James Ellroy

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.

• 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 Sign of Four (120th) - Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Name of the Rose (30th) - Umberto Eco
• LA Confidential (20th) - James Ellroy
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Jack Kerouac
• Milan Kundera
• 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
• Ursula K Le Guin
• James Joyce
• 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

Zócalo Public Square has posted “An Evening with James Ellroy”, featuring the author talking with Erika Schickel, downloadable video or audio.

The great Ellroy visits Zócalo to ballyhoo, consecrate, deconstruct and ridicule his bestselling new novel, and to reflect on the nature of his historical fiction and the America it invents.

Via LA Observed.

Scott Timberg at the LA Times has a cool overview of a favorite of mine, James Ellroy, covering the difficulties the writer has had with Hollywood…and vice versa. While LA Confidential did well, at least with the critics, others of Ellroy’s works just haven’t translated.

Only the most die-hard Ellroy fan resented that the film resembled his labyrinthine novel — with its dozens of characters, thick historical context and overlapping subplots — only slightly. It’s considered one of the finest films of the ’90s and one of the greatest film noirs since the genre’s 1950s heyday.

But since then, when it comes to movies, it’s been more crying than laughing for Ellroy fans.

Read the article at “Hollywood’s James Ellroy enigma”

A new film opens a week from today (April 11th), for the first time with a screenplay by Ellroy himself: Street Kings. Very interesting cast: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Common, and The Game.

See also: James Ellroy at IMDB.

One of those days just like any other day.

Happy Birthday, James Ellroy.

Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax.

Thanks for the memories, Brett Favre.