read The 6th extinction? How was it?

>>13856889
What, not even Inherent Vice? They made a film of it!

>>13856889
>no sex at dawn
>fucking franzen
>pet nigger coates is in the top 10

>>13856947
Persepolis, a comic written by an Iranian woman, and a Mabanckou novel, a Congolese writer teaching in California. That’s it for french lit as far a Guardian is concerned. One could laugh... one could cry...

Does anybody have our chart for best 21st century fiction?

>>13856889
Is Michelle Obama's book in there?

>>13856936
It's not even a best pamphlet.

>>13857000
Asterix & obelix go to auschwitz

>>13857388
Here’s this one

>>13856889
The most obviously weird thing is Eimear McBride, who's the most guardian friendly writer ever and wrote a great, already canonised book, but is somehow not on the list. I have no idea how that happened, especially since the list must have been controlled. I say that because only the one Mantel only gets one book, despite her second one being arguably better, and the same is true of Barnes, Ferrante, St Aubyn.

The presence of several books intended for actual children is just sort of funny.

>>13857388
there's also this one antsize while the archive is down.

>>13856895
>>13856902
>>13857032
>>13857039
>>13857339
You guys don't seem to get it... The media and publishing industry are run by jews who have an ethnic interest in making literature as low brow as possible and excluding white male writers.

>>13857503
>yet another beckett ripoff regarded as a major 21st century artist
You guys always eat it all up, uh ?

>>13857484
>>13857505
Thank youu, the second one is exactly the one I was looking for.

>>13856899
Top fucking kek

>Atonement at 41
I thought this was pretty much universally regarded as soon to be canon? Shouldn’t it be higher?
Or is there a penalty for being a huwite male?

>>13856889
No Houellebecq
No Pynchon
No DFW

They think Houellebecq is racist and hates women

They’re too retarded to focus on a Pynchon book

They think DFW is a psychopathic stalker

No fuckingn wonder

>>13857503
it means they dont actually fucking read, even in their nigger diversity entries they didnt fucking mention marlon james keise laymon paul beatty or walter mosley

if a fucking raycisss reactionary xenophobe like me has a better list of modern black writers something is seriously lacking

>>13856983
That Coates book was one of the worst things I’ve ever read

The only one I've read recently is Postwar by Judt, not especially deep but covers all the major stuff really well and has good profiles on all the Euro countries besides Moldova and other meme ones

>>13856983
Gilead, Austerlitz and Autumn (or any Ali Smith for that matter really, she’s very zany that woman) are all well worth reading.

better than expected desu
>implying most people on /lit/ have even read any 21th century books to have opinions on them

>>13857761
Ali Smith is too hideous a woman not to be a gifted fiction writer lol. Love her. Would gladly shake her hand and thank her.

They should have made this list in 2100, not now! Only 20% of the the 21th century has passed.

>>13857770
what an insight

>>13857764
>better than expected desu
You weren’t expecting much then lol. And you are obviously anglo.

>>13856983
>top are all woman
y.ikes

>>13857761
The other two are fine, but Ali Smith is a total bullshit merchant. The Carol Anne Duffy of prose.

>>13857778
dooo yooou have a prooobluhm with thaaat, aaanooon?

>>13857807
You don’t?

>>13857796
You are the bs merchant. Smith is fine.

>>13857509
I get it. It just pisses me off

>>13857811
I must admit the Duffy reference is on point though.

my top ten:

Vladimir Sorokin - Ice Trilogy
Roberto Bolaño - 2666
László Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Marilynne Robinson - Gilead
Jamie O'Neill - At Swim, Two Boys
Karl Ove Knausgård - My Struggle Book 1: A Death in the Family
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Fleur Jaeggy - S. S. Proleterka
W. G. Sebald - Austerlitz

>>13857807
they are trying so hard to appear proggy
as an artist how you would feel knowing that the only reason to put you on the top was to fill the current political agenda
At least they get rich i guess

>>13857822
>Fleur Jaeggy
Is she still alive ? Damn... I’ll look into it (although I think she’s rather 2nd rate as a whole but we’ll see).

>>13857830
she's only done 5 books that have been translated into english and they're coming relatively fast. she's a very acquired taste but works for me

>>13857835
I might try to find that last novel in english. She isn’t anything special in french.

>>13857815
As it should.

>>13857839
i haven't read her in italian so i have no idea what your experience is or even if it's more authentic than my english experience.
what i like that seems consistent throughout the translators i've read into english is the incredibly detailed precise tiny sentences, the little skewering details. and the cold but intense relationships, that icyhot passion and ironic detachment to burning feelings. it's so great to me and she gets right into it like scalpel through all the flesh of normal decency right into the nerve of human perverseness
in a cool aesthetic taciturn way

>>13857857
Great post, thanks for sharing. By any chance, have you read Sono il fratello di XX ? if so, impressions ?

>>13857811

I have read her earlier stuff but not autumn. Still, take one look at it and you can see that she's still terrible.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/pauline-boty-blonde-brilliant/

She can barely get a couple of fairly bland paragraphs in before the

gimmick

of a fresh line

for some reason

Then jumps straight into the clumsy use of tenses in "who’d been studying art history as one of her subjects at college and had been having an argument with her tutor".

We return to the style-free narration, interrupted by meaningless attempts at novelty like "Malignant thymoma is what it said in the list of things under the word Chronology at the back of the catalogue." before we go back to the apparently bottomless well of inspiration that is the fresh line gimmick, dialogue minus speech marks in which sentences end on commas but questions on question marks, and the trademark effect ("everybody and HER dog") where she has one of her characters alter a commonplace (or, in her other stuff, introduce an Ali-Smithy pun) in a way that breaks the flow of dialogue and can only be read as clumsy authorial intrusion.

She is terrible because she cannot write a fairly simple, description light passage without desperately jazzing it up with distracting novelties.

>>13857898
i read it in english and i loved it
there's something really enjoyable morbid about her in general and these short stories were especially gothic and fun

it's like high brow addams family

>>13857912
Cool, thank you again. My library has both available right now so I know what i'm doing tomorrow. Should be fun (questionable choice of word here considering her whole vibe but yea...).

>>13856889
lot's of wamyn, of course

>>13856983
Cloud Atlas is pretty good though.

What the fuck lmao

>>13856889
>no Donna
What the FUCK did they mean by this?

>>13858255
>and the book sold in huge numbers
Haha, alright.

>>13858255
>Its ok that the author of a book about an entirely philosophical argument lacks philosophical sophistication

>>13858262
She’s not black or Jewish or Muslim

>>13857509
>I don't have any actual criticism so I'll just blame the Jews

kek

way too many fucking memoirs

We're reaching midwit levels that shouldn't be possible

>>13857509
>every
>fucking
>time
The #1 book is a hagiography of that zealous, genocidal, satanic scumbag Thomas Cromwell who brought Ziobankers to England.

>>13856889
Isn't it a bit early to make such a list?

>Wolf Hall

Jesus christ, fuck off with this shit.

>>13858340
Never quite understood why this book is so liked

OMG what an absolutely shit list.

There are fewer then 10 books on that list that are worth reading.

The only one I would 100% have on there is Night Watch, I'm shocked Pratchett was included. Cloud Atlas and maybe Amber Spyglass and the Cormac book, but most of that list is pure SJW garbage.

>no Alexander Theroux
>no Gjetrud Schnackenberg
>no Roberto Calasso

cringe

>>13857088
turbocringe, singer songwriter shit is kindergarten tier compared to poets like Schnackenberg, Heany, Muldoon, Longley or >>13857097 and many others
that mongoloids do not know poetry post 1950 is their problem

>>13858457
>hating on based Svetlana Alexievich

>no Rupi Kaur
how dare they??

>>13857088
Cohen admitted he started to sing to get chicks.

>>13858434
It's perfect suburban mum book group reading. Unchallenging, but with enough 'issues' in it that you can have an ersatz discussion about it before getting drunk and thinking about who's husband you would fuck

>>13857484
>>13857484
Buried Giant was the dullest tripe I ever read.
God, it sucked donkey's balls.

>>13858487
not hating but she made most of it up

>>13856889
>I didn't read any of this books except The Road

>>13858262
stop posting pictures of my loving wife, thanks.

>>13857827
They don't see it that way. Ego is too big. Most such books are written by true believers.
Unfortunately their prose is usually shit because they think so long as their intentions are good then quality can be disregarded.

>>13857909
sounds to me like she is too lazy to edit

>>13858584
got anything to back that up

>>13856889
>Siege is on it
okay

>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night‑Time
lmao I had to read that one for my 11th Grade English class
it fucking blew

>>13856895

>Persepolis

WHY THE FUCK

Marías, Sebald, McCarthy, and maybe Munro, Saunders and Ishiguro are the only ones capable of anything literary on this list.
Clearly very much non-literary, very Anglocentric, and mid-to-low brow at that (it's the Guardian after all), so no surprise.
Anything from the likes of Pynch, Eco, Gospodinov, Vosganian, Lebedev, Pavlov, Houellebecq, Krasznahorkai, Nadas, Cartarescu, Larkin, Calasso, or even Bill Gaston or that Littell guy, outshines nearly whole of this list.
Oh well
>angloids
picrel

Daily reminder Éric Chevillard is the greatest active french novelist. More or less untranslatable sadly.

>>13856947
France has no intelligentsia.

>>13858913
That is false yet has nothing to do with their absence on a Guardian list. Shit post desu.

>>13858913

You might be mistaken.

Bestsellers are a hack. Prix Goncourt is better.

>>13858989
Have you even seen this year goncourt’s lineup ? Amélie Nothomb is on there - think about that for a second.

>>13857484
>the world goes on
such a disappointment and I say that as big Krashnahorkai fand i hope the baron w.e. it's called is good
also
>murakami
lol fuck off
at least mediocrity like sudden death is vaguely interesting murakami is bland and incessantly sterotypical

>>13857822
not bad not bad
certainly much better top 10 than the one we've been given by the guardian.

>>13858792

Barnes, Roth >>> McCarthy

Having a sense of humour does not disqualify a writer from relevance.

>>13858638
https://newrepublic.com/article/135719/witness-tampering
>There was some confusion, however, about the lineaments of Alexievich’s chosen genre. The Western press described her as an “investigative journalist” and “contemporary historian,” accepting her work as accurate documentation of Soviet and post-Soviet reality. In interviews, however, Alexievich has stressed the literary nature of her intentions and methods, and she rejects the title of “reporter.” Her work opts for subjective recollection over hard evidence; she does not attempt to confirm any of her witnesses’ accounts, and she chooses her stories for their narrative power, not as representative samples. Her newly translated book Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets bears no resemblance to “investigative journalism.”

>>13856889
5/100
wew, that's one terrible list.

>>13858607
Good Anon. Keep it up. Stay away from trash.

>>13856889
So how do you guys find out which modern books are worth reading? Can't trust any source these days with the female and colour propaganda.

Gott strafe Anglos

>>13859241
ceci

>>13856902
post 90s DFW is not best of century though

>>13859268
Same for Pynchon, McCarthy, Bolano, Sebald, Roth, Lazslo...

There’s absolutely nothing contemporary about these guys’ work

>>13859302
Disagree, 2666 is definitely best of 2000s material

>>13859302
I don't think being contemporary in attitude matters. Writing your best stuff does, so I'd personally consider books like Against the Day and Seiobo questionable calls on those grounds. The other writers on that list (albeit Sebald by a tight margin) have an okay case for having done that in this century.

>>13856889
Was expecting to see John Green

>>13859349
>>13859313
I disagree on all counts but anyway what I really want is new artists. Also, fuck Bolano. Both in verses and prose.

>>13857118
I'm in the opposite direction, read Remains of the Day and enjoyed it - do you recommend reading Never Let Me Go or some other book by him?

>>13856983
obvious reflection of the shit middlebrow taste of the sort of bourgeoisie globalist parasites who read the guardian. these people will be the first against the wall when the day comes. Hail Victory!

>>13859489
BASED

>>13857105
Gee, I wonder why that could be!

>>13856889
>>best books
No Vox Day

Ha Ha, normie tier list detected

Massively wrong.

>>13859609
That list is just about as boring and previsible desu desu... That DFW is downright embarassing.

>>13859609
Bretty good list desu fampai
Why does /lit/ have such better taste than fucking journalist scumbags who literally read for a job

>>13859617
make yours then, faggot. let's see what you have to say about it.

>>13859645
Tu ne fais jamais que régurgiter, mon enfant.

>>13856983
>all women, blacks, or both

>>13856889
So a fucking Bob Dylan MEMOIR and a cringe genre fiction Neil Gayman YA novel are there... but not fucking HOUELLEBECQ AND BOLAÑO. FUCK OFF.

>>13859652
So you can't even make a little list? lmao stfu then pretentious frog cunt

>>13859678
That list already exists... Why would I share it though ? Because you’re still worshipping DFW ? What do I care my dude...

>>13859663
>Ishiguro, Pullman, Mitchell
>back and/or women
okay lad

>>13859686
People who whine about things yet don't offer a solution are mere faggots no better than crying women.

>>13859698
You take this board too seriously. Btw that shitty list of yours was already posted up here in this shitty thread. Now go read some Chevillard or something for all I care - would be a step up.

>>13859689
they are deracinated onions people and spiritual redditors. Even if they are biological males, these authors an their readers are women in a metaphysical sense

>>13859710
Except it wasn't the correct size, faggot. The poster even admitted so. Don't you have children to fuck and cuck parties to go to, silly frog?

>>13859735
hum hum

>>13859748
cope

>>13859721
fair enough

>>13859752
cope... what exactly? You being a DFW reader ? All readers on here are midwits anyway.

>>13856895
>no Pynchon
He peaked with Gravity's Rainbow. Listing one of his lesser works as a best work of a new century would be pretty damn embarrassing for the century.

>>13859759
(Oh and btw, i’m still waiting for a ferocious wine n cheese joke, dear burger)

>>13859763
Unfortunately the state of contemporary literature is not exactly bright so even the work of the masters of yore is better than what's produced these days.

>>13859759
>>13859770
cringe

How the fuck can we determine the best books of a century we haven't even reached the middle of?

>Neil Gayman
>best anything
TOP FUCKING KEKS

>>13859362
worse. neil homosexualman is there.

>>13856889
>a fucking comicbook
???

>>13859880
The only french pick with Mabanckou, be respectful !!

>>13859763
He peaked with Mason & Dixon and Against the Day is hardly a 'lesser work'.

>>13859802
I agree that he's not the greatest of all time, but I quite liked "Ocean at the End of the Lane".

>>13859609
>wh*te m*n

Okay, what the F*ck!?

>>13859609
Are you a death grips fan by any chance lol ? This is some true teenage-macho stuff...

>>13859802
R*ddit considers him one of the greats

>>13860068
the only "macho" book there is No Country for Old Men

>>13860148
so that's a yes ?

>>13860154
I'm not a "fan" of Death Grips, no.

>>13860025
what do you mean?

>>13857643
because muh wymen and muh niggers HAVE to be higher even if they're literal whos

>The Shock Doctrine
Yep, into the trash compactor it goes

>>13860148
I bet she didn't even read it, just picked it based on the title thinking it was some feminist book.

>>13856889
I've read 4 of these: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Infatuations, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and Never Let Me Go. The Ishiguro one was the strongest. Dragon Tattoo is dreck. Kavalier and Clay was too cutesy, and The Infatuations reads like the kind of thing people read just so that they can say they're into modern Spanish literature.

When I see a list like this, I imagine what a similar list made in 1919 about the 20th century would look like. Had any enduring 20th century books actually been published yet at that point?

>>13861629
Ulysses was published in 1922.

>>13859459
Artist of the Floating World is more or less ROTD: Japan edition and also a good book.

>>13861629
By 1919 you already had:
Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks
Henry James - Wings of the Dove
Soseki - I am a Cat
Soseki - Botchan
Robert Walser - Jakob von Gunten
Proust - Swann's Way
Bely - Petersburg
Joyce - Dubliners
Soseki - Kokoro
Kafka - Metamorphosis
Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Wyndham Lewis - Tarr
Joyce - Exiles

And that's ignoring e.g. Chekhov's plays or poetry by writers like Pound, TS Eliot, Yeats, Rilke or Trakl or non-fiction from Freud, Jung, Henri Bergson, Max Weber, Spengler, Husserl, etc.

Now, to be fair, it's very possible that many of these works were mostly ignored by the mainstream literary press in their time as well.

>>13861629
>too cutesy,
middlebrow bourgeoisie liberal taste has veered to the nauseatingly twee since the turn of the century

>>13861629
>similar list made in 1919
Off the top of my head you'd have
>Wings of the dove
>The Ambassadors
>The Golden Bowl
>Buddenbrocks
>Death In Venice
>Lord Jim
>Nostromo
>The Secret Agent
>Kim
>The Good Soldier
>The Gods Will Have Blood
>The Varieties of Religious Experience

>>13859763
Against the Day is high-tier Pynchon on par with GR and M&D

>>13861629
>The Infatuations reads like the kind of thing people read just so that they can say they're into modern Spanish literature
Brainlet detected

List is rubbish. No Krasznahorkai, no Beatty, no Johnson, no Pynchon, no gusta

you're also assuming one can read Japanese, French, German, Russian, and English as these were not all available in translation at that time

>>13862686
meant to reply to >>13862121
oops :)

>>13856962
>Persepolis is not a book
wut

>>13857039
when will we finally address the Anglo question

>>13862705
>"Those damn Anglos!"

>>13862672
>Krasznahorkai
skeptical that this nigga wrote anything good since the 80's

>>13862146
AtD is self-parody and rehash. There are good bits, but it can't touch M&D.

>>13856889
> Niggers and womens have to dig up 50-200 years old third party bones to justify their own degeneracy in present day
I think majority of people would burn paradise on second day of staying, becaue someone have to suffer to feel better for yourself on that background

>>13856889
NO Tao Lin????

You know the list is really bad when even plebbit thinks it’s shit