Thursday, October 08, 2015

OkCupid co-founder's six favorite books

Christian Rudder is a co-founder of the dating site OkCupid and the company's former president. His recent book is Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves. For The Week magazine Rudder named his six favorite books, including:
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius J. Reilly is the most original, most difficult, most worldview-havingest character ever created. Here he is on page six: "I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip." This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is my favorite novel. I wish I could quote it all for you here.
Read about another book on the list.

Ignatius Reilly is on Jeff Somers's list of five of the greatest, dumbest characters in literary history, Ginni Chen's top six list of fictional mustaches, Chrissie Gruebel's top eleven list of books that will make you glad you're single, Melissa Albert's list of six of the worst fictional characters to sit next to on a plane and Jill Boyd's list of five of the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving. A Confederacy of Dunces is among the Telegraph's critics' fifty best cult books, Melissa Albert's eight favorite fictional misfits, Ken Jennings's eight notable books about parents and kids, Sarah Stodol's top ten lost-then-found novels, Hallie Ephron's top ten books for a good laugh, Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories, John Mullan's ten best moustaches in literature, Michael Lewis's five favorite books, and Cracked magazine's classic funny novels.

--Marshal Zeringue