I have begun reading (or rereading, as the case may be) July's People by Nadine Gordimer. This is from the "Modern Fiction" section. I don't want to go into details until I have finished the book, but I will list the books in this section so you can get a feel for what it entails.
1. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
2. Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amando
3. Le Grand Meaulnes, Alain-Fournier
4. Take a Girl Like You, Kingsley Amis
5. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
6. Surfacing, Margaret Atwood
7. The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
8. Tales of Odessa, Isaak Babel
9. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
10. The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks
11. The Regenerational Trilogy, Pat Barker
12. Herzog, Saul Bellow
13. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
14. Nadja, Andre Breton
15. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
16. The Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
17. Possession, A. S. Byatt
18. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino
19. The Outsider, Albert Camus
20. Auto da Fe, Elias Canetti
21. Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey
22. The Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier
23. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
24. What We Talk about When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
25. The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Carey
26. Journey to the End of Night, Louis-Ferdinand Celine
27. Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas
28. The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
29. Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee
30. Cheri, Colette
31. Victory, Joseph Conrad
32. A House and It's Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett
33. Fifth Business, William Robertson Davies
34. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
35. Underworld, Don Delillo
36. Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
37. Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin
38. Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff
39. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
40. The Lover, Marguerite Duras
41. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence George Durrell
42. The Name of Rose, Umberto Eco
43. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
44. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
45. The Wars, Timothy Findley
46. The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
47. Wildlife, Richard Ford
48. A Passage to India, E. M. Forester
49. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
50. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
51. The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
52. From the Fifteenth District, Mavis Gallant
53. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
54. Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet
55. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
56. July's People, Nadine Gordimer
57. FerdyDurke, Witold Gombrowicz
58. The Tin Drum, Guenter Grass
59. Hunger, Knut Hamsun
60. The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat
61. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
62. The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
63. Lost Horizon, James Hilton
64. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
65. The World According to Garp, John Irving
66. Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
67. The Remains of the Day, Kazui Ishiguro
68. Ulysses, James Joyce
69. The File on H, Ismail Kadare
70. The Trial, Franz Kafka
71. It, Stephen King
72. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
73. The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
74. The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
75. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
76. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
77. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
78. Changing Places, David Lodge
79. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, J. N. Machado de Assis
80. The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz
81. The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer
82. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
83. Embers, Sandor Marai
84. Life of Pi, Yahn Martel
85. Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham
86. The Group, Mary McCarthy
87. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson Mccullers
88. Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
89. The Sea of Fertility, Yukio Mishima
90. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
91. Cold Heaven, Brian Moore
92. Beloved, Toni Morrison
93. The Progress of Love, Alice Munro
94. The Sea, the Sea Iris Murdoch
95. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
96. A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul
97. The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brian
98. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
99. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
100. Where the Jackals Howl, Amos Oz
101. The Messiah of Stockhold, Cynthia Ozick
102. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
103. Mr. Weston's Good Wine, T. F. Powys
104. The Nephew, James Purdy
105. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
106. Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler
107. Hadrian the Seventh, Frederick Rolfe
108. The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth
109. The Human Stain, Philip Roth
110. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
111. Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo
112. Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
113. Short Stories, Saki
114. Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
115. Staying On, Paul Scott
116. Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald
117. Last Exit to Brooklyn, Husbert Selby, Jr.
118. Unless, Carol Shields
119. The Magician of Lublin, Isaac Bashevis Singer
120. The Engineer of Human Souls, Josepf Skvorecky
121. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
122. The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
123. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
124. Sophie's Choice, William Styron
125. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
126. The Confessions of Zeno, Italo Svevo
127. Declares Pereira, Antonio Tabucchi
128. The White Hotel, D. M. Thomas
129. The Master Colm Toibin
130. Felicia's Journey, William Trevor
131. The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola
132. The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler
133. Couples, John Updike
134. The Time of the Hero, Mario Vargas Llosa
135. In Praise of Older Women, Stephen Vizinczey
136. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
137. Voss, Patrick White
138. Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar
Yikes! That's quite a list. I thought I was fairly well read, but I can see that I have clearly missed some very important authors. How is it possible that (to the best of my recollection) I have never read Steinbeck, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, and a host of others? And just the title of the section is intimidating-- "Modern Fiction." It feels like something you would write a thesis on-- "Defining Modern Fiction." On the less intimidating fron there are some familiar faces here. I had to smile when I saw Things Fall Apart on the list; everytime I see that title, I hear it in my head as pronounced by a certain Nigerian professor I had. Never fails to produce a smile. I wonder if a few years will deepend my understanding of novels such as A Hundred Years of Solitude, Lolita, or Beloved, all of which I have not read since college or before. I guess I'd better start reading. I have a big job ahead of me.
About Me
- Amber
- Illinois, United States
- I have always loved books. My mother has a photo of me as a small child, sitting on the floor surrounded by stacks of books, "reading" to my kitten. I'm pretty sure my love of books can be blamed on her; after all, she bought me most of the books in those stacks. I was startled to discover after having my son that I had gone months without reading a book. The previous record for time without reading a book could most likely have been measured in hours-- certainly not days, weeks, or months. I immediately rushed to the library to rectify this situation, and spent every napping moment frantically reading the biography of my favorite guitarist while my infant son napped. The book was unsatisfactory (I predict a return to rehab for the guitarist), but my book addiction is back in top form. Thus, despite having a husband, two-year old, two dogs, and a full-time job, I have decided to read all 501 books in my "501 Must-Read Books." I have enjoyed flipping through this in the past, reminiscing fondly about some of my favorites. Now I plan on actually buckling down, reading ALL 501, and sharing my experience.