Marginal Revolution: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

If you are a completist, as am I, buying this new book -- yes it really is called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die -- is a dangerous move. It has already induced me to purchase George Bataille's Story of the Eye (not what I thought!), Robert Musil's Young Törless, Thomas Pynchon's supposedly underrated Vineland, and Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island, which I expect contains the key to the mysteries of Lost. The volume is excellent for browsing and seeing what came out in a particular year. Elsewhere on the book front, David Maruszek's long-awaited Counting Heads has idea futures, frozen heads, and a compelling literary style. I can't imagine how it could have a good ending, but I am not yet at the point where I care.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 8, 2006 at 09:10 PM in Books | Permalink

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Comments

The amazon link seems to be broken.

Posted by: TJ at Mar 8, 2006 9:36:57 PM

I saw that book in the store but I didn't bother to pick it up because I figured the type would have
to be much too small for me to read.

Posted by: Ronald Brak at Mar 8, 2006 9:53:08 PM

Bataille is porn.

Posted by: Dave at Mar 8, 2006 9:56:46 PM

Tyler,
I really love your blog and pretty much all the articles of yours I have read (which are quite a few), but, how do I say it - you are weird.
Sorry.
Commenterlein

Posted by: Commenterlein at Mar 8, 2006 10:02:48 PM

Mysterious Island is a great book! I read it in 6th grade and hadn't even given it a thought until you mentioned it.

Posted by: Doug at Mar 8, 2006 10:12:57 PM

Any list that shows Vineland in the top one million books is immediately suspicious. I plowed thru a hundred pages or so, thinking "what the hell
is this?", before throwing in the towel. The book does not make the slightest nod towards coherency much less literary merit. Pynchon dwelled alot on the Thanatoids which pretty much speaks to the mental state needed to finish this book.

Posted by: Mark H at Mar 9, 2006 12:02:17 AM

I liked Vineland, though I like Pynchon in general. Yes it's hard to follow at times, but what do you expect given who you're reading?

Posted by: Van at Mar 9, 2006 12:32:22 AM

I recently stumbled upon Pynchon's work while surfing the web in search of metaphors which referenced dynamic modeling with autonomous agents.
I got sidtracked on the notion of as I had recalled it being referenced in Weiner's "Human Use of Human Beings." Pynchon writes more on the topic in "Crying of Lot 49"

I thought Pynchon's implications were greatly flawed (heat death and the sort), but still find it facinating the extent to which it seems like this thread of thought bears similar motivation in answering some of the similar questions driving spontaneous order theory. How do we explain the apparent randomness of action of the system compared with rational action of the individual parts?

Alas I recently purchased "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Vineland" for about a buck each at a local used book store, and digested a small beginind chunk of "Vineland." It's fun to read and shares a Palahniuk style nihilism.

Dr. Cowen,
If you're fmailiar with Pynchon, I'd be most interested to hear your general thoughts.

Thanks,

Dan

Posted by: Daniel J. D'Amico at Mar 9, 2006 12:40:49 AM

I'm not adverse to challenging material. One of the other authors in the post, Robert Musil, is brilliant and his masterwork "The Man Without Qualities is on my short list of greatest books of the 20th century.
But Vineland ... man I just didn't get it. If there's an underlying genius to this book it was buried to deep for me to find. Must be an acquired taste.

Posted by: Mark H at Mar 9, 2006 11:26:33 AM

If your goal is to read a certain 1001 books before you die, which could happen any time, then why are you bothering with books that certainly won't be on that list, such as
"1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"?

Posted by: Thelonious_Nick at Mar 9, 2006 12:18:10 PM

I'm reading Vineland now and it is a pretty baffling read. I like it inspite of that though. I just let the phrases and images wash over me and move forward lost. It's odd but not an altogether unpleasent experience like walking at night through a strange city. I liked the Crying of Lot 49 too even though it was pretty much a shaggy dog story.

Posted by: Mike F at Mar 9, 2006 12:38:24 PM

I do not know which books are on the 1001 list, but I would
recommend the more recent Mason and Dixon by Pynchon far ahead
of Vineland. Of course, Gravity's Rainbow is his masterpiece,
idiosyncratic as it is.

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 9, 2006 12:47:32 PM

If these are books you're supposed to read before you die, does that mean that you'll be taking a dirt nap soon after you finish the last one?

Posted by: Peter at Mar 9, 2006 1:37:47 PM

Since you have to read "1001 Books you have to read before you die" before you can read the other 1001 books, shouldn't that title really be "1002 Books you have to read ..."?

Posted by: Robert Speirs at Mar 9, 2006 4:35:00 PM

Vineland is probably my favourite book of all time. I don't get the 'challenging' bit. Gravity's Rainbow I can't get started with, tried a dozen times and I always hit the wall at about page 50. But - structure apart, I can see that you do need to know which strand of the sotry is which to be able to follow it properly - Vineland is straighforward. And beautifully, hilariously, dramatically written. It's like very, very high class airport fiction, or satire of airport fiction maybe - car chases, kidnaps, conspiracies, cliffhanger chapter endings, tremendous, never quite feasible leading charcters superb supporting cast, sex, drugs, rock and roll. On a more socio-political academic tip it's also a masterly critique of eighties America, but I don;t thinyou have to read that angle unless you want to - it stands alone as a good - among the best - old-fashioned story, brilliantly told . Rilly (as teenage heroine Prairie would say), it's totally awesome.

Posted by: Grayscale at Mar 10, 2006 6:04:16 AM

Vineland is probably my favourite book of all time. I don't get the 'challenging' bit. Gravity's Rainbow I can't get started with, tried a dozen times and I always hit the wall at about page 50. But - structure apart, I can see that you do need to know which strand of the story is which to be able to follow it properly - Vineland is straightforward. And beautifully, hilariously, dramatically written. It's like very, very high class airport fiction, or satire of airport fiction maybe - car chases, kidnaps, conspiracies, cliffhanger chapter endings, tremendous, never quite feasible leading charcters superb supporting cast, sex, drugs, rock and roll. On a more socio-political academic tip it's also a masterly critique of eighties America, but I don't think yyou have to read that angle unless you want to - it stands alone as a good - among the best - old-fashioned story, brilliantly told . Someone should make a film of it. Rilly (as teenage heroine Prairie would say), it's totally awesome.

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