the new canon

According to the site creator, he/she will be constantly adding new works as time moves on.

list so far

Gabriel García Márquez:
Love in the Time of Cholera

David Foster Wallace:
Infinite Jest

Margaret Atwood:
The Handmaid's Tale

Toni Morrison:
Beloved

Jonathan Franzen:
The Corrections

Don DeLillo:
Underworld

Zadie Smith:
White Teeth

Roberto Bolaño:
2666

Mark Z. Danielewski:
House of Leaves

Cormac McCarthy:
Blood Meridian

Philip Roth:
American Pastoral

Jonathan Lethem:
The Fortress of S0litude

Haruki Murakami:
Kafka on the Shore

Edward P. Jones:
The Known World

Ian McEwan:
Atonement

Michael Chabon:
The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay

Philip Roth:
The Human Stain

Mario Vargas Llosa:
The Feast of the Goat

Marilynne Robinson:
Gilead

David Mitchell:
Cloud Atlas

José Saramago:
Blindness

Jennifer Egan:
A Visit from the Goon Sqad

W. G. Sebald:
Austerlitz

Jeffrey Eugenides
The Marriage Plot

Donna Tartt:
The Secret History

Michael Ondaatje:
The English Patient

Saul Bellow:
Ravelstein

A.S. Byatt:
Possession

Umberto Eco:
Foucault's Pendulum

Cormac McCarthy:
The Road

David Foster Wallace:
The Pale King

J.K. Rowling:
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone

Arundhati Roy:
The God of Small Things

Roberto Bolaño:
The Savage Detectives

Paul Auster:
The New York Trilogy

Per Petterson:
Out Stealing Horses

Ann Patchett:
Bel Canto

Ben Okri:
The Famished Road

Joseph O'Neill:
Netherland

Haruki Murakami:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Marisha Pessl:
Special Topics in Calamity
Physics

Jonathan Franzen:
Freedom

Colm Tóibín:
The Master

Denis Johnson:
Tree of Smoke

Richard Russo:
Empire Falls

Alice Munro:
Runaway

Martin Amis:
London Fields

Mark Haddon:
The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time

John Banville:
The Sea

Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club

Jeffrey Eugenides:
Middlesex

Junot Diaz:
The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao

Aravind Adiga:
The White Tiger

Tim O'Brien:
The Things They Carried

Irvine Welsh
Trainspotting

Tobias Wolff:
Old School

Tim Winton:
Cloudstreet

David Foster Wallace:
Oblivion

Oscar Hijuelos:
The Mambo Kings Play
Songs of Love

This post was edited on 6/15/21 at 11:27 pm

5 ...

Report Post

Posted by The Spleen

Member since Dec 2010

38865 posts

Posted on 6/16/21 at 10:21 am to HailHailtoMichigan!

Thanks for sharing. I need to get out of my rut of reading and re-reading classics. I've read many on this list already - some I liked, some I hated - but always good to have a list to refer back to when book shopping.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by boxcarbarney

Above all things, be a man

Member since Jul 2007

22714 posts

Posted on 6/16/21 at 10:34 am to HailHailtoMichigan!

Interesting. The ones I've read on that list are:

Mark Z. Danielewski:
House of Leaves

Cormac McCarthy:
The Road

J.K. Rowling:
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone

Chuck Palahniuk:
Fight Club

Tim O'Brien:
The Things They Carried

I didn't realize Mambo Kings was originally a novel. I loved the movie and the soundtrack.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by Tigris

Mexican Home

Member since Jul 2005

12349 posts

Posted on 6/16/21 at 10:49 am to HailHailtoMichigan!

quote:
David Foster Wallace:
The Pale King

This one surprises me - one of the least enjoyable books I've ever read. And I'm a huge DFW fan and would have Infinite Jest at the top of the list. The Pale King seemed to have been written to intentionally be tedious (the point of the book really). It was also unfinished at his death and was pieced together, by his wife I think.

quote:
Don DeLillo:
Underworld

Really like this one - probably the best thing I've read in the last 10 years or so. White Noise is also very good.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by Htowntiger90

Houston

Member since Dec 2018

939 posts

Posted on 6/16/21 at 2:21 pm to HailHailtoMichigan!

It's a good list - I've only read about a quarter of them. I've got some catching up to do on contemporary lit.

I thought Gilead was good but not necessarily Pulitzer great. Maybe b/c I liked the writing in Housekeeping much better? I felt like I could have passed on A Visit from the Goon Squad. But it catapulted Jennifer Egan into being a guest NYT book reviewer, so what do I know?

Glad to see Chabon on there. Kavalier & Klay is still my favorite novel of this century. Atonement & The Road are right up there too.

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by Rocky Gamucci

Member since Sep 2019

110 posts

Posted on 6/16/21 at 8:11 pm to Htowntiger90

Kavalier and Klay isn't even my favorite Chabon. The Things They Carried, however, is one of my favorites. Looking forward to getting into some David Foster Wallace. I'll give Dennis Johnson's Trees of Smoke a shot. Laughing Monsters was cool, but ultimately not first class..

In O' Brien's honor.

2 ...

Report Post

Posted by Htowntiger90

Houston

Member since Dec 2018

939 posts

Posted on 6/17/21 at 8:39 am to Rocky Gamucci

quote:
Kavalier and Klay isn't even my favorite Chabon.

Yeah, thinking on it I like Wonder Boys from '95 even more. Would like to reread that one. My favorites list can be a fluid situation.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by HailHailtoMichigan!

Mission Viejo, CA

Member since Mar 2012

69252 posts

Posted on 7/4/21 at 12:12 am to Rocky Gamucci

I have kavalier and klay sitting on my shelf. I need to read it

2 ...

Report Post

Posted by Charter Embers

Member since Nov 2019

133 posts

Posted on 7/4/21 at 12:11 pm to HailHailtoMichigan!

It is sneaky good. Doesn’t matter if you’re into comic books or not.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by Sneaky__Sally

Member since Jul 2015

12364 posts

Posted on 7/5/21 at 7:27 am to HailHailtoMichigan!

I've only read a few of those, thanks

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by Htowntiger90

Houston

Member since Dec 2018

939 posts

Posted on 7/6/21 at 8:54 am to HailHailtoMichigan!

quote:
I have kavalier and klay sitting on my shelf. I need to read it

A great book, even if it does send you to the dictionary now and then.

I get that his vocabulary and cultural/historical references are too much for some people. But going through that book is like a master class in writing.

Page 1