2008 Short Story Challenge

I need my head examined. Didn't I say just yesterday that the two (two!!) challenges I joined yesterday would be it? Here's my new thinking: I'm going to join 100 challenges this year. That should cover any other lapses in judgment I may have over the next 11 months. :-) As if I need to explain myself to other book addicts, here is my reason for joining the Short Story Challenge: Sometimes a person just wants to read something really short. Enough said.

Since I'm a short story extreme novice, I will choose Option #1 -- 10 short stories by 10 different authors. I won't include the Edgar Allan Poe story I read earlier this month, as I was not officially in the Challenge at the time. I will, however, list the ones I read here:

Completed: 10/10 as of Dec.. 21, 2008 **FINISHED**

1. "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison
2. "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield
3. "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted" by Elizabeth Berg
4. "God Sees The Truth But Waits" by Leo Tolstoy
5. "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner
6. "Up In Michigan" by Ernest Hemingway
7. "The Destructors" by Graham Greene
8. "A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty
9. "Blue Winds Dancing" by Tom Whitecloud
10. "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain

This will be fun!!
Lezlie

2008 Pub Challenge

OK. This is it. My last challenge for the year. (Now you can laugh. . .) At least 8 books published in 2008. The cool part? I plan on all audiobooks so I can keep up with some of the authors and series I've read that are still currently publishing. The list may change depending on what is actually released. Sadly, publishing omniscience is not one of my fortes. Wouldn't that be cool if it was, though? :-)

**FINISHED**

Completed: 8/8 as of July 8, 2008

The Serpent's Tale -- Ariana Franklin
The Devil's Bones -- Jefferson Bass
The Road To Cana -- Anne Rice
The Romanov Bride -- Robert Alexander
Compulsion -- Jonathan Kellerman
Mistress of the Sun -- Sandra Gulland
Stealing Athena -- Karen Essex
The Aviary Gate -- Katie Hickman

Potentials:

The Broken Window -- Jeffery Deaver
Phantom Prey -- John Sandford
Killer View -- Ridley Pearson
Revelation -- C.J. Sansom
Chasing Darkness -- Robert Crais
Devil's Bones -- Kathy Reichs

I'm thinking I might need to host a challenge next year. I'll call it The "Finish Your Challenges from Last Year" Challenge. Ha!

Lezlie

2008 Chunkster Challenge

OK. I'm in. I have a rational reason though! Stop snickering. I really do have a rational reason. This will not add any new books to my list. It will only give me another reason to read the bigger ones that are on there instead of only picking up the smaller ones for a quick finish. The rules are at least 4 books of a minimum of 450 pages. My choices are:

Completed: 3/4 as of August 13, 2008

The Borgia Bride -- Jeanne Kalogridis
The Courts of Love -- Jean Plaidy
Mistress of the Revolution -- Catherine Delors
The Queen's Lady -- Barbara Kyle

There. Now I have to read them! :-)

Keep warm everyone!
Lezlie

WORLD WITHOUT END by Ken Follett

This book is the sequel to Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which is one of my favorite books of all time. World Without End takes place about 200 years after Pillars, and is the story of the descendants of the builders of the cathedral and founders of the town. It's a huge book (as is Pillars) , but it's never boring. There isn't even a good way to quickly sum up what it is about. So much happens in 1000+ pages that all I can say is, "Hang on to your hats!"

What I really love about these books is that the author is not afraid to let bad things happen to good people. And believe me, a lot of bad stuff happens: Successful families topple, peasants lose what little they have, evil lords wreak havoc, unscrupulous monks yield to ambition. (Readers beware: There are a couple of rapes in the book and while not terribly graphic, they are disturbing.) Not that I'm a scholar on medieval life, but it all seemed very realistic to me. It was a hard existence back then. Not that I want bad stuff to happen to good characters, but it keeps you on the edge of your seat never being certain that everything is really going to be all right. And the bad guys don't always pay. But when they do, it is, oh, so satisfying. . . I sound a bit blood thirsty, don't I? Sorry about that. I do find myself getting emotionally caught up in the lives of these characters even after the last page is turned. Just for the record, a lot of good stuff happens, too. And it will be all you can do to not cheer out loud. I, however, was not able to maintain, and I whooped with joy. Thankfully, I was listening to it in my car, and no one was any the wiser. :-)

Have I at least intrigued some of you even though I've told you nothing? I hope so. It's a big commitment to read these, but I truly believe you will not find the time wasted. I listened to the unabridged audio version on my commute, and found it was a great way to not only fit another enormous book into my reading schedule (I was also reading War & Peace at the time), but I almost wished for a traffic jam!

Lezlie

AMERICAN YOUTH by Phil LaMarche

When a gun accident in a small but growing town leaves one kid dead, the community deals with the aftermath while emotions boil over.

This book was listed as one of the Best of 2007 in Bookmarks Magazine. I'm not sure what I think of this one. While it was kind of interesting, I felt strangely detached from the book. I never found a character to love and cheer for, or even one to hate for that matter. The book has some great scenes depicting rural v. suburban life, adolescent angst, misguided political fanaticism, and differing but equally understandable views about guns and gun control. There is a lot here, but I never really felt it. Could just be me. When it comes to books about angry teenagers, I find myself fearing hideous, gratuitous violence, usually directed at animals, to prove how "bad" a character is. I probably steeled myself a little too well for this possibility. Fortunately, the author is not one to go the cheap route, and my fears never materialized. (Thank you, Mr. LaMarche!) The downside is that the parts that I maybe would have been more moved by under normal circumstances went by all but unnoticed while I waited for the hammer to fall.

Once I have a chance to see if I find myself mulling over American Youth as time goes by, I think there may be a good chance I will discover it made more of an impression on me than I thought it did.

Lezlie

Wolves Update

Awesome game last night! The team with the best record in the NBA (Celtics) v. the worst (T-Wolves), and we lost by one point in the last seconds of the game. My boys were right there with them the whole time and nearly came away with the victory. Next time, guys! You have your chance to pay them back in two weeks, and Peter and I will be there cheering you on!

Speaking of being there, our sales guy is giving us courtside seats for tomorrow's game against the NJ Nets!!!!! One of his season ticket holders can't make the game, so he's passing them on to us as a gesture of appreciation for supporting the team during rebuilding. How cool is that??

Go Wolves!!

In the meantime, I finished up American Youth and will be starting Mrs. Dalloway this afternoon. Reviews coming right up!

Lezlie

THE COMPLETE FABLES by Aesop

I loved Aesop's fables as a kid, and I thought it would be great fun to go back and read them now as an adult. I chose the Penguin Classics version and my plan was to read them bit by bit. So much for that plan. I read the whole things in about 2 nights. I have to say the stories are not near as enchanting when they're not being rendered for children. Straight translation tends to leave out a bit of the magic. However, it was still entertaining to see many familiar tales again. You still grin and shake your head when the Raven loses her meal to the flattering Mr. Fox. And "The Travelers and the Bear" is very cute!

There are certain advantages to the PG versions of the Fables. I'm pretty sure my favorite line would never have shown up in Little Golden Books. (You'll have to read "The Lion and the Ass Go Hunting Together" for that one. . . )

Overall, while most of the stories are simplistic and many are just plain odd to our modern sensibilities, and the morals written to go with them are usually pretty silly, there is a lot of wisdom to be found between the smiles.

Lezlie

Triple 8 Challenge

The object of the Challenge is to pick 8 categories of your choosing and read 8 books in each of those categories in 2008. I opted for no cross-overs within this Challenge*, but most of them are included in other Challenges and Projects. Here is my list:

11/22/08 -- What a mess I've made here! In order to focus on other Challenges with a better chance of not making my head hurt, I am officially abandoning this challenges as of today. I've signed up for the 2009 version, The Countdown Challenge, which is a nice straight-forward plan that I can't wreck with topical indecision. See you there!

Completed: 17/64 as of Nov. 19, 2008

1. Jean Plaidy's "Queens of England":

The Courts of Love
The Queen's Secret
The Reluctant Queen
The Lady In The Tower
The Rose Without A Thorn
In The Shadow of the Crown
Queen of this Realm
Loyal In Love

2. Agatha Christie Mysteries:

Cards On The Table
Dumb Witness
Death On The Nile
Murder In The Mews
Appointment With Death
Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None

3. Christoper Moore v. Tom Robbins:

Practical Demonkeeping -- Christopher Moore
Coyote Blue -- Christopher Moore
Island of the Sequined Love Nun -- Christopher Moore
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove -- Christopher Moore
Another Roadside Attraction -- Tom Robbins
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues -- Tom Robbins
Still Life With Woodpecker -- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume -- Tom Robbins

4. I, Me, My (1st Person POV):

The Historian -- Elizabeth Kostova
The Borgia Bride -- Jeanne Kalogridis
The Queen of Subtleties -- Suzannah Dunn
In The Company of the Courtesan -- Sarah Dunant
Junky -- William S. Burroughs
The Praise Singer -- Mary Renault
I, Claudius -- Robert Graves
Tides of War -- Steven Pressfield

5. Bookmarks Magazine's Best of 2007:

American Youth -- Phil LaMarche
What Is The What -- David Eggers
In The Country of Men -- Hisham Matar
Nada -- Carmen Laforet
Then We Came To The End -- Joshua Ferris
Black Girl/White Girl -- Joyce Carol Oates
After Dark -- Haruki Murakami
The Raw Shark Texts -- Steven Hall

6. Penguin Classics:

The Power & The Glory -- Graham Greene
The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -- Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain
Petals of Blood -- Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Theresa Raquin -- Emile Zola
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- James Joyce

7. Barnes & Noble Classics:

Siddhartha -- Herman Hesse
Beowulf -- Anonymous
Pride & Prejudice -- Jane Austen
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz -- L. Frank Baum
Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Narrative of an American Slave -- Frederick Douglass
The Jungle -- Upton Sinclair
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde -- Robert Louis Stevenson

8. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die:

Things Fall Apart -- Chinua Achebe
Time's Arrow -- Martin Amis
The Master & Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov
The Old Man & The Sea -- Ernest Hemingway
Cry, The Beloved Country -- Alan Paton**
A Farewell To Arms -- Ernest Hemingway
Memoirs of Hadrian -- Marguerite Yourcenar
Zeno's Conscience -- Italo Svevo

Whew. Polish up those reading glasses!
Lezlie

Added 5/5/2008:

Possible alternate catagories:

Tudor England:

The Lady In The Tower by Jean Plaidy
Rose Without A Thorn by Jean Plaidy
In The Shadow of the Crown by Jean Plaidy
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson
The Concubine by Norah Lofts
The Other Queen by Phillipa Gregory

Historical England:

Duchess by Susan Holloway Scott
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
The Conqueror by Georgette Heyer
??
??
??
??
??

Library Books:

The Crusader -- Michael Alexander Eisner
Travels In The Scriptorium -- Paul Auster
Allah Is Not Obliged -- Ahmadou Kourouma
The Romanov Bride -- Robert Alexander
The Swallows of Kabul -- Yasmina Khadra
The Nature of Monsters -- Clare Clark
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters -- Julian Barnes
The Rossetti Letter -- Christi Phillips

Audio Books:

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King
Roots by Alex Haley
Heat Lightning by John Sandford
Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs
??
??

Non-Fiction:

John Adams by David McCullough
His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank
When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? by George Carlin
When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Naked by David Sedaris

Advance Reader Copies

Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland
Stealing Athena by Karen Essex
My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes
The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner
The Queen's Lady by Barbara Kyle
The Tsarina's Daughter by Carolly Erickson
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman


Published in 2008

The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman
Phantom Prey by John Sandford
Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors
The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver
Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais
Killer View by Ridley Pearson


* As the year progressed, I realized that this was terribly unrealistic. There are cross-overs included now, but not too many.
** Changed selection on 1/26/08 as I found I may not be able to aquire a copy of my original selection of Exercises In Style by Raymond Queneau. If I do get my hands on a copy, I will still try to read it this year.

Wolves Win! Wolves Win!

Yaaahoooooo!! !! A BIG win over the Phoenix Suns!! That's two in a row for my beloved Minnesota Timberwolves!! It's been a rough year, so we're basking in any and all success!! :-) Next up: KG and the Boston Celtics on Friday. Go Wolves!!

OK. Off my basketball soapbox and back to books.

For a while there I wondered why people said things like, "I can't believe I'm joining yet another challenge." I get it now. I'm about to take the plunge into the Triple 8. Yikes. But I've reached the conclusion that these challenges are the only way I will deviate meaningfully from the 1001 Books Project and make room on some of these shelves. I wrote up my Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of all my Challenges (Go ahead. Laugh. I did.), and I'm pretty sure I'm biting off quite a bit more than I can chew. I'm going for it though. Why not? Life is short. Make ridiculously enormous plans! :-) I've never planned my reading for an entire year before, so we'll see how this goes. I've left open spots for 8 impulsive "1001 Books", so I have a little bit of wiggle room in case I start feeling rebellious.

Wish me luck, and good luck to all of you!
Lezlie

2008 TBR Challenge

I promised myself (and Peter) that if I decided to commit to these reading challenges, I would use the opportunity to clean off some of my "to be read" shelves rather than just to create reasons to go to the bookstore. I hesitated on the actual TBR Challenge only because I was so focused on the 1001 Books Project. But there are more books in the world! (And on my shelves . . .) Therefore, here we go:

** FINISHED **
Completed: List 7/12, Alternates: 5/12 as of Dec. 23, 2008

The List:

The Orchard Keeper -- Cormac McCarthy
Mrs. Dalloway -- Virginia Woolf
Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller
The Power & The Glory -- Graham Greene
Beowulf -- Anonymous
Things Fall Apart -- Chinua Achebe
The Courts of Love -- Jean Plaidy
The Historian -- Elizabeth Kostova
The Borgia Bride -- Jeanne Kalogridis
The Praise Singer -- Mary Renault
I, Claudius -- Robert Graves
Tides of War -- Steven Pressfield

Alternates:

Light In August -- William Faulkner
Outer Dark --Cormac McCarthy
Shindler's List -- Thomas Keneally
Petals of Blood -- Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Siddhartha -- Herman Hesse
Cry, The Beloved Country -- Alan Paton
The Queen's Secret -- Jean Plaidy
In The Company Of The Courtesan -- Sarah Dunant
The Queen of Subtleties -- Suzannah Dunn
Practical Demonkeeping -- Christopher Moore
Another Roadside Attraction -- Tom Robbins
Cards On The Table -- Agatha Christie

Some apply to the 1001, some I've had sitting around forever and it's time to make room for a new batch. :-) I'm also considering the 888 Challenge to help clear my backlog. Hmmmmm. . .

I'm in!
Lezlie

NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro

What if cancer and many other diseases could be cured, but the method is so heinous it would be kept from not only the general public but from the donors themselves? Where do you draw the moral line between the health of yourself and your loved ones and the life of another being? This book paints a ghastly portrait of the lengths to which some will go and how ignorant we can choose to be. It's done in so beautiful a prose that even though you suspect the disturbing truth, you can lie to yourself all the way to the end. But deep down, you do know. And you are forced to examine your own hypocrisy.

I still am not sure how to answer some of the questions I asked myself when I put the book down. And I didn't like my answers to some of the others. I appear to have some work to do to bring my actions in line with what I profess to believe. Ignorance really is bliss. Or is it?

This book reminded me a lot of The Handmaid's Tale. Not the story itself, but how it was written. I enjoy first person point of view, and there is something very appealing about being spoken to as if you understand all the odd terminology and then finding out whether or not your assumptions were correct or not. However, not all questions are definitively answered by the end of Never Let Me Go. I think that's what makes it so powerful. I don't rate books, but I have a feeling this is one that I'll be thinking about for a long time to come.

Lezlie

Other reviews of this book:

From Writer2B

For a different point of view, see John's review at Book Mine Set (Part I and Part II). Just so you know, there are some spoilers there. He also has links in his comments to more blog reviews. Happy exploring!

And here is a review from Chartroose at Bloody Hell, It's A Book Barrage that includes some great humor. (Not to mention that the Monty Python photo in the header always makes me smile!)

WAR & PEACE by Leo Tolstoy

Too bad I didn't enter the Chunkster Challenge. . .

I read War & Peace for absolutely the most ignoble of reasons: Just to be able to say I did. Like any of my friends were actually going to be impressed. For most of them, my quest only proved my literary insanity. They are entitled to their opinion. I think they're jealous. Not. :-)

Seriously though, I expected a slow, difficult experience. Imagine my surprise, nearly glee, when I discovered I genuinely liked the book and cared for many of the characters. I felt Andrei's dissapointment when he realized many of his superiors in charge of the army had no clue what was happening in reality. I cheered for Pierre in his quest to find meaning in his privileged existence. I admired Marya's stoicism. The philosophic passages more than once stopped me in my tracks to reread their insights.

Yes, it's really long (1350+ pages). No, I will not run around recommending it to everyone I meet. But I will say this: In my humble opinion, for the person who approaches this classic with respect and an open mind, there is a gold mine of observations about people, life, death, dreams, remorse, success, failure, and, yes, war and peace that is unrivaled in modern literature.

Peace~
Lezlie

PS I do admit to trouble with the Epilogue, Part II. That is the longest 50 pages I ever read. . . :-)

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

I don't know what we did in high school English class. Apparently we didn't read books, because all of the things everyone seems to have read in high school, I missed out on. I say this, because whenever I mentioned to anyone I know that I was reading Brave New World, the response was always, "Didn't you have to read that in high school?" Same for Animal Farm, Catcher In The Rye, Huckleberry Finn, the list goes on. OK, missing Huck Finn was my own fault. I just plain didn't read it when it was assigned. But I remember that *because* we didn't have that many assigned. I must have thought, "We never read anything else. Why should I read this?"

Anyway, I digress. The lack of required reading in my high school English education was not the point of this post.

Brave New World is every bit as disturbing as it was meant to be. I loved the last 50+ pages, when the Controller explains to John, the Savage, the philosophy behind "civilization", where all needs are met with the press of a button or the pop of a pill and desires are carefully controlled via early "conditioning". It's hard to believe this book was written over 70 years ago. (It was published in 1932.) Much of it made me think of today's society and how we think we should have everything we want "right now" with a minimum of effort, how our lives should be geared simply toward overabundance of comfort and convenience in one form or another. Yet even though it appears many people's actions strive only to achieve personal success, comfort, and that elusive state of "happiness", misery and unrest seems more prevalent than ever.

This is one of my favorite quotes from Brave New World. The Controller is explaining to John why the lives of the "civilized" are so devoid of, well, life:

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

Perhaps "too much" is its own brand of poverty and "enough" is that for which we should seek. Or even a little bit of personal sacrifice.

Here's to enough~
Lezlie

Book Reviews In General

Now that I've started to get a handle on things, I've begun to post reviews of books I've read. I don't really think "review" is the correct word to use, but lacking a more descriptive prospect off the top of my head, I'll just go with it. I'm not a critic, I'm not a literature major, I'm not an aspiring writing. I'm just a big fan of books. I don't really plan on posting "reviews" so much as simply my thoughts on the books, whether I liked them or not, and who else may enjoy them. I won't be rating them as my feelings on books tend to change as time goes on. I can never really tell if a book deserves a personal 4 or 5 star rating until long afer I've read it. It's only then that the truly memorable reveal themselves. Some may find my musings helpful or interesting, others may not. Fair enough. If I can help even just a few fellow readers discover a new favorite they may have otherwise missed, I'll call it a job well done!

Happy reading everyone!
Lezlie

Bookstore v. Library

I'm not a big advocate of American "bigger, better, more" consumerism, a topic I'm sure will get me on my soapbox periodically, but when it comes to bookstores, I can barely control myself. In fact, I've pretty much stopped trying. Thankfully, Peter is very understanding.

When I started the "1001 Books" project, the big question was: Own or borrow? I started out with borrow, then my "book collector" gene kicked in. I don't smoke, I don't really drink, I'm not much of a fashionista. . . Correction: I'm not *at all* a fashionista. My free $$$ goes to my pets and my book collection. Don't get me wrong. I visit the library about once a week for audiobooks and all the murder mysteries I'll most likely never read again. I love browsing the shelves and checking out books I'm curious about. But Borders and Barnes & Noble are always happy to see me. It's supposed to be sub-zero all weekend here in the frozen tundra with hideous wind chills reaching -25. Brrrrr! That was enough reason to make me weekly bookstore trip last night and pick up 4 more "1001" titles:

Cry, The Beloved Country
The Thin Man
Red Harvest
Things Fall Apart

Barnes & Noble also has a "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" sale on their Barnes & Noble Classics. That little sale cost me a fortune last summer!! :-)

I predict a weekend of hot tea, warm blankets and great reading! (And hopefully a win for the Timberwolves! Hooowwwwlllllll! Go Wolves!)

Have a warm weekend, everyone!
Lezlie

TIMBUKTU by Paul Auster

When I first began investigating the list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" to see if it was really something I wanted to make a project out of, I randomly started looking up books I'd never heard of before on Amazon. Timbuktu was the first one I selected. With my love of dogs, it was absolutely fate which made that decision for me. It is about a dog. In fact, it's told from the point of view of said dog, Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is owned by a homeless man, Willy Christmas, who is dying, and they both know that Mr. Bones needs to find a new master before Willy's time runs out.

As Willy and Mr. Bones travel their final days together searching for one of Willy's former high school teachers, Mr. Bones thinks about the years they have spent together and when the end for Willy finally comes, Mr. Bones takes all the lessons he's learned and sets out for his uncertain future.

That's all the specifics I'll tell you about the story. All I'll say further is that isn't the end. There's more. And it's worth every single Kleenex you'll use getting to the end. It's been a long, long time since a book got me that emotional. I tend to shy away from animal books, because, quite frankly, I can't handle it. But I'm very glad I took the chance with this one. It's not happy, but it's not completely sad either. I can't describe it properly. I laughed, I had moments of deep introspection, and I had a great soul-cleansing sob-fest with our dogs when it was all over. I would absolutely recommend this book, but don't forget to have that hanky handy.

And don't forget that things aren't always what they seem to be on the outside . . .

Lezlie

Bookmarks "Best of 2007"

In the Booksmarks Dec./Nov. 2007 issue, they listed books that received some of the best overall reviews of 2007. One of my goals for 2008 is to read at least 10 books off the "literature" section of that list, not including the one I already read. Here is the complete list, and I will link the ones I decide to read to my reviews for them:

11/22/08 -- I have no excuse. I forgot all about this personal challenge. As of today, I am officially abandoning it and will use many of these titles for the 2007 section of the Countdown Challenge. See you there!

Completed: 3/10 as of May 18, 2008

The Aneid by Fagles Translation 5
After Dark by Haruki Murakami 4½
Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon 4½
American Youth by Phil LaMarche 5
Black Girl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates 4
I'll Steal You Away by Niccolo Ammaniti 4
In The Country Of Men by Hisham Matar 4
Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon 4
*Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin 4
My Holocaust by Tova Reich 4½
Nada by Carmen Laforet 5
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult 4½
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski 4½
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson 4
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall 4½
Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris 4
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini 4½
What Is The What by Dave Eggers 4½

* Already read. Great book!!

The "rating" number following each book is from Booksmarks. They look at a number of reviews of the same books from different sources and then give an average. It's one of the aspects of the magazine that I really like. It's not just one opinion.

Happy Reading!
Lezlie

2008 A-Z Reading Challenge

As long as I've jumped in already, why not make it two official challenges? You can catch the details of this challenge from the "Official Reading Challenge Sites" link in my side bar. I will keep track of my personal progress here, easily accessed by the "My Challenges" sidebar link. I'm having way too much fun with all of this!!

Lezlie

2/1/08 -- I made my spreadsheet to organize myself now that I've committed to so many Challenges, so I can now list nearly everything I plan to read. I'm undecided about a Q author at the moment. Amanda Quick and Daniel Quinn are the current front-runners. Thankfully, I don't have to decide right now. :-)

11/22/08 -- I've made the executive decision to abandon this challenge. I could fill in a lot more letters right now with what I've read, but I know I won't do "X". I'm just not interested. Nothing personal, X. It's not you, it's me. :-) I just have some other challenges I want to finish up instead. This one has been fun, but I don't think I'll pick it up for 2009. There are a bunch of there Challenges I want to try instead. I may come back to it some other year though!

Completed: 26/52 as of August 11, 2008
Finished books are linked to my review

BY AUTHOR:

A -- Aesop (The Complete Fables)
B -- Burroughs, William S. (Junky)
C -- Christie, Agatha (Hercule Poirot's Christmas)
D -- Dunn, Suzannah (The Queen of Subtleties)
E -- Eisner, Michael Alexander (The Crusader)
F -- Follett, Ken (World Without End)
G -- Grahame, Kenneth (The Wind In The Willows)
H -- Huxley, Aldous (Brave New World)
I -- Ishiguro, Kazuo (Never Let Me Go)
J -- Joyce, James (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
K -- Kostova, Elizabeth (The Historian)
L -- LaMarche, Phil (American Youth)
M -- Milbank, Dana (Homo Politicus)
N -- Naipaul, V.S. (A Bend In The River)
O -- Oates, Joyce Carol (Black Girl/White Girl)
P -- Proust, Marcel (Swann's Way)
Q -- Quinn, Daniel (After Dachau)
R -- Ryman, Geoff (Was)
S -- Stevenson, Robert Louis (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde)
T -- Thiong'o, Ngugi Wa (Petals of Blood)
U -- Updike, John (Rabbit, Run)
V -- Verne, Jules (Journey to the Center of the Earth)
W -- Woolf, Virginia (Mrs. Dalloway)
X -- Xenophon (The Persian Expedition)
Y -- Yourcenar, Marguerite (Memoirs of Hadrian)
Z -- Zola, Emile (Theresa Raquin)


BY TITLE:

A -- After Dark (Haruki Murakami)
B -- Borgia Bride, The (Jeanne Kalogridis)
C -- Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
D -- The Devil's Bones (Jefferson Bass)
E -- Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (Tom Robbins)
F -- Finn (Jon Clinch)
G -- The Gospel of Judas (Simon Mawer)
H -- A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (Julian Barnes)
I -- In The Company of the Courtesan (Sarah Dunant)
J -- Jungle, The (Upton Sinclair)
K -- King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard)
L -- The Last Wife of Henry VIII (Carolly Erickson)
M -- Mistress of the Revolution (Catherine Delors)
N -- Nada (Carmen Laforet)
O -- Odd Hours (Dean Koontz)
P -- Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Oscar Wilde)
Q -- Queen's Secret, The (Jean Plaidy)
R -- The Romanov Bride (Robert Alexander)
S -- Swallows of Kabul, The (Yasmina Khadra)
T -- Timbuktu (Paul Auster)
U -- Untouchable, The (John Banville)
V -- Virgin Suicides, The (Jeffrey Eugenides)
W -- Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The (L. Frank Baum)
X -- X-Wing: Rogue Squadron (Michael Stackpole)
Y -- Youth (J.M. Coetzee)
Z -- Zeno's Conscience (Italo Svevo)

2008 Decades Reading Challenge

OK. I've changed my mind. And anyone who knows me gets pretty used to that in a hurry!

I've decided to plunge in and officially sign up for the Decades Reading Challenge. I don't know why this makes me nervous. It can't be the commitment to read. Making reading lists is pretty much a necessary life function for me. Kind of like breathing. A girl has to have goals, right? :-) It's probably just this newness to the whole blogging world.

So here's the Official List. Books I've finished are in bold.

CHALLENGE COMPLETED!!!
Completed: 8/8 as of May 13, 2008

1860s
Journey To The Center of the Earth
Jules Verne

1870s
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain

1880s
King Solomon's Mines
H. Rider Haggard

1890s
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

1900s
The Wind In The Willows
Kenneth Grahame

1910s
Swann's Way
Marcel Proust

1920s
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

1930s
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley

Most of these are also on the "1001 Books" list also. That will help with my goal of 50 for this year on that project.

Good luck everyone!
Lezlie

Agatha Christie Mystery Project

This reading project is pretty simple. Read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries. Not too tough, right? Ha. There are, I believe, over 90 books, so this should keep me busy for a while! The nice thing about Agatha Christie is the books are fun, quick, interesting, and a wonderful break from heavier reading. I will update this list as I read and link it to the main page. Just FYI -- the list I'm working from was obtained at the Official Online Home of Agatha Christie. Unfortunately, I don't think the List by Publication Date is available there anymore. Bummer. Thankfully, I printed it out a couple of years ago. As I read them, I will keep the listing in proper publication order according to the information I have. Also, I'm focusing on the ones that were published in the U.S.

I've read the books that are in bold. The ones for which I have written a review are linked.

Updated: December 26, 2008

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2. The Secret Adversary
3. The Murder on the Links
4. The Man in the Brown Suit
5. Poirot Investigates
6. The Secret of Chimneys
7. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
8. The Mystery of the Blue Train
9. The Seven Dials Mystery
10. Partners In Crime
11. The Mysterious Mr. Quin
12. The Murder at the Vicarage
13. The Sittaford Myster
14. Peril At End House
15. The Thirteen Problems
16. Lord Edgeware Dies
17. Murder On The Orient Express
18. Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
19. Parker Pyne Investigates
20. Three-Act Tragedy
21. Death In The Clouds
22. The A.B.C. Murders
23. Murder In Mesopotamia
24. Cards On The Table
25. Dumb Witness
26. Death On The Nile
27. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
28. Evil Under The Sun
29. N or M?
30. The Body In The Library
31. The Moving Finger
32. Death Comes As The End
33. The Labors of Hercules
34. Crooked House
35. They Came To Baghdad

Have a good day!
Lezlie

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I define a "reading challenge" as something I intend to finish within a 12 month period or less. A "reading project" may or may not have a deadline, but it will definitely be something I work on for more than a year.

I have chosen "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" to be such a project. I know there has been a lot of discussion about this list/book and the books which have or have not been included. My feelings are this: Every single person or group of people who compiled a list such as this one would compile a different one, and none of them are wrong. It's an opinion. As I explored the possibilities of this particular version (1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, General Editor Peter Boxall), I found myself attracted to the huge amount of post-1900 books that were on it. I haven't read many modern "literature" novels, and I was fascinated with title after title and author after author I had never heard of or had passed over on the shelves of the bookstore. Will I agree with every choice that was included? Probably not. But I look at this list as a great opportunity to vastly broaden my personal reading horizons. As I type this, I plan on reading every book on the list. It remains to be seen if that remains the goal as I work my way through. In the meantime, I have already discovered some gems that I would have totally missed had I not discovered this list/book. Maybe someday I'll make my own list of 1001! How fun would that be?!

Happy Reading!
Lezlie


78 Read as of September 25, 2009

**Books I have read are in bold type**

Pre-1700s 1700s 1800s 1900s 2000s

2000s

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia – George Saunders

1900s

Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Amongst Women – John McGahern
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
London Fields – Martin Amis
The Book of Evidence – John Banville
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow
V. – Thomas Pynchon
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Junky – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man (Survival In Auschwitz) – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Counterfeiters – André Gide
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s

Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s

Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Pamela – Samuel Richardson
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700s

Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus