The life of a writer is hard, because money.
There comes a time, usually after you’ve gone four days eating nothing but ramen noodles (and you’ve contemplated selling all of your valuables and subsequently realized that you have none), when you have to literally sober up and assess the facts. With a stack of unpublished short stories and the wreckage of three or four novels somewhere inside my laptop, with a day job as a cook, I was tired of the whole show. Writing, rejection, writing, rejection. Exhaustion, hard drinking, further exhaustion, rejection, the hardest drinking.
How, having worked my entire life writing fiction no one reads, can I make any money with this skill? This one skill I’ve troubled to cultivate? This one skill that I love? This art?
A few weeks ago I turned, pointed by a friend, to the world of Kindle romance/erotica where, I was assured, there was money to be made. Seventy percent of profits from each story sold would be mine, and the price for a single story was set generally at $2.99. This friend who recommended me explained that she made an extra $500 to $700 a month, and others made much more. Some lucky people you’ve heard of have even made millions. Signing up was free and all Amazon required was a little tax information. Following that, all I had to do was be willing to remorselessly pump out paranormal pornography like nobody’s business. Could I accept this challenge?
I read Dostoevsky for pleasure, I read Juvenal, I read Big Billy Shakes: of course, I thought, of course I can write shape-shifter erotica, and I can do it goddamn exceptionally.
I began this life-changing journey with an attempt to define the word erotica, because I’d never read or written anything with that explicit label before. How in depth are we talking? How specific does this genre get? Erotica had always reminded me of the word “pornography” dressed up for a night at the opera. (Though I don’t really mind the word pornography either: the next time you see a porn video, picture James Joyce’s ghost hovering in the background moaning sensually.) I thought I knew what I was dealing with, having heard a lot about 50 Shades of Gray and dinosaur erotica and all that from the zeitgeist and other grotesque corners of the Internet. I thought that erotica could be as explicit as regular pornography, but it also required a more delicate, emotional touch. This turned out not to be true. After doing some important, serious research, I found out that actually erotica could be just regular old smut, and so I was free to ignore romance and focus instead on the repeated use of the phrase “hard as iron” and descriptions of how hot peoples’ breath was.
I first had to choose my hook, my concept. Perusing the available archives on Amazon’s Kindle section, I quickly learned that there were thousands of erotic short stories available written by willing, easily excited amateurs like myself, and I would have to distinguish my work if I wanted any of that sweet, sexy cash. A lot of the stories had a hook, usually involving paranormal creatures, or just regular creatures, creatures that shape-shift into human form and then have amazing sex with other people (that transformation is very important: apparently overt bestiality, or rape, are banned from Kindle short stories, so, you know, there’s a line drawn somewhere). These shape-shifter sex creatures could be anything from dolphins to bears to whales. Moby-Dick joke. Because I had to put in my due diligence, I decided I’d have to read and research some of these stories, to help settle on a concept and structure for my own sex-melee. I ended up investing $2.99 in a shorty story by Olivia J. Rose titled “Dominated by the Dolphins” (I almost couldn’t decide between this one and “Humped by the Humpback“). I read the whole thing and I can honestly tell you that I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. I’ve definitely never read anything like it. But the main takeaway was: who the hell am I to judge if someone wants to get their rocks off, and nobody’s getting hurt? That’s not such a bad thing. You go for it, Olivia Rose. Not every book needs to be Heart of Darkness, and if you’re story is a BBW shape-shifter erotica called “Dominated by the Dolphins,” I’ll have to insist that it has nothing to do whatsoever with King Leopold’s Congo.
Deciding my hook was by far the worst part. I couldn’t decide. Every nook and cranny of paranormal genre junk was already occupied with hundreds of stories filled with passionate creature-based sex: goblins, werewolves, phantoms, steampunk vampires — I wanted to choose a relatively untapped market, but that wound up being impossible. There are no viable untapped markets in Kindle erotica, pretty much like in regular internet porn except in regular internet porn there are no unviable markets. I basically just settled on a bunch of different genre ideas that I then gracelessly mashed together into the uninviting stew that became my first ever explicitly erotic short story. It involved ghosts, it involved dragons, and it involved a secret underground sex club. I wrote it kind of in a trance, but whatever, it doesn’t matter: sometimes you’ve just got to try all available options to pay your rent, and sometimes that entails making compromises.
Tip to win readers over: describe your erotic short story as an uninviting stew.
Before I began writing, though, I knew I had to settle on a pen name. It’s not that I wasn’t inordinately proud of the fact that I was willing to write erotica for hot, iron-hard cash, but I wasn’t exactly interested in advertising it with the name I’d carry for the rest of my life. So I decided to use a pen name, and it would have to be appropriately romantic, because people buy erotic short stories from writers with names like Michelle Cox and Sheena O’Mara, but they definitely don’t buy erotica from writers with names like any male name. There’s a difference between a female and a male writer of erotica, and that difference is porn. So, once again stymied by the brute realities of capitalism, I asked another friend if he had any ideas for a suitable pen name for an author of romantic/erotic fiction. He suggested several: Horatio Mancleever and Orpheus Baccarat being the only I guess printable ones. I tried to ease him into more feminine territory. I can’t tell you what name we eventually settled on, because I don’t want to give away my true identity to my loyal readers, but I will tell you it was a female name and it was slightly less ostentatious than Orpheus Baccarat. A foolproof plot, a totally viable scheme. An extra $500 a month! I was ready. (Meanwhile, it had been almost a year since McSweeney’s received my novella and I’d heard nothing, and the clerk at the corner liquor store now greeted me by name).
The actual writing process was semi-described above. Mainly a fruitless thrusting of words onto the page, a relentlessly sweaty, uncomfortable affair, I wanted to get the whole dumb thing finished as soon as possible. I knew, setting out, that there were a few phrases I definitely wanted to use (“sweltering heat of his animal eyes,” “sturdy as a buffalo,” “a ruined hellscape of exquisite sadness,” etc.) but before writing I had almost nothing in the way of hard beginning-middle-end type stuff. And as soon as I did begin writing the thing, the goddamn thing, I realized that a life spent reading postmodernists and 19th-century Russians had somehow not in the slightest prepared me for the work of generic, workmanlike eroticism. Sure, Gravity’s Rainbow is chock full of weird sex, but to match the right tone, the tone solely focused on sexy time and not acts of eternal recurrence or V-2 mechanics (which needless to say rarely ever come up while I’m, uh…performing sexual functions…I don’t know what language I’m allowed to get away with here) I needed to devolve a little bit, let the writing hang out, forget about descriptions of candlelight or monologues about metaphysics, and instead head straight into the dark heart of bodily fluids and hot breath.
I asked an ex-girlfriend what kind of erotica she’d read if she read erotica and she was confused by the entire scheme, declined eventually to answer. I was on my own, so after an aggressive caffeine binge and a few days spent trying to imagine what this whole thing could possibly mean for my life I bashed out a rough draft of dirty, filthy smut. A couple embarrassing revisions later, and I was done. It was exhausting, but it was also liberating, and not even in a sexual way: if poverty’s a fact, I’m going to game the system any way I can, especially if it’s harmless and entails giving pleasure to other people — in fact, although it was never the kind of pleasure I ever imagined my writing would give people, I felt absolutely terrific, in the end, that I was maybe giving them any kind at all. Weirdly enough a second ambition had twined itself, in stunted form, to the central one of cash: I want to help some people. I want to help some people get off.
Is that how pornographers feel? Am I a pornographer? “Who cares?” as J. Joyce would say. If nobody’s getting hurt I’ll write whatever smut’s required of me when the bills need to get paid.
The last step was designing a cover, by which point I was too exhausted to care. Also, stock photos and photoshop are expensive, so I slapped together a piece of generic art provided by Amazon’s design program. Then I threw the thing up there and tried to forget about it, tried instead to dream about piles of weird voluptuous money, wheelbarrows full of it, and people across the country having a grand old time reading what I’d written.
Somehow, everything went terribly wrong.
In terms of monetary gains, I initially checked my Amazon reports every few days, but had to stop after a while. It was just too depressing. By the end of its first month online, my heartbreaking little story had managed to rope in a grand total of three readers. Which, to be fair, is more readers than I’ve ever had for any other piece of fiction I’ve written in my life. Unfortunately or fortunately, they left no reviews. The only mark to know they’d been there at all was the goddamn blue uptick on the Amazon sales graph. (Blue means that the reader is someone with a Kindle Unlimited account, so they can read your story for free, i.e. no royalties.) It came to me that I might have underestimated the fact that the market is so glutted with stories written by half-assed people like me, nobody’s going to plunk down three bucks for the opportunity to even laugh at it. There was too much. I was one more drop of irrelevant smut in an Atlantic of erotica. I’d thought that just publishing this thing with minimal effort would somehow grant me at least hundreds of paying readers, but now, somewhat removed from the fever that afflicted me while I wrote it, that seems literally insane. What kind of lunatic thinks he’s going to make hundreds or thousands of dollars by self-publishing a 20-page story about a dragon sex club? But when you’re desperate for cash, it’s simpler to believe almost anything. How could I not want to hold onto that? It’s practically un-American to not believe that you can get rich quick with minimal effort and erotic know-how.
My dreams faded. I got up and went to work again, every day. Every day there were no readers, there was no excess money coming in. I worked and went home and worried about rent, groceries, like I’d always done. In the immortal words of Henry Hill, “I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
That was basically the end of it.
Throughout this great experiment, I’ve realized a few things. Most importantly I know now, despite Dostoevsky and friends, that I don’t have any of the ambition necessary to become a successful erotic writer. It would require me to continually write and publish a bunch of stuff that at the end of the day I find so boring, I’d prefer getting paid to correct automotive textbooks. I don’t have the drive to just pump this stuff out, build a fanbase, because it doesn’t in the slightest matter to me. That’s, I guess, the difference between the hundreds of pages of fiction I’ve written, for no monetary compensation whatsoever, and the 20-page erotic story which totally exhausted me. Even right now the idea of sitting down and churning out another of these things makes me want to take a nap. Once the story was actually finished, and there was no money to be made, all ambition tied to it evaporated, and now I’m left pretty much where I began. Ruthlessly lazy, without much money, and stuck for the foreseeable future at an annoying day job. Like pretty much every other writer in the world, I imagine. Maybe there are no get-rich quick schemes, if you’re not passionate about what you’re writing. And if you’re writing erotica, you’ve got to be passionate, you’ve got to be sturdy as a buffalo.
But just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean the option isn’t out there for others. Other poor, unlucky writers with superhuman ambition: I’m talking to you. Even if I made no money off this whole charade, what can you do with it, you heroic pornographers? Why not give it a go? Lord knows the world could use more smut. But don’t think of it as smut, think of it as sexual healing. After all, who doesn’t need some excess cash? And who doesn’t need to get off? We’re writers, goddammit, but we’re still human beings. Wants and needs abound everywhere, you can’t avoid them. The hardest drinking one day gives way, hopefully, to opportunity, and maybe you can make some people happy. At the very least they might see the title of your story in the Kindle store, your ridiculous, strange little story, and they might laugh before moving on — and that’s good enough, hell. You’re published. You’re the real deal.
Art schmart.
Ain’t nothing wrong with getting off.
Image Credit: Flickr/Fadil Elmansour
I’m surprised not to see Sarah Waters on either list.
I was so happy to see that readers included Jhumpa Lahiri after a snubbing by the panel.
Oh, and ditto Murakami.
I think something to take away from the whole exercise is that it is silly to ascribe merit numerically. Number one, number three, number thirteen—these are basically meaningless distinctions (unless, I suppose, you are running a race). Consider the Modern Library 100, which creates a fairly arbitrary, often ridiculous, hierarchy between books, using basically the same process used for this list (which is, to reiterate, *not* a round-table consensus-type situation, but one based on tallies). Folks seem a little grumpy about The Corrections’ number one spot. Of course it feels a odd to call The Corrections “the best novel of the millennium.” But I don’t see how any of the novels we talked about this week would be less troublesome in that lauded position (unless, naturally, they happen to be your particular favorite).
We’re all just having a good time, right?
I would take the readers’ list over the panel’s anytime. The Corrections is only notable for the Oprah huff, other than that its professorial navel-gazing which is why it was at the top.
I thought that The Interpreter of Maladies came out in ’99.
What is it with people and “professorial?” I keep hearing this adjective leveled at things I find conspicuously intelligent, but maybe it’s meant to denote some tone or rhetorical trait to which I (a quasi-professor) am as deaf as a human to a dog-whistle. Do people hate professors? I’ve always sort of liked them. At any rate, between Chip, Gary, Denise, Enid, and Alfred, there seems to be something for everyone in The Corrections. But maybe not?
You conducted a big poll and went through all of the trouble of tabulating and organizing and compiling this list and that’s what sits at the top? Why even bother with the whole exercise? One thing has been made definitely clear though: what most professional writers want, more than anything, is not to be the best writers they can be, but the best that the market wants them to be, to be rich and famous. Yawn. So the best example of fiction writing so far this decade is an enormous, encyclopedic novel written by a very tall white guy who wears glasses. The more things change the more they stay the same. I think this comment should end with a cliched statement like that in honor of your cliched, safe, zeitgeist-approved choice.
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey?
I’m surprised at how _Kafka on the Shore_ did on the reader’s list. I felt like it was one of Murakami’s weakest novels ever (and maybe that’s a testament to his skill and ability).
Both _White Teeth_ and _Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell_ were excellent books. Definitely among my favorites of the millennium.
The whole point is to spur debate, right? Now’s when the fun begins. My personal quibble: no Aleksandar Hemon? I nominate Nowhere Man. (Oh, by the way, Hemon is also a tall white man with glasses. Oh well.)
I personally love tall white guys who wear glasses. Sexy!
And is anyone really surprised that the top book is one that’s been a commercial and critical success? In order to get the #1 spot, a book had to have the most votes, and it would be difficult for a less well known book to win, simply because the fewer people who have read a book means fewer people voting for it.
I know people who hated The Corrections or thought it mediocre, and that’s fair. But I also know people who hate a book simply because lots of other people like it…
That said, I enjoyed The Corrections very much, I had fun nominating my favorite books, and I loved reading the write-ups for all the ones that made the list. I can’t wait to get my hands on American Genius and Mortals, two books I knew very little about before the list was published.
Where oh where is China Mieville? As far as I’m concerned, he’s the tops–at least in fantasy/science fiction. But THANKS for excluding the author of Angels and Demons, whats his name!
EUROPE CENTRAL should be among this august list, but I can only assume few of the Millions voters have read it. It’s long and difficult, don’t you know, and its subject matter is not trendy. Vollmann’s execution of his great ambition is intimidating — few of the authors here (Bolano, perhaps a couple of others) could conceive of such a project, let alone complete it. And following its example will not make you a more marketable young writer.
Sorry to be so snarky, but, really….
Also, KAVALIER AND CLAY, TREE OF SMOKE, and OMEGA MINOR
How about Netherland?
The stand-out quality of The Corrections, and the reason it deserves a spot at least near the top (if there has to be a list at all), is that it’s a genuine novel of social criticism (that is, not social criticism masquerading as a novel, or vice versa). Franzen deserves praise for revitalizing the form. It’s more Jane Austen than John Updike.
Interpreter of Maladies did come out in ’99, and as such, should be disqualified. (That’s not to take away from its quality or the quality of Lahiri’s writing. Just that it doesn’t meet the criteria for inclusion.)
I think both of these lists are full of great novels and story collections. The comments are focusing largely on what wasn’t included and the consensus seems to be that the big, difficult novels got the shaft. I’m not sure this is entirely correct, as 2666 placed pretty highly on the list. Perhaps a book like Tree of Smoke lost out because it’s taking a while for readers to digest it, but again, 2666 puts the lie to that theory. To suggest that a book like Europe Central didn’t make the list because nobody must’ve read it is nutty. I read it. It wasn’t in my top 5. It’s an incredible book and it digs into consciousness in a way I’d never seen before, but I happen to think The Corrections is a better novel. Big and difficult doesn’t always equally better and more impressive, despite what the commentors on this site so often suggest.
While I agree with Tom, I still wouldn’t give it anywhere close to the top spot. I thought it was pretty middling, and I don’t necessarily think we need any sort of “return to form” in an era where new voices, traditionally kept out of mainstream publishing, are finally coming to the forefront.
I think Junot Diaz deserves that number one.
But hey, great list! It’s nice to just have a compiled list of suggested contemporary reading, which – for some reason – is difficult to come by. (But I’ll take suggestions) .
Dang it – several sources I looked at said 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, but I guess that’s just when she won the Pulitzer… So, Unaccustomed Earth got several votes – how about we swap that in (and counting the combined votes she got for her three books, Lahiri deserves to be on there.)
I think the panel’s list is stronger, but both are missing some key books… but that’s always to be expected. I enjoyed these lists!
Oops, I was one of the people who nominated Interpreter of Maladies on my reader’s choice list, and somehow also convinced myself it came out in 2000. But Unaccustomed Earth is great! I’m curious, did The Namesake get many votes? I’ve never liked it as much as her short stories.
Actually, Laura, it looks like The Namesake didn’t get any votes, but Unaccustomed and Interperter got almost the same number, and combined would have moved Lahiri up the list a few spots (it seems like most folks agree with you that Lahiri’s short stories are where it’s at).
Garth:
I think “professorial” has become a synonym for “intellectual.” On the one hand, I understand how someone would criticize a writer for this trait. Some writers, like many professors, can take the soul out of a story. The heady language, the “ideas,” obfuscate the feelings and emotions.
But, for the most part, the label of “professorial” is lazy. I’ve heard the tag thrown at Pynchon and DFW, for example, but I’ve encountered some of the most beautiful, well written, emotion-filled passages in both of their books.
I understand the criticism some readers have about “The Corrections.” The language, at times, does seem to take on the self-pity and cynicism of its characters. I too struggled with this, and I think it’s fair to call attention to it– as many notable critics have. But, overall, I’m certain Franzen was well-aware of this. So the questions should be why does he write like this and, secondly, is he successful? In all, Franzen has an incredible talent for family drama, and the book is incredibly well-written and challenging– two traits any great novel should have.
What I don’t agree with are the knee-jerk reactions to the book. Franzen tends to catch the same lazy criticism as Pynchon and Wallace and Delillo. And you are right to challenge the term “professorial” in this case, which, in essence, is a cynical attack on ambition. These attacks, many of which come from those who haven’t read the books in question, stem from a misunderstanding about the writing process and, in general, irreverence for authors who experiment and try to push the form.
Most writers, to counter W.S., aren’t out to be famous. To accuse Franzen of this is ridiculous because “The Corrections” is an anomaly. Serious writers with literary ambitions don’t make the long dollar– most artists without a mind for entertainment aren’t the ones living in luxury.
And irreverence: this is a trend I don’t understand. Many like to bash “high-art” as pretentious and elitist and snobbish. It’s as if great art is all a facade, a hoax. The people who make it are intellectuals and the people who consume it want to look smart. No, great art is ambitious, challenging, and requires a finer taste.
And to “The Millions” crew and the writers who participated: thanks for the list. I don’t agree with some of the books, but who cares? The numbers game is a matter of preference, and there isn’t a dud on the list. Thanks for sparking conversation, reminding me of books I’ve read, and encouraging me to read the books I haven’t.
I have to agree with PJ about Aleksandar Hemon. Nowhere Man didn’t make a big splash when it was published, but it is (I hope) one of those books that will keep growing in stature as the years pass. Few writers have ever captured the dislocations of the refugee/exile experience as vividly as Hemon. The book is structurally dazzling, and the way Hemon reinvigorates the English language puts native speakers on notice that their mother tongue has grown tired of being taken for granted and has found herself a new lover.
I’m okay with the White Teeth snub because, though it’s a fantastic book, the ending’s pretty damn lame. I wonder if Tree of Smoke didn’t make it because, well, it’s massive, and it’s hard to vote for something you can’t finish.
“Most writers, to counter W.S., aren’t out to be famous. To accuse Franzen of this is ridiculous because “The Corrections” is an anomaly. Serious writers with literary ambitions don’t make the long dollar– most artists without a mind for entertainment aren’t the ones living in luxury.”
Right. Most writers long to live in penury and anonymity. Especially writers like Franzen, which would explain his habitual need to tell other people why whatever it is he is working on at any given moment is exactly what the publishing world, and the reading public, needs.
I think the problem with your argument is your example. Franzen is a middlebrow novelist working with traditional material to make what amounts to more of the same. The Corrections is just another in a long line of novels that flatters its audience into thinking that their lives have some kind of universal truth to them, as if a Chef, a Writer and a Businessman are avatars for all of humanity. The Corrections, to me, said nothing new about anything and did it in a way that was neither innovative nor exciting. I guess that it was picked number one by the panel shouldn’t really come as a surprise when you see who made up the panel.
I too think Oscar Wao deserves the top slot (and agree about Hemon and would have loved to see Colum McCann somewhere) but as some have observed the rankings are pretty subjective anyway.
On a separate note, while I am amused at some of the sharp rhetoric flying around, I also think it’s great to see so many so passionate about books and reading. Three cheers to the Millions for sparking such lively conversation!
The lists are very solid top to bottom, but am I the only person surprised by the lack of love on either list for Atwood’s Blind Assassin? Seems like a rather prominent omission.
I’m also curious if any of Philip Roth’s books from the decade got any votes.
I voted for the Blind Assassin, PScott! That was the one I felt sad about.
W.S., there are undoubtedly things to be said against The Corrections, but you’re getting a touch personal there.
PScott,
I considered a couple of Roth books — namely The Human Stain — but in the end, they didn’t make my top 5. If we did this same thing for the 90s, I might have picked American Pastoral #1 overall. There were actually quite a few authors whose best work seemed to happen in the late 90s, and as such, just missed the cut.
It’s interesting that The Corrections has been labelled “professorial,” considering that the occupation and the ivory tower are the target of some keen (and hilarious) satire in Franzen’s novel. Also, evidence for Franzen’s beliefs in the pleasures of writing and reading is all over the place. Alas, the suggestion that something is trying to be intelligent does leave the impression of elitism. As readers, though, it’s up to us to enter a dialogue with the writer and not just approach art as a cheap fix, but as a means of communicating something of value. I think Franzen does this well.
I love Oscar Wao and Jhumpa Lahiri! I got two copies of The Known World for m birthday years ago and COULD NOT FINISH IT! I just lost interest in the plot around page 300, and did not feel like slogging through to the end.
I actually read Middlesex last week and loved it. I read Cloud Atlas earlier this year and enjoyed it qute a bit (except the longest story in the middle). The Road I was forced to read by my book club and thought it was okay.
I have read 9 of the top 20 “readers choices” (6 of the top 10) but almost none on the critics list.
I look forward to reading The Corrections soon.
It seems unfair to exclude The Savage Detectives considering its English translation came later and its impact was most certainly felt in this millennium as opposed to the last.
Also, I found it more inventive than The Savage Detectives in nearly every way: http://wwtawwta.blogspot.com/2009/05/2666.html
p.s. W.S. = Will Speers?
LB
I’m very surprised that “Life of Pi” did not make the list. Regardless of what you think of Yann Martel’s other work, this one should stand the test of time.
Life of Pi? Really?
Went searching for Norman Rush’s Mortals, found it in the remainders at Book City in Toronto for six bucks. Not bad.
Out Stealing Horses is a personal favourite. I was pleased and surprised to see it in the Pro list as it seldom gets a mention
Shout out to “Gould’s Book of Fish”, by Richard Flanagan.
“The Corrections” is the best novel of the millennium, so far? C’mon. Seriously?
How utterly boring.
That choice is more a reflection of a writerly clique than the book’s worthiness.
For the record, I have read six of the twenty critics’ choices and seven of the twenty readers’ choices. The Corrections is one of those. I was underwhelmed. Franzen can write a sentence, but the book lacked depth.
As one example of a flaw, the scene with the talking poo is derivative of Mr. Hanky of South Park fame. Mr. Hanky has been around since 1997, so South Park gets credit. And, I guess, my biggest problem with the book was that Franzen seemed primarily interested in zaniness (like the fish down the pants which seemed for all the world like a Seinfeld (Kramer) bit.) rather than saying anything new about the human condition. And, no, his one-dimensional shots at big pharma, the cruise industry, etc. do not qualify.
Still, the two lists are outstanding and provide the spur I need to catch up on some of the millenium’s best (if sometimes overrated) writing.
I was so pleased to see Austerlitz make both lists; I admire Sebold so much and I’m planning on starting The Emigrants soon. What is it with our need to “rank” in order, by number? I like the idea of bounded sets or intersecting circled sets of favorites instead of lists. With a list, where do I start…at the top? I’m interested in the intersections and what else is being read. I’m probably gonna start with Gilead, Cloud Atlas, and Never Let Me Go, based on how near they were on the list to other favorites that I’ve read. It’s all so…whacked. But what a great load of fun.
I contributed titles, but none of mine made it in the top 20…I figured they wouldn’t, but I’d love to see the entire list of submitted titles if that exists somewhere! It’s fun to see which titles got chosen the most, but I’d be more interested in seeing everything that was nominated and how many votes each title received. Max, would that be a possibility?
Hi Leah, Thanks for taking part. I’m not sure if we’ll be publishing the readers’ list of titles – probably not – but we have published the panel’s list.
Corrections??? How can that be? It is a novel of cartoons.
Very high on my top 20 list would be Kathryn Davis’s “The Thin Place,” Kate Walbert’s “A Short History of Women,” and Jane Gardam’s “Old Filth.”
My fave book of the decade is “Sacred Games” by Vikran Chandos. How can these idiots omit it?
I’ve read only Murakami, but looking forward for top-list… Thanks!