Jack Kerouac

A few months ago I got the idea to create a reading queue based on anniversary. There were quite a few great books celebrating more or less significant birthdays in 2009.

Continuing the idea, here's a list of possibilities to choose from for 2010, with the ordinal in parentheses. The list is skewed to 20th Century lit since I didn't go farther back in my searching except for certain authors -- there will be scads of additional selections available if you feel like looking around. Feel free to offer any other suggestions in the comments.

I'll strike out those I get around to reading during the year.

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (30th) - Douglas Adams
• I, Robot (60th) - Isaac Asimov
• The Handmaid’s Tale (25th) - Margaret Atwood
• Martian Chronicles (60th) - Ray Bradbury
• Ender’s Game (25th) - Orson Scott Card
• The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (10th) - Michael Chabon
• Farewell, My Lovely (70th) - Raymond Chandler
• The Brothers Karamazov (130th) - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Sign of Four (120th) - Arthur Conan Doyle
• Baudolino (10th) - Umberto Eco
• The Name of the Rose (30th) - Umberto Eco
• LA Confidential (20th) - James Ellroy
• As I Lay Dying (80th) - William Faulkner
• Good Omens (20th) - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Love in the Time of Cholera (25th) - Gabriel García Márquez
• The Difference Engine (20th) - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
• The Marble Faun (150th) - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (70th) - Ernest Hemingway
• Rhinoceros (50th) - Eugene Ionesco
• The Cider House Rules (25th) - John Irving
• The Town and the City (60th) - Jack Kerouac
• Tristessa (50th) - Jack Kerouac
• Immortality (20th) - Milan Kundera
• To Kill a Mockingbird (50th) - Harper Lee
• A Canticle for Leibowitz (50th) - Walter M. Miller
• Devil in a Blue Dress (20th) - Walter Mosley
• Ringworld (40th) - Larry Niven
• The Violent Bear It Away (50th) - Flannery O’Connor
• Hemingway's Chair (15th) - Michael Palin
• Skinny Legs and All (20th) - Tom Robbins
• Still Life with Woodpecker (30th) - Tom Robbins
• Contact (25th) - Carl Sagan
• Green Eggs and Ham (50th) - Dr. Seuss
• One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (50th) - Dr. Seuss
• The Bachelors (50th) - Muriel Spark
• The Ballad of Peckham Road (50th) - Muriel Spark
• Cryptonomicon (10th) - Neal Stephenson
• Zeitgeist (10th) - Bruce Sterling
• The Artificial Kid (30th) - Bruce Sterling
• The Snake’s Pass (120th) - Bram Stoker
• A Confederacy of Dunces (30th) - John Kennedy Toole
• The Accidental Tourist (25th) - Anne Tyler
• Hocus Pocus (20th) - Kurt Vonnegut
• The Sleeper Awakes (100th) - H.G. Wells
• The Age of Innocence (90th) - Edith Wharton
• Jeeves in the Offing (50th) - P.G. Wodehouse
• Mrs. Dalloway (85th) - Virginia Woolf
• Le Bête Humaine (120th) - Emile Zola
• Nana (130th) - Emile Zola

Much like for my favorite movies, here is a list of my Top 25 favorite writers.

1. Vladimir Nabokov
2. Ray Bradbury
3. JRR Tolkien
4. Kurt Vonnegut
5. Douglas Adams
6. Mark Twain

The rest in alphabetical order by last name:

• Robert Benchley
• Charlotte Brontë
• Emily Brontë
• Albert Camus
• Raymond Chandler
• Umberto Eco
• William Gibson
• Spalding Gray
• Franz Kafka
• Milan Kundera
• Ursula K Le Guin
• George Orwell
• Dorothy Parker
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Muriel Spark
• Bram Stoker
• Jules Verne
• Edith Wharton
• HG Wells

Honorable Mentions

• Jane Austen
• Jorge Luis Borges
• George Carlin
• Philip K Dick
• James Ellroy
• Ernest Hemingway
• James Joyce
• Jack Kerouac
• Stephen King
• Herman Melville
• Flannery O'Connor
• William Shakespeare
• Mary Shelley
• Neal Stephenson
• John Steinbeck
• Hunter S Thompson
• Virginia Woolf
• Oscar Wilde
• PG Wodehouse
• Emile Zola

"Only one thing I'll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: they're not hurting anyone"

-- Jack Kerouac

From the Chronicle...

Last week, an airtight black suitcase passed through a security checkpoint at the Indianapolis International Airport on its way to San Francisco. A guard ordered the case opened and found inside a tattered and frayed scroll of yellowed paper 119 feet and 8 inches long.

"Oh I know what this is," the baggage screener said to Jim Canary, a conservator who was accompanying the artifact. "This is one of them religious scrolls, ain't it?"

Not a bad observation. The scroll was in fact the manuscript of one of the most famous and iconic novels of the 20th century, Jack Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness Beat generation bible, "On the Road," which is on exhibit for the next three months at the San Francisco Public Library....