Premier bilan après l’apocalypse
Frédéric Beigbeder sees the digitisation of books as the apocalypse and rails against it, preferring by far the conventional printed book. (He insists that this book will only be available in printed format.) This list is, in his words (translated, of course) My 100 favourite books to read in print format before it is too late). He has a complicated (and, in his view, very scientific) algorithm for determining his list (far superior, he states, to Mark Zuckerberg’s one for Facebook). You’ll have to read his book (only available in French, of course) to learn it. The list is idiosyncratic and very much not, on the whole, to my taste but nevertheless interesting. Where a book was originally written in English, I only give the English title (he normally only gives the French title). Where a book was originally written in another language and has been translated into English, I give the foreign language and English title. Others are left in their original language.
1. Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho
2. Paul Nizon: Das Jahr der Liebe (no English translation)
3. André Gide: Paludes (Morasses; Marshlands)
4. Antoine Blondin: L’Humeur Vagabonde (no English translation)
5. Jay McInerney: Bright Lights, Big City
6. Paul-Jean Toulet: Les Contrerimes (no English translation)
7. J D Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
8. Michel Houellebecq: Plateforme (Platform)
9. Georges Perec: Les Choses: Une histoire des années soixante (Things: A Story of the Sixties)
10. F Scott Fitzgerald: The Crack-Up: With Other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books, and Unpublished Letters (UK: The Crack-Up With Other Pieces and Stories)
11. Curzio Malaparte: La Pelle (The Skin)
12. Colette: Chéri (Chéri) and Le blé en herbe (UK: Ripening Seed; US: The Ripening, later: Green Wheat)
13. Guillaume Dustan: Nicolas Pages (no English translation)
14. Georges Simenon: La chambre bleue (The Blue Room)
15. Edouard Levé: Autoportrait (no English translation)
16. Gabriel Matzneff: Ivre du vin perdu (no English translation)
17. Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
18. Philippe Djian: Maudit manège (no English translation)
19. Françoise Sagan: Des bleus à l’âme (Scars on the Soul)
20. Jean-Jacques Schuhl: Rose Poussière (no English translation)
21. Charles Bukowski: Women
22. Jeffrey Eugenides: Virgin Suicides
23. Alexandre Vialatte: Chroniques de La montagne (no English translation)
24. Jean-Marie Gourio: Brèves de comptoir (no English translation)
25. Boris Vian: L’Ecume des jours (UK: Froth on the Day-Dream; US: Foam of the Daze; Mood Indigo)
26. Henry de Montherlant: Les jeunes filles (The Girls)
27. J D Salinger: Nine Stories
28. Bernard Frank: Solde (no English translation)
29. W H Auden: Quand j’écris je t’aime (small collection of his poetry in French with no exact English equivalent)
30. Patrick Besson: La femme riche (no English translation)
31. Amélie Nothomb: Hygiène de l’assassin (Hygiene and the Assassin)
32. Pierre de Régnier: La vie de Patachon (no English translation)
33. Arto Paasilinna: Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare)
34. Charles Simmons: Salt Water
35. Jack Kerouac: On the Road
36. Virginie Despentes: Les Jolies Choses (available in Finnish and Spanish but no English translation)
37. Philip Roth: Everyman
38. Jean Echenoz: Je m’en vais (I’m Gone)
39. Jonathan Littell: Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones)
40. Jean Rhys: Good Morning, Midnight
41. Hunter S Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
42. Valéry Larbaud: Journal (no English translation)
43. Téléphone: Téléphone (first albium) (yes, it’s a CD not a book)
44. Don DeLillo: Cosmopolis
45. Jean-Claude Pirotte: Ange Vincent (no English translation)
46. Eric Neuhoff: Un bien fou (no English translation)
47. Jean-Pierre George: Le diable et la licorne (no English translation)
48. Jim Harrison: The Road Home
49. Yves Adrien: Novövision: les confessions d’un cobaye du siècle (no English translation)
50. Patrick Modiano: Un pedigree (available in Italian, Korean and Spanish but not English)
51. Nick Hornby: Fever Pitch
52. Primo Levi: Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man)
53. Marc-Edouard Nabe: Journal (no English translation) (note that it is actually called Journal intime and that there are four parts – Nabe’s dream (the English title is used in French); Tohu-bohu, Inch’Allah and Kamikaze)
54. Jean Cocteau: Oeuvres poétiques complètes (no English translation but there is his Poems, 1916-1955)
55. Régis Jauffret: Histoire d’amour and Promenade (no English translation)
56. Mikhail Bulgakov: Мастер и Маргарита (The Master and Margarita)
57. Henry Miller: Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn
58. François Nourissier: Un petit bourgeois and Le musée de l’homme (no English translation but Un petit bourgeois available in Spanish)
59. Dorothy Parker: Mauvaise journée, demain (selection of her stories)
60. Philippe Sollers: Passion fixe (no English translation but available in Catalan and Spanish)
61. Paul-Jean Toulet: Mon amie nane (no English translation)
62. J G Ballard: Crash
63. Mathieu Terence: Journal d’un coeur sec (no English translation)
64. Georges Bataille: Romans et récits (some translated into English)
65. Raymond Radiguet: Oeuvres (some translated into English)
66. Kurt Cobain: Journals
67. Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
68. Albert Cossery: Les couleurs de l’infamie (The Colors of Infamy)
69. San-Antonio (Frédéric Dard): En avant la moujik! (no English translation)
70. Mian Mian: 糖 (Candy)
71. Ned Rorem: The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem
72. James Salter: Burning the Days
73. Simon Liberati: Nada exist (no English translation)
74. Dawn Powell: Turn, Magic Wheel
75. Gérard Lauzier: Tranches de vie (no English translation but available in Finnish and Danish)
76. Martin Suter: Die dunkle Seite des Mondes (no English translation but available in Bulgarian, French, Russian and Turkish)
77. Bret Easton Ellis: Glamorama!
78. Gabriel García Márquez: Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
79. Yann Moix: Podium (no English translation)
80. J G Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition
81. Nicolas Bouvier: L’Usage du monde (The Way of the World)
82. Saneh Sangsuk: เงาสีขาว (White Shadow)
83. Karen Blixen: Out of Africa
84. Roland Jaccard: Une fille pour l’été
85. Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated
86. J M Coetzee: Disgrace
87. Joseph Mitchell: Joe Gould’s Secret
88. Emmanuel Carrère: L’Adversaire (The Adversary)
89. Grégoire Bouillier: Rapport sur moi (Report on Myself)
90. André Blanchard: Petites nuits (no English translation)
91. Ernest Hemingway: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
92. Lolita Pille: Hell (Paris 75016: Hell’s Diary)
93. Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf (Steppenwolf)
94. Hanif Kureishi: Midnight All Day
95. Régis Jauffret: Clémence Picot (no English translation)
96. Richard Brautigan: The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings/
97. Ryu Murakami: ライン (No English translation. Translates as Lines. Available in French and Czech.)
98. Viktor Pelevin: Поколение”П” (Homo zapiens) and Бубен верхнего мира (stories, no English translation. Translates as The Tambourine from the Beyond. Available in French as Un monde de crystal)
99. Alain Pacadis: Un jeune homme chic (no English translation)
100. Christian Kracht: 1979 (note: available in Danish, Estonian, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian and Spanish but not English)