30 Books to Read Before You Die (Pt. 36)

There’s something quite amazing about being well underway into the 1000s that makes me pretty proud of starting this series. We’ve been through a lot in terms of talking as well—I’ve spoken about everything from wide reading to my undergraduate dissertation to bookstagrammers on Instagram. But, again, we will never run out of things to talk about, and so, I want to talk to you today about some stuff concerning modernist literature.

There are many things that I love about modernist literature—I am a big fan of the writings of DH Lawrence and Truman Capote. I pretty much love a lot of stuff from the 1900s to the 1950s in terms of literature, and music, and even film. But, when it comes down to it, there are a few things about the culture around it in our own times that I don’t like. I know you’re going to call me a bit prejudiced, but it is very true and some of this stuff hurts quite a bit.

The first thing I don’t like is the snobbery. There’s a certain amount of snobbery that certainly comes from Russell Group University English Literature students who want to convince you they’re sitting around re-reading Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce all the time. They tend to believe in “high modernist” and “low modernist” literature, believing that the more bohemian and ‘poetic’ the book is written, then the ‘cooler’ it makes them seem. Therefore, the “low modernism” is stuff like DH Lawrence, and books actually written philosophically with wit and drama. They tend to believe that all their own angst can be expressed in two books: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I get tired of these people, because they’re trying way too hard to be “cool” and “edgy” by suggesting to you they’ve been analysing all the feminine demonisation in The Bell Jar and The Great Gatsby. I just end up yawning profusely.

The second thing I don’t like is the “cult culture.” It’s like being goth for literature when you haven’t actually read the book. These are the teenagers (mainly) that think loving A Clockwork Orange and Jack Kerouac makes them “edgy” and “different,” and they keep telling you about it, but have failed to read over three books by Kerouac, and couldn’t name you another Burgess book with a gun to their head. These are also the same teenagers who thing re-reading Lolita at 14 is “philosophically charging” and makes them “edgier” than their teen friends, when in reality the arguments are so complex they wouldn’t be able to understand them well enough at that age. Again, it’s boring and I’ve seen it so many times that I wouldn’t be able to count them all if I tried.

The third thing I don’t like is the “post modern” culture. Post-Modernists tend to think everything modernist is old and outdated when they literally came from the modernists themselves. I’m sorry I just think that the argument that post-modern literature is the “future,” and that modernism is old fashioned is terribly ironic in every way. It’s normally the post-modernists though who call modernists the aged and out-of-it writers who don’t understand the changing world. This is all being said whilst modernists were not just a part of the changing world, they actually were the changing world.

I think I’ve spoken enough about the three things about modernist fan culture in our own day that I hate, and now, it’s time to tell you that I’d never suggest a book I haven’t read. Be that as it may, my own personal favourites will be marked with an (*), and I will talk about one or two intermittently if you haven’t had enough of me already.

1051-1060

1051. Burmese Days by George Orwell

1052. The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft

1053. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

1054. Think, Write, Speak by Vladimir Nabokov

1055. The Power of Non-Violent Resistance by Mahatma Gandhi

1056. Becoming by Michelle Obama

1057. 'The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' by Stuart Turton

I remember when I went to buy this book about a week after it came out. It was at the university bookshop, and I was due to be in a western philosophy lecture in the next ten minutes. It was halfway across campus and yet there I was. I was in a bookshop. I was buying this book and I swear to God every person working there came up to me and said “oh yeah, I’ve read that—it’s really good.” Or they would say, “ooh, I’m reading that at the moment. It’s amazing so far…” After which, I couldn’t resist. I bought the book. I was late for western philosophy.

1058. The Acts of King Arthur by John Steinbeck

1059. Poet in New York by Federico Garcia Lorca

1060. America in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan

1061-1070

1061. Circe by Madeline Miller

1062. The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

1063. Enlightenment by Steven Pinker

1064. Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

1065. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

1066. The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee

1067. All the Birds in the Sky by CJ Anders

1068. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

1069. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

1070. SPQR by Mary Beard

1071-1080

1071. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

1072. A Conjuring of Light by VE Schwab

1073. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

1074. Nutshell by Ian McEwan

1075. The Muse by Jessie Burton

1076. Moonglow by Michael Chabon

1077. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

1078. Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

1079. The Outside by Stephen King

1080. Zibaldone by Giacomo Leopardi