#1 – Where The Lake Becomes The River by Kate Betterton

Finally, for the throngs of fans of this blog, the long awaited review of Where the Lake Becomes the River by Kate Betterton. 

I previously mentioned that I won ten copies of this book from bookmovement.com.  This was my book club’s book for January.  The author was gracious enough to call us for a question and answer session this past Sunday evening. 

Were I browsing for books, this is not one that I would have chosen to purchase for myself.  For the most part, I dislike science fiction.  My personal definition of science fiction is extremely broad and would include anything that has the word ghost in the synopsis.  But, we won the book.  I read it and found it to be enjoyable. 

The novel is made up of interwoven short stories about the life of the McCullough family.  Betterton covers a broad range of topics – the Ku Klux Klan and the civil rights movement, life in Japan after WWII, kamikazes, ghosts, patricide, suicide, molestation, reincarnation, returning from the dead.  She ties them together well. 

The book made me think about how I would cope if faced with the death of my husband.  I cannot imagine anything more devastating.  Certainly it would be very hard to accept.

Betterton was wonderful to talk to.  She thoughtfully answered the questions that the book club members posed and expanded on our comments. 

After the call, the meeting turned to food (Monical’s pizza and wonderful baked goods) and girl talk as it always does.  We welcomed a new member.  Hopefully she will stay, as I think she makes a good addition to the group.

Jealous bobbitry, couponing obesity and the boy parts of the recent POTUS

It is hard to imagine what information the persons using the following keywords to find my blog were actually looking for:

• jealous bobbitry – Isn’t “bobbitry” in and of itself a jealous act?
• couponing obesity – Fat people that use coupons to buy more food?  Or, a plethora of coupons?
• pee hug - I thought I had coined this term after a person who swam in a baby pool that had been urinated in woke me up to give me a hug.
• Charlie Blackwell’s penis in American Wife – Charlie Blackwell is the George Bush character in American Wifeby Curtis Sittenfeld.  Perhaps she has some inside knowledge about the former President’s member.
• bowling ball designed butt – A bowling ball that is shaped like a butt?  Sir Mix A Lot would love this.
• flogging fat girls – So now we deserve to be harmed for our love of food?  Or is this some type of fetishist?
• best rolling pin  – Ha!  There’s no cooking information here. 

What are some of your own recent favorites from your blog?

When I Was In The News…

I once made my husband introduce me to all of his colleagues as “And, this is my wife, Mrs. R—–, whom I’m sure you’ve recently read a lot about.”  One drunk fellow agreed that he indeed had been reading a lot about Mrs. R—–.  I had not made the news at that time, but I thought it would be a great ice breaker for the first meeting of his former co-workers.  For those of you who have met my husband, I’m certain you understand the cajoling and begging that was involved in his making such an introduction.

As a student, I made the local newspaper for the standard honor roll, graduations, pageants, etc…  My husband and I were in the local newspapers when we got engaged and subsequently married, and later our names were mentioned when we bought our house.  When I became the Postmaster of the town that I work in, a story about my Postmaster installation was on the front page of the town’s newspaper.

When I was a child I made the news twice for very dumb reasons.  In 1985, I attended the East Peoria Centennial.  A classmate, Justin M, and I were asked to introduce a news segment about the festival after a reporter stumbled upon us sucking air from balloons and talking in crazy voices.  We  the introductions in the high-pitched voices that one achieves only by inhaling helium. 

The next year, I made the front page of the East Peoria Courier.  My neighbor Lindsey and I read enough books to be invited to the Fondulac library’s prestigious end of the year party.  Zookeepers from the Glen Oak Zoo brought different animals for the children to see.  Lindsey and I were photographed petting a skunk.  The tentative looks on our faces made it front page material. 

And several years ago I was a local fitness celebrity.  My husband and I participated in the Indoor Triathalon at the Riverplex.  One of the news stations showed me several times on the news.  I think they chose me as a message to unfit people everywhere – “If she can do it, then you certainly can too!”

I guess my lack of fame is a good thing.  After all, I haven’t been featured in the police blotter.

The Mighty Omni

In 1991, my Uncle Jack passed away.  Even though I was 14, he left a car to me in his will. 

I was thrilled at the prospects; once I got my driver’s license I would be able to drive myself anywhere I wanted to go.  The savory scent of my future freedom permeated the air around me.  Less than two years would pass and then I would no longer have to depend on other people to give me a ride.  Opportunities abounded making it a fine car, indeed.

The two-tone brown 1983 Dodge Omni sat in my Grandma’s garage for almost two years.  My dad would occasionally start the car, but for the most part it just sat and developed some minor character flaws. 

I got my driver’s license in September of 1993.  The minute I got home from the driver’s license bureau I was literally off like a shot.  The power of being able to drive was exhilarating.

Having a car gave me the ability to quit my hated job as a bus person at Jonah’s.  I interviewed for and was given a job at Foster & Gallagher.  I was movin’ on up.  Now I would be paid the sum of $4.70 an hour plus commission on the number of magazine renewals I was able to obtain.  This was a vast improvement over the $4.25 minimum wage I was paid at Jonah’s.

Before October 1st, I had four flat tires.  Really.  Four. flat. tires.  Although my dad made sure I could change a tire before I was allowed to get my driver’s license, I never had to put my skills to the test.  I would pull over to the side of the road and get out the spare tire and the  jack, but men always stopped and finished the job for me.  This was prior to the advent of cellular phones into daily life.  I didn’t have the ability to call someone to help me.  Now it strikes me as odd that random strangers always stopped to help.  Society has changed a lot in the past 16 years.  Now, it is assumed that everyone has a cell phone and can call for help, so the random men just keep on driving. 

One premium feature of the Omni was the rusted floorboard on the passenger side.  When driving through a large puddle, water would splash into the car dousing the unsuspecting passenger’s feet.

The tan fabric on the roof of the car had come partially unattached and would flutter in the breeze if the windows were rolled down.

The car came equipped with an AM radio.  Back then, I loved gangsta rap music, so I drove around with a boom box in the car blaring my Too Short and Easy-E tapes.  The amount of D batteries I used to listen to such horrible degrading tripe blows my mind. 

Gas was less than $1.00 a gallon.  It cost between $8 and $10 to fill up the tank.  Friends would donate a dollar or two to the cause and we would cruise around Peoria for hours. 

One of the finest days in the history of my Omni occurred in the winter of 1994.  I picked up my friend Kristy before school for our daily ride to school and work together.  That morning we decided to go through the Hardees’ drive through to pick up some breakfast sandwiches before school.  As I pulled into the drive through we noticed the car was making a loud thump with each turn of the tire.  It was snowy out.  Mechanical geniuses that we were, we determined that the thump was caused by snow caught in the wheel well and went about our merry ways. 

After school we were off to Foster and Gallagher for a few hours of trying to get people to renew subscriptions to Nursing, Grit, and Playboy magazines (by the way, I was always one of the top telemarketers, due to my sexy telephone voice).  We headed down highway 116 to work, driving the posted speed limit of 55.  The noise got louder and louder, sounding like a helicopter.  Although it did add some needed bass to the gangsta rap music we were jamming out to, it wasn’t the right beat. 

The night was over and I took Kristy home.  The noise remained at the same level during the ride home.  At the bottom of Bloomington Road I decided that the best way to solve the problem of the “Omnicoptor” would be to turn the steering wheel all the way to the left and then all the way to the right.  Surely that would dislodge the snow.

The entire wheel fell off. 

A friend of my father’s came and towed the car away.  A few days later it was as good as it ever was.

Several months later the Omni just stopped moving as I was driving down the road.  It blew a head gasket and the cost of repair was tenfold the value of the car.  So, the Omni was no more and I had to depend on my mom and my friends to take me places for a few months. 

Rest In Peace, Omnicoptor, wherever you are.  Thank you Uncle Jack. You gave me my first taste of freedom.  I have never turned back.

But, I digress

The Postmaster oath is the same as the President’s oath of office.  I told my husband this and he looked at me like I was insane and asked how I intended to protect and defend the Constitution.

Soon, I might be meeting President Obama.  I am doing something for work that may put me in very close vicinity with him!  How exciting it would be to actually see a U.S. President in person. 

Last night we started watching the HBO’s John Adams miniseries.  Did you know that John Adams defended the perpetrators of the Boston Massacre? 

I had a crazy dream last night.  I was driving a teal Ford Mustang down a busy highway that was partially covered in snow and ice.  Every time I used the brakes I would fishtail and slide all over the road.  Several accidents were narrowly avoided.  Finally I crashed into a house.  Upon getting out to see what the problem was I noticed I had a flat tire and that all of my tires were completely bald. 

Cell phone update – Yesterday I put the phone in the refrigerator for at least 10 hours.  This did not seem to help at all.  There is still a lot of condensation on both screens.  I am going to try rice next.  If I have to get a new phone, I’m going to use ebay.  Several years ago I got an older model (that was new) for a ridiculously low price.  Since all I do is talk to a few people, I don’t need any fancy bells and whistles.

In Which I Consider Delivering a Sound Flogging Upon Myself

I couldn’t find my cell phone earlier.  After calling it a few times and searching around the house and in my car, I realized it must be in my pants pocket.  Those pants were in the washing machine which was churning away.

Some googling suggests the following methods of cell phone revival:

• put it on a dehumidifier
• put it in the oven on low for 30 minutes
• put it in the crock pot on low
• put it in the refrigerator
• use a blow dryer to dry it out
• put it on top of the dryer on spin cycle
• put it underneath a lamp

I had it underneath a lamp for a while.  A few minutes ago, I tried the blow dryer method, which fogged up the display screens a bit more.  Now it is back under the lamp.  Hopefully it will work soon.  I REALLY don’t want to buy a new cell phone.  I’m starting to wish I wasn’t so anti-cell phone insurance.  On the other hand, if I buy a new phone on ebay I think I will be ahead, since I have avoided paying for cell phone insurance for the past decade. 

Cross your fingers for me.  Any tried and true suggestions for bringing my phone back from the abyss?

Years past…

Recently on a Good Morning America episode, the anchors revealed what past year of their life had the most impact on them.  Hearing this got me thinking about events in my own past and what far reaching effects they have had on my current life.

The events that most changed my life happened over a period of two years.  In 2001, a friend asked me to go with her to Weight Watchers.  I was extremely overweight and was suffering from extremely low self esteem.  At that time and had never made any attempt to diet and didn’t know how to begin.  Weight Watchers literally changed my life.  By the end of 2001, I was a size 4.  My self esteem skyrocketed to the point of megalomania. 

In 2002, I had a raucous time, making up for many years of a life as a obese self-deprecating anti-fatite.  I had previously believed that others based my worth as a human being on my weight.  I also based my own self worth on my weight, though I have always been glad to befriend anyone who stimulated my mind regardless of his/her weight. 

In 2003, I learned to desire things that I could not get with my looks.   I calmed down and set my sights on the future.  In 2003, at the age of 25, I became an adult. 

In 2003, I met my future husband.  In 2004, we moved in together and adopted some pets.  In 2005, we got engaged.  In 2006, we got married.  In 2009, we are very happy. 

I still believe that I can do anything that I want to do.  Keep in mind that I have accepted that with my extreme lack of coordination and short stature, I will not be a ballerina.  Honestly, I believe that anyone can do anything they put their mind to.  Most of the time, its not based on looks.  Certainly a sprinter needs a lean body and strong leg muscles; a surgeon needs a steady hand; a foot model should be free of corns and bunions.  But do you need to look a certain way to be a Postmaster, vending machine repairman or a stenographer?  Probably not.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I very much enjoyed the last book that I read – Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.  It isn’t often that I become totally engrossed in a book, so I set out to compile a more comprehensive list of literary suggestions. 

I chose Of Human Bondage from the list of 100 Best Novels compiled by the Modern American library.  I was previously exposed to several of the books on that list in high school and college.  Realizing this made me start seeking a list of novels that are typically part of the college English curriculum.  First I visited the Cliff’s Notes website with hopes that the list of available study guides would assist me better in preparing my own list of books to read. 

Several google searches later I stumbled across a list of books whose sole purpose is to suggest to the bibliophile what he/she should do to become more well read.  Currently the most popular of such publications is Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. 

The complete list is below.  I have already read several of the titles, and have highlighted those in red.  As I went through and highlighted the books that I am certain I have read in the past, I had a fond remembrance of each one - American Pastoral is probably my favorite book of all time.  If you haven’t read it, pick it up.  Roth doesn’t disappoint.  Other favorites include The Handmaid’s Tale and Invisible Man.   Hopefully all of these books are the kind that leave something behind with the reader.

I will use these and several other lists to make literary reading suggestions for myself.  This list, for its sheer volume, has the most appeal to me.  There is no way that I will read all of these books, as some topics and genres do not appeal to me, but I think combing through this list will keep me busy for quite some time.

Have you read any of these?  Is there anything that I should move to the top of the list?  I don’t care what order I read them in, I just want to always be reading a good book!  Is there something you feel should have made the list, but didn’t (perhaps Brave New World or The Count of Monte Cristo)?  My To-Be-Read list is not exclusive of the list below.  It is an ever changing and ever growing thing. 

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

#4 Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham

In an effort to expand my horizons, understand more literary references and challenge my brain I am attempting to read some of the Classics this year.  The first book I chose was Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.

The back cover describes the book as a “classic bildungsroman” – a novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.  Having to look up the definition of a word on the book jacket made me wonder what I was getting myself into.  I persevered, started the book and found it to be a very engaging story. 

First published in 1915, this book tells the story of Phillip Carey, a young man who is forced to bear many crosses. 

He is born with a club foot, a handicap that he is very sensitive about.  Orphaned at a young age, he goes to live with his uncle and aunt – a childless Vicar and his wife.  As a young adult he sets out on several different paths before finding his calling in medicine.  Like all humans, he has to make his own journey.  His time spent studying art in Paris and later living in abject poverty while working as a dress designer contribute to the formation of his character, which later makes him a successful doctor. 

Throughout the book he befriends various artists and intellectuals.  He gets drunk on conversation and is invigorated by new concepts and ideas.   

One of the prominent story lines in this novel is Phillip’s obsession with the despicable Mildred.  Although he can find no redeeming quality in her, he cannot stop his infatuation.  Their affair vastly alters the course of Phillip’s life.  Although Phillip knows that Mildred is only using him, he so desperately wants to spend time with her that he enables her to exploit him again and again.  When the affair was finally over, I was thrilled to see her go.     

In Chapter XXVIII, Maugham does justice to the struggle of man losing his faith.  Some of the character’s reasoning was similar to my own processes.  I really enjoyed this chapter and read it several times.  

Later in the story, Phillip contemplates the concept of abstract morality, that was first put forth to him in Chapter XXVIII :

“When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he felt that a great weight was taken from his shoulders; casting off the responsibility which weighed down every action, when every action was infinitely important for the welfare of his immortal soul, he experienced a vivid sense of liberty.  But he knew now that this was an illusion.  When he put away the religion inwhich he had been brought up, he had kept unimpaired the morality which was part and parcel of it.  He made up his mind therefore to think things out for himself.  He determined to be swayed by no prejudices.  He swept away the virtues and the vices, the established laws of good and evil, with the idea of finding out the rules of life for himself…” 

Certainly writing a book about sexual obsession and the loss of one’s religion in 1915 was quite scandalous.  Maugham was one of the great Realists of his time and I fully intend to read more of his work.

Adventures in Postmastering

For those of you who don’t know me, I am the Postmaster of a town with the population of about 2,500 people.  I really enjoy interacting with the townspeople.  Working for the Post Office allows me to meet people from all demographics.  Everyone gets mail. 

A few weeks ago, a man knocked on my office door during the lunch period.  I opened the door to find a new face.  This fine new citizen of the town wanted four change of address forms.  I gave them to him and he went on his merry way.  The next day he returned (during my lunch period) and asked for four more change of address cards.  I acquiesced and went back to reading my book.  Several days later this person came in and inquire as to where his mail was.  He didn’t understand why he hadn’t been receiving any mail at his new house.  I asked him if had turned in a change of address and he said “no”.  I gave him four more. 

Let me paint the picture of this fellow for you, dear reader.  He is in his early twenties, about 6′2″ tall, 300 pounds.  He smells very bad and every time I have encountered him he has been wearing the same baggy grey sweat pants that he stops every few minutes to hitch up.  He doesn’t seem as if he is all there. 

He wears a wedding ring, so he is married to some poor soul.  He also has two children – a toddler and a baby, with whom he ambles around town aimlessly for several hours every day.

Today the temperature was a balmy -14 degrees with a wind chill in the mid -20s.  He spent at least an hour pushing the baby around in a stroller, up and down the street in front of the post office.  Certainly this is child endangerment, so I called the police and asked them to send an officer to check no the baby.  The dispatcher asked for a description and I said that he was wearing sweat pants and a tan Carhart jacket and pushing a stroller West on Street X and then North on Street Y.  A few minutes later, we saw a policeman talking to a person pumping gas at the service station across the street.  The “suspect” was also wearing a tan Carhart jacket, but did not have a stroller.  The sleuth was on the case.  I think the bad parent must have been found; we didn’t see him again.

On a side note, the receptionist at the doctor’s office in town told us that the same guy was spotted wearing the sweat pants and a pair of flip flops the other day as he took his daily constitutional.  It was 20 degrees! 

This man doesn’t seem crazy when you talk to him, but obviously has a vast lack of judgement in the child rearing and social interaction departments.  I can’t decide if he is just really high or really dumb.