Top Ten Novels I Read In 2011.

I'll always remember 2011 as my "Year of Enlightenment"; after spending much of my adult life sort of listlessly drifting through existence, I finally found a breakthrough this year, in terms of life goals, purpose of being, personality, and countless other things. A large part of that shift is likely due to the fact that I read more in 2011 than I have in any year of my life; by my count, I read over 20 books during the year, and plan on reading at least 20 more in 2012. Below are a list of the ten favorites I managed to get through, as well as some honorable mention (and dishonorable mention) candidates.


10. Never Let Me Go (2005, Kazuo Ishiguro)

Takes a little long to get going, but when it does...oh wow. The second half is an extremely difficult read, just for how powerfully sad it is, and the ending would make The Tin Man tear up. It's so good that I refuse to see the film adaption (released in 2010) for fear that it'll have nowhere near the emotional punch of the novel. (Note: This was in the top three until I read a review of it that imagined the three main characters as farm animals; needless to say, this analogy did not enhance my opinion of the book, and now makes me view it in an almost humorous light.)

9. The Sirens of Titan (1959, Kurt Vonnegut)

Similar to #10 in that the set-up is probably too long and the second half is simply sublime. The idea of all of humanity existing simply to transport a spare machine part to an alien stranded on Saturn is the best theory I've ever seen for why we were created. This won't be the last Vonnegut novel on the list.

8. Killing Yourself to Live; 85% of a True Story (2003, Chuck Klosterman)

Chuck Klosterman at his neuotric peak. Take the love essays and rock essays from Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs, meld them all together so that they transition seamlessly, slightly tweak the topics, and you've got this just-the-right length extended magazine piece (and that's a compliment). Highlights: the Kid A/September 11th theory, the discussion about Zeppelin, and the section about people who live in Los Angeles ("it is January or possibly July" is my favorite line in the entire book).

7. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1940, Carson McCullers)

Maybe the most brilliant idea in early contemporary literature was McCullers' introducing the idea of the "protagonist as audience surrogate." John Singer, a lonely deaf man living amidst a colony of lost souls, serves this purpose perfectly; he allows the other characters to share their rich, interesting, ultimately heartbreaking life stories as they search for love and mostly fail to find it. The fact that McCullers had this published when she was 23 actually kind of irritates me, since I'll likely be typing words for a school newspaper and working in the back kitchen of a two-star restaurant at that age.

6. 1984 (1949, George Orwell)

A little preachy? Sure, but still the ultimate dystopian masterpiece, and likely a huge influence on one of my all-time favorite movies, V for Vendetta. The feeling of constant suspense and danger present throughout the first two-thirds of the book is palpable, and Winston Smith's tragic journey is a remarkably written one. I like this book anywhere from two to two thousand times better than Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which I find boring and overly ridiculous.

5. Slapstick (1976, Kurt Vonnegut)

Here's a reason why I don't like "Top Ten" or "Top 100" lists; the author often feels as though they need to represent the greatest variety of material possible, which leads them to not list multiple pieces of work by the same artist. (The worst example is probably VH1's list of the "Greatest Songs of the '80s"; it includes "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses at #2, but omits "Welcome to the Jungle" entirely, probably for the reason I noted above.) Yes, I read a lot of books by guys other than Kurt Vonnegut, but Slapstick was a laugh-out-loud emotional roller coaster ride with one of my favorite endings of all time. Why shouldn't I put it on the list? Because I also loved Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse-Five? That's reasonable?

4. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, John Kennedy Toole)

Quite possibly the funniest thing ever written, and (more importantly) an interesting insight as to why the author committed suicide before it got published. All of Confederacy's characters are either unlikable or unredeemable (or both), which causes society as a whole to be portrayed in a highly negative light.

3. Eating The Dinosaur (2009, Chuck Klosterman)

Ralph Sampson, Mike Leach, In Utero, Lady Gaga, and countless other pop culture manifestations are critically analyzed by the P.C. guru himself. Klosterman was in his mid-thirties and married when he began work on this novel, which explains how its tone is much less negative and fatalistic than everything else he's written (and also why this is my favorite book of his).

2. Catch-22 (1961, Joseph Heller)

I take back my comment from #4; this is the funniest thing ever written. The story isn't particularly interesting, and the theme doesn't go much deeper than "War is stupid," but every single page contains at least two side-splitting laughs, and Yossarian is probably my favorite protagonist of all time. There may very well be no funnier chapter in literature history than the one about Major Major Major.

1. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969, Kurt Vonnegut)

Kurt's best. Rivals #2 and #4 on this list for humor, while also critically analyzing a host of deep themes: free will, love, marriage, war, and others that are the usual Vonnegut standbys. The fact that this Vonnegut novel features a frequently-time-traveling main character named "Billy Pilgrim," Tralfamadorians, and the always-enjoyable Kilgore Trout, pushes it to the top of my 2011 reading list.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Fight Club (1996, Chuck Palahniuk)

An enjoyable satire on the American male's existence in the late 20th century. Bonus points for the scene, tragically omitted from the film version, where the narrator and Marla engage in a kitchen brawl while using Marla's mother's liposuctioned fat as a weapon.

Cat's Cradle (1963, Kurt Vonnegut)

Is this what's going to happen on December 21, 2012?

Chuck Klosterman IV (2006, Chuck Klosterman)

Can't beat an anthology of Chuck's finest. His interviews with Val Kilmer and Bono are especially enlightening.

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

Fahrenheit 451 (1953, Ray Bradbury)

Just could never get into this supposed "dystopian sci-fi masterpiece"; nearly every character, including the protagonist, is completely unlikable, and the story goes nowhere. I did enjoy parts of it, though, which is why I'm willing to give Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes a chance.

A Clockwork Orange (1962, Anthony Burgess)

I don't really like Catcher In The Rye as a novel (my appreciation for it arises from deeper reasons), and Clockwork Orange generally feels like a carbon copy of the former book, if Holden Caulfield was 50% more violent and spoke entirely in ridiculous, nearly-impossible-to-decipher slang.

Tender Is The Night (1934, F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I still believe that The Great Gatsby is the greatest American novel of all time, and definitely one of my four or five favorite books ever. Tender is generally considered Fitzgerald's second-greatest book, which led me to take the understandable plunge. What I found was a long, boring, devoid-of-action romance novel whose only value lies in the fact that it's basically the story of the end of Fitzgerald's life. I suppose that there's some reason to appreciate it, in that regard, but as a novel itself I found it extremely hard to get through.

The book is more powerful than the sword.

Mind control absolutely exists.

There are any number of complex theories and methods one could use in this space to prove that true, but I will choose to focus on the basic forms. Take the simple example of "music." If a girl at a club has had a few drinks and hears a catchy song, her mind tells her to dance, and she usually does. If a stoner has had a few puffs and puts on a track with a laid-back groove, his mind tells him that he is getting very sleepy. If a flower child drops some acid and listens to prog-rock or trip-hop, his mind tells him that certain pictures and colors exist that actually do not. This is mind control. (Some might argue that this is simply "mind manipulation," and that true "mind control" can only exist if a certain individual can literally use their mind to control the thoughts of others. This is, at the very least, nitpicking.)

The concept goes a little deeper when analyzed through the lens of film. Taxi Driver convinced Ed Hinckley to shoot the president. Fight Club moved large groups of people to start "copycat" Project Mayhem organizations (although with, of course, much more realistic results). Jaws kickstarted a worldwide fear of sharks, leading to Animal Planet's highly-publicized "Shark Week" and the shark itself eventually getting tagged as an "endangered species" due to extreme over-hunting. Seemingly innocent films like The Wizard of Oz and Lord of the Rings became famous for wholly unintentional reasons (in each of these cases, "Dude, we gotta get high to this shit, man"). And so forth.

However, beyond these two methods comes the truest form of mind control, and the one that has arguably resulted in the most serious consequences throughout the years: manipulation through literature.

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One of my friends is absolutely beautiful...or, at least, I've seen her at a state of absolute beauty. She has gorgeous blue eyes, tan brown skin, flowing brown hair, and some of the prettiest features I've ever seen in a woman's face. I've seen modeling pictures of her from several years ago, and she looks like a fucking ten (out of five). On paper, she has everything that any man would ever look for in a woman. It's unfortunate that those criteria don't include "a personality," but shit; if she did have a wonderful personality, she'd be the most attractive person on the fucking planet. Bar none.

This is where (at least, in my speculation) literature enters the picture.

This woman's favorite author is Chuck Klosterman, notorious always-depressed contrarian hipster/"philosopher for dummies." And I actually like the guy; in fact, I'm a huge fan of a lot of his essays, and definitely enjoy his takes on Star Wars ("Empire Strikes Back previewed Generation X"), the 1980s Lakers-Celtics rivalry ("Celtics = old school Republicans, Lakers = late-'60s Democrats"), and Advancement Theory (when an artist does something that is the opposite of unpredictable and also the opposite of unpredictable, they have done something genius). I'll even be referencing a lot of these essays in my own writing, and plan on my next one to even involve a "philosophical" question of his from the book "Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs." But here's the thing: I respect the guy's writing, but I wouldn't say I'm in love with it. Sure, I love certain parts, but generally it just seems too depressing; one of his books chronicles a road trip of his around America looking for famous places where rock stars died ("Killing Yourself To Live") that should have been fucking incredible...if he wasn't sulking the entire time over being lovesick. In that book, he also admits that the entirety of his most famous work ("SD&CP") was written when he was also lovesick. As you can imagine, he can very easily start to sound like a whiny douche in a lot of places throughout both books. This is why, although I definitely enjoy portions of his brainstorms throughout both works, I wouldn't call myself a Klosterman Disciple. Of course, since his writing is extremely relatable to the average American (since he's writing about everyday situations and pop culture in a slightly deep way), I can imagine that it would be easy for someone to get sucked in by him.

Unfortunately, my girl friend did. (Or, at least, I think she did; again, this all speculative.)

My female friend has pierced her nose at least three times. She rarely wears makeup. She recently cut her hair down to shoulder length. She seemingly deliberately wears the least revealing (i.e., least attractive) clothes she can find. On top of that, she also apparently tries to make her Facebook profile picture the least attractive picture she can find. The only things she ever talks about are how little money she has and how little luck she has with men. Although I could very, very easily imagine her being a "party girl" (at least, based on what I've seen and heard about her past life), it seems as if she's trying to go "alternative." And although we're friends, whenever I speak to her I get the general impression that she's attempting to disagree with everything I say and/or one-up me at every turn because she has to be smarter and "righter" than me about everything.

This is a Klosterman Disciple in a nutshell.

Again...I may be reading too much into this (no pun intended). Maybe she was always like that, and is just now choosing to go full indie chick. Maybe she's naturally condescending; fuck, most women are. Maybe she never was a "party girl," and just looked and acted extremely like one once upon a time (according to various sources, anyway). Maybe she honestly does find those clothes and those Facebook pictures attractive, in which case her choices to utilize them would be less "pretentious" and more "extremely misguided."

Or maybe she views Klosterman like Chapman viewed Sallinger. In which case, a) Chris Martin had better start wearing Kevlar in public, and b) we've lost another one to literature mind control.

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So why does literature take such a strong hold over the people who read it? Here's my theory.
In the case of music at a club, you're around a hundred other people when you're hearing the song; it does dictate your actions to a point, but if absolutely nobody else was dancing to the music then you probably wouldn't either. It's just as much of a sociological thing as it is a psychological thing. It's a little different in the case of a movie, because you take it in on more of a personal level (what with the silent theater and the dark atmosphere). But immediately after the movie ends, you're probably discussing it with a friend or family member (and possibly multiple friends and family members), because movie viewing is almost completely a social exercise at this point. The film is all yours for about two seconds...and then the credits roll, and now it's everybody's. Again, sociology intersecting with psychology.

Literature is different because (unless you're in a book club, an entity which I don't actually believe exists because the heaviness of the cliche would end up crushing everyone in the room) it's just you and the author. You take everything in at your own pace, and dissect it in your own fashion. There's nobody around you while you're taking in that affects your opinion of it, and nobody to immediately discuss it three seconds after you finish reading it. Moreover, it also wasn't some conscious decision of a social group to pick out this book; it was something you chose, because you enjoyed the topic and probably wanted to be affected by it. I've never thought of reading a book as a bizarre form of self-fulfilling prophecy before, but there you go.

Does this mean that every anti-war novel will turn you into a '60s anti-Vietnam hippie, or that every apocolpaytic novel will turn you into the guy from Take Shelter? No. But it's a hell of a lot more likely that, if you do undergo a personal transformation due to culture, the inspiration will likely be "that book you just read."