'CULT' books - wot? eh?
Apparently the Telegraph thinks the following are 'cult books', which in most cases I feel is a designation that could only have been applied by someone the only books in whose house are probably collected volumes of Reader's Digest Condensed Books that they inherited from their great-aunt and who thinks reading is a sinister cult in itself:
bold = I've read it
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - no, but I have read other things by Nietzche, which is probably a great deal more cult
A Rebours by JK Huysmans
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (Haven't read this, possibly only person alive in late 60s who didn't...)
Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - think I may have started this once?
Baby and Child Care by Doctor Benjamin Spock
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard - have always managed to avoid the people outside Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Rd
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley - but I have read lots of other Huxley!
Story of O by Pauline Réage
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - people were always exhorting to me to read this, but meh
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Magus by John Fowles
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter - started this, bogged down
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Am of opinion that a lot of those titles were seriously things that had 'Best-before' stamped all over them and are now well past it. Also that a significantly high proportion of 'cult' books on this list are a) by blokes &?or unreadable. And quite a few of them are the kind of books that get carried around or placed prominently on the coffee-table in order to look deep. But in what universe are books that got turned into television series or made into Hollywood movies or both 'cult'? That practically defines 'mainstream'.
Not sure I do much better with the alternative list by by Nisi Shawl and Nin Harris
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Roots by Alex Haley
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide by Ntozake Shange - no, but I've read at least one other book by her
Jambalaya by Luisah Teish
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
Cheri by Colette
Black Looks by bell hooks - I've read a great deal of bell hooks but this title doesn't sound familiar
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
The Sensuous Woman by J
I Hate to Housekeep by Peg Bracken
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
I Ching (the Wilhelm Baynes translation)
Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday
Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moor Lappe - no, but I have Cookbook for a Small Planet
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Woman, Native, Other by Trinh T-Minh Ha
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe - no, but I have read The Italian
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - on my tbr pile...
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*
Wild Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys*
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Matigari by Ngugi Wa Thiong’O
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Dykes to Watch out For by Alison Bechdel
*WTF, how are these 2 even cult? (Except insofar as The Janeites constitute a cult...)
Also, I think I should like (quite) a few more pre-1950 titles in that list. But while some of these are a bit more out there, quite a few are pretty much mainstream, Booker-prize type works.
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