Top 200 (118) 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.]
[August 26, 2026 note: as of today I'm changing this to Top 200 because there're so many more books I want to include. This enables me to add more than one book per author, my initial restriction.]
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. [See note above about that no longer being the case] 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.
[On May 7, 2026, I've added H. G. Wrlls's "The Time Machine", pushing the number to 101. There're so many more to be added now but when I have the time to do so is open to speculation.]
- September 17 [revised October 5], 2017 note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
001. "A" - Louis Zukofsky
002. Adventures in Ontological Dissonance or Why I Have No Money - Brian Gentry
003. Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon
004. The Age of Huts - Ron Silliman
005. Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
006. American Assassins - The Darker Side of Politics - James W. Clarke
007. Anonymous Family Reunion - Anonymous
008. Apocalypse Culture - edited by Adam Parfrey
009. Art And The Future: A History Prophecy Of The Collaboration Between Science, Technology And Art - Douglas M. Davis
010. Assemblage, Environments, & Happenings - Allan Kaprow
011. The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard
012. At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
013. Attention, Move! This is America! - Margot Henry
014. A Void - George Perec
015. The Banquet Years - Roger Shattuck
016. The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus - "Blaster" Al Ackerman
017. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
018. Blueprint for a Higher Civilization - Henry Flynt
019. Book of the Damned - Charles Fort
020. The Book of the SubGenius: Being the Divine Wisdom, Guidance, and Prophecy of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs..
021. The Buenos Aires Quintet - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
022. Carnival - the first panel: 1967-70 - Steve McCaffery
023. Cassette Mythos - edited by Robin James
024. Chris Burden - Chris Burden
025. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp - Arturo Schwarz
026. Conceptual Art - Ursula Meyer
027. Concrete Poetry: A World View - Mary Ellen Solt
028. Conversation in the Cathedral - Mario Vargas Llosa
029. Cover to Cover - Michael Snow
030. Dada: Monograph of a Movement - Willy Verkauf
031. The Death Ship - B. Traven
032. Dennis Oppenheim: Retrospective Work, 1967-1977 - Dennis Oppenheim, Alain Parent, Louise Letocha
033. Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and Other 4 Dimensional, Aural, Optic, Olfactory, Epithelial and Tactile Art Forms. - George Maciunas
034. The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
035. The Dream Life of Balso Snell / A Cool Million - Nathanael West
036. Expanded Cinema - Gene Youngblood
037. Experimental Animation: An Illustrated Anthology - Robert Russett & Cecile Starr
038. Experimental Music - Cage & beyond - Michael Nyman
039. Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, 'Pataphysician - Alfred Jarry
040. Fantastic Architecture - Michael Schuyt, Joost Elffers, George R. Collins
041. Film as a Subversive Art - Amos Vogel
042. Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
043. footnotes - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
044. footnotes (2nd greatly expanded edition) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
045. Formalized Music - Iannis Xenakis
046. Gargantua & Pantagruel - Rabelais
047. The German guerrilla: terror, reaction, and resistance - Hans Joachim Klein
048. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
049. Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
050. Grapefruit - Yoko Ono
051. great western salt works: essays on the meaning of Post-Formalist art - Jack Burnham
052. Guerrilla Television - Michael Shamberg & Raindance Corporation
053. Hannah Weiner's Open House - Hannah Weiner
054. Happenings - Michael Kirby
055. "Harlem Gallery" and Other Poems - Melvin B. Tolson
056. High Priest - Timothy Leary
057. HiTEC (Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative) "Systems Management" - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & HiTEC
058. The Hobbit - J.R.R.Tolkein
059. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
060. How to Write a Resumé - Volume II: Making a Good First Impression - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
061. How to Write a Resumé: Volume II: Making a Good First Impression - revised 3rd edition in DEAD color - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
062. Imressions of Africa - Raymond Roussel
063. Improper Names - Collective Pseudonyms from the Luddites to Anonymous - Marco De Seriis
064. Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific By Raft - Thor Heyerdahl
065. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book - edited by Charles Bernstein & Bruce Andrews
066. LEGEND - Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffrey, Ron Silliman
067. Locus Solus - Raymond Roussel
068. The Many-Headed Hydra - Marcus Rediker & Peter Linebaugh
069. Me and Frumpet. An adventure with size and science - Evans G. Valens, Edward Teller
070. Mike Film - A Mail (Art) Epic - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
071. Mind of a Mnemonist - A. R. Luria
072. The Monkey's Wrench - Primo Levi
073. A Neoist Research Project
074. Notations - edited by John Cage
075. not limited to But (Smattering 2) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
076. Obedience to Authority - Stanley Milgram
077. OPEN SPACE 15/16
078. Outsider Art - Roger Cardinal
079. Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
080. Performance: Live Art, 1909 to the Present - Roselee Goldberg
081. Poesia Totale
082. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - Alfred W. McCoy
083. Prisoner of Love - Jean Genet
084. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist - Alexander Berkman
085. The Recognitions - William Gaddis
086. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
087. Ringolevio - Emmett Grogan
088. Robopaths - Lewis Yablonsky
089. Schemes & Variations - Emmett Williams
090. THE SCIENCE (volume 1) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
091. Scribble Death - Franz Kamin
092. The Search for the Perfect Language - Umberto Eco
093. Self-Discovery - Vladimir Savchenko
094. The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner
095. Sleepers Awake - Kenneth Patchen
096. The Soft Machine - William S. Burroughs
097. Source - Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966-1973
098. Space - Clark Coolidge
099. Such is Life - Tom Collins
100. Text-Sound texts - edited by Richard Kostelanetz
101. 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
102. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
103. Time Lapse Emotional Study - curated by etta cetera
104. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells
105. The Tremor of Forgery - Patricia Highsmith
106. Triton - Sumuel R. Delaney
107. The Twelve Caesers - Suetonius
108. Typewriter Art - edited by Alan Riddell
109. The Ugly Swans - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
110. Ulysses - James Joyce
111. Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC - Amir-ul Kafirs [tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE} & fellow HERETICS
112. Der Untertan - Heinrich Mann
113. Vanishing Voices - The Extinction of the World's Languages - Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine
114. Vertov from Z to A - edited by Peggy Ahwesh & Keith Sanborn
115. Why Birds Sing - David Rothenberg
116. Wrjtjng spelled w/ a "q" (volume 1: 1969-2002) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
117. Wrjtjng spelled w/ a "q" (volume 2: 2003-2024) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
118. zines
idioideo at verizon dot net
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to a very small selection of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Writing