Top 100 Books
Even having this list include 100 books is probably not enough, if I list an entire 100 there'll probably be more that pop into my head that seem like they belong here. [In fact, I initially just listed 50 books & the list was woefully incomplete - so I made it my "Top 100" instead. Critics will note that very few women authors are represented, this is not intended as a critique of women authors, I simply listed the 1st 100 books that came to mind as having been important to me & haven't tried to fudge that to meet any particular quota.]
I've listed some of my own books too because, hey!, I think they belong here. Other than myself, I only 'allow' one book per author on here. That doesn't mean that there aren't more that belong here, I'm just trying to get as many authors in as I can - hence Joyce's "Ulysses" 'loses out' to Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" when both, obviously, belong. Roussel's "Impressions of Africa" loses out to "Locus Solus" even though they're both amazing, etc.. In some cases I cheat a little when 2 books are published as one: Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" & West's "The Dream Life of Balso Snell / A Cool Million".
Books by friends of mine tend to be left off - not because they aren't great but because interpersonal relations tend to complicate things a bit too much.
They're listed in alphabetical order rather than according to a rating because there's no way I believe in a hierarchy that can absolutely put one above the other. They all have something extraordinary to offer. When the titles are links, the links will mostly, or entirely, be to my reviews of the books.
I've read all the books picked except for Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority" which is so important to me anyway that I just had to include it.
- September 17 [revised October 5], 2017 note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
001. "A" - Louis Zukofsky
002. Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon
003. Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
004. American Assassins - The Darker Side of Politics - James W. Clarke
005. Apocalypse Culture - edited by Adam Parfrey
006. Art And The Future: A History Prophecy Of The Collaboration Between Science, Technology And Art - Douglas M. Davis
007. Assemblage, Environments, & Happenings - Allan Kaprow
008. The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard
009. At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
010. Attention, Move! This is America! - Margot Henry
011. A Void - George Perec
012. The Banquet Years - Roger Shattuck
013. The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus - "Blaster" Al Ackerman
014. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
015. Blueprint for a Higher Civilization - Henry Flynt
016. Book of the Damned - Charles Fort
017. The Book of the SubGenius: Being the Divine Wisdom, Guidance, and Prophecy of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs..
018. The Buenos Aires Quintet - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
019. Carnival - the first panel: 1967-70 - Steve McCaffery
020. Cassette Mythos - edited by Robin James
021. Chris Burden - Chris Burden
022. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp - Arturo Schwarz
023. Conceptual Art - Ursula Meyer
024. Concrete Poetry: A World View - Mary Ellen Solt
025. Conversation in the Cathedral - Mario Vargas Llosa
026. Cover to Cover - Michael Snow
027. Dada: Monograph of a Movement - Willy Verkauf
028. The Death Ship - B. Traven
029. Dennis Oppenheim: Retrospective Work, 1967-1977 - Dennis Oppenheim, Alain Parent, Louise Letocha
030. Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and Other 4 Dimensional, Aural, Optic, Olfactory, Epithelial and Tactile Art Forms. - George Maciunas
031. The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
032. The Dream Life of Balso Snell / A Cool Million - Nathanael West
033. Expanded Cinema - Gene Youngblood
034. Experimental Animation: An Illustrated Anthology - Robert Russett & Cecile Starr
035. Experimental Music - Cage & beyond - Michael Nyman
036. Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, 'Pataphysician - Alfred Jarry
037. Fantastic Architecture - Michael Schuyt, Joost Elffers, George R. Collins
038. Film as a Subversive Art - Amos Vogel
039. Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
040. footnotes - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
041. Formalized Music - Iannis Xenakis
042. Gargantua & Pantagruel - Rabelais
043. The German guerrilla: terror, reaction, and resistance - Hans Joachim Klein
044. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
045. Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
046. Grapefruit - Yoko Ono
047. great western salt works: essays on the meaning of Post-Formalist art - Jack Burnham
048. Guerrilla Television - Michael Shamberg & Raindance Corporation
049. Hannah Weiner's Open House - Hannah Weiner
050. Happenings - Michael Kirby
051. "Harlem Gallery" and Other Poems - Melvin B. Tolson
052. High Priest - Timothy Leary
053. HiTEC (Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative) "Systems Management" - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & HiTEC
054. The Hobbit - J.R.R.Tolkein
055. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
056. How to Write a Resumé - Volume II: Making a Good First Impression - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
057. Improper Names - Collective Pseudonyms from the Luddites to Anonymous - Marco De Seriis
058. Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific By Raft - Thor Heyerdahl
059. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book - edited by Charles Bernstein & Bruce Andrews
060. Locus Solus - Raymond Roussel
061. The Many-Headed Hydra - Marcus Rediker & Peter Linebaugh
062. Me and Frumpet. An adventure with size and science - Evans G. Valens, Edward Teller
063. Mind of a Mnemonist - A. R. Luria
064. The Monkey's Wrench - Primo Levi
065. A Neoist Research Project
066. Notations - edited by John Cage
067. Obedience to Authority - Stanley Milgram
068. OPEN SPACE 15/16
069. Outsider Art - Roger Cardinal
070. Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
071. Performance: Live Art, 1909 to the Present - Roselee Goldberg
072. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - Alfred W. McCoy
073. Prisoner of Love - Jean Genet
074. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist - Alexander Berkman
075. The Recognitions - William Gaddis
076. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
077. Ringolevio - Emmett Grogan
078. Robopaths - Lewis Yablonsky
079. Schemes & Variations - Emmett Williams
080. Scribble Death - Franz Kamin
081. The Search for the Perfect Language - Umberto Eco
082. Self-Discovery - Vladimir Savchenko
083. The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner
084. Sleepers Awake - Kenneth Patchen
085. The Soft Machine - William S. Burroughs
086. Source - Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966-1973
087. Space - Clark Coolidge
088. Such is Life - Tom Collins
089. Text-Sound texts - edited by Richard Kostelanetz
090. t he bk / t he referent 4 wch consists of / t he transparent punch-outs from a letter/whatever stencil - Michael Frederick Tolson et al
091. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
092. The Tremor of Forgery - Patricia Highsmith
093. Triton - Sumuel R. Delaney
094. The Twelve Caesers - Suetonius
095. Typewriter Art - edited by Alan Riddell
096. The Ugly Swans - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
097. Der Untertan - Heinrich Mann
098. Vanishing Voices - The Extinction of the World's Languages - Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine
099. Vertov from Z to A - edited by Peggy Ahwesh & Keith Sanborn
100. Why Birds Sing - David Rothenberg
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