I love my Kindle Fire!!!!

Anyone who knows me well at all knows that I am an avid reader. I read LOTS of fiction and a fair amount of non fiction. I read for learning, for entertainment, for distraction, for comfort, for inspiration. Since I was a child, reading a good book has been among my dearest pursuits.

As an anniversary gift my sweet husband bought me a Kindle Fire. It's absolutely delicious to be able to carry around 100 different books in my jacket pocket. As I have indicated in an earlier post, my tastes are rather eclectic so I tend to be somewhat fickle in going between various genres. With all these different books (and a few magazines) collected on my Fire I an find something yummy to suit any mood.

There are hundreds of books that are available for download for free or very low cost. Many of them are drivel. Some, however, are quite good.

I've recently download several collections - complete works by classic authors: Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, HG Wells, and unbelievably - the whole collection from The Bronte Family (YES - all of them: Charlotte, Ann, Emily and Patrick). My brain has had enough of formula murder mysteries. I'm ready to dig deep into some of these time honored classic tales. Some I will be re-reading for the 3rd or 5th time since childhood. Some I will be discovering for the first time.

I know spring will come soon and then I'll have lots of yard work to get busy with. There is laundry to do and dinner to make. I do have a job - two of them actually. So I won't be able to just get lost in my books nearly as much as I would like. But all the more reason to choose carefully which sort of books I spend my limited discretionary time on.

Just as I think it makes sense to take care in what sort of people I choose to surround myself with in my social world, I want to be more judicious about my reading life in the coming months. I've recently finished one or two books that I wish I could delete from my brain. They convinced me it was time for a change.

So one of my goals for the coming year is to read a dozen or more classic stories and discuss them well with other people who care about serious literature.

For starters will be Persuasions by Jane Austen. (Click here for chapter summaries)My sweet blogger friend, Mimi, over on Bigger than a Breadbox is hosting a discussion of the book. I'm excited to join in!

What have you read lately??

What I'm reading - 2012

I've been doing some eclectic reading of late - all different genres, all different formats. Here are the books I have been perusing of late:

Right now I am at different points in EACH of the following--

All the Women of the Bible by Edith Deen (hardcover - copyright 1955)

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New Word by Paul Gilding (Hardcover - copyright 2011)

I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better: Six Practical Principles That Empower Others to Solve Their Own Problems While Enriching Your Relationship by Gary & Joy Lundberg (softcover - copyright 1995)


Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice (Kindle - copyright 2010)


The Crystal Bridge by Charles M. Pulsipher (Kindle - copyright 2011)

Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt edited by his son, Parley P. Pratt (Kindle - copyright 1938)

Unleash the Power Within by Anthony Robbins (Audio - copyright 2005)

One Simple Act: Discovering the Power of Generosity by Debbie Macomber (Audio - copyright 2009)

It's sort of interesting simultaneously reading/listening to all these different things. I have Tony Robbins in my car to listen to on my way to and from work. I have the Macomber book in the CD player in my kitchen and listen to that when I'm doing domestic stuff.

The Great Disruption is in the bathroom (by the way - did you know there has been very detailed research about who does or does not read in the john?).

I usually read the Women of the Bible book for a bit in the morning when it's quiet and I have yet to enter the fray of whatever the day will have in store.

I read Crystal Bridge at night before turning out the lights.

The Lundberg book on Not having to make everything better is something I'm reading as one of several sources for a class I'm going to be teaching on Marriage and Family Relations so I tend to read it in my office when I'm in school mode.

Both the Parley Pratt autobiography and the memoir by Condaleezza Rice are ones I pick up now and again to read a little bit of whenever to mood strikes me. I seldom read either one for very long - but I've enjoyed sampling them both.

I'm getting increasingly intrigued by the sci-fi/fantasy book, Crystal Bridge

Each one of these books has their place for me.

What are you reading these days?

Books Read in 2011

I didn't keep track of my reading until summer. I started logging each book on July 1, 2011. I'm sure there were many good ones early on, but what they were is anybody's guess. So here are the ones I DO have a record of:

JULY 2011
BOOKS IN PRINT:
The Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum
The Spire by Richard North Patterson
Sweet Dreams by Aaron Patterson (Review Here)
Safe Money Millionaire by Brett Kitchen & Ethan Kap Review Here)
A Morning for Flamingos by James Lee Burke
Latter Rain by James M. Conis Review HERE

Audio Books
Death of a Village by M.C. Beaton
Leaving Yesterday by Kathryn Cushman
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

August 2011
BOOKS IN PRINT:
Deception Point by Dan Brown
212 by Alafair Burke
Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke
Dead Connection by Alafair Burke

Audio Books
These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauff
Let's Roll by Lisa Beamer
Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat

September 2011
BOOKS IN PRINT:
Angel's Tip by Alafair Burke
Two for Texas by James Lee Burke
....and a whole lot of student papers!

Audio Books
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Oh Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Keepsake by Tess Garritsen
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

October 2011
BOOKS IN PRINT:
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson

Audio Books
LA Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker
A first Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness by Nassir Ghaemi

November 2011
BOOKS IN PRINT:
Half of Paradise by James Lee Burke
Judgement Calls by Alafair Burke
The Assassination of Governor Boggs by Rod Miller (Review HERE)
Trial by Fire by J.A. Jance
Now You See Her by James Patterson
No Second Chance by Harlan Coben

Audio Books
Men of Ireland by William Trevor
The Capture of Cerberus by Agatha Christie
The incident of the Dog's Ball by Agatha Christie
Long Gone by Alafair Burke
Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner

December 2011
Books in PRINT
Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Traveling by Tin Lizzie by Laura Purtyman McBride

Audio Books
Ape House by Sara Gruen
You Were Always Mom's Favorite! - Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives by Deborah Tannen
Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway

Cruising the Blogosphere...

Saturday morning is Pancake morning at Casa Piranha.

I've enjoyed a lazy morning, sipping a cup of Good Earth herbal tea and exploring the blogosphere for a bit. Here are a few of the gems that impressed me...

1. Dan over at Black Owl has an EXCELLENT piece on the dearth of critical thinking in the retail world during holiday shopping...(which is endemic throughout the year, and not just in retail, I am afraid.)

2. Ruth over at Upstream Downstream shares some words on assumptions about guilt and innocence and our jury system...

3. Violins and Starships offered up a great clip of Elvis singing "Blue Solstice" to entertain my Pagan friends.

4. And just for grins, David over at Nephite Blood, Spartan Heart, shared some positively hillarious pictures that made me laugh.

5. Sergio over at Space Time Chronicles wrote a lovely piece on censorship from the perspective of a scientist. That one is an older piece from 2009, but isn't that the beauty of the blog world? It's still there to discover.

I LIKE being able to find cutting edge words about what people are pondering RIGHT NOW - the immediacy of this form of media has much appeal. But at the very same time I occassionally enjoy sampling the thoughts of various writers whose blogs have since languished or who may not have updated for quite some time.

Do you have any favorite dead blogs - words that resonated with you and maybe made you sad that the writers have ceased to publish?

A New Read - Earl of Darkness

I just received a brand spanking new book hot off the press from the author - "Earl of Darkness" by Alix Rickloff.

From the Publisher:
The magic she tries to hide . . . Born a lady, but reduced to surviving in the slums of Dublin, Catriona O’Connell has been hired to steal a mysterious book from Aidan Douglas, Earl of Kilronan. But Cat is secretly Other, an age-old mixture of Fey and human—something Aidan recognizes immediately when he surprises the lovely young burglar in his library, about to steal a magical diary.. . . is the magic he desperately wants. From the moment Aidan sees her, Cat’s spirited beauty enchants him, but her uncanny abilities are what he truly needs, for Cat can understand the mystical language in the diary he inherited from his murdered father. So Aidan makes an offer: translate the book or be thrown in prison as a thief. And as Cat slowly deciphers each page, she and Aidan are drawn together by passion . . . and into the violence of the Other world that is the Kilronan legacy. Can they defeat those who seek the book, or are their lives in even greater danger than their hearts?

EARL OF DARKNESS
ALIX RICKLOFF

•Pub. Date: December 2010
•Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
•ISBN-13: 9781439170366
•ISBN: 1439170363

You can see an excerpt from Chapter 1 HERE to get a taste of what I'm about to read.

I'm intrigued, hopeful, apprehensive, as I get ready to peruse the pages of this new book by an unfamiliar author - admittedly a genre I seldom dabble in. It's sort of like going to a fancy dress up party where I don't know any of the other guests. I may have a smashing good time. I may feel awkward and out of place. Who knows? But I'm ready to jump in and see if it is a fit.

Thanks ever so much for the book Alex - I will let you know what I think...

New Virtual Book Tour on the Way

Trisiti Pinkston is at it again.

A successful writer herself, Tristi also works as Senior Editor of Valor Publishing. In that role she has been a real champion of finding fresh and innovative ways to get the word out about new books coming to market. One that she has successfully done is the "Virtual Book Tour" in which several bloggers are invited to read a pre-release copy of a new book and then write a candid review of that book on their blogs.

I have been fortunate enough to be included in this gathering of readers in the past. On March 24 I will be reviewing The Cleansing of America by Dr. W. Cleon Skousen.(Click HERE for a biography of Skousen)

While I have heard a lot about Skousen's past works, I have not yet read any of his books. I have a PDF file of this soon to be published work on a flash drive I will take with me as I am traveling to Arizona this week. I have about a three hour lay over in Salt Lake at an airport that does NOT offer free wi-fi. (What's the deal SLC?) So instead of bemoaning the fact that I can't get online while I'm there I'll use that time to do some reading.

I look forward to seeing what the book has to offer and I very much appreciate Tristi's continued confidence in me as a reviewer. I'm excited to have the opportunity to give this book careful thought and share my reactions to it here.

Books Read / Listened to in 2010

I started out with the best of intentions for tracking every book I read or listened to throughout the year. However, after just a few months I got side tracked and quit writing them down. Sigh. I know there were many others.

But here's my list of what I did keep track of. The audio books are the ones with asterisks (*) and the others I read the old fashioned way.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver *
The Run by Stuart Woods
Anyone But You by Jennifer Cruise *
Speaking in Tounges by Jeffery Deaver *
Blood of Angels by Reed Arvin *
Bordon Chantry by Louis L'Amour
Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O'Reilly *
Impact by Douglas Presston
Burnt Toast and Other Philosphies of Life by Terri Hatcher *
Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose *
The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

I've wracked my brain trying to recall those I didn't make a note of.

I mostly read whatever books my husband brought home from the library. Even though our tastes in books are generally somewhat different I enjoyed being able to talk with him about the various stories he had dread. There were several murder mysteries, espionage thrillers and the occasional western.

Whether it is fiction or non-fiction, serious or fun, basically I just love to read!

Crazy For the Storm

Check out the review I just wrote of Crazy For the Storm by Norman Ollestad over on Page Nibbers. AMAZING BOOK!!!!

Here are a few links to what OTHERS have said about this book:

June 07, 2009 Sarah Willis in the Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH)

June 14, 2009 Washington Post

July 08, 2009 Pen on Fire - Audio interview of author by Marie Stone

BOOKS

I just finished reading reviews of the book "Twilight" over on Jacquandor's blog, Byzantium Shores. (yeah, that's where I usually go when I'm up in the middle of the night and can't sleep.)

I've never read Twilight and don't really plan to. I've heard some people rave about it and some say it is crap. Just not a genre I'm interested in.

I TRIED to read the first Harry Potter book, but it left me cold. I quit after the first 70 pages, baffled by all the hype.

I've been thinking some about why I think of some books as well written and others as not. It has a lot to do with voice. I like a book that uses words well and that engages me into the characters.

I just finished reading My Sister's Keeper when I talked about over on Page Nibblers. I liked that book A LOT. So I picked up another book by the same author, this time trying Songs of the Humpback Whale which I'm having a very tough time getting into. Meanwhile I'm listening to the audio book I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass. That book has me absolutely gripped, although at first the way it kept skipping around in time had me a little perplexed. Once I got the hang of a non-linear story I got very interested.

Another book I recently listened to that I actually liked a lot was Widow of the South by Robert Hick, a civil war novel based on a true story.

Then, for a change of pace I listened to The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross, a thriller about a family ripped apart when the father is arrested for money laundering and dealings with a Columbia drug cartel. He testifies against his partner and the family goes into hiding in the federal witness protection program... one thing leads to another and soon you find that nothing is as it seems.

There are so many good books out there...

It is interesting to me how authors manage to create characters, events, whole worlds sometimes out of thin air. Some pull it off better than others. Some take away my breath with their power with words. Others leave me wondering why I bothered. And isn't it interesting how different people will have such completely different takes on the very same book?

So for the twilight fans or Harry Potter fans ... more power to you for liking those books that I had utterly no interest in. I don't feel the need to bash the books as drivel. I just pass them by and reach for something else. To each their own.

Page Nibblers is born

My dear friend Rozel and I have decided to create a virtual book club. When first considering why we (who are both OH SO BUSY) are motivated to do this Roz said: "I just want to read a book and talk to someone about it. I want others to pick books that I would have NEVER given a second thought to. Since I am no longer in school, my brain feels like it is dying. I don't have enough self discipline to read a book on my own so if I am responsible to others I will be more motivated (even though it is a guilt free book club)."

We are still tossing around ideas about how much structure and how much anarchy we want in this collaboration. It's just beginning to congeal into a plan. We've started a blog to guide and record our meanderings. Check us out HERE.

I'm excited to have a place for some old friends and new friends to come together to talk about what we are reading.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I just finished listening to the audio book version of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - the author of Kite Runner. This is a positively stunning book.

I was impressed by Kite Runner. But THIS book is one of the best I've read/heard in years. MANY THANKS to Mimi for turning me on to this author.

The description of Many Splendid Suns says: "Set in Afghanistan, it is the story of two generations of characters brought together by the tragic sweep of war, with some thirty years of tumultuous recent Afghan history as a backdrop. It is a story about devotion, courage, hope, self-sacrifice, and love."

I read A LOT. I've been exposed to all sorts of tales from all sorts of writers. But this novel truly shook me to the core. It is a powerful, powerful book.

It made me consider so many issues - shame, forgiveness, facing adversity, passion, family ties, national pride - you name it, it's in there. The story is so well crafted that I couldn't help but bond with the characters in a meaningful way so that when they hurt, I hurt. When they rejoiced, I rejoiced. Truly an amazing book. Don't pass this one up!

Click HERE for a YouTube interview of the author discussing the book.

Naming the Perpetrator

While on vacation I read the book "A Random Act" by Cindi Broddus. The story is her true account of a horrific crime - some person tossed a gallon of sulphuric acid off an overpass in the wee hours of the morning just as she and a friend were driving by on the freeway below. The bottle of acid came hurling through the windshield, splashed all over Cindi's face, arms and torso, burning her beyond recognition. She required many surgeries and years of recovery therapy and remains physically disfigured. How she coped with those events and the meaning she gave to it is the focus of her book.

I've been mentally comparing this book to Terri Jent'z account of her late night attack in an Oregon campground. For no apparent reason, an unknown assailant drove his truck up on top of the pup tent Terri and her roommate were sleeping in, then got out of the truck and proceeded to attack them both with an ax. Miraculously, both girls survived, even though their injuries were severe. Terri's book Strange Piece of Paradise tells of her years of investigation to identify the perpetrator who so brutally harmed her.

In BOTH cases it was a random act by a stranger that brought unimaginable damage to these women who seemed to have done nothing to bring them into harm's way more than merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In both cases, the perpetrators were never arrested or held accountable for their crimes. The similarities stop there.

Without question, Jent'z book is better written. Strange Piece of Paradise is filled with striking word images and powerful prose that give evidence to her Yale training. Broddus, on the other hand, is not a writer by profession. In fact, she parnters with someone else to get her story laid out. Evenso, at times her book comes off as too sappy. I acknowledge that from the outset the intent of the two books are entirely different. Jentz aims to speak the truth of what happened to her in the face of a social and political climate that seemed determined to look the other way and sweep all that unpleasantness under the rug. Broddus, on the other hand, deliberately sets out to be inspirational/ uplifting. Her message is of forgiveness and choosing to focus on the kindnesses of those who supported her through the nightmare rather than on the horror or the pain.

Broddus states in several passages that catching the criminal or knowing his specific identity were never a priority for her. Instead, she focuses on "pay it forward" style efforts to make something good come out of the terrible. Jentz, on the other hand, describes feeling driven to find out who did this bad thing. Naming the perpetrator takes on almost a compulsion for her and seems to be a catalyst for her healing (although she uses a pseudonym in the book for the man she is convinced did the assault, she has discussed his real identity with law enforcement officials and given information which substantially incriminates him - if not entirely proves he did the crime. They chose not to follow up because he could not be prosecuted due to expiration of statute of limitations.)

What reading both of these books has got me wondering about is what I believe is the most healthy or most appropriate response to trauma and harm.

While most people will never have to face events of this magnitude, EVERY one of us will face some bad in this world. It is the nature of our mortal existence. When the bad comes, how will I respond? What meaning will I give to the utterly wrong, unfair heartaches that come my way?

Does it matter what the context is?

In the book Too Scared to Cry by Dr. Lenore Terr comparison is made between the effects of ONE isolated terrible awful event that happens to the consequences of enduring prolonged, ongoing trauma. I heard Dr. Terr speak at a conference once shortly after the book came out. She described her research comparing a group of school children who had been kidnapped and buried in their school bus, a young girl who was attacked by a lion at a zoo, and several other "ONE time harmed kids" with a group of young people who had lived in war zones or endured years of abuse. It was a fascinating study of the long-term consequences of what happens when children are forced to live in fear.

But I can't help but wonder what different outcomes might be if we could somehow measure the variable of how individuals DEFINE the bad things that happened to them rather than how much or how long those bad things had to be endured.

The meaning we give to the events of our life has tremendous power. What meaning will I give to my blessings? What meaning will I give to my harms?

Library Daze

I don’t remember learning to read. All I know is that from the time I was tiny, way before starting school, I had a fascination with the printed page. It seems like the most astonishing magic to me that those squiggles and lines dancing together could represent sounds.

At age four I was the queen of phonics. I would sound out words on cereal boxes and toilet paper wrappers. I would read billboards and letters carved in soap. I thought it shamefully wasteful that car license plates had letters that had no particular meaning. Even though I could not read them, I would sound them out just the same.

Once I got old enough for Brownie scouts I began making weekly forays to our town library. This was a tiny little stone building at the edge of downtown. I remember walking down the sidewalk that curved steeply along a hill from my elementary school to the street where the library was. With every step I took my anticipation mounted and I eagerly planned what sort of book I would get to check out next.

I rapidly progressed from picture books to chapter books and then moved out of the juvenile section to read some grown up biographies. I loved learning about Florence Nightingale and Helen Keller. By fourth grade I was moving through all the animal books like “Brighty” about a donkey that lived in the Grand Canyon and “Misty of Chincoteague.” When things got crazy in my family (which happened a lot) I would grab one of my books and head for the giant mulberry tree in the back yard. I could hide out there reading for hours to stay out of harms way.

My greatest joy and biggest disappointment came from libraries.

When I was really little, I thought that the library in our small town held every book in the world. So, I made up my mind that I would go through them one by one until I’d read them all. I would begin at the red shelf in the west corner, then progress up to the green shelf, and on to the blue. Once I was done with all the books on the west wall I'd move over to the wall next to it and do the same thing. I checked out books about planets and books about dogs. I checked out a book on small engine repair and murder mysteries and history books. Some I didn’t understand at all. But I would plow through each one as best as I could, sounding out each word and making stead use of my dictionary to looking up the vocabulary I didn’t understand.

I thought it was a rather noble project I’d taken on, and felt rather smug with myself.

Then one day when we went to visit my grandparents in Flagstaff my grandmother decided to take me to the big city library so I could see all the books there. I was horrified. That library was six times the size of the little Podunk establishment I’d grown accustomed to. There were whole rooms of books of a certain type, not just separate shelves. I realized all at once how naive I had been. I could read ever waking moment of the rest of my life and NEVER be able to read all the books in the world. Recognizing the futility of the dream I had been so ambitious about nearly broke my heart. I was so overwhelmed I broke out in sobs.

My grandmother was mystified. Of all of her grandchildren, I loved books the best. She thought I would be delighted to see this treasure trove of print. She asked why I was so upset. I tried as best I could to explain through my tears how I had wanted to read every book in the world, because I thought the little library back home held them all. I told her how awful it felt to know I would be missing out on so much because there was just no way I could read all these hundreds and hundreds of volumes, even if I lived to be old as her.

She smiled and wisely said: “Oh honey, don’t worry about that. Half of them are junk. The trick is to learn how to pick the truly good ones and spend your time with those. You don’t need to go filling up your head with a bunch of garbage just because somebody put it in a book. But if you get good books with solid stories and honorable characters, THOSE books can become your very best friends.”

She was right. But then, she often was.

What sort of books engage you the most? Are there ones you could read again and again?
Which books have had the biggest impact on you?

1001 Books

I just found this list of 1001 books to read before you die. I cannot discern what sort of criteria whas used to concoct such a list. The literary genres appear to be all over the map. Also, I can think of more than a few classics that appear to be missing. I have highlighted the ones I have already read. There are a few others that I had begun, but for one reason or another never actually finished. Do you see any favorites on this list? What might you add that wasn't included? "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" by ukaunz

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
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

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-1700
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

So many books, so little time!

I just found the coolest thing! BookCrossing offers a facinating way to share books. Seems like it is some wild hybrid between my geocaching obsession and my love for reading. I guess it's been around for a while, but I've just now found it, thanks to Torchwolf's list of wonderful things

I am totally jazzed to discover this and was amazed to see there are nine different books that have been released in my tiny little town in Oregon!

I am very much looking forward to both catching and releasing some books this summer and seeing where they go.

A New Read

REVISED 4/17/07 - The FIRST part of the book was great - it really captured my attention; However, once I got into it further it was awful. WAY too much profanity and lost the magic that he started with. I will NOT be finishing this book

How is it that I've managed to be an omnivorous reader all these years and completely missed the work of Elmore Leonard? I've just started his book Pagan Babies and am absolutely riveted. The story opens in Rwanda, with chilling descriptions of the horror of mass genocide the Hutu militia enacted upon the Tutsi people. From what I've read of the book reviews the story will soon be moving along to other settings and introducing new characters, but where I'm at right now has be glued to the book. From what I've seen so far, the man is truly a master story teller. Within just a few pages I was completely engaged in the characters and the setting, drawn in as if I were there.

When I did my master's thesis on the influence of gender in how people choose educational paths somewhere in my literature review I came across a quote from the 1800's that said one of the justifications for not educating girls was that if they could read they might become willful and neglect their household duties. I remember thinking it was pretty ludicrous at the time. But ya know what? The dust be damned, I can't put this book down and I don't care what anyone says, SO THERE!

Books Read or Listened to in 2007

What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson
Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers
Black Holes and Baby Universes by Steven Hawking
A Thousand Splendid Sunsby Khaled Hosseini
The Dry Divide by Ralph Moody
A Random Act by Cindi Broddus
Nothing to Regret by Tristi Pinkston
The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl
High Five by Janet Evanovich
The Innocent Man by John Grisham
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
City of Bones by Michael Connelly
Overcoming Life's Dissappointments by Harold Kushner
Pompeii by Robert Harris
Eye Contact by Kerri McGovern
Full Moon Rising by Keri Arthur
Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks
Letters To My Daughters by Mary Matalin
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
A Guide to Getting It: Passion & Purpose (multiple authors)
A Guide to Getting It: Creative Intelligence (multiple authors)
The Broker by John Grisham
Isolation Ward by Joshua Spanogle
Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz
The Puzzle Bark Tree by Stephanie Gertler
Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Rebels of Ireland by Edward Rutherford
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Sula by Toni Morrison
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Fourth Dawn by Bodie & Brock Thoene
1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Lando by Louis L'Amour
Jewel by Bret Lott
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Promised King by Kelly Sedinger

Books Read (or Listened to) in 2008

(Audiobooks marked in italics)


Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon
When Your Moment Comes by Dan Pallotta
Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson
Strength to Endure by Tristi Pinkston