- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: ILEX (7 Jun 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1905814895
- ISBN-13: 978-1905814893
- Product Dimensions: 15.6 x 2.7 x 20.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 347,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
500 Essential Cult Books gathers the finest trade paperbacks, hardbacks, collections, novellas, biographies, poems and graphic novels from around the world into one giant volume that reveals what makes a read not just a success and not just a classic but a cult book. From fiction to non-fiction, poetry to self-help titles, 500 Essential Cult Books covers a huge range of literature and is sorted into thematic genres. Each entry includes a brief plot breakdown, critical review and suggested further reading. Whether youre looking to broaden your literary horizons, reacquaint yourself with old favourites, or find recommendations for other titles you might like, this compendium of cult classics is sure to have something to appeal to your inner bookworm.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I find books like this--the Rough Guides to various sorts of books, including cult, come to mind--fun to read, despite their being pretty lightweight and very much subjective. (Given the premises for them, subjectivity and absence of serious criticism would I suppose be difficult to avoid.)
McKinnon divides her books into 10 categories, like the seedy, young adults, sci-fi, one-of-a-kind and doesn't make a bad job of it in commenting on the books, although I would never have bothered looking at some of the ones I quite liked on the basis of her summaries. For each book she lists a few other supposedly similar ones, and here she strays a bit. Well, a lot, at times. Only the most relaxed sort of free association leads from Hero with a Thousand Faces to Babbitt, surely. . . But balancing this drawback is that non-fiction and comics are scattered freely through the various categories.
The photographs of the different covers many of the titles have been issued with are very interesting. There is, though, a serious problem with the book's layout. The margins are cluttered with whacking great labels for suggested reading ages, the title of the book, the title of the chapter, and more. It's visually confusing and this matters. When the pages stick together (they often do) or when is looking for a specific page, one's eyes dance about looking for the page number somewhere amongst all the other numbers in the margins. And I was nearly 100 pages into the book before I noticed that amidst the marginal clutter were star ratings given to the books.
Undemanding and, disappointingly, it didn't leave me eager to hunt down any of the books discussed, but it's a book better for the time being on my shelf rather than Oxfam's.
McKinnon divides her books into 10 categories, like the seedy, young adults, sci-fi, one-of-a-kind and doesn't make a bad job of it in commenting on the books, although I would never have bothered looking at some of the ones I quite liked on the basis of her summaries. For each book she lists a few other supposedly similar ones, and here she strays a bit. Well, a lot, at times. Only the most relaxed sort of free association leads from Hero with a Thousand Faces to Babbitt, surely. . . But balancing this drawback is that non-fiction and comics are scattered freely through the various categories.
The photographs of the different covers many of the titles have been issued with are very interesting. There is, though, a serious problem with the book's layout. The margins are cluttered with whacking great labels for suggested reading ages, the title of the book, the title of the chapter, and more. It's visually confusing and this matters. When the pages stick together (they often do) or when is looking for a specific page, one's eyes dance about looking for the page number somewhere amongst all the other numbers in the margins. And I was nearly 100 pages into the book before I noticed that amidst the marginal clutter were star ratings given to the books.
Undemanding and, disappointingly, it didn't leave me eager to hunt down any of the books discussed, but it's a book better for the time being on my shelf rather than Oxfam's.
2 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I really liked the look of this book, especially the photographs of the covers of the books to which it refers, many of which I have read. I also enjoyed reading about these, as well as the ones I haven't read but will now look out for.
But . . . and there is a very big but to my enjoyment of this book that makes me resent the money I paid for it: I can't see how it can call itself The Ultimate Guide to cult books and leave out any mention of, for example, James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, which have undeniably huge cult followings, and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. It's not as if other far older books aren't included.
Most of all, to my mind, to leave out J K Rowling's Harry Potter books puts the final nail in this book's coffin. I have not read one single book from this series myself, but it seems to me that the thousands who waited for each with bated breath, and queued for hours till midnight to get them, and then read them over and over, must surely constitute a cult following that can't be explained away by mere good marketing.
But . . . and there is a very big but to my enjoyment of this book that makes me resent the money I paid for it: I can't see how it can call itself The Ultimate Guide to cult books and leave out any mention of, for example, James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, which have undeniably huge cult followings, and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. It's not as if other far older books aren't included.
Most of all, to my mind, to leave out J K Rowling's Harry Potter books puts the final nail in this book's coffin. I have not read one single book from this series myself, but it seems to me that the thousands who waited for each with bated breath, and queued for hours till midnight to get them, and then read them over and over, must surely constitute a cult following that can't be explained away by mere good marketing.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Intriguing book
26 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Excellent reference that covers a good selection of the wierd and wonderful and bestsellers that have earned cult reputations. Endorses many of the books that are already classics and encourages the reading of others that are not so widely known. Great fun volume to browse and to search out the books and authors in your favourite bookstores.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Pretty dang good
7 Dec 2011
Format:Paperback
McFestus shall checklist this one out. Content - 4.5 stars. A tad too many British mod-new wave type titles from the 60's. Probably a tad too many noir type books too. Illustrations - 5 stars. Font size - 1 star (not for anyone over 40 without glasses) - it would be impossible to make the print any smaller and have it readable. Tortuous. Arrangement - the various categories these cult books are divided into - it's sort of thematic and not too clear in my view. 3 stars. Nice try though. McFestus adds them together and gives extra weight to content. Voila - 4 stars.
Enough reading & rereading to keep you busy for a couple of decades
5 Oct 2011
Format:Paperback
I remember, years ago, being involved in an extended, entirely friendly, but nevertheless intense argument with several friends, fellow science fiction fans, about which were the "best" novels in that field. Not the most literary, nor even the best-written (which might have excluded Heinlein entirely), but the essential books that no one who considered himself a fan could have not read. My top choice was (probably still is) "Stranger in a Strange Land". Also "Ringworld". A few years later and I would have included "Snow Crash". We didn't use the word, but what we were talking about is what McKinnon calls "cult" books. And she defines those as books that have a "peculiar ability to speak to the reader." This goes beyond liking or loving a book into the realm of near-manic devotion. The books you insist your friends have *got* to read. The books you probably have several copies of. And usually, they're books you discovered as a teenager or young adult because cult books almost always have youth appeal. These are the books that will stay with you forever. We know what we're talking about now, right? "Catcher in the Rye". "A Clockwork Orange". "1984". "Atlas Shrugged". "Lord of the Flies". "Fahrenheit 451". "On the Road". "Maus". More recently, "Trainspotting" and "Lonesome Dove", though I think it takes a while for a book to do its work and be recognized as a cult classic. (There are cult books, like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", that gave rise to equally cult films, but the author doesn't stray into that other huge subject.)
There are ten chapters here, organized around genres or themes, and each starts with the Top Ten Classics in that category, followed by the forty Best of the Rest. And there are amazingly few selections whose inclusion I would disagree with, not did I find any of my own nominations for cult status that were omitted -- with the exception of "Cryptonomicon". Each listing includes a brief plot summary and a short review to orient you. If you're any kind of a reader at all, you will find quite a few titles here (I certainly did) that you read earlier in your life and ought to go and read again. You'll find others you were aware of but never read. And others (one hopes not too many) that you've honestly never heard of. If you're of the younger literary generation, you should come away with a good long list of books you simply must read. If, again like me, you've been reading almost continually for more than half a century, the list may not be much shorter. What can I say? You should buy this book, or least borrow it from the library, and begin making notes. You have a lot of reading and re-reading to do.
There are ten chapters here, organized around genres or themes, and each starts with the Top Ten Classics in that category, followed by the forty Best of the Rest. And there are amazingly few selections whose inclusion I would disagree with, not did I find any of my own nominations for cult status that were omitted -- with the exception of "Cryptonomicon". Each listing includes a brief plot summary and a short review to orient you. If you're any kind of a reader at all, you will find quite a few titles here (I certainly did) that you read earlier in your life and ought to go and read again. You'll find others you were aware of but never read. And others (one hopes not too many) that you've honestly never heard of. If you're of the younger literary generation, you should come away with a good long list of books you simply must read. If, again like me, you've been reading almost continually for more than half a century, the list may not be much shorter. What can I say? You should buy this book, or least borrow it from the library, and begin making notes. You have a lot of reading and re-reading to do.
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