Blogsurfing lazily as usual, I came upon the inevitable annual book lists. And also something a little different: lists of the most over-rated/under-rated books of the year. I don't see anything special about the
year, so at a venture, imagining writers as gladiators...
Thumbs down: Martin Amis, John Updike, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Ian McEwan, Derek Walcott, Percy Shelley, Ezra Pound, Charles Reznikoff, Charles Simic, Alain Badiou, Bertrand Russell, Ayn Rand, Robert Bly, Billy Collins, Anthony Hecht, Stephen Spender, Andrew Motion, Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham, John Berryman
Thumbs up: Jane Austen, P.G.Wodehouse, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, George Ade, James Branch Cabell, Ambrose Bierce, William Shakespeare, John Webster, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, John Skelton, Christopher Smart, Russell Edson, Frank Kuppner, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Lorine Niedecker, May Swenson, Phyllis Webb, Sandro Penna, Miroslav Holub, Tomas Transtromer, Francis Ponge, Jacques Roubaud, Robert Walser, Leo Perutz, Flann O'Brien, Ronald Firbank, Henry Green, J.L.Carr, R.K.Narayan, Fernando Pessoa, Alexander Mccall Smith, Ruth Rendell, H.C.Bailey, Edmund Crispin, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll