Top 50 "Cult Fiction" Books of All Time - Your Opinion?

[Merrick]

The definition of a "Cult Fiction" book according to publisher John Lynch of the Telegraph:

"Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon."

So which do you think are worthy of their notoreity (and sales), and which are indeed merely "Cult Fiction?"

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)

A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)

Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)

Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (196 8)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (196 8)

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (194 8)

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)

Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)

The Magus by John Fowles (1966)

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)

The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)

Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)

The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)

The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

[swag]

1. Interesting batch, but that list makes the category seem

amorphous, meaningless. And I think it probably is.

[jonnyblitz]

2. I wasn't aware No Logo by Naomi Klein was considered fiction.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. And "Baby and Child Care" - didn't realize that was no fiction, either.

:shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. 'Fiction' only appeared in the transcribing to DU

Here's the actual article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/26/nosplit/boanotherlist126.xml

[khashka]

3. Great choices.

But.....

The Master And Margarita - you gotta get the right translation. But Behemoth always cracks me up.

And I have problems with The Story of O. One of the classic S/m novels, but the ending has always bothered me.

Can I add Claudine by Colette to the list?

Khash.

[Merrick]

4. Definite Classics:

Master and Margarita
Slaughterhouse Five
Fear and Loathing
To Kill A Mockingbird
Confederacy of Dunces
Catcher in the Rye
Hitchiker's Guide

just my 2 cents

[China_cat]

10. Add 'On the Road' to that list

[Trailrider1951]

5. Great list, but you forgot my personal favorite

Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". Damn, now I have to find it and read it again! :P

[TZ]

7. What a strange list

I would never have imagined, Dune, Hitchhikers, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Stranger on one list..all great books..but so,so different

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. A better summary of their definition of a cult book:

A book about which one group says "this book changed my life!"*, and another group replies "you can't serious".

* See 'The Meaning of Liff', co-authored by one of the authors on this list, and which is, itself, arguably a cult book, and thus a liff to some:

It is a "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet"; all the words listed are place names, and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word. Examples are Shoeburyness ("The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom") and Abinger ("One who washes up everything except the frying pan, the cheese grater and the saucepan which the chocolate sauce has been made in").

It should be noted that the cover of the book usually bears the tagline "This book will change your life!", either as an integral part of its cover or as an adhesive label. Liff is then defined in the book as "A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff

The Meaning of Liff has changed my life more than most books. I certainly remember more of it than most.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

11. Mixing the Kool-Aid by Jim Jones; Come On Baby, Light My Fire by David Koresh

Okay, so that's in bad taste. But you asked for cult fiction....