Earlier this month, Details magazine published their list of the “25 Greatest Gen X Books of All Time“. Of all time? That’s a bit pretentious, but here’s the list (ones I’ve read are in bold).

1. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
2. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
4. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
5. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
6. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Mötley Crüe and Neil Strauss
7. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson
8. The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Tom Bissell
9. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
10. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
11. Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
12. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
13. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams by Darcy Frey
15. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
16. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
17. Our Dumb Century by The Onion
18. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
19. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
20. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
21. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
22. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
23. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
24. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
25. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Both White Teeth and Zeitoun are on my “to be read” list. There are some really great books on the list – The Secret History, Motherless Brooklyn, American Psycho, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay are standouts for me. Then there are titles I’ve never heard of such as The Forever War. What’s your take on this list?