The 50 Coolest Books Ever [courtesy ShortList.com]
Tell me, dear readers, is your idea of cool the same as theirs?
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea.
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The 50 Coolest Books Ever [courtesy ShortList.com]
Tell me, dear readers, is your idea of cool the same as theirs?
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 
Reblogged this on thunderlane12.
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Interesting idea. I have to ask, and I know this is sexist but did a guy come up with this list? I’d take half the books off the list then right off the bat add Gone Girl, We Took to the Woods and Jane Eyre (think about it – Jane is one super cool chick) to the list.
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I half suspect that it was compiled by a “rebellious” 15-year-old boy.
Questioning why a list is so male dominated is not sexist; it is actually the opposite of sexist.
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Good point. 🙂
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Cool usually translates dark, violent, chaotic, hopeless. I can’t say I’m much into cool anymore. I don’t know if you can be cool and happy at the same time. I’m going for happy (for now). My moods are very changeable.
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There is the type of coolness that people pay lip service to (the type that fits your description, and has long since been an accepted cliche) and then there is actual coolness, which accepts no boundaries or definitions. This list kowtows to the former, and is thus quite lazy and boring.
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100% TRUE. I like your thinking. haha.
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Thank you much!
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I have read some of these books, not all. Although I have read a lot of Cormac McCarthy I understand that Blood Meridian is a very dark and violent book and I can only take so much of that, especially in movies. Yes, these books seem to fit some category of “cool” but my cool is not their cool and vice versa.
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I think that this list is very, very lazy. It smacks of someone including all of the books that they think are considered cool, without giving any real thought as to what might make them so. All substance, no weighty consideration.
I love some darkness, and always appreciate quirkiness, but cool deserves a broader definition than that.
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Oh please. Some of these are obvious, but all of them cool? No thanks.
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Oh, I agree. It reads like a 15-year-old boy compiled it, frankly.
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I find this a very narrow selection of books. Not many international authors represented here and there is a limited range of themes.
Nay, I think they must be made to re-do this list.
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I wish I could force do-overs for 99% of literary lists, including this one!
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I’ve only read a few of these, the ‘classics’. Totally agree with Juliette too much testosterone I think.
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I agree, too!
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Maybe the “cool factor” is a self-anointed male genius writer thing? I have no idea what the definition of cool is but I think it means something that is outside the mainstream, actually a little in the bottom depths or surreal. I have no doubt some of these books are very good but maybe the category should have been American Ironic Underbelly genre. I am so glad Catch-22 is not on the list – I could not read it.
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I think there might be something to that. All I know, is that “cool” cannot really be defined. It also must be effortless.
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It saddens me deeply that of the minority of female authors mentioned, Ayn Rand had to be one of them. Ick.
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Yep. I found this list to be terribly lacking and predictable. I was really curious to see what others thought, and we are all pretty much on the same page.
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