Saturday, December 31, 2016

The 100 Best Novels in the World --- 1899 Edition


Literature blogger,  Rose City Reader, posted a list of the 100 Best Novels in World---as assessed by the editor of London's Daily Telegraph and his team--- in 1899. How fun is that?

The ones I've read are in red---not too many! Sounds like I've got some Victorian book hunting, buying, and reading in my future---three challenges in one! Good thing I'll be doing my Victorian Reading Challenge this year. I'll edit this list throughout the years and see if I ever get through them.

The Tower of London by W. H. Ainsworth
Old St. Paul's  by W. H. Ainsworth
Windsor Castle by W. H. Ainsworth
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
A Window in Thrums by J. M. Barrie
The Golden Butterfly by Walter Besant & James Rice
Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood
Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. Braddon
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
The Deemster by Hall Caine
Valentine Vox by Henry Cockton
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Last of the Mohicans by J. Fenimore Cooper
The Pathfinder by J. Fenimore Cooper
The Prairie by J. Fenimore Cooper
Mr. Isaacs by F. Marion Crawford
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Firm of Girdlestone by Conan Doyle
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Mary Barton by Mrs. Gaskell
The Aide de Camp by James Grant
The Romance of War by James Grant
Gabriel Conroy by Bret Harte
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Two Years Ago by Charles Kingsley
Alton Locke by Charles Kingsley
Hypatia by Charles Kingsly
The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley
Soldiers Three by Rudyard Kipling
Guv Livingstone by George Lawrence
Harry Lorrequer by Charles Lever
Charles O'Malley by Charles Lever
The Atonement of Learn Dundas by E. Lynn Linton
Handy Andy by Samuel Lover
Rory O'More by Samuel Lover
Last of the Barons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Night and Morning by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Rienzi by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Caxtons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The King's Own by Captain Frederick Marryat
Peter Simple by Captain Frederick Marryat
Jacob Faithful by Captain Frederick Marryat
Midshipman Easy by Captain Frederick Marryat
Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
John Halifax, Gentleman by D. M. Mulock
Under Two Flages by Ouida
It Is Never Too Late to Mend by Charles Reade
Peg Woffington and Christine Johnstone by Charles Reade
Hard Cash by Charles Reade
The Headless Horseman by Captain Mayne Reid
Virginia of Virginia by Amelie Rives
The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
Tom Cringle's Log by Michael Scott
Cruise of the Midge by Michael Scott
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott
Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott
Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott
Woodstock by Sir Walter Scott
The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
Frank Fairlegh by Frank E. Smedley
Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
On the Face of the Waters by Mrs. F. A. Steel
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Soapey Sponge's Sporting Tour by Robert Smith Surtees
The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue
The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackerary
The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Oldey Farm by Anthony Trollope
Robert Elsmere by Mrs. H. Ward
£10,000 a Year by Samuel Warren
The Wide, Wide World by Elizabeth Wetherell
Market Harborough by G. J. Whyte-Melville
Inside the Bar by G. J. Whyte-Melville
East Lynne by Mrs. Henry Wood---read in 2020

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Perpetual Reading Challenge

The best way to get me to read a book is to tell me all the things you loved about it. The worst way to get me to read a book is to tell me I must read it. Maybe that's an immature ignorant streak in me but life's way too short to read the things one doesn't want to read. That's why I've avoided the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list for so long. I don't want to be told what I should read. However, giving myself the freedom to choose which ones to read and which ones to pass on takes this list from a bunch of "requirements for the well-read individual" to a buffet of "choices for the picky reader". The perfectionist in me is willing to make that compromise.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is a literature reference book compiled by over one hundred literary critics worldwide and edited by Peter Boxall, Professor of English at Sussex University. Since the original list was published in 2006, the book has been edited several times to make it less Anglocentric. Below is a list of all the books from all the editions---1305 in total. Since I know there are going to be quite a few on this list that I will not feel comfortable reading or will absolutely despise and abandon, I'm setting my life-long goal with the 1305 list---hoping to get through at least 1001.

I've read several of these already so I will color those red. As I read and post on the others, I'll change them to clickable links directing to the review post. If I abandon a book or decide I don't want to read it in the first place, I'll put a line through it.

Read 56 as of Jan. 1, 2018


Pre 1700
Aesop's Fables - Aesop (c.4th BC)
Metamorphoses - Ovid (c.2-8 AD)
Chaireas And Kallirhoe - Chariton (c.200)
Aithiopika - Heliodorus (c.250)
The Golden Ass - Apuleius (c.260)
The Thousand And One Nights - Anonymous (c.850)
The Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter - Anonymous (c.900)---read in 2022
The Tale Of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu (c.1000)
Water Margin - Shi Naian (c.1300)
Romance Of The Three Kingdoms - Luo Guanzhong (c.1300)
Tirant Lo Blanch - Marti Joan De Galba (1490)
La Celestina - Fernando De Rojas (1499)
Amadis Of Greece - Garci Rodriguez De Montalvo (1508)
The Life Of Lazarillo De Tormes And His Fortunes And Adversities - Anonymous (1554)
Gargantua And Pantagruel - Francoise Rabelais (1532-64)
The Lusiads - Luis Camoes (1572)
Euphues: The Anatomy Of Wit - John Lyly (1578)
Journey To The West - Cheng'en Wu (1592)
The Unfortunate Traveller - Thomas Nashe (1594)
Thomas Of Reading - Thomas Deloney (1599)
Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (1605-15)
The Travels Of Persiles And Sigismunda - Miguel De Cervantes (1617)
The Truthful History Of The Conquest Of New Spain - Bernal Diaz Del Castillo (1632)
The Adventurous Simplicissimus - Hans Jakob Christoffel Von Grimmelshausen (1668)
The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan (1678-84)
The Princess Of Cleves - Comtesse De La Fayett (1678)
Oroonoko - Aphra Behn (1688)

1700s
A Tale Of A Tub - Jonathan Swift (1704)
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (1719)
Love In Excess - Eliza Haywood (1719)
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe (1722)
Roxana - Daniel Defoe (1724)
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift (1729)
Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding (1742)
Memoirs Of Martinus Scriblerus - Various (c.1740)
Pamela - Samuel Richardson (1749)
Clarissa - Samuel Richardson (1749)
Roderick Random - Tobias George Smollett (1749)
Tom Jones - Henry Fielding (1749)
Fanny Hill - John Cleland (1749)
Peregrine Pickle - Tobias George Smollett (1751)
Amelia - Henry Fielding (1751)
The Female Quixote - Charlotte Lennox (1752)
Candide - Voltaire (1759)
Rasselas - Samuel Johnson (1759)
Julie Or The New Eloise - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1760)
Rameau's Nephew - Denis Diderot (1761-84)
Emile Or On Education - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
The Castle Of Otranto - Horace Walpole (1765)---read in 2020
The Vicar Of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith (1766)
Tristram Shandy - Laurence Stern (1759-67)
A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Stern (1768)
The Man Of Feeling - Henry Mackenzie (1771)
Humphrey Clinker - Tobias George Smollett (1771)
The Sorrows Of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1774)
Evelina - Fanny Burney (1778)
Reveries Of A Solitary Walker - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
Dangerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos De Laclos (1782)
Anton Reiser - Karl Philipp Moritz (1785)
Confessions - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
Cecilia - Fanny Burney (1782)
The 120 Days Of Sodom - Marquis de Sade (1785)
Vathek - William Beckford (1786)
Dream Of The Red Chamber (The Story Of The Stone) - Cao Xueqin (1791)
Justine - Marquis De Sade (1791)
The Adventures Of Caleb Williams - William Godwin (1794)
The Interesting Narrative - Olaudah Equiano (1794)
The Mysteries Of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe (1794)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1795-6)
The Monk - M G Lewis (1796)
Camilla - Fanny Burney (1796)
Jacques The Fatalist - Denis Diderot (1796)
The Nun - Denis Diderot (1796)
Hyperion - Friedrich Holderlin (1797-9)

1800s
Castle Rackrent - Maria Edgeworth (1800)
Henry Von Ofterdingen (Unfinished) - Novalis (1802)
Elective Affinities - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1809)
Michael Kohlhaas - Heinrich Von Kleist (1810)
Sense And Sensibility - Jane Austen (1811)---read multiple times
The Absentee - Maria Edgeworth (1812)
Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen (1813)---read multiple times
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (1814)---read in 2014
Emma - Jane Austen (1816)---read in 2015
Rob Roy - Sir Walter Scott (1817)
Ormond - Maria Edgeworth (1817)
Persuasion - Jane Austen (1818)---read in 2015
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (1818)---read multiple times
Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818)---click for review---read multiple times
The Life And Opinions Of The Tomcat Murr - E T A Hoffmann (1820)
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott (1820)
The Monastry - Sir Walter Scott (1820)
Melmoth The Wanderer - Charles Robert Maturin (1820)
The Albigenses - Charles Robert Maturin (1824)
The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner - James Hogg (1824)
Last Of The Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
Life Of A Good-For-Nothing - Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff (1826)
The Bethrothed - Alessandro Manzoni (1827)
The Red And The Black - Stendhal (1831)
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo (1831)
Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin (1833)
Eugenie Grandet - Honore De Balzac (1834)
Le Pere Goriot - Honore De Balzac (1834-5)
The Nose - Nikolay Gogol (1836)
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1838)
The Lion Of Flanders - Hendrik Conscience (1838)
The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens (1839)
The Fall Of The House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe (1839)---read in 2022
Camera Obscura - Hildebrand (Nicolaas Beets) (1839)
The Charterhouse Of Parma - Stendhal (1839)
A Hero Of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov (1840)
Dead Souls - Nikolay Gogol (1842)
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (1843)---read multiple times
Lost Illusions - Honore De Balzac (1843)
The Pit And The Pendulum - Edgar Allan Poe (1843)--most recently read in 2020
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens (1844)
The Purloined Letter - Edgar Allan Poe (1844)---read in 2020
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (1844)
Facundo - Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1845)
Le Reine Margot - Alexandre Dumas (1845)
The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (1845-6)
The Devil's Pool - George Sand (1846)
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (1847)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (1847)---read ~2011, 2023
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte (1847)---click for review---read ~2014
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (1847)---click for review---read multiple times
The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte (1848)
Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell (1848)
Shirley - Charlotte Bronte (1849)
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (1850)
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)---click for review---read multiple times
Moby Dick - Herman Melville (1851)
The House Of The Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851) -- read in 2024
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)---read in 2021
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)---
Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell (1853)
Villette - Charlotte Bronte (1853)
Bleak House - Charles Dickens (1853)
Walden - David Henry Thoreau (1854)---read ~2009
Green Henry - Gottfried Keller (1854)
Hard Times - Charles Dickens (1854)---click for review---read in 2016
North And South - Elizabeth Gaskell (1855)
Indian Summer - Adalbert Stifter (1857)
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (1857)
Adam Bede - George Eliot (1859)
Oblomovka - Ivan Goncharov (1859)
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (1859)
Max Havelaar - Multatuli (1860)
The Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1860)
The Woman In White - Wilkie Collins (1860)---read in 2024
The Mill On The Floss - George Eliot (1860)
Castle Richmond - Anthony Trollope (1860)
On The Eve - Ivan Turgenev (1860)
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (1861)
Silas Marner - George Eliot (1861)---click for review---read in 2016
Fathers And Sons - Ivan Turgenev (1862)
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (1862)
The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley (1863)---read in 2020
Notes From The Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864)
Uncle Silas - Sheridan Le Fanu (1864)
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens (1865)
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865)---read in 2016, 2021
Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth - Jules Verne (1866)---read in 2016
The Last Chronicle Barset - Anthony Trollope (1867)
Therese Raquin - Emile Zola (1867)
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (1868)---read multiple times
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (1868)---click for review---read 2015
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1868-9)
Maldoror - Comte De Lautreaumont (1868-9)
Phineas Finn - Anthony Trollope (1869)
Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert (1869)
War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy (1869)
He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope (1869)
King Lear Of The Steppes - Ivan Turgenev (1870)
Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll (1871)---read in 2016, 2021
Martin Fierro - Jose Hernandez (1872)
Middlemarch - George Eliot (1872)
Spring Torrents - Ivan Turgenev (1872)
Erewhon - Samuel Butler (1872)
The Devils - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872)
In A Glass Darkly - Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
Around The World In Eighty Days - Jules Verne (1873)---read in 2014, 2023
The Enchanted Wanderer - Nicolai Leskov (1873)
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (1874)
Pepita Jimenez - Juan Valera Y Alcala-Galiano (1874)
The Sin Of Father Amado - Jose Maria De Eca De Queiroz (1876)
The Temptation Of Saint Anthony - Gustave Flaubert (1874)
The Hand Of Ethelberga - Thomas Hardy (1876)
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot (1876)
Virgin Soil - Ivan Turgenev (1877)
Drunkard - Emile Zola (1877)
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1877)
Return Of The Native - Thomas Hardy (1878)
The Red Room - August Strindberg (1879)
The Brothers Karamzov - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
Nan - Emile Zola (1880)
Ben-Hur - Lew Wallace (1880)
Bouvard And Pecuchet - Gustave Flaubert (1881)
The Portrait Of A Lady - Henry James (1881)
The House By The Medlar Tree - Giovanni Verga (1881)
The Posthumous Memoirs Of Bras Cuba - Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis (1881)
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)--abandoned 11/2016
A Woman's Life - Guy De Maupassant (1883)
The Regent's Wife - Leopoldo Alas (1884)
The Death Of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy (1884)
Against The Grain - Joris-Karl Huysmans (1894)
Marius The Epicurean - Walter Pater (1885)
Bel-Ami - Guy De Maupassant (1885)
The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (1885)
The Quest - Frederik van Eeden (1885)
Germinal - Emile Zola (1885)
King Solomon's Mines - H Rider Haggard (1885)
Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
The Mayor Of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy (1886)
The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
The Manors Of Ulloa - Emilia Pardo Bazan (1886)
She - H Rider Haggard (1887)
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy (1887)
The People Of Hemso - August Strindberg (1887)
Under The Yoke - Ivan Vazov (1888)
Fortunata And Jacinta - Benito Perez Galdes (1887)
Pierre And Jean - Guy De Maupassant (1888)
The Master Of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson (1889)
Eline Vere - Louis Couperus (1889)
Hunger - Knut Hamsun (1890)
By The Open Sea - August Strindberg (1890)
La Bete Humaine - Emile Zola (1890)
Thais - Anatole France (1890)
The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy (1890)
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (1891)---click for review---read ~2015
Down There - Joris-Karl Huysmans (1891)
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (1891)
Gosta Berling's Saga - Selma Lagerlof (1891)
New Grub Street - George Gissing (1891)
News From Nowhere - William Morris (1891)
The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
Diary Of A Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith (1892)
Born In Exile - George Gissing (1892)
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)--click for review--read in 2020
The Viceroys - Federico De Roberto (1894)
The Real Charlotte - Somerville & Ross (1894)
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (1895)
Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane (1895)
The Time Machine - H G Wells (1895)---read ~2015
The Island Of Dr Moreau - H G Wells (1896)
Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz (1896)
Dracula - Bram Stoker (1897)
Fruits Of The Earth - Andre Gide (1897)
What Maisie Knew - Henry James (1897)
Compassion - Benito Perez Galdos (1897)
Pharaoh - Boleslaw Prus (1897)
The Invisible Man - H G Wells (1897)
The War Of The Worlds - H G Wells (1898)
The Child Of Pleasure - Gabriele D'Annunzio (1898)
As A Man Grows Older - Italo Svevo (1898)
The Turn Of The Screw - Henry James (1898)-- read in 2024
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (1899)
The Stechlin - Theodor Fontane (1899)
Some Experiences Of An Irish R M - Somerville & Ross (1899)
Eclipse Of The Crescent Moon - Geza Gardonyi (1899)
Dom Casmurro - Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis (1899)

1900s
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad (1900)
Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser (1900)
The Tiger Of Mompracem - Emilio Salgari (1900)
None But The Brave - Arthur Schnitzler (1901)
Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1901)
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann (1901)
The Hound Of The Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (1902)--read in 2023
The Wings Of The Dove - Henry James (1902)
The Immoralist - Andre Gide (1902)
The Riddle Of The Sands - Erskine Childers (1903)
Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness - Daniel Paul Schreber (1903)
The Ambassadors - Henry James (1903)
Call Of The Wild - Jack London (1903)
The Way Of All Flesh - Samuel Butler (1903)
The Golden Bowl - Henry James (1904)
Hadrian The Seventh - Frederick Rolfe (1904)
Nostromo - Joseph Conrad (1904)
Solitude - Victor Catala (1905)
Where Angels Fear To Tread - E M Forster (1905)
Professor Unrat (The Blue Angel) - Heinrich Mann (1905)
The House Of Mirth - Edith Wharton (1905)
The Forsythe Saga - John Galsworthy (1906)
Young Torless - Robert Musil (1906)
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair (1906)
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad (1907)
Mother - Maxim Gorky (1907)
The House On The Borderland - William Hope Hodgson (1908)
The Old Wive's Tale - Arnold Bennett (1908)
The Iron Heel - Jack London (1908)
A Room With A View - E M Forster (1908)---click for review---read in 2020
The Inferno - Henri Barbusse (1908)
Tono-Bungay - H G Wells (1908)
Strait Is The Gate - Andre Gide (1909)
Martin Eden - Jack London (1909)
Three Lives - Gertrude Stein (1909)
Impressions Of Africa - Raymond Roussel (1910)
The Notebooks Of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rainer Maria Rilke (1910)
Howards End - E M Forster (1910)---read in 2021
Fantomas - Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre (1911)
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton (1911)---click for review---read ~2015
The Charwoman's Daughter - James Stephens (1912)
Death In Venice - Thomas Mann (1912)
Sons And Lovers - D H Lawrence (1913)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell (1914)
Tarzan Of The Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)
Rosshalde - Herman Hesse (1914)
Locus Solus - Raymond Roussel (1914)
Platero And I - Juan Ramon Jimenez (1914)
Kokoro - Natsume Soseki (1914)
The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan (1915)---read in 2023
The Rainbow - D H Lawrence (1915)
Of Human Bondage - William Somerset Maugham (1915)
The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf (1915)
The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford (1915)
Rashomon - Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1915)
The Home And The World - Rabindranath Tagore (1916)
Pallieter - Felix Timmermans (1916)
Under Fire - Henri Barbusse (1916)
The Underdogs - Mariano Azuela (1916)
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce (1916)
Bunner Sisters - Edith Wharton (1916)
Growth Of The Soil - Knut Hamsun (1917)
Summer - Edith Wharton (1917)
The Shadow Line - Joseph Conrad (1917)
The Return Of The Soldier - Rebecca West (1918)
Tarr - Wyndham Lewis (1919)
Night And Day - Virginia Woolf (1919)
Storm Of Steel - Ernst Junger (1920)
Women In Love - D H Lawrence (1920)
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis (1920)
The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1920)
The Life Of Christ - Giovanni Papini (1921)
Crome Yellow - Aldous Huxley (1921)
Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrid Undset (1922)
Claudine's House - Colette (1922)
Forest Of The Hanged - Liviu Rebreanu (1922)
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922)
Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis (1922)
Aaron's Rod - D H Lawrence (1922)
The Last Days Of Humanity - Karl Kraus (1922)
Life And Death Of Harriett Frean - May Sinclair (1922)
The Glimpses Of The Moon - Edith Wharton (1922)
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse (1922)
Jacob's Room - Virginia Woolf (1922)
The Enormous Room - E E Cummings (1922)
The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield (1922)
Amok - Stefan Zweig (1922)
The Fox - D H Lawrence (1923)
Antic Hay - Aldous Huxley (1923)
Cane - Jean Toomer (1923)
Zeno's Conscience - Italo Calvino (1923)
The Devil In The Flesh - Raymond Radiguet (1923)
A Passage To India - E M Forster (1924)
We - Yevgeny Zamiatin (1924)
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (1924)
The Green Hat - Michael Arlen (1924)
Billy Budd, Foretopman - Herman Melville (1924)---read in high school
The Professor's House - Willa Cather (1925)
The Artamonov Business - Maxim Gorky (1925)
Chaka The Zulu - Thomas Mofolo (1925)
The Trial - Franz Kafka (1925)
The Counterfeiters - Andre Gide (1925)
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)---click for review--read ~2015
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (1925)
Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos (1925)
The Making Of Americans - Gertrude Stein (1925)
New World - Heruy Welde Sellase (1925)
Under The Sun Of Satan - Georges Bernanos (1926)
Albert And Jacob - Cora Sandel (1926)
The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie (1926)
One, None And A Hundred Thousand - Luigi Pirandello (1926)
The Plumed Serpent - D H Lawrence (1926)
The Good Soldier Svejk - Jaroslav Hasek (1926)
The Castle - Franz Kafka (1926)
Blindness - Henry Green (1926)
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1926)
In Search Of Lost Time - Marcel Proust (1927)
The Case Of Sergeant Grischa - Arnold Zweig (1927)
Amerika - Franz Kafka (1927)
Tarka The Otter - Henry Williamson (1927)
To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927)
Rememberance Of Things Past - Marcel Proust (1927)
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse (1927)
Nadja - Andre Breton (1928)
Some Prefer Nettles - Junichiro Tanizaki (1928)
Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford (1928)
Quicksand - Nella Larsen (1928)
Decline And Fall - Evelyn Waugh (1928)
Quartet - Jean Rhys (1928)
The Childermass - Wyndham Lewis (1928)
The Well Of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall (1928)
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D H Lawrence (1928)
Orlando - Virginia Woolf (1928)
Story Of The Eye - Georges Bataille (1928)
Retreat Without Song - Shahan Shahnoor (1929)
I Thought Of Daisy - Edmund Wilson (1929)
Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (1929)
Les Enfants Terribles - Jean Cocteau (1929)
The Sound And The Fury - William Faulkner (1929)
Harriet Hume - Rebecca West (1929)
The Last September - Elizabeth Bowen (1929)
Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Doblin (1929)
All Quiet On The Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
The Time Of Indifference - Alberto Moravia (1929)
Living - Henry Green (1929)
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett (1929)
A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway (1929)
Passing - Nella Larsen (1929)
Hebdomeros - Giorgio de Chirico (1929)
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (1929)
Monica - Saunders Lewis (1930)
Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh (1930)
Her Privates We - Frederic Manning (1930)
Insatiability - Stanislaw Witkiewicz (1930)
The Apes Of God - Wyndham Lewis (1930)
Cakes And Ale - W Somerset Maugham (1930)
The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett (1931)
The Waves - Virginia Woolf (1931)
The Forbidden Realm - J Slauerhoff (1932)
The Return Of Philip Latinowicz - Miroslav Krleza (1932)
The Radetzky March - Joseph Roth (1932)
The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett (1932)
To The North - Elizabeth Bowen (1932)
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (1932)---finished 2/2017
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1932)
Journey To The End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1932)
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) - Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932)
Viper's Tangle - Francois Mauriac (1932)
Joseph And His Brothers - Thomas Mann (1933)
Man's Fate - Andre Malraux (1933)
Cheese - Willem Elsschot (1933)
The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil (1933)
A Day Off - Storm Jameson (1933)
Testament Of Youth - Vera Brittain (1933)
The Autobiography Of Alice B Toklas - Gertrude Stein (1933)
Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L Sayers (1933)
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West (1933)
The Street Of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz (1934)
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth (1934)
Thank You, Jeeves - P G Wodehouse (1934)
Tender Is The Night - F Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
A Handful Of Dust - Evelyn Waugh (1934)
Tropic Of Cancer - Henry Miller (1934)
The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain (1934)
Novel With Cocaine - M Ageyev (1934)
Threepenny Novel - Bertolt Brecht (1934)
The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L Sayers (1934)
Burmese Days - George Orwell (1934)
On The Heights Of Despair - Emile Cioran (1934)
The Bells Of Basel - Louis Aragon (1934)
Untouchable - Mulk Raj Anand (1935)
England Made Me - Graham Greene (1935)
The House In Paris - Elizabeth Bowen (1935)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - Horace McCoy (1935)
The Last Of Mr Norris - Christopher Isherwood (1935)
Auto-Da-Fe - Elias Canetti (1935)
Independent People - Halldor Laxness (1935)
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes (1935)
Rickshaw Boy - Lao She (1936)
War With The Newts - Karel Capek (1936)
At The Mountains Of Madness - H P Lovecraft (1936)
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner (1936)
Wild Harbour - Ian MacPherson (1936)
Keep The Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell (1936)
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (1936)
The Thinking Reed - Rebecca West (1936)
Eyeless In Gaza - Aldous Huxley (1936)
Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner (1936)
Ferdydurke - Witold Gombrowicz (1937)
The Blind Owl - Sadeq Hedayat (1937)
To Have And Have Not - Ernest Hemingway (1937)
Out Of Africa - Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (1937)
The Revenge Of Love - Wyndham Lewis (1937)
In Parenthesis - David Jones (1937)
The Years - Virginia Woolf (1937)
The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein (1937)
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston (1937)---read in 2021
Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck (1937)---read in high school
On The Edge Of Reason - Miroslav Krleza (1938)
Alamut - Vladimir Bartol (1938)
Murphy - Samuel Beckett (1938)
USA - John Dos Passos (1938)
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene (1938)
Cause For Alarm - Eric Ambler (1938)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (1938)---read several times
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day - Winifred Watson (1938)
After The Death Of Don Juan - Sylvia Townsend Warner (1938)
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler (1939)
Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys (1939)
Tropic Of Capricorn - Henry Miller (1939)
Goodbye To Berlin - Christopher Isherwood (1939)
Coming Up For Air - George Orwell (1939)
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien (1939)
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce (1939)
The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)
Party Going - Henry Green (1939)
The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead (1940)
The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati (1940)
The Power And The Glory - Graham Greene (1940)
Native Son - Richard Wright (1940)
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (1940)
Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler (1940)
The Hamlet - William Faulkner (1940)
The Harvesters - Cesare Pavese (1941)
Broad And Alien Is The World - Ciro Alegria (1941)
Between The Acts - Virginia Woolf (1941)
Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton (1941)
The Living And The Dead - Patrick White (1941)
The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien (1941)
Conversations In Sicily - Elio Vittorini (1941)
Chess Story (The Royal Game) - Stefan Zweig (1942)
The Outsider - Albert Camus (1942)
Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner (1942)
Embers - Sandor Marai (1942)
The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse (1943)
Caught - Henry Green (1943)
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943)
Dangling Man - Saul Bellow (1944)
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges (1944)
Transit - Anna Seghers (1944)
The Razor's Edge - William Somerset Maugham (1944)
Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren (1944)---read in 2015
The Tin Flute - Gabrielle Roy (1945)
Bosnian Chronicle - Ivo Andric (1945)
Nada - Carmen Laforet (1945)
The Death Of Virgil - Hermann Broch (1945)
Christ Stopped At Eboli - Carlo Levi (1945)
Arcanum 17 - Andre Breton (1945)
Loving - Henry Green (1945)
The Pursuit Of Love - Nancy Mitford (1945)
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck (1945)
Animal Farm - George Orwell (1945)--read in 2021, 2023
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (1945)
The Bridge Over The Drina - Ivo Andric (1945)
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake (1946)
Back - Henry Green (1946)
A House In The Uplands - Erskine Caldwell (1946)
Zorba The Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis (1946)
Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz (1947)
Froth On The Daydream - Boris Vian (1947)
The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)
The Path Of The Nest Of Spiders - Italo Calvino (1947)
Under The Volcano - Malcolm Lowry (1947)
If This Is A Man - Primo Levi (1947)
Exercises In Style - Raymond Queneau (1947)
The Victim - Saul Bellow (1947)
Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann (1947)
Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton (1948)
The Heart Of The Matter - Graham Greene (1948)
Death Sentence - Maurice Blanchot (1948)
Disobedience - Alberto Moravia (1948)
All About H Hatterr - G V Desani (1948)
This Way For The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen - Tadeusz Borowski (1948)
In The Heart Of The Sea - Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1948)
Journey To Alcarria - Camilo Jose Cela (1948)
Ashes And Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski (1948)
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (1949)---read in 2015
The Man With The Golden Arm - Nelson Algren (1949)
Kingdom Of This World - Alejo Carpentier (1949)
The Heat Of The Day - Elizabeth Bowen (1949)
The Case Of Comrade Tulayev - Victor Serge (1949)
Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford (1949)
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (1950)
The Guiltless - Hermann Broch (1950)
Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist (1950)
The Garden Where The Brass Band Played - Simon Vestdijk (1950)
The Moon And The Bonfires - Cesare Pavese (1950)
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov (1950)
The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing (1950)
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake (1950)
The 13 Clocks - James Thurber (1950)
The Third Man - Graham Greene (1950)
The Labyrinth Of Solitude - Octavio Paz (1950)
The Abbot C - Georges Bataille (1950)
The Hive - Camilo Jose Cela (1951)
The End Of The Affair - Graham Greene (1951)
Molloy - Samuel Beckett (1951)
The Rebel - Albert Camus (1951)
The Catcher In The Rye - J D Salinger (1951)---read in high school
The Opposing Shore - Julien Gracq (1951)
Foundation - Isaac Asimov (1951)
Day Of The Triffids - John Wyndham (1951)
Malone Dies - Samuel Beckett (1951)
Memoirs Of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar (1951)
Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata (1952)
Excellent Women - Barbara Pym (1952)
The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson (1952)
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor (1952)
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1952)
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison (1952)
The Judge And His Hangman - Friedrich Durrenmatt (1952)
The Lost Steps - Alejo Carpentier (1953)
The Hothouse - Wolfgang Koeppen (1953)
The Dark Child - Camara Laye (1953)
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming (1953)
Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin (1953)
The Adventures Of Augie March - Saul Bellow (1953)
Junkie - William Burroughs (1953)
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis (1953)
Watt - Samuel Beckett (1953)
The Unnamable - Samuel Beckett (1953)
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler (1953)
The Go-Between - L P Hartley (1953)
The Unknown Soldier - Vaino Linna (1954)
The Sound Of Waves - Yukio Mishima (1954)
Death In Rome - Wolfgang Koeppen (1954)
A Day In Spring - Ciril Kosmac (1954)
The Mandarins - Simone de Beauvoir (1954)
Under The Net - Iris Murdoch (1954)
Lord Of The Flies - William Golding (1954)
A Ghost At Noon - Alberto Moravia (1954)
The Story Of O - Pauline Reage (1954)
Self Condemned - Wyndham Lewis (1954)
I'm Not Stiller - Max Frisch (1954)
Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan (1954)
The Lord Of The Rings - J R R Tolkein (1954-56)
The Tree Of Man - Patrick White (1955)
The Burning Plain - Juan Rulfo (1955)
The Ragazzi - Pier Paulo Pasolini (1955)
The Recognitions - William Gaddis (1955)
The Last Temptation Of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis (1955)
The Quiet American - Graham Greene (1955)
The Trusting And The Maimed - James Plunkett (1955)
A World Of Love - Elizabeth Bowen (1955)
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith (1955)
The Floating Opera - John Barth (1956)
Seize The Day - Saul Bellow (1956)
The Roots Of Heaven - Romain Gary (1956)
The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon (1956)
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin (1956)
The Devil To Pay In The Backlands - Joao Guimaraes Rosa (1956)
The Manila Rope - Veijo Meri (1957)
The Glass Bees - Ernst Junger (1957)
The Birds - Tarjei Vesaas (1957)
The Deadbeats - Ward Ruyslinck (1957)
Justine - Lawrence Durrell (1957)
The Wonderful O - James Thurber (1957)
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (1957)
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov (1957)
On The Road - Jack Kerouac (1957)
Homo Faber - Max Frisch (1957)
Blue Of Noon - Georges Bataille (1957)
The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham (1957)
Voss - Patrick White (1957)
Jealousy - Alain Robbe-Grillet (1957)
The Bell - Iris Murdoch (1958)
The Once And Future King - T H White (1958)
The End Of The Road - John Barth (1958)
Borstal Boy - Brendan Behan (1958)
Mrs 'Arris Goes To Paris - Paul Gallico (1958)
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe (1958)
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (1958)
The Bitter Glass - Eilis Dillon (1958)
Pluck The Bud And Destroy The Offspring - Kenzaburo Oe (1958)
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (1958)
Breakfast At Tiffany's - Truman Capote (1958)
The Guide - R K Narayan (1958)
Deep Rivers - Jose Maria Arguedas (1958)
Gabriela, Clove And Cinnamon - Jorge Amado (1958)
Down Second Avenue - Es'kia Mphahlele (1959)
Billiards At Half-Past Nine - Heinrich Boll (1959(
Memento Mori - Muriel Spark (1959)
Henderson The Rain King - Saul Bellow (1959)
Absolute Beginners - Colin MacInnes (1959)
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass (1959)
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs (1959)
Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse (1959)
Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee (1959)
Halftime: A Novel - Martin Walser (1960)
God's Bits Of Wood - Ousmane Sembene (1960)
The Magician Of Lublin - Isaac Bashevis Singer (1960)
Bebo's Girl - Carlo Cassola (1960)
Promise At Dawn - Romain Gary (1960)
Rabbit, Run - John Updike (1960)
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960)---read in high school
The Country Girls - Edna O'Brien (1960)
Our Ancestors - Italo Calvino (1960)
How It Is - Samuel Beckett (1960)
The Violent Bear It Away - Flannery O'Connor (1960)
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (1961)
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark (1961)
Cat And Mouse - Gunter Grass (1961)
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem (1961)
Faces In The Water - Janet Frame (1961)
A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch (1961)
Franny And Zooey - J D Salinger (1961)
Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert Heinlein (1961)
The Shipyard - Juan Carlos Onetti (1961)
No One Writes To The Colonel - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1961)
Memoirs Of A Peasant Boy - Xose Neira Vilas (1961)
The Time Of The Hero - Mario Vargas Llosa (1962)
The Death Of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes (1962)
Time Of Silence - Luis Martin-Santos (1962)
The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis - Giorgio Bassani (1962)
Girl With Green Eyes - Edna O'Brien (1962)
Labyrinths - Jorg Luis Borges (1962)
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (1962)
The Drowned World - J G Ballard (1962)
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (1962)
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kesey (1962)
The Third Wedding - Costas Taktsis (1963)
Dog Years - Gunter Grass (1963)
The Collector - John Fowles (1963)
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzheitsyn (1963)
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963)
Inside Mr Enderby - Anthony Burgess (1963)
The Girls Of Slender Means - Muriel Spark (1963)
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - John Le Carre (1963)
Manon Des Sources - Marcel Pagnol (1963)
The Graduate - Charles Webb (1963)
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut (1963)
V - Thomas Pynchon (1963)
Three Trapped Tigers - Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1964)
Garden, Ashes - Danilo Kis (1964)
Return To Oegstgeest - Jan Wolkers (1964)
Herzog - Saul Bellow (1964)
The Ravishing Of Lol V Stein - Marguerite Duras (1964)
Arrow Of God - Chinua Achebe (1964)
Albert Angelo - B S Johnson (1964)
Come Back, Dr Caligari - Donald Barthelme (1964)
Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Kesey (1964)
The Passion According To G H - Clarice Lispector (1964)
Closely Watched Trains - Bohumil Hrabal (1965)
Everything That Rises Must Converge - Flannery O'Connor (1965)
God Bless You, Mr Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut (1965)
August Is A Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien (1965)
The River Between - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (1965)
Things - Georges Perec (1965)
Death And The Dervish - Mesa Selimovic (1966)
Silence - Shusaku Endo (1966)
Marks Of Identity - Juan Goytisolo (1966)
To Each His Own - Leonardo Sciascia (1966)
The Crying Of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon (1966)
Giles Goat-Boy - John Barth (1966)
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (1966)---finished 6/2017
The Vice-Consul - Marguerite Duras (1966)
The Magus - John Fowles (1966)
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (1966)
Trawl - B S Johnson (1966)
The Birds Fall Down - Rebecca West (1966)
Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz (1967)
Z - Vassilis Vassilikos (1967)
The Manor - Isaac Bashevis Singer (1967)
A Man Asleep - Georges Perec (1967)
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien (1967)
No Laughing Matter - Angus Wilson (1967)
The Joke - Milan Kundera (1967)
Pilgrimage - Dorothy Richardson (1967)
The Master And Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
The Cubs And Other Stories - Mario Vargas Llosa (1967)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe (1968)
Chocky - John Wyndham (1968)
The Quest For Christa T - Christa Wolf (1968)
A Kestral For A Knave - Barry Hines (1968)
In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan (1968)
The German Lesson - Siegfried Lenz (1968)
Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid - Malcolm Lowry (1968)
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke (1968)
The First Circle - Aleksandr Solzheitsyn (1968)
Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzheitsyn (1968)
Belle Du Seigneur - Albert Cohen (1968)
The Nice And The Good - Iris Murdoch (1968)
Myra Breckinridge - Gore Vidal (1968)
Eva Trout - Elizabeth Bowen (1968)
Cathedral - Oles Honchar (1968)
Heartbreak Tango - Manuel Puig (1969)
Moscow Stations - Venedikt Yerofeev (1969)
The Case Worker - Gyorgy Konrad (1969)
Seasons Of Migration To The North - Tayeb Salih (1969)
Here's To You Jesus - Elena Poniatowska (1969)
Jacob The Liar - Jurek Becker (1969)
A Void/Avoid - Georges Perec (1969)
Them - Joyce Carol Oates (1969)
Ada - Vladimir Nabokov (1969)
The Godfather - Mario Puzo (1969)
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth (1969)
The Green Man - Kingsley Amis (1969)
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (1969)
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (1969)
Blind Man With A Pistol - Chester Himes (1969)
Pricksongs And Descants - Robert Coover (1969)
Tent Of Miracles - Jorge Amado (1969)
Fifth Business - Robertson Davies (1970)
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion (1970)
A World Of Julius - Alfredo Bryce Echenique (1970)
The Atrocity Exhibition - J G Ballard (1970)
Jahrestage - Uwe Johnson (1970)
Troubles - J G Farrell (1970)
Mercier Et Camier - Samuel Beckett (1970)
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou (1970)
Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick - Peter Handke (1970)
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (1970)
The Ogre - Michel Tournier (1970)
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark (1970)
The Sea Of Fertility - Yukio Mishima (1970)
Rabbit Redux - John Updike (1971)
The Wild Boys - William Burroughs (1971)
Group Portrait With A Lady - Heinrich Boll (1971)
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Book Of Daniel - E L Doctorow (1971)
In A Free State - V S Naipaul (1971)
House Mother Normal - B S Johnson (1971)
Cataract - Mykhailo Osadchy (1971)
Lives of Girls And Women - Alice Munro (1971)
The Twilight Years - Sawako Ariyoshi (1972)
The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty (1972)
The Day Of The Dolphin - Robert Merle (1972)
Surfacing - Margaret Atwood (1972)
G - John Burger (1972)
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson (1972)
The Breast - Philip Roth (1972)
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino (1972)
Sula - Toni Morrison (1973)
The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch (1973)
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The Honourary Consul - Graham Greene (1973)
Crash - J G Ballard (1973)
The Castle Of Crossed Destinies - Italo Calvino (1973)
The Siege Of Krishnapur - J G Farrell (1973)
A Question Of Power - Bessie Head (1973)
Fear Of Flying - Erica Jong (1973)
Breakfast Of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (1973)
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Distopia - Ursula Le Guin (1974)
The Diviners - Margaret Laurence (1974)
The Harbour - Antun Soljan (1974)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carre (1974)
The Lost Honour Of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Boll (1974)--read Jan. 2020
Dusklands - J M Coetzee (1974)
The Fan Man - William Kotzwinkle (1974)
The Year Of The Hare - Arto Paasilinna (1975)
The Commandant - Jessica Anderson (1975)
Woman At Point Zero - Nawal El-Sadaawi (1975)
Ragtime - E L Doctorow (1975)---read in 2017
Correction - Thomas Bernhard (1975)
Dead Babies - Martin Amis (1975)
Humboldt's Gift - Saul Bellow (1975)
High Rise - J G Ballard (1975)
Willard And His Bowling Trophies - Richard Brautigan (1975)
Fateless - Imre Kertesz (1975)
The Dead Father - Donald Barthelme (1975)
Grimus - Salman Rushdie (1975)
A Dance To The Music Of Time - Anthony Powell (1975)
W, Or The Memory Of Childhood - Georges Perec (1975)
Autumn Of The Patriarch - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1975)
Kiss Of The Spiderwoman - Manuel Puig (1976)
Almost Transparent Blue - Ryu Murakami (1976)
Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor (1976)
Patterns Of Childhood - Christa Wolf (1976)
Amateurs - Donald Barthelme (1976)
Cutter And Bone - Newton Thornburg (1976)
Interview With A Vampire - Anne Rice (1976)
The Public Burning - Robert Coover (1976)
Ratner's Star - Don DeLillo (1976)
The Left-Handed Woman - Peter Handke (1976)
The Engineer Of Human Souls - Josef Skvorecky (1977)
Quartet In Autumn - Barbara Pym (1977)
The Wars - Timothy Findley (1977)
The Hour Of The Star - Clarice Lispector (1977)
Song Of Solomon - Toni Morrison (1977)
Petals Of Blood - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (1977)
Dispatches - Michael Herr (1977)
The Shining - Stephen King (1977)
Delta Of Venus - Anais Nin (1977)
The Passion Of New Eve - Angela Carter (1977)
In The Heart Of The Country - J M Coetzee (1977)
Requiem For A Dream - Hubert Selby, Jr (1978)
The Beggar Maid - Alice Munro (1978)
The Back Room - Carmen Martin Gaite (1978)
The Virgin In The Garden - A S Byatt (1978)
Yes - Thomas Bernhard (1978)
The Singapore Grip - J G Farrell (1978)
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978)
Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec (1978)
The World According To Garp - John Irving (1978)
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan (1978)
A Dry White Season - Andre Brink (1979)
So Long A Letter - Mariama Ba (1979)
Fool's Gold - Maro Douka (1979)
Southern Seas - Manuel Vazquez Montalban (1979)
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1979)
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino (1979)
The Safety Net - Heinrich Boll (1979)
Burger's Daughter - Nadine Gordimer (1979)
A Bend In The River - V S Naipaul (1979)
Shikasta - Doris Lessing (1979)
Smiley's People - John Le Carre (1979)
The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting - Milan Kundera (1979)
The Smell Of Sadness - Alfred Kossmann (1980)
Clear Light Of Day - Anita Desai (1980)
The Name Of The Rose - Umberto Eco (1980)
City Primeval - Elmore Leonard (1980)
Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Rituals - Cees Nooteboom (1980)
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980)
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (1980)
Waiting For The Barbarians - J M Coetzee (1980)
Broken April - Ismail Kadare (1980)
Leaden Wings - Zhang Jie (1981)
The War At The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa (1981)
The House With The Blind Glass Windows - Herbjorg Wassmo (1981)
Couples, Passersby - Botho Strauss (1981)
Summer In Baden-Baden - Leonid Tsypkin (1981)
July's People - Nadine Gordimer (1981)
The Comfort Of Strangers - Ian McEwan (1981)
Lanark: A Life In Four Books - Alasdair Gray (1981)
Rabbit Is Rich - John Updike (1981)
Memory Of Fire - Eduardo Galeano (1982)
Baltasar and Blimunda - Jose Saramago (1982)
The Book Of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa (1982)
The Names - Don DeLillo (1982)
Concrete - Thomas Bernhard (1982)
On The Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin (1982)
The Newton Letter - John Banville (1982)
The House Of The Spirits - Isabel Allende (1982)
Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982)
A Pale View Of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro (1982)
Wittgenstein's Nephew - Thomas Bernhard (1982)
The Colour Purple - Alice Walker (1982)
A Boy's Own Story - Edmund White (1982)
If Not Now, When? - Primo Levi (1982)
Fado Alexandrino - Antonio Lobo Antunes (1983)
The Christmas Oratorio - Goran Tunstrom (1983)
The Witness - Juan Jose Saer (1983)
The Sorrow Of Belgium - Hugo Claus (1983)
The Piano Teacher - Elfriede Jelinek (1983)
The Diary Of Jane Somers - Doris Lessing (1983)
The Life And Times Of Michael K - J M Coetzee (1983)
Waterland - Graham Swift (1983)
La Brava - Elmore Leonard (1983)
Fools Of Fortune - William Trevor (1983)
Worstward Ho - Samuel Beckett (1983)
Shame - Salman Rushdie (1983)
Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel - Julian Rios (1984)
Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich (1984)
The Young Man - Botho Strauss (1984)
Professor Marten's Departure - Jaan Kross (1984)
Money: A Suicide Note - Martin Amis (1984)
Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes (1984)
Neuromancer - William Gibson (1984)
Blood And Guts In High School - Kathy Acker (1984)
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being - Milan Kundera (1984)
Nights At The Circus - Angela Carter (1984)
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (1984)
Empire Of The Sun - J G Ballard (1984)
The Lover - Marguerite Duras (1984)
The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis - Jose Saramago (1984)
The Busconductor Hines - James Kelman (1984)
Dictionary Of The Khazars - Milorad Pavic (1984)
Legend - David Gemmell (1984)
Half Of Man Is Woman - Zhang Xianliang (1985)
Simon And The Oaks - Marianne Fredriksson (1985)
Annie John - Jamaica Kincaid (1985)
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (1985)
Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd (1985)
Queer - William Burroughs (1985)
White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985)
Old Masters - Thomas Bernhard (1985)
Perfume - Patrick Suskind (1985)
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (1985)---read several times
Contact - Carl Sagan (1985)
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis (1985)
A Maggot - John Fowles (1985)
The Cider House Rules - John Irving (1985)
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeannette Winterson (1985)
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)
The Parable Of The Blind - Gert Hofmann (1985)
Reasons To Live - Amy Hempel (1985)
Ancestral Voices - Etienne van Heerden (1986)
The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman - Andrzej Szczypiorski (1986)
The Drowned And The Saved - Primo Levi (1986)
Foe - J M Coetzee (1986)
Extinction - Thomas Bernhard (1986)
An Artist Of The Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)
Lost Language Of Cranes - David Leavitt (1986)
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986)
Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons (1986)
Marya: A Life - Joyce Carol Oates (1986)
Matigari - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (1986)
Anagrams - Lorrie Moore (1986)
Of Love And Shadows - Isabel Allende (1987)
Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto (1987)
A Ballad For Georg Henych - Viktor Paskov (1987)
Black Box - Amos Oz (1987)
Beloved - Toni Morrison (1987)
The Taebek Mountains - Jo Jung-rae (1987)
Enigma Of Arrival - V S Naipaul (1987)
World's End - T Coraghessan Boyle (1987)
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster (1987)
The Bonfire Of The Vanities - Tom Wolfe (1987)
Cigarettes - Harry Mathews (1987)
The Child In Time - Ian McEwan (1987)
The Pigeon - Patrick Suskind (1987)
The Passion - Jeannette Winterson (1987)
The Black Dahalia - James Ellroy (1987)
The Afternoon Of A Writer - Peter Handke (1987)
The Radiant Way - Margaret Drabble (1987)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams (1987)
Paradise Of The Blind - Ford Madox Ford (1988)
The Last World - Christoph Ransmayr (1988)
The First Garden - Anne Hebert (1988)
The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh (1988)
The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul - Douglas Adams (1988)
Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988)
The Player Of Games - Iain Banks (1988)
Libra - Don DeLillo (1988)
Oscar And Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988)
The Swimming-Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst (1988)
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie (1988)
Wittgenstein's Mistress - David Markson (1988)
The Beautiful Room Is Empty - Edmund White (1988)
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (1988)
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood (1988)
All Souls - Javier Marias (1989)
Inland - Gerald Murnane (1989)
Obabakoak - Bernardo Atxaga (1989)
Gimmick! - Joost Zwagerman (1989)
The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor (1990)
The Book of Evidence - John Banville (1989)
London Fields - Martin Amis (1989)
A Prayer For Owen Meany - John Irving (1989)
Like Water For Chocolate - Laura Esquivel (1989)
The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon - Jose Saramago (1989)
The Trick Is To Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway (1989)
The Temple Of My Familiar - Alice Walker (1989)
The Melancholy Of Resistance - Laszlo Krasznahorkai (1989)
Remains Of The Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
Billy Bathgate - E L Doctorow (1989)
Moon Palace - Paul Auster (1989)
Sexing The Cherry - Jeannette Winterson (1989)
A Disaffection - James Kelman (1989)
The Daughter - Pavlos Matesis (1990)
The Midnight Examiner - William Kotzwinkle (1990)
The Buddha Of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi (1990)
Possession - A S Byatt (1990)
Get Like Life - Lorrie Moore (1990)
A Home At The End Of The World - Michael Cunningham (1990)
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien (1990)---abandoned 6/2017
The Music Of Chance - Paul Auster (1990)
Stone Junction - Jim Dodge (1990)
Vertigo - W G Sebald (1990)
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon (1990)
Amongst Women - John McGahern (1990)
Shorty - Elmore Leonard (1990)
The Laws - Connie Palmen (1991)
Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell (1991)
Astradeni - Eugenia Fakinou (1991)
Wise Children - Angela Carter (1991)
Senor Vivo And The Coca Lord - Louis De Bernieres (1991)
Downriver - Iain Sinclair (1991)
Regeneration - Pat Barker (1991)
Typical - Padgett Powell (1991)
Mao II - Don DeLillo (1991)
Time's Arrow - Martin Amis (1991)
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
Wild Swans - Jung Chang (1991)
Before Night Falls - Reinaldo Arenas (1992)
Uncle Petros And Goldbach's Conjecture - Apostolos Doxiadis (1992)
Memoirs Of Rain - Sunetra Gupta (1992)
The Triple Mirror Of The Self - Zulfikar Ghose (1992)
The Club Dumas - Arturo Perez-Reverte (1992)
All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy (1992)
Arcadia - Jim Crace (1992)
Hideous Kinky - Esther Freud (1992)
Black Dogs - Ian McEwan (1992)
Asphodel - H D (Hilda Doolittle) (1992)
The Heather Blazing - Colm Toibin (1992)
Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe (1992)
Miss Smilla's Sense Of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1992)
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992)
Jazz - Toni Morrison (1992)
Written On The Body - Jeannette Winterson (1992)
The Crow Road - Iain Banks (1992)
Indigo - Marina Warner (1992)
Possessing The Secret Of Joy - Alice Walker (1992)
A Heart So White - Javier Marias (1992)
The Discovery Of Heaven - Harry Mulisch (1992)
Life Is A Caravanserai - Emine Ozdamar (1992)
The Secret History - Donna Tartt (1992)
The Emigrants - W G Sebald (1992)
The Adventures And Misadventures Of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutis (1993)
Deep River - Shusaku Endo (1993)
The Twins - Tessa de Loo (1993)
Remembering Babylon - David Malouf (1993)
Waiting For The Dark, Waiting For The Light - Ivan Klima (1993)
The Holder Of The World - Bharati Mukherjee (1993)
The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood (1993)
The House Of Doctor Dee - Peter Ackroyd (1993)
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides (1993)
The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields (1993)
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (1993)
What A Carve Up! - Jonathan Coe (1993)
On Love - Alain de Botton (1993)
Complicity - Iain Banks (1993)
Operation Shylock - Philip Roth (1993)
Looking For The Possible Dance - A L Kennedy (1993)
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (1993)
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (1993)
The Shipping News - E Annie Proulx (1993)
The Invention Of The Curried Sausage - Uwe Timm (1993)
Disappearance - David Dabydeen (1993)
Our Lady Of The Assassins - Fernando Vallejo (1994)
Felicia's Journey - William Trevor (1994)
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (1994)
How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994)
City Sister Silver - Jachym Topol (1994)
Pereira Declares: A Testimony - Antonio Tabucchi (1994)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami (1994)
The Master Of Petersburg - J M Coetzee (1994)
Land - Park Kyong-ni (1994)
Whatever - Michel Houellebecq (1994)
The Folding Star - Alan Hollinghurst (1994)
Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster
Santa Evita - Tomas Eloy Martinez (1995)
Troubling Love - Elena Ferrante (1995)
Late-Night News - Petros Markaris (1995)
The End Of The Story - Lydia Davis (1995)
Love's Work - Gillian Rose (1995)
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (1995)
The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (1995)
The Rings Of Saturn - W G Sebald (1995)
Sabbath's Theatre - Philip Roth (1995)
The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie (1995)
The Information - Martin Amis (1995)
Morvern Callar - Alan Warner (1995)
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro (1995)
Democracy - Joan Didion (1996)
A Light Comedy - Eduardo Mendoza Ceballos (1996)
Fall On Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald (1996)
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood (1996)
The Clay Machine Gun - Victor Pelevin (1996)
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (1996)
Forever A Stranger - Hella Haasse (1996)
The Ghost Road - Pat Barker (1996)
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels (1996)
Hallucinating Foucault - Patricia Duncker (1996)
Silk - Alessandro Baricco (1996)
Money To Burn - Ricardo Piglia (1997)
Margot And The Angels - Kristien Hemmerechts (1997)
The Untouchable - John Banville (1997)
American Pastoral - Philip Roth (1997)
The Life Of Insects - Victor Pelevin (1997)
Jack Maggs - Peter Carey (1997)
Underworld - Don DeLillo (1997)
Enduring Love - Ian McEwan (1997)
Great Apes - Will Self (1997)
Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden (1997)---read ~2007
The God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997)
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon (1997)
Crossfire - Miyuki Miyabe (1998)e
The Heretic - Miguel Delibes (1998)
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano (1998)
Dirty Havana Trilogy - Pedro Juan Gutierrez (1998)
Veronika Decides To Die - Paulo Coelho (1998)
The Hours - Michael Cunningham (1998)
Another World - Pat Barker (1998)
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis (1998)
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
Tipping The Velvet - Sarah Waters (1998)
The Talk Of The Town - Ardal O'Hanlon (1998)
All Souls Day - Cees Nooteboom (1998)
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks (1998)
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998)
Intimacy - Hanif Kureishi (1998)
Elementary Particles - Michel Houellebecq (1998)
Pavel's Letters - Monika Maron (1999)
The Museum Of Unconditional Surrender - Dubravka Ugresic (1999)
In Search Of Klingsor - Jorge Volpi (1999)
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami (1999)
Disgrace - J M Coetzee (1999)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie (1999)
Fear And Trembling - Amelie Nothomb (1999)
Everything You Need - A L Kennedy (1999)
As If I Am Not There - Slavenka Drakulic (1999)
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (1999)
The Romantics - Pankaj Mishra (1999)
Timbuktu - Paul Auster (1999)

2000s
Bartleby And Co - Enrique Vila-Matas (2000)
Pastoralia - George Saunders (2000)
Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
House Of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski (2000)
Super-Cannes - J G Ballard (2000)
Small Remedies - Shashi Deshpande (2000)
After The Quake - Haruki Murakami (2000)
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000)
The Human Stain - Philip Roth (2000)
How The Dead Live - Will Self (2000)
City Of God - E L Doctorow (2000)
Celestial Harmonies - Peter Esterhazy (2000)
Nineteen Seventy Seven - David Peace (2000)
Ignorance - Milan Kundera (2000)
Under The Skin - Michel Faber (2000)
The Heart Of Redness - Zakes Mda (2000)
White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000)
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost - Ismail Kadare (2000)
The Devil And Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho (2000)
An Obedient Father - Akhil Sharma (2000)
The Feast Of The Goat - Mario Vargos Llosa (2000)
Soldiers Of Salamina - Javier Cercas (2001)
I'm Not Scared - Niccolo Ammaniti (2001)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2001) ---abandoned in 2007
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk (2001)
At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill (2001)
Fury - Salman Rushdie (2001)
The Body Artist - Don DeLillo (2001)
Don't Move - Margaret Mazzantini (2001)
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen (2001)
Atonement - Ian McEwan (2001)
Schooling - Heather McGowan (2001)
Platform - Michel Houellebecq (2001)
Austerlitz - W G Sebald (2001)
Gabriel's Gift - Hanif Kureishi (2001)
Snow - Orhan Pamuk (2002)
Your Face Tomorrow - Javier Marias (2002)
The Book Of Illusions - Paul Auster (2002)
Nowhere Man - Aleksandar Hemon (2002)
Dead Air - Iain Banks (2002)
Youth - J M Coetzee (2002)
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
Shroud - John Banville (2002)
In The Forest - Edna O'Brien (2002)
That They May Face The Rising Sun - John McGahern (2002)
The Story Of Lucy Gault - William Trevor (2002)
Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)
Unless - Carol Shields (2002)
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer (2002)
The Double - Jose Saramago (2002)
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (2002)
Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry (2002)
London Orbital - Iain Sinclair (2002)
The Successor - Ismail Kadare (2003)
La Dama Numero Trece - Jose Carlos Somoza (2003)
A Tale Of Love And Darkness - Amos Oz (2003)
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
Vernon God Little - D B C Pierre (2003)
Elizabeth Costello - J M Coetzee (2003)
Islands - Dan Sleigh (2003)
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time - Mark Haddon (2003)
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt (2003)
The Light Of Day - Graham Swift (2003)
Thursbitch - Alan Garner (2003)
The Colour - Rose Tremain (2003)
Drop City - T Coraghessan Boyle (2004)
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (2004)
Dining On Stones - Iain Sinclair (2004)
The Lambs Of London - Peter Ackroyd (2004)---read 2020: review here
Vanishing Point - David Markson (2004)
The Master - Colm Toibin (2004)
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (2004)
The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble (2004)
Kavalier And Clay - Michael Chabon (2004)
The Line Of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
The Book About Blanche And Marie - Per Olov Enquist (2004)
The Swarm - Frank Schatzing (2004)
Small Island - Andrea Levy (2004)
2666 - Roberto Bolano (2004)
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky (2004)
The Sea - John Banville (2005)
Adjunct: An Undigest - Peter Manson (2005)
Slow Man - J M Coetzee (2005)
On Beauty - Zadie Smith (2005)
Saturday - Ian McEwan (2005)
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka (2005)
Measuring The World - Daniel Kehlmann (2005)
The Accidental - Ali Smith (2005)
History of Love - Nicole Krauss (2005)---read ~2007
Mother's Milk - Edward St Aubyn (2006)
Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon (2006)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid (2006)
The Inheritance Of Loss - Kiran Desai (2006)
The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell (2006)
Carry Me Down - M J Hyland (2006)
Animal's People - Indra Sinha (2007)
Falling Man - Don DeLillo (2007)
Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2007)
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz (2007)
The Gathering - Anne Enright (2007)
The Elegance Of The Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery (2008)---abandoned 6/16/2017
Cost: A Novel - Roxana Robinson (2008)
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (2008)
Home - Marilynne Robinson (2008)
Kieron Smith, Boy - James Kelman (2008)
The Children's Book - A S Byatt (2009)
Invisible - Paul Auster (2009)
American Rust - Philipp Meyer (2009)
The Blind Side Of The Heart - Julia Franck (2009)
Cain - Jose Saramago (2009)
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore (2009)
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami (2010)
Nemesis - Philip Roth (2010)
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen (2010)
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan (2010)
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes (2011)
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
There but for the - Ali Smith (2011)
Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach (2011)

Friday, December 30, 2016

This Week's New (To Me) Books and a Rare Find

Yesterday afternoon, Jamie and I spent some time together while the teens babysat. I'd been wanting to check out a local bookstore that I'd heard was awesome {it was} and he wanted to pick up some supplies for making me a hat {also awesome}. I found several neat old books to add to my collection, as well as a couple newly published ones that looked interesting.

My best find of the day was this rare first edition of Grace Livingston Hill's Marcia Schuyler. Livingston Hill's books are already special to me as I remember my Grammy Annabelle giving me tons of them in the years before she passed away. She's been gone about 12 years now and ignorant me didn't realize the preciousness of the stories she was trying to share with me. Now I'm on a mission to collect as many as I can.

Though this copy was published in 1908, it was gifted to "Sadye" from Jessie Milne on Nov. 24, 1912.  There are no other inscriptions inside. The binding is pretty good but it's obviously been well read and loved as there are lots of spots and a few tears throughout.

According to the Grace Livingston Hill site, this is a true first edition and a rare copy---and is likely worth over $100. I bought it for $7. Exciting! I love having a valuable collection---but you'll never see me selling them!

I was immediately intrigued when I saw this title, Tour of the World by Jules Verne. Hmmm....sounds familiar! Yes, turns out this is an early translation of what most of us know as Around the World in Eighty Days.

This copy was likely published around 1900. There's a whole ton of neat versions of this book here.

Next up is a Home Economics text book from 1935: The Mode in Dress and Home by Dulcie G. Donovan. I've only skimmed through a few pages but I think there's going to be a lot of great stuff in here.

One thing I'm excited about is there are lots of detailed instructions about sizing a pattern up or down, as well as drafting one's own sewing pattern. Fun!

This book, Little Ships by Kathleen Norris, caught my eye because I recognized the author as the same who wrote one of my cherished books, Mother. My friend Jennie found Mother in a bookshop and had it republished by Vision Forum. I'd love to see so many of these beautiful antique books republished! 

From Wikipedia: "Kathleen Norris was a popular American novelist and newspaper columnist. She was one of the most widely read and highest paid female writers in the United States for nearly fifty years, from 1911 to 1959. Her stories appeared in the Atlantic, The American Magazine, McClure's, Everybody's, Ladies' Home Journal and Woman's Home Companion, and she wrote 93 novels, many of which were best sellers. She used her fiction to promote values including the sanctity of marriage, the nobility of motherhood, and the importance of service to others." You can find more of her story here.

This copy is from 1925 and is also a first edition. It's inscribed with the name, Mrs. Loula W. Robinson, Meridian, Miss. and features the name of the book shop where it was likely purchased at some point: Paragon Book Store. The only info I could find on that store was a conversation between some alumni from the local high school's class of 1950-ish.

J.R. Miller published Home-Making in 1882 and it was revived by Vision Forum in 2001. It's been on my wishlist for a long time so I was happy to find a copy for just $1.00 at the bookshop.

Finally, this book called Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World by David J. Kent. Jamie has always been infatuated with Edison's discoveries and inventions so I think of him whenever I see something on Edison. We stopped at Barnes and Noble before dinner and I came out with just this one book! Yay me!

The photos and illustrations inside are amazing. It's going to be a great read!

There was a companion book on Tesla, as well. I should have grabbed it!

It's got a fun sort of Steampunkish feel to it. Hope Lynzie doesn't rob it from me!

Hope you're getting in some great reading on this holiday weekend! I'm just about ready to begin!

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis -- Book Review

When I was in the 8th grade, I moved to a small town in Eastern Oregon called Baker City. There was one thing for teens to do in the evenings in that little town and that was to attend the one room Eltrym movie theater. (Eltrym being the original owner's wife's name backwards---Myrtle). Because this was a small town with a small theater, the owner could, or maybe just would, only afford one film a week. Sometimes he would actually play the same film for weeks at a time---months, even. Therefore, I can probably recite from memory anything that came out between about 1991 and 1994 and wasn't rated R. 

One movie that stands out to me from that time was the 1993 film, Sommersby, with Richard Gere and Jodi Foster. The story just touched me so much and I cried every time I saw it---even when I saw it three times in a weekend! Little did I know, it was based on the true 16th century story of Martin Guerre.


Martin and Bertrande are wed very young at the insistence of their families and it takes awhile before Bertrande learns to love her husband. Just when all is going well, Martin disappears and is gone for eight years. Assuming herself abandoned or widowed, Bertrande is as shocked as everyone else when Martin returns after having served in a war. Almost immediately, Bertrande is uncomfortable and doubting the identity of this man everyone else believes is Martin, yet she spends a year living as his wife and bearing him a child. Soon, her guilt begins to gnaw at her and she begins to despise him. She goes so far as to have him put to trial in an attempt to rid herself of this reminder of her adultery and willingness to sin. The story takes a turn when another man claiming to be Martin arrives on the scene.

I read through this book in a little less than two hours last night. It's a simple read told in a partly fable, partly documentary, straightforward sort of way. The reading of it was probably made simpler by the fact that I know the story so well and I found it humorous that I read it imagining a mixed-up setting of 16th century France and the film's American Civil War rendition.

I can't imagine the tragic struggle that Bertrande faced in the pursuit of her own honor and soul's rest. I imagine she often felt as mad as everyone was making her out to be. The part that really touched me was when she went to confession and thought, at first, that the priest believed her and sympathized---only to find that he would not take her seriously. That crushing aloneness must have been terrifying. 

Let me know if you're able to find a copy of the story and what your thoughts are. It's a rich way to spend a couple of hours of an evening.


Have you joined the 2017 Victorian Reading Challenge? Make sure to check it out and sign up!

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Victorian Reading Challenge 2017 -- Taking Sign Ups!


I spent the first part of this year reading everything "Victorian" I could get my hands on. About half way through, things got crazy and I had very few opportunities to read. (I did get a book published, though! woop woop!) This year, I'm renewing my commitment toward Victorian studies. I'm still fascinated and there's still so much to learn!

More than any other time in modern history, the Victorian Age saw the most change to European and American societies. Many agrarian, rural communities transitioned to urban centers of industry. Men and women began to talk about and take steps toward redefining their traditional roles. Theories about God, the origin of man, and the practice of religion began to be publicly put forth, challenged, refuted, or solidified. The Victorian Age saw a great revolution in the western world and it's a topic that fascinates me endlessly.

Over the past couple years, I've collected a good stack of Victorian novels and have several on my Christmas list. I spent a week in England in September visiting the Brontes old stomping grounds, and even wrote and taught a class on Victorian Sci Fi and Fantasy literature. This year's reading challenge will be all about the Victorians.

The Rules

Books published during the Victorian age (1837-1901) are acceptable.

Books written about the Victorian age are acceptable, no matter what year they were published.

Stories are not limited to Victorian Britain. Read about what was going on in other parts of the world during this time!

The challenge is open to everyone everywhere---you don't have to have a blog or site to join. Just comment with the link to your online review (Amazon, Goodreads, BookCrossing, or elsewhere) and we'll come visit you.

How to Join

Leave a comment below letting me know you're in and add your blog link if you have one. You can link directly to your home page or to a post you've written about the challenge.

Add the code in the box below to your own site to advertise the challenge so your friends can join too!

Let's Work Together

I'll be putting together a list of books I plan to read for this challenge and will link it here when I'm done. I'd love to hear about your plans for this challenge so let me know in the comments below! Also, if you know of other great reading challenges to join, I'd love to hear about them!


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