Cult Books
I just found this list at Puss Reboots, who got it from Bibliobibuli, who in turn found it at the site of The Telegraph.
The allegedly 50 best cult books. What exactly a cult book is defies an easy definition. I thought the Telegraph’s attempts at explaining it were quite funny:
Some things crop up often: drugs, travel, philosophy, an implied two fingers to conventional wisdom, titanic self-absorption, a tendency to date fast and a paperback jacket everyone recognises with a faint wince. But these don’t begin to cover it.
Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon.
Well, whatever the definition, what we have here is a list. And I just love lists.
Sharon Bakar at Bibliobibuli had the idea to see which ones she’s read and because I’m curious I will do the same.
The books I have read are bold, the ones I am interested in reading are in italics.
* Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
* The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
* A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
* Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
* The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
* The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
* Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
* The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)
* The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
* The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
* Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968)
* A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980) - easily the most awful book I have read in years!
* Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
* The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
* Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
* The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
* Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
* The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
* The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
* Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973) - and god was that boring
* The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
* The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
* Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
* Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
* The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982) - this one was so boring that I couldn’t even finish it
* I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948) - loved it!
* If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
* Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
* Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970) - no, I was wrong, THIS ONE is the most awful book I ever read (along with The Little Prince *blech*)
* The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
* Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
* The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
* The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
* No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
* On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
* Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
* The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
* The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
* The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
* The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám translated by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
* The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
* Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
* The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
* Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
* The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
* The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
* Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974) – another one that bored me to tears, I think I tossed it aside after a hundred pages or so and even that was too late
That makes 13 out of 50. Not too bad, but sadly I only really enjoyed 2 of the ones I read. That doesn’t bode too well for the other ones I still plan to read one day.
Thank you for the mention. Which of the two did you like? I liked half of the ones I read.
pussrebootss last blog post..Upcoming Reviews for the Week of April 28
You’re welcome.
Actually, I lied: I loved only 2 of the books, namely “The Hitchiker’s Guide” and “I Capture The Castle”.
Two others I liked, “To kill a mockingbird” and “The Catcher in the Rye”, but in a more absent-minded fashion, certainly not enough to read them again sometime.
I am obviously an illiterate clod! I have only read five of those: Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Chariots of the Gods, Hitchhiker’s Guide (loved it!), Mockingbird (pretty good). In addition, I started two of them and gave up after a few chapters: Fear of Flying, and The Magus.
Nicholass last blog post..Thursday Thirteen #56
Ok, who is that person in the photo in the comment I just posted? Am I the victim of blog identity theft?
Nicholass last blog post..Thursday Thirteen #56
Don’t fret, Nicholas. That’s just the picture I use instead of the default gravatar graphic.
I finally played. I’ve read 14 and really liked 6 of them–at least at the time that I read them. I don’t remember loathing any of the ones I read, but chances are I did, because 6 of the ones I read (which don’t overlap with the six I liked) were for classes in high school or college.
Darlas last blog post..Monday Morning Meme
Try “The Magus” – One of the all time best books I’ve ever read & one of the few that I’ve read more than once
I’ll give it a try, if a copy falls into my hands at some point. I’ll put it on my list of books to look out for, at least.