1001 books you must read before you die....

Middlesex!

2008-06-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Of all joys the most blessed: I found Middlesex! One day I just walked into the library, resolved to just get my Sandman fix and leave without looking, and there it was on a special stand.

It was worth the trauma. I didn't really know what to expect - the book had attracted me on the fluidity of its writing, and this continued to impress me. It was a very easy read - in the way that Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo is an easy read. They might be long, but the words just zip off the page in a way more concice novelists such as Jane Austen don't. In other words, I could skim read it - and I got through the tome in two four hour sessions.

There was something necessarily artificial about its history - the scenes such as Smyrna or the race riots were convincingly written, but as soon as we got to a subject I knew something about, I saw through the trick at once. I've been to Ellis Island, and his description matched almost line by line the guided tour we took. But that isn't necessarily a great crime.

The most striking thing about this book was its sense of culture. Cal is on the divide between male and female - but she is also a Greek-American, and Eugenides never let us forget it. Hence we get American cars, American race riots, American schools and shops clashing with Greek traditions, names, meals and incessant Homer references. I liked them - not only because they made me feel smug - but in the way they were used. The occasional "sing muse" was basic enough, but the description "wine dark" - always applied to the sea by Homer - was used of a car. I thought that was very impressive - subtle, but also cool. There's this concept of the Great American Novel - a book actually about America itself - and with the generations counting down from 1920 to the 1980s, at times this was what it seemd to be. Wikipedia suggests it is the equivalent of a national epic, which I rather like. It also suggests that Cal's coming of age is intertwined with the saga of her family - I disagree entirely. If anything, Cal is secondary, and the main interest seems to be changing country and the passing times. Maybe it is significant that an adult Cal has chosen to leave her birth country and move from place to place instead.

In many ways it reminded me of Lolita - another classic on The List which zings off the page in a similar style. Nabokov slips subtle literary references all the way through his book - from addressing Lolita as "Miranda" when asking if she remembers an inn, to getting his childhood sweetheart who he knew by the sea mixed up with the poetical figure Annabel-Lee.

Characters? Well, the opening romance between Lefty and Desdemona was adorable, but while the Callie-Obscure Object relationship was filled with all the unfufilled longing of true love, it was all a bit generic.

Incidentally, in looking for some interesting opinions on the book, I found the New York Review of books had said almost the same thing as me: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15794. Which makes it right.

So that's another one down. Right now, I am finishing The Castle of Otranto and Vathek - two gothic novels I have already half-started and got bored with at various times. It didn't help that my English teacher mocked Otranto mercilessly to give us a good idea of what the gothic was when we began to study the genre. I have difficulty taking it seriously now - plus, the absence of speech marks or indents makes skimming it, or reading it at any speed at all, almost impossible. I'm looking forward to Vathek more - it dips into the same stylised hedonism as Picture of Dorian Gray does, and Byron called it his "Bible".

Incidentally, I looked out the cinematic equivalent of this list - 1001 films to see before you die, second edition. I watch films at a prolific rate - for example, I watched three yesterday. I'm 16% done on that, and I've been deliberately watching classic/highbrow movies for several years now...does this mean anything?

It's alive...It's ALIVE!

2008-06-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

I have my exam on the gothic genre next week. Our task is this: to analyse an unseen passage from a gothic text; and then to compare and contrast any two gothic novels in answer to a question. One of which must be Frankenstein (or the Dead School, which I enjoyed but wouldn't want to write on).

That means I get to choose me own for the other. I haven't settled for sure yet. In our mock exam, I still hadn't chosen (and therefore, revised) a book; but I know The Picture of Dorian Gray backwards, and the question ("society creates its own monsters") was irresistable.

Anyway, this is the fruit of my revision this morning. I've skimmed through the first 16 chapters, and it got me athinking...

Frankenstein, or rather Mary Shelley, has a particular compass of vice and virtue. There are repeated scenes of nursing - the highest human virtue seems to be the ability to deny your own needs and emotions for the supply of fellow creatures.

Agatha and Felix go hungry to feed their father. Elizabeth remains cheery after the death of their mother for the sake of cheering them. Justine nursed mother Frankenstein. Mother Frankenstein, Catherine Beaufort, cheerily denied herself for the sake of her ailing father. Clerval nurses our hero when he discovers him ill.

At the opposite end of this scale, the ultimate misery is loneliness. Walton's chief desire on the way to the arctic is to have a buddy; so is the Monster's, and he becomes evil through his lack of friends. Victor is revived by the help of Clerval - there are many more examples within the book I've forgotten.

I sympathise greatly with Frankenstein, despite my teacher's attempt to portray the creature as the hero, just as last year we were supposed to view Dracula as the good guy. I disagree with both - Dracula of the books is certainly a complete villain. The Creature is slightly more sympathetic at times, but standing up and saying "I only became evil because I had a bad childhood" doesn't count. If you can recognise that so clearly, you are certainly rational enough to take responsibility for your own behavior. When the Creature says "if you comply with my demands, I'll go away and be happy; otherwise I'll destroy your life" these are actually Mary Shelley's thoughts. Because otherwise it's not an emotional response - its a calculated threat. It's sad if you are so unhappy you kill someone. A tragic crime of passion. A red ball. But if the day before you say "if I become unhappy, I will kill someone", you're an stone cold psycho. See my drift?

But I digress. I like Frankenstein, but if you judge him by this moral compass, I'm not sure you're meant to...

After the death of little William, Alphonse Frankenstein recalls his son from Ingolstadt for the sake of consoling them - but it doesn't work, he merely sinks neck-deep in misery, and claims he is more wretched than the about-to-be-killed Justine. I quote: "The poor victim, who was on the morrow to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony... The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forego their hold". Similarly, his descent into the creation of the monster is marked by his cutting himself off from family without communication. He shows absolute uselessness in both valuable qualities, of consoling and helping his loved ones, and being a good sociable person. So maybe he is intended to be a villain after all?

The role of an English teacher is to stimulate thought on books, and my two are really quite excellent. Doesn't change the fact they're often wrong - just playing devil's advocate to make us consider things.

But again, in the case of Elizabeth, I find myself agreeing with their typically ludicrous interpretation. There is something just downright creepy about her. To start with, Frankenstein is a book about a creature which is ugly but good. But our heroine's goodness seems linked with her beauty - just look at the radiant imagery surrounding her. So is Shelley saying goodness is or isn't shown by external appearance?

It's worse than the Picture of Dorian Gray - Basil says you can judge people by appearances, but we know that's not true because the flawless Dorian is completely rotten inside. However, every time he sins the picture does become uglier, suggesting the exact opposite - that as people become spiritually ugly, they also become physically ugly. And this is why I'm not going to choose The Picture of Dorian Gray as the other gothic novel for my exam on Wednesday -because it is far too good, far too paradoxical, and unlike Frankenstein, I'm not willing to smash out some bull about the whole thing being a metaphor for syphillis. Or whatever.

Item 2 - nature vs. nurture. Elizabeth is gorgeous, and one of five children, the other four being
"dark eyed, hardy little vagrants". We then discover that the others are all the children of peasantfolk, while Elizabeth is actually the adopted daughter of a nobleman. Her beauty marks her out as noble - i.e. nature shapes who we are. She was born of fine parents, and she grows up to be a fine woman. You'll notice there are very few peasants in Frankenstein - Agatha and Felix were noblefolk who came to poverty through a noble deed and endure with a wonderful spirit. So also is Catherine Beaufort, Frankenstein's Mother, discovered in poverty after having been cast down from nobility. Again, enduring with patience and nobility. But the creature's goodness and evil are both the result of nurture. He is born a blank slate - the kindess of the De Lacey's, the cruelty of M. Frank and the rest of the world all combine to motivate his actions. Mary Shelley's unfortunate nobles continue to behave nobly in whatever state, suggesting nature will triumph over all adversity; but not so with the monster. Conflicting messages?

And that's even before you get onto the twisted family stuff. Elizabeth and Victor grow up together as brother and sister, but calling each other cousin. Just as Mother Frankenstein dies she both expresses the desire for their "union", and charges Elizabeth to be a mother to the remaining children. Um, disturbing much? Elizabeth refers to Victor's brothers as she would her own children, despite the fact they later marry. And then after fleeing the creature, he has a dream when he kisses Elizabeth who then turns into his mother's rotting corpse. I'm the worlds biggest hater of the oedepal answer - Freud was a nut as far as I'm concerned (or am I just in denial...?), at least in terms of fiction - but I think you've got a case here.

(Incidentally, I believe it was in Cold Fusion - Doctor Who fiction, don't stop listening - they had a psychologist robot called a "Freudroid". Genius!)

My teacher does place a lot more stock on the idea of Frankenstein "penetrating nature" and assailing its citadels to create life, while he could, how shall we put this, be at home with Elizabeth as his wife and creating life in a much more conventional manner. I think his reluctance to marry and seeming lack of care is just tied in with the selfishness above - he gushes with respect for everyone in this story, but doesn't have time for any of them.

Another idea which she suggested which I do like is Victor as a reaction to her husband, the genius, and the sacrifices which end up getting made to great men. He did drag her around Europe while pregnant. Without getting too creepy, Victor was also P. Shelley's pen name, and he had a sister called Elizabeth.

Although I'm not convinced of the suggestion that the creature doesn't exist, and Victor comitted the murders. You've got to work hard to read that one. Mind you, I'm convinced the oedepal reading of Hamlet is entirely unsubstantiated by the text, and supported by theatrical tradition alone - and look how prevalant that interpretation is!

Maybe I'm so willing to dissect because I don't like the book. I'm dead fond of Dracula; and so while I dashed off a passable essay about the fear of vampirism representing the Victorian fear of female sexual expression, I do still think it's total bollocks. Bram Stoker was writing about vampires. If you enjoy the book more fizzed up with an interpretation, be my guest. But I don't think it was written as a confession of closet homosexuality, a comment on British imperialism, Marxist tendancies or sexually transmitted diseases.

But I was willing to plunge into analysing Atonement, a book I didn;t like at first bat, and came to love it through taking it to pieces and seeing how it ticked. Maybe it is the same for Frankenstein?

And I do feel it is a flawed book. The story is solid, but strangely unsatisfying.

I absolutely hate the C18-19th century insistance on using framing devices to make their stories "real". Wuthering Heights has the useless Lockwood hearing the story, Dracula has the internal fiction of the story constructed from various papers preserved. The Castle of Otranto comes with an explanation claiming it has been translated from ancient Italian. It's daft. It's as if they justify the writing of fiction by treating it as fact. Now I always treat my fiction as real - if you don't believe it, then it can't effect you. It's stupid to shed tears for people who never existed. This is why I was so peeved off at Atonement for shattering its own internal realitu. One of my chief excuses for not converting to any religion is yes, of course I believe the Gospels, and the Old Testament, and the teachings of Mohammed too. And I also believe in Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh and the Happy Prince. In the past, religious teachings were dressed up in stories to make them accessable for the commonfolk - Jesus' parables are all about farming. But I can't let it work on me, because I believe everything told as a story.

My gosh, where was I? Very, very distracted. Ah yes - the irritating early-lit habit of pretending to be real. I suppose you could call "thematic" on Frankenstein - Victor tells Robert his story, the Creature tells his to Victor, and throughout exposition for minor characters come by way of "let me tell you about so and so..." - but all the while, Frankenstein itself was created as a story to tell Polidori, Percy and Byron in that Genevese villa. But somehow I don't think she was trying to be that smart.

So we have Robert Walton, concieved as a device for making the fantastic story real. I hate him already. And then there's Victor. I do have more sympathy for him than the Creature. But I still don't care about him - which is bizarre, considering I fall for guilt-stricken heroes like lead in water. Elizabeth is completely absent - a plot cypher, no more. The Creature is just irritating. He's a walking warning, a moral on legs. Who's left? Clerval is sweet, but quite frankly the most interesting part is the relationship between Beaufort and Alphonse Frankenstein, which occupies a paragraph at the start of the first chapter. That would make a fantastic story.

I don't even like her style - at least in Atonement I could respect his skill as an author. The gushing kills me. Not a character passes without their voice being the sweetest, their sentiment the noblest, their appearance the loveliest, from minor character Waldman to the almost obscene level of praise Walton has for Victor - "He excites at once my admiratuion and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? he is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparallelled eloquence." And on, and on, and on. Get a room, boys.

Argue, if you like, that Tolkien does it too - Middle Earth is packed with greatests and gorgeouses - but he is writing about a realm of heroes. It's Homer with hobbits. What's Frankenstein's excuse? It's set in Europe!

I suppose it is a key feature of the gothic to employ too many adjectives. It was certainly my sister's main assessment of Edgar Allen Poe.

All in all, my judgement is Frankenstein is more important for what came after than as literature in its own right. Doctor Who's "Brain of Morbius" and Buffy's "Some Assembly Required" owe royalties to Ms Shelley, to name but two. Investigation reveals that X-files tried it too, in the episode "Post-Modern Prometheus" (damn cool title - "A Modern Prometheus" is Frankenstein's sub-title. At least someone did their homework)

Boris Karloff! Young Frankenstein! Frank-n-Furter resurrecting Rocky, the perfect man, in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Lurch from the Addams Family. Herman Munster. A D&D adventure my dad wrote a few years ago. " Certainly the popular image of Frankenstein - bolts and all - is a product of the movies, not the novel. Today's post title, "It's alive!", was chosen precicely because it ISN'T in the book (but see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for Darth Vader's rebirth...). Less said about Van Helsing the better.

If you look instead for influence than cheap rip offs, what about Blade Runner? Or 2001: A Space Odyssey? Man creating something he cannot control; man creating a monster; man becoming a monster through his interferance with science - these are the three basic tenets of science fiction! I, Robot, man screws up. Battlestar Galactica. The robots of The Matrix. The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not for nothing do some people call Frankenstein the original science fiction novel.

And in listing those shows, those movies, those books, what a large list of things I'd rather be watching or listening to...

At least the other gothic novel I've picked out to study is one I adore. But more on that later...

(and I found Middlesex! I'm about half way through, more on that later too...)

Cry, the Beloved Country

2008-05-10T01:39:00.000-07:00

Finished and adored Posession! If ever I had anything to say about either this, or Lolita, I have forgotten them - save enjoying both.

Cry the Beloved Country caught my attention by having a gorgeous title. It's a very clever book - it draws attention to the evils in Africa by showing us the good. Kind priests, with kind wives, living next to kind landowners with very, very kind sons - you love everyone in this novel, and in the midst of misery treasure every kind deed (and there are lots of these). Suggesting, I suppose, that the evil is just endemic - until root problems are solved, there is no hope for the individual. It was also very beautifully written. For a novel to be great, it doesn't have to be complex - this is as plain as a book could be, and through its simplicity expresses so much more. Highly recommended.

And certainly the polar opposite of Beloved by Toni Morrison, a gothic novel set in post-civil-war America. It's really dense, getting through is like wading through treacle. Its not like the words are long or the grammar complicated - it's just a book that doesn't enjoy being read, if you get me.
In the past few days, I've been going through something of a book lull - I can't find anything I want to read. I got through 4 books in as many minutes yesterday - Martin Chuzzelwit, looks good but I feel like a quick read; Bridget Jones Diary, didn't even get to the first page as it ain't on the list; Detectives, a book of sci-fi noirs, managed two pages before my splitting headache interrupted; Mrs Smilla's feeling for Snow, which was good, but by that point I'd established I wasn't in the mood for reading.

Nor can I work up the energy for anything in a wider sense. After enjoying Cry the Beloved Country, my mater suggested I give Uncle Tom's Cabin a spin. "Because you'll like that".

If you say so. I like being happy. I like ignoring whole chunks of unhappy history. I refuse point blank to watch issues movies, and Schindler's List is the only one of the IMDb top 10 I haven't seen, because they depress me. And I hate, hate novels written in dialect, because I suffer from the malady that is skim reading, and if you skim dialect you don't understand it, and before you know you're flicking through whole chapters for someone who speaks the Queen's English again. At which point, you're hardly getting the whole experience of the book. This is preciciely what happened 100 pages into Uncle Tom - a crying shame, because up until then I had been enjoying it.

I'm also furious at my local library, for being incompetant. I want to get a job there, just so I can sort them out. I was looking for three books, all listed on their computer:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, because I started reading it in an airport departure lounge. While still in the bookshop, and it had a really nice style - not to mention, defiantly modern in the face of all the Victoriana I'd been indulging in. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan, a brilliant author and one I really can't stand, because poor missing Miss McCann was on my brain, and I'm sure he'd make a great novel out of the situation. Also, because Child in Time is an amazing title for, say, a different, more appealing sci-fi novel, rather than a morbid real life drama. And it has time in the title. And Short Trips - Doctor Who short stories, definitely not on the list, as a break from all that misery and gender confusion.

Eugenides - shelfmarked adult fiction, look at Eu. McEwan - check under Mc, then check Ew, then Mc again just in case I'd missed it. Nada. Not a single book by either of those authors. To set the scene, this was not the first time I'd come looking for these three novels - I'd browsed quickly at least twice before.

I'm head library prefect at my school. As I was at my previous school. How can I not find a book which is meant to be there?! No problem, lets look for Short Trips - shelfmarked, junior fiction. Not desperately embarassed by this, because I know in this case it's been incorrectly shelved - it should be with teens, or maybe the sci-fi? It isn;t there. I check under both authors. I check under D for doctor. I then scour the entirety of the sci-fi section, just in case. Twice.

By that point, I was a little annoyed. Went to a librarian. Asked for help finding Short Trips. So she checked teen fiction, then junior fiction, then got a second librarian to help, all the while cooing "She's looking for a Doctor Who novel!", as I shrivelled at being stuck in a section where the shelves were a head shorter than me, letting someone else look for a book I couldn't find.
It's karmic justice, I suppose.

Finally, she goes to look in their back room. And returns five minutes later, to say sorry, it was lent out to a school in 2001, so maybe MAYBE it got lost? Our local library has "maybe" been missing a book since 2001 and no one has noticed. I didn't have the heart to tell her there were two other books I was looking for also. So that's the last time I look for something specific in this library - from now on, I'm taking the whole list down and taking whatever I find.

There's something of a libriric curse going around right now (libriric: neologism, meaning "to do with libraries. Cute word). Suddenly, my beloved school library has become a lot less friendly. It's not a case of "you can't save them all" - right now I can't save any!

PS - went back to Oxfam. Dictionary of the Khzars was gone. Absolutement typique.

Currently reading: the Bridge, by Iain Banks. Not on the list, but I've been meaning to read it for years, and Beloved.
Up next: Smilla's Feeling for Snow, maybe a Town like Alice. Also, I've been recommended Trollope.
Read since last update: 1
Total read: 78
Of which is: 7.79% of the list

Lolita

2008-04-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Finished! Comments forthcoming.

I also finally got to the end of War of the Worlds, which I had been reading at a snail's pace due to my familiarity with the story. The last few chapters really touched me though, they were well worth getting to.

I've started regency romance cum artistic debate Posession. It's wonderfully written, the author has a unique way of writing and using words. She is writing about characters I understand - literary experts who live through their subjects. Their reactions to coming into contact with the homes, posessions and writings of their individual literary darlings show a sympathy for the obsessive reader.

Currently reading: Posession,
Read since last update: 40
Total read: 77/1001
Of which is: 7.69% complete - 924 books to go

A la recherche de temps perdu...

2008-03-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

Hello again. Miss me?

Why have I started up again? No reason. I still don't feel I can write about books as eloquently as film.

Because if I don't write down how I feel when I feel it, then I'll forget.

Because my sister's blog on the same subject has impressed me so much. Go and see it HERE if you want lucid, well written reviews. Stay here if you want random and hastily dashed off comments. All the better, read both. But if you read one, read hers - its better written, and the sting of it is she's younger - so she's still got two years to catch up with my current book count!

Because my "1001 books spreadsheet", recommended to me by a kind commenter during my absence of a year, informs me I'll only reach the end if I read 15 books a year.

Because the only way to write well is to read well written stuff, even if this does mean I spend hours agonising over paragraphs because they don't come out as good as McEwan's.

And finally, because I just came into a large number of Doctor Who novels. Lolita was immediately dumped mid paragraph for the Eight Doctors - the sci-fi equivalent of the airport novel. They are what Victor Frankenstein's father would describe as "sad trash", but oh-so irresistable. Maybe this blog will help keep me on the straight and narrow? Some of the time...

2008-03-24T05:10:00.001-07:00

Looking forward to reading

Ones with beautiful or intriguing titles

I know why the caged bird sings (I've always thought this phrase perfectly beautiful)
Cryptonomicon (yeh, you can feel my fantasy leanings seeping out.)
Neuromancer (ditto)
The Things they Carried
Sexing the Cherry
The Trick is to Keep Breathing
The beautiful Room is Empty
Oscar and Lucinda
the Child in Time
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Blood and Guts in High School (probably not as exciting as it sounds)
if not now, when?
The Colour Purple
The Comfort of Strangers
Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (definitely a metaphor...)
One hundred Years of Solitude
Stranger in a Strange Land
malone Dies
The 13 Clocks
Cry the Beloved Country
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Their Eyes were Watching God
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Call it Sleep
The Childermass
A portrait of the Artist as a Young man
V.
Cat's Cradle

Ones based on films
Because my finger twitches to cross them out every time I scan my list. The Godfather is exempt from this - I love the film too much to read the book.

Famously hefty ones, so I can smile and look superior as I devour them on the bus

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
A Return to Times Past
Kafka - Metamorphosis, the Trial

Alarming ones, so I can smile and look charming as I devour them on the bus

Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Trainspotting
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Marquis de Sade ones, I suppose
Lolita and Clockwork Orange, wot I have already read.

The sci-fi classics on the list
Most of which I've done already - I, Robot and some Robert Heinlein still awaits. Also The Player of Games - Ian Banks wrote Use of Weapons, which at the time was the most brilliant thing I'd ever read. it's still hotdarn good.

the Gothic Novels
Because I love them - Vathek, Castle of Otranto, Mysteries of Udolpho e.t.c.

The Thomas Hardy
I loved Mayor of Casterbridge - also, I'm sick of people telling me how upsetting Jude the Obscure is.

Also

The Dictionary of the Khazars - Because it's in our local Oxfam, and I nearly buy it every time I go in. I only discovered it was on the list this morning - so naturally, it'll be gone when I return. C'est la vie.

Middlesex - I got hooked reading this in the corner of an airport departure lounge. In the bookshop, before I had bought it.

American Psycho -because the hero likes Genesis music, and so do I.

Melmoth the Wanderer -Because an exiled Oscar Wilde took Melmoth as his cover name.

Slaughterhouse Five

Posession

Not looking forward to reading

The Dickens.
There's ten on the list, and so far I've only read one. I'm thanking my stars I've already got Lord of the Rings, Gormenghast and Count of Monte Cristo out of the way.

Clarissa
My English teacher's favourite novel. Also (possibly) the longest book on the list. In fact, perhaps its the longest book in the English language?

The Marquis de Sade.
Quite aside from how I'm going to lay my hands on them (school library, I don't think...), reading a synopsis of Justine was quite enough for me.

Books read since last post: 40

The 37 I've read already...

2007-02-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

It's a start, eh?

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Quite enjoyed it, but not entirely my sort of thing

The Devil and Miss Prym and Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
I love Paulo Coelho. These aren't his best - I enjoyed the Alchemist most - but I liked them.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
I read this on holiday in wet France, and sobbed endlessly. Although the multi-character thing annoyed me.
Was the soldier chap called Carlos? Anyway, I liked him.

Regeneration and The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
There's actually a trilogy of these things...I think. Friend 2 went through a phase of adoring them, so I read them to keep her company. I liked the first one a lot, though I wasn't so keen on the sequels.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brilliant, in a word.

Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
I started reading this when I was ten. Naturally, I didn't get very far. When I tried it a second time I adored it.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Odd...but definitely very good.

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
One of the best novels ever written. Probably.

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
We had to study this one for school. So naturally, I loathe it. I'm not saying it was bad, I just never want to put see Okonkwo and his yams ever again.

On the Road – Jack Kerouac
"Read some Kerouac, kinda put me on the track to burn a little brighter now. It was something about Roman Candles fizzing out, shine a little lighter now" - song by Marillion. I've been listening it to years and decided to finally find Kerouac. I even found the roman candles bit!

Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Actually, I thought it was tedious.

Gormenghast and Titus Groan– Mervyn Peake
I attacked this one with a ruler - cheerfully updating people on how many cm I was through. Wonderful read.

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
One of my favourite books, though mostly on account of the plot, not the writing.

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Definitely one of the best written books ever. I revisit this at least once a year, it's just packed with such wonderful words.

Animal Farm – George Orwell
OK, I suppose. Nothing really really special, but a pretty good read.

The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A wonderful little book. I've never really enjoyed it as much as I thought I should though...

The Outsider – Albert Camus
Weird...oh, I'm sorry, I meant existentialist. I did like it...sort of. But it's not really the sort of thing you're meant to like. Twas good though.

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings– J.R.R. Tolkien
No comment. Love too much for words.

Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Wrestled all the way through on holiday. Possibly the only book that has ever made me sob.

At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Very unusual novel, but wonderful atmosphere et al.

Dracula – Bram Stoker
We're doing this one at school. Love it!

Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Didn't enjoy it as much as Casterbridge, but it was ok. I didn't really like the characters.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Probably my favourite book ever. Just beautiful.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
A tad disappointing.

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Absolutely fantastic, though the ending was lame. This book deserves a decent film adaptation.

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
I really really enjoyed this.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
I'm running out of unusual ways to say "yes, I liked this"

Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Ploughed through the entire thing, and it's fantastic.

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Absolutely wonderful! Sydney is an angel.

Pursuasion - Jane Austen
Friend 4 made me read this. Fairly good, I suppose, but nothing special.

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
OK. Well...disappointing. Wuthering Heights' reputation has been built on what people think they know about it, from spin offs and films. It's actually got less of the passion and tempestuous darkness one would imagine.

Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Quite enjoyed this. I felt more sorry for the doctor than the creature though.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
For years I had been reading the first half then giving up. I finally had to finish it for school. I wouldn't describe myself as a Jane Austen fan at all...

The list

2007-02-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the plan. You know that 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I'm gonna try reading them. All.

A bit about me: I'm 17, people assume I read a lot (but I really don't) and so far, I've read 37.

Why am I doing it? Partly as a joke, partly to increase my reading and partly because we've got to be cynical about getting into university, and our English teachers have told us to read lots, then feign an interest in "feminism in American literature" for application forms. Why do you care? I don't know, I'm just blogging it because it will give me an incentive to keep going.

It'll be fun, I suppose. I'll have to plough through the entire works of Jane Austen (groan...), and I'm not really looking forward to the Marquis du Sade's entries either. But there's lots on there I've been meaning to read.

The list:

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
Junkie – 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 – 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
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
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
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