Friday, May 30, 2008

Prince Rupert's drops

They "let it off" on the steps of their hut. It was early, with the sun just slanting through the cross-crossed needles of the casuarinas which lined the creek. There was dew on the grass and their boots were wet from it. The larme batavique caught the light and gathered it in like molten metal straight from a glassworks' glory-hole. It withstood her father's hammer and her mother's axe. And then Lucinda--it was her birthday, after all--took the needle-nosed pliers and snapped--it took a grunt to manage it--the tail.

Fireworks made of glass. An explosion of dew. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Silence.

There are drugs that work the same, and while I am not suggesting that our founder purchased the glassworks to get more drops, it is clear that she had the seed planted, not once, but twice, and knew already the lovely contradictory nature of glass and she did not have to be told, on the day she saw the works at Darling Harbour, that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid, that an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at the top, and that even while it is as frail as the ice on a Parramatta puddle, it is stronger under compression than Sydney sandstone, that it is invisible, solid, in short, a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from.

--Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Woodpecker



A young woodpecker stunned himself on our back door this morning.



When he didn't object to my taking a few shots without a plate of glass between us, I decided he might need a lift into a low-lying branch. . .



the very idea of which was all he needed to send him soaring up to his usual height.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sunday Evening Salon: The Philosopher's Apprentice

The Sunday Salon.comWhen Mason Ambrose's nemesis, a writer of anti-Darwinist screeds, asks him in the middle of his dissertation defense (in the middle of chapter 1 in James Morrow's The Philosopher's Apprentice) if God is dead, Mason knows exactly what he should say to skirt the snare that's been placed before him. Instead he opts to keep his self-respect:

"Why," I said, "do our postrationalist theologians, Dr. Pielmeister among them, expect us to prostrate ourselves before a deity who, by the Darwinian insight he claims to endorse, stands exposed as a kind of cosmic dilettante--"

"That is not the language of philosophy," interrupted Pielmeister, wagging his finger.

"--a kind of cosmic dilettante, idly tinkering plants and animals into existence only to have them go extinct from the very environmental conditions he provided for them?"

Delicate but palpable vibrations filled the stuffy air of Schneider Auditorium. The attendees shifted in their seats, delighted that the gladiator had mysteriously elected to insert his head into the lion's mouth. My committee was likewise astir, wondering what demon had possessed this outwardly rational candidate.

"Why," I continued, "was Dr. Pielmeister's presumably competent God unable to produce the contemporary biosphere through any process other than the systematic creation and equally systematic obliteration of countless species?"

Nervous laughter emerged here and there throughout the audience.

"Why," I persisted, "would this same divine serial killer have begun his career spending thirteen billion years fashioning quadrillions of needless galaxies before
finally starting on his pet project: singling out a minor planet in an obscure precinct of the Milky Way and seeding it with vain bipedal vertebrates condemned to wait indefinitely for the deity in question to disclose himself?"

"Mason, this isn't going anywhere," Carol Eberling asserted.

"Right you are," I said. "The show is over. Time to close the concession stand and sweep up the peanut shells. I would rather teach front-end alignment at an auto-mechanics school in Framingham than continue to cast my lot with higher education. And so, with all humility and a deep appreciation for the effort you've expended in
reading my dissertation, I withdraw my candidacy."



Fortunately for Mason, front-end alignment classes aren't in his immediate future; by the end of chapter 1 he'll have accepted a job as private tutor for a young girl with "no moral center," and he'll be whisked away to a situation on a private island that will bring The Island of Doctor Moreau quickly to mind.

I have a fun evening ahead of me.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

So

I expected to be back to posting as soon as the primary was over, but I didn't count on how exhausted I would be for days afterwards. Or the lower back pain. We voted 896 people on the machines, had 54 provisional ballots cast, and stayed so busy that I didn't even have time to eat an entire bagel over the course of the day. If we don't get both more workers and more equipment in November--well, I don't want to even think about it.

And then I caught a cold, which after five days, still seems to be getting worse instead of better. L. thinks I should go to the doctor, but I'm going to give things another day.

And Something Major happened over the weekend, which will deserve its own post in a day or so--I'm waiting for photographic evidence.

I actually went a week without opening a book.

But on Monday I finished Don Robertson's The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, a book I learned about via Bybee, who counts it as her all-time favorite, and yesterday I started three:
Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteredge, Lauren Liebenberg's The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, and Julie Hecht's latest story collection Happy Trails to You, which I downloaded to the Kindle immediately after spotting it on Amazon. I'm enjoying all three enormously after a spell of feeling rather "eh" about the books I picked up and I've arranged a shelf with all the ones I'd like to get through over the summer and I've paid my fines at the public library that had blocked me from placing holds there since last summer and I now have three books waiting to be picked up after I leave work this evening.

All I want to do this summer is read.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

1001 Books You Must Read list

    I didn't intend to sign up for any additional challenges this year; I thought when I copied the list below and bolded the titles that I'd read that I was merely doing it so that I'd have an on-line list for later reference, but now that I've completed the list I realize I should have five additional books finished from this list by the end of the summer anyway, so why not commit to the 1% Well Read challenge? Ten books from the list below before the end of February 2009, with the ones I should complete by the end of August being Silas Marner, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Robinson Crusoe, Les Miserables and Mary Barton.

    1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
    2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
    3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
    4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
    5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
    6. The Sea - John Banville
    7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
    8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
    9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
    10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
    11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
    12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
    13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
    14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
    15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
    16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
    17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
    18. What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
    19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
    20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
    21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
    22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
    23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
    24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
    25. The Double – José Saramago
    26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
    27. Unless – Carol Shields
    28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
    29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
    30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
    31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
    32. Shroud – John Banville
    33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
    34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
    35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
    36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
    37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
    38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
    39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
    40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
    41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
    42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
    43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
    44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
    45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
    46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
    47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
    48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
    49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
    50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
    51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
    52. The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho
    53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
    54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
    55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
    56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
    57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
    58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
    59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
    60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
    61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
    62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
    63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
    64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
    65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
    66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
    67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
    68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
    69. Pastoralia – George Saunder
    70. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
    71. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
    72. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
    73. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
    74. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
    75. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
    76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
    77. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
    78. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
    79. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
    80. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
    81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
    82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
    83. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
    84. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
    85. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
    86. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
    87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
    88. Another World – Pat Barker
    89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
    90. Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho
    91. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
    92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
    93. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
    94. Great Apes – Will Self
    95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
    96. Underworld – Don DeLillo
    97. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
    98. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
    99. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
    100. The Untouchable – John Banville
    101. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
    102. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
    103. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
    104. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
    105. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
    106. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
    107. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
    108. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
    109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
    110. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
    111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
    112. The Information – Martin Amis
    113. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
    114. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
    115. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
    116. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
    117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
    118. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
    119. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
    120. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
    121. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
    122. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
    123. Land – Park Kyong-ni
    124. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
    125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
    126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
    127. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
    128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
    129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
    130. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
    131. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
    132. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
    133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
    134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
    135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    136. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
    137. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
    138. Complicity – Iain Banks
    139. On Love – Alain de Botton
    140. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
    141. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
    142. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
    143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
    144. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
    145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
    146. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
    147. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    148. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
    149. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
    150. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
    151. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
    152. Indigo – Marina Warner
    153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
    154. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
    155. Jazz – Toni Morrison
    156. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
    157. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
    158. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
    159. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
    160. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
    161. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
    162. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
    163. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
    164. Arcadia – Jim Crace
    165. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
    166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
    167. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
    168. Mao II – Don DeLillo
    169. Typical – Padgett Powell
    170. Regeneration – Pat Barker
    171. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
    172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
    173. Wise Children – Angela Carter
    174. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
    175. Amongst Women – John McGahern
    176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
    177. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
    178. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
    179. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
    180. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
    181. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
    182. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
    183. Possession – A.S. Byatt
    184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
    185. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
    186. A Disaffection – James Kelman
    187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
    188. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
    189. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
    190. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
    191. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
    192. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
    193. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
    194. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
    195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
    196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
    197. London Fields – Martin Amis
    198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
    199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
    200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
    201. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
    202. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
    203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
    204. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
    205. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
    206. Libra – Don DeLillo
    207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
    208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
    209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
    210. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
    211. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
    212. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
    213. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
    214. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
    215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
    216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
    217. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
    218. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
    219. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
    220. World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
    221. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
    222. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
    223. Beloved – Toni Morrison
    224. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
    225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
    226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
    227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
    228. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
    229. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
    230. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
    231. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
    232. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
    233. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
    234. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
    235. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
    236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
    237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
    238. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
    239. A Maggot – John Fowles
    240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
    241. Contact – Carl Sagan
    242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
    243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
    244. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
    245. White Noise – Don DeLillo
    246. Queer – William Burroughs
    247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
    248. Legend – David Gemmell
    249. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi
    250. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
    251. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
    252. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
    253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
    254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
    255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
    256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
    257. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
    258. Neuromancer – William Gibson
    259. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
    260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
    261. Shame – Salman Rushdie
    262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
    263. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
    264. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
    265. Waterland – Graham Swift
    266. The Life and Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee
    267. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
    268. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
    269. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
    270. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
    271. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
    272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
    273. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
    274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
    275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
    276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
    277. The Newton Letter – John Banville
    278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
    279. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
    280. The Names – Don DeLillo
    281. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
    282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
    283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
    284. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
    285. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
    286. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
    287. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
    288. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
    289. Rites of Passage – William Golding
    290. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
    291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
    292. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
    293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
    294. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
    295. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
    296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
    297. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
    298. Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
    299. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
    300. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
    301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
    302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
    303. The World According to Garp – John Irving
    304. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
    305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
    306. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
    307. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
    308. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
    309. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
    310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
    311. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
    312. The Shining – Stephen King
    313. Dispatches – Michael Herr
    314. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
    315. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
    316. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
    317. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
    318. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
    319. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
    320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
    321. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
    322. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
    323. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
    324. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
    325. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
    326. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
    327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
    328. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
    329. Fateless – Imre Kertész
    330. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
    331. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
    332. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
    333. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
    334. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
    335. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
    336. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
    337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
    338. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
    339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
    340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    341. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
    342. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
    343. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
    344. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
    345. Crash – J.G. Ballard
    346. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
    347. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
    348. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
    349. Sula – Toni Morrison
    350. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
    351. The Breast – Philip Roth
    352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
    353. G – John Berger
    354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
    355. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
    356. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
    357. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
    358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
    359. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
    360. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
    361. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
    362. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
    363. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
    364. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
    365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
    366. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
    367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
    368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
    369. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
    370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
    371. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
    372. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
    373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
    374. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
    375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    376. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
    377. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
    378. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
    379. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
    380. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
    381. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
    382. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
    383. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
    384. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
    385. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
    386. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
    387. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    388. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    389. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
    390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
    391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
    392. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
    393. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
    394. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
    395. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
    396. Chocky – John Wyndham
    397. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
    398. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
    399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
    400. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
    401. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
    402. The Joke – Milan Kundera
    403. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
    404. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
    405. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
    406. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
    407. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
    408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
    409. The Magus – John Fowles
    410. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
    411. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
    412. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
    413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
    414. Things – Georges Perec
    415. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
    416. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
    417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
    418. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
    419. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
    420. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
    421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
    422. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
    423. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
    424. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
    425. Herzog – Saul Bellow
    426. V. – Thomas Pynchon
    427. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
    428. The Graduate – Charles Webb
    429. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
    430. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
    431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
    432. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
    433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
    434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    435. The Collector – John Fowles
    436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
    437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
    438. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
    439. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
    440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
    441. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
    442. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
    443. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
    444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
    445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
    446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
    447. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
    448. Solaris - Stanislow Lem
    449. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
    450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
    451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
    452. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
    453. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
    454. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
    455. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
    456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
    457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
    458. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
    459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
    460. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
    461. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
    462. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
    463. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
    464. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
    465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
    466. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
    467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
    468. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
    469. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
    470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
    471. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
    472. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
    473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
    474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
    475. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
    476. The End of the Road – John Barth
    477. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
    478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
    479. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
    480. Voss – Patrick White
    481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
    482. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
    483. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
    484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
    485. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
    486. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
    487. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
    488. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
    489. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
    490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
    491. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
    492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
    493. The Floating Opera – John Barth
    494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
    495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
    496. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    497. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
    498. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
    499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
    500. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
    501. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
    502. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
    503. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
    504. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
    505. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
    506. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
    507. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
    508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
    509. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
    510. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
    511. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
    512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
    513. Watt – Samuel Beckett
    514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
    515. Junkie – William Burroughs
    516. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
    517. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
    518. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
    519. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
    520. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
    521. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
    522. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
    523. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
    524. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
    525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
    526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
    527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
    528. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
    529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
    530. The Rebel – Albert Camus
    531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
    532. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
    533. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
    534. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
    535. The Third Man – Graham Greene
    536. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
    537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
    538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
    539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
    540. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
    541. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
    542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
    543. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
    544. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
    545. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
    546. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
    547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
    548. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
    549. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
    550. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
    551. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
    552. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
    553. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
    554. The Victim – Saul Bellow
    555. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
    556. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
    557. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
    558. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
    559. The Plague – Albert Camus
    560. Back – Henry Green
    561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
    562. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
    563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
    564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
    565. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
    566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
    567. Loving – Henry Green
    568. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
    569. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
    570. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
    571. Transit – Anna Seghers
    572. Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
    573. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
    574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    575. Caught – Henry Green
    576. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
    577. Embers - Sandor Marai
    578. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
    579. The Outsider – Albert Camus
    580. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
    581. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
    582. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
    583. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
    584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
    585. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
    586. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
    587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
    588. Native Son – Richard Wright
    589. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
    590. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
    591. Party Going – Henry Green
    592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
    593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
    594. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
    595. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
    596. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
    597. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
    598. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
    599. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
    600. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
    601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
    602. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
    603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
    604. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
    605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
    606. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
    607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
    608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
    609. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
    610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
    611. The Years – Virginia Woolf
    612. In Parenthesis – David Jones
    613. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
    614. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
    615. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
    616. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
    617. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
    618. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
    619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
    620. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
    621. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
    622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
    623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
    624. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
    625. Independent People - Halldor Laxness
    626. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
    627. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
    628. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
    629. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
    630. England Made Me – Graham Greene
    631. Burmese Days – George Orwell
    632. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
    633. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
    634. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
    635. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
    636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
    637. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
    638. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
    639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
    640. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
    641. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
    642. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
    643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
    644. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
    645. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
    646. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
    647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
    648. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
    650. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
    651. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
    652. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
    653. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
    654. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
    655. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
    656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
    657. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
    658. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
    659. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
    660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
    661. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
    662. Passing – Nella Larsen
    663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
    664. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
    665. Living – Henry Green
    666. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
    667. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
    668. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
    669. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
    670. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
    671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
    672. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
    673. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
    674. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
    675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
    676. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
    677. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
    678. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
    679. Quartet – Jean Rhys
    680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
    681. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
    682. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
    683. Nadja – André Breton
    684. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
    685. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
    686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
    687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
    688. Amerika – Franz Kafka
    689. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
    690. Blindness – Henry Green
    691. The Castle – Franz Kafka
    692. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
    693. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
    694. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
    695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
    696. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
    697. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
    698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
    699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
    700. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
    701. The Trial – Franz Kafka
    702. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
    703. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
    704. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
    705. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
    706. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
    707. We -Yevgeny Zamyatin
    708. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
    709. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
    710. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
    711. Cane – Jean Toomer
    712. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
    713. Amok – Stefan Zweig
    714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
    715. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
    716. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
    717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
    718. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
    719. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
    720. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
    721. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
    722. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
    723. Ulysses – James Joyce
    724. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
    725. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
    726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
    727. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
    728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
    729. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
    730. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
    731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
    732. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
    733. Summer – Edith Wharton
    734. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
    735. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
    736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
    737. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
    738. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
    739. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
    740. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
    741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
    742. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
    743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
    744. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
    745. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
    746. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
    747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
    748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
    749. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
    750. Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
    751. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
    752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
    753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
    754. Howards End – E.M. Forster
    755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
    756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
    757. Martin Eden – Jack London
    758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
    759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
    760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
    761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
    762. The Iron Heel – Jack London
    763. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
    764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
    765. Mother – Maxim Gorky
    766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
    767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
    768. Young Törless – Robert Musil
    769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
    770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
    771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
    772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
    773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
    774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
    775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
    776. The Ambassadors – Henry James
    777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
    778. The Immoralist – André Gide
    779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
    780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
    781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
    783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
    784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
    785. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
    786. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
    787. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
    788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
    789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
    790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
    791. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
    792. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
    793. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
    794. Dracula – Bram Stoker
    795. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
    796. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
    797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
    798. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
    799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
    800. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
    801. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    802. Born in Exile – George Gissing
    803. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
    804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    805. News from Nowhere – William Morris
    806. New Grub Street – George Gissing
    807. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
    808. Tess of the D-Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
    810. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
    811. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
    812. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
    813. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
    814. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
    815. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
    816. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
    817. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
    818. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
    819. She – H. Rider Haggard
    820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
    821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
    822. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
    823. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
    824. Germinal – Émile Zola
    825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
    826. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
    827. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
    828. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
    829. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
    830. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
    831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
    832. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
    833. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
    834. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
    835. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
    836. Nana – Émile Zola
    837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    838. The Red Room – August Strindberg
    839. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
    840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
    841. Drunkard – Émile Zola
    842. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
    843. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
    844. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
    845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
    846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
    847. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
    848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
    849. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
    850. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    851. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
    852. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
    853. Middlemarch - George Eliot
    854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
    855. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
    856. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
    857. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
    858. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
    859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
    860. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
    861. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    862. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
    863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
    864. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
    865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
    866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
    867. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
    868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
    869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
    870. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
    871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
    873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
    874. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
    875. Silas Marner – George Eliot
    876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
    877. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
    878. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
    879. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
    880. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
    881. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    882. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
    883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
    884. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
    885. Adam Bede - George Eliot
    886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
    887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
    888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
    889. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
    890. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
    891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
    892. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
    893. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
    894. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    896. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
    897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
    899. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
    900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
    901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
    902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
    903. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
    904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
    905. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
    906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
    907. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
    908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
    909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
    910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
    911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
    912. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
    913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
    914. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
    915. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
    916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
    917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
    918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
    919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
    920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
    921. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
    922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
    923. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
    924. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
    925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
    926. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
    927. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
    928. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
    929. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
    930. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
    931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
    932. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
    933. Persuasion – Jane Austen
    934. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
    935. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
    936. Emma – Jane Austen
    937. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
    938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
    939. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
    940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
    941. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    942. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
    943. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
    944. The Nun – Denis Diderot
    945. Camilla – Fanny Burney
    946. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
    947. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    948. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
    949. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
    950. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
    951. Justine – Marquis de Sade
    952. Vathek – William Beckford
    953. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
    954. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
    955. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    956. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
    957. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    958. Evelina – Fanny Burney
    959. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    960. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
    961. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
    962. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
    963. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
    964. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
    965. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
    966. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    967. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
    968. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    969. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
    970. Candide – Voltaire
    971. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
    972. Amelia – Henry Fielding
    973. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
    974. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
    975. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
    976. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
    977. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
    978. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
    979. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
    980. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
    981. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
    982. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
    983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
    984. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
    985. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
    986. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
    987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
    988. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
    989. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
    990. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
    991. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
    992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
    993. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
    994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
    995. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
    996. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
    997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
    998. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
    999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
    1000. Metamorphoses – Ovid
    1001. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Maggie's Southern Reading Challenge



This will be the second year that Maggie has hosted the Southern Reading Challenge. The objective is to read three books by Southern authors between May 15 and August 15.

I need to join another reading challenge like I need a hole in my head, but how can I resist a challenge that gives me both an excuse to issue dead mule alerts and a chance to win a tin of pecans?

I'll be selecting books from this pool:

The Grass Harp. Truman Capote

A Visitation of Spirits. Randall Kenan

On Agate Hill. Lee Smith

Thirteen Moons. Charles Frazier

Collected Stories. Ellen Gilchrist

Everything That Rises Must Converge. Flannery O'Connor

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Photobucket

Not that you can tell, but I'm the one holding a blue sign behind the letter H. . .

A bang, not a whimper

  Two months into L.'s retirement, and I'm finished with the stockpiling of books. No more book purchases! Or at least, no purcha...