WLF reading list 2010

[Igu Soni]

January:
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
Unruly Times, Prashant Bhawalkar
The Homecoming, Harold Pinter

February:
Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Mirra Ginsburg
Nine Stories, J. D. Salinger

March:
The Land of Green Plums, Herta Muller, translated by Michael Hofmann
Old Times, Harold Pinter
The Road, Cormac McCarthy

April:
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

[mesnalty]

January
Anton Chekhov, The Darling and Other Stories (trans. Constance Garnett)
Vincent Lam, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes (trans. Robin Buss)
Horacio Quiroga, Cuentos de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte
Jean Anouilh, Antigone (trans. Barbara Bray)
Jean Anouilh, The Lark (trans. Christopher Fry)
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas (trans. Chris Andrews)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Girl from the Coast (trans. Willem Samuels)
Ferenc Barnás, The Ninth (trans. Paul Olchváry)
Gao Xingjian, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (trans. Mabel Lee)
Ch'oe Yun, There a Petal Silently Falls (trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton)
Saul Bellow, Herzog
Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen (trans. Megan Backus)
Elie Wiesel, Night (trans. Marion Wiesel)
Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro (trans. Barbara Wright)
Roberto Bolaño, The Skating Rink (trans. Chris Andrews)
Jean Toomer, Cane
Juan Filloy, Op Oloop (trans. Lisa Dillman)

February
Manuel Puig, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (trans. Suzanne Jill Levine)
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
David Grossman, Be My Knife (trans. Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz)
Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
John Updike, Rabbit Redux
John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
John Updike, Rabbit at Rest
John Gardner, Grendel
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat (trans. Edith Grossman)

March
A. S. Byatt, Possession
Torquato Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem (trans. Max Wickert)
Haruki Murakami, After Dark (trans. Jay Rubin)
Pablo Neruda, Odas Elementales
William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Paul Auster, City of Glass
Paul Auster, Ghosts
Paul Auster, The Locked Room
José Saramago, All the Names (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness (trans. Katherine Silver)
Anonymous, Beowulf (trans. R. M. Liuzza)
Pablo Neruda, Nuevas Odas Elementales
Pablo Neruda, El Tercer Libro de las Odas
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Jessie Coulson)
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog
Horacio Castellanos Moya, La Diabla en el Espejo
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (trans. Marian Schwartz)

April
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red (trans. Erdağ M. Göknar)
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis (trans. Stanley F. Conrad)
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Athol Fugard, Selected Plays ('Master Harold'... and the Boys, Blood Knot, Hello and Goodbye, Boesman and Lena)
Robert Coover, The Public Burning
Arthur Schnitzler, La Ronde (trans. Stephen Unwin and Peter Zombory-Moldovan)
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (trans. Daniel Hahn)
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun (trans. Philip Gabriel)
Roberto Bolaño, Monsieur Pain (trans. Chris Andrews)
John Steinbeck, The Short Novels of John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
David Foster Wallace, Oblivion
Ernesto Sabato, El Túnel
Carlo Emilio Gadda, That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (trans. William Weaver)
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

May
Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores (trans. Edith Grossman)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
André Malraux, Man's Fate (trans. Haakon M. Chevalier)
Javier Marías, A Heart So White (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)
Anthony Burgess, The Doctor Is Sick
Amélie Nothomb, The Character of Rain (trans. Timothy Bent)
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Michel Houellebecq, Platform (trans. Frank Wynne)
Alice Munro, The Love of a Good Woman
Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana
Mario Vargas Llosa, Conversation in the Cathedral (trans. Gregory Rabassa)
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Federico García Lorca, Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba (trans. Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata)
E. M. Forster, Howards End
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase (trans. Alfred Birnbaum)
Anton Chekhov, Ivanov, The Seagull and Three Sisters (trans. Ronald Hingley)
Halldór Laxness, Independent People (trans. J. A. Thompson)
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
August Strindberg, The Father (trans. Michael Meyer)

[waxwing]

2010 reading list

Lush Life by Richard Price
Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard by Georges Simenon
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larrson
The Secret Scripture by Sebastien Barry
A Person of Interest by Susan Choi

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
Distant Star by Roberto Bolano
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

The Likeness by Tana French
That Awful Mess on the Via Merluna by Carlos Emilio Gadda
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen
Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano
A Gate at the Stairs by Laurie Moore
Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
The Darkest Room by Johann Theorin
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Derek Palmer
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Your Face Tomorrow Vol 1 Fever and Spear by Javier Marias
The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick
Sleepless by Charlie Huston
As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo
The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven
The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream Vol 2 by Javier Marias
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano
The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello

Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker

The Black Minutes by Martin Solares
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra
Jerusalem by Goncalo M. Tavares
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

Ghosts by Cesar Aira
Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow and Farewell Vol3 by Javier Marias
The Babes in the Wood by Ruth Rendell
Purge by Sofi Oksanen
Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Amulet by Roberto Bolano
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Consequences by Penelope Lively

[peter_d]

Originally Posted by mesnalty

January
Anton Chekhov, The Darling and Other Stories (trans. Constance Garnett)
Vincent Lam, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes (trans. Robin Buss)
Horacio Quiroga, Cuentos de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte
Jean Anouilh, Antigone (trans. Barbara Bray)
Jean Anouilh, The Lark (trans. Christopher Fry)
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas (trans. Chris Andrews)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Girl from the Coast (trans. Willem Samuels)
Ferenc Barnás, The Ninth (trans. Paul Olchváry)
Gao Xingjian, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (trans. Mabel Lee)
Ch'oe Yun, There a Petal Silently Falls (trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton)
Saul Bellow, Herzog
Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen (trans. Megan Backus)
Elie Wiesel, Night (trans. Marion Wiesel)
Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro (trans. Barbara Wright)
Roberto Bolaño, The Skating Rink (trans. Chris Andrews)
Jean Toomer, Cane
Juan Filloy, Op Oloop (trans. Lisa Dillman)

February
Manuel Puig, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (trans. Suzanne Jill Levine)
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
David Grossman, Be My Knife (trans. Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz)
Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
John Updike, Rabbit Redux
John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
John Updike, Rabbit at Rest
John Gardner, Grendel
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat (trans. Edith Grossman)

March
A. S. Byatt, Possession
Torquato Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem (trans. Max Wickert)
Haruki Murakami, After Dark (trans. Jay Rubin)
Pablo Neruda, Odas Elementales
William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Paul Auster, City of Glass
Paul Auster, Ghosts
Paul Auster, The Locked Room
José Saramago, All the Names (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness (trans. Katherine Silver)
Anonymous, Beowulf (trans. R. M. Liuzza)
Pablo Neruda, Nuevas Odas Elementales
Pablo Neruda, El Tercer Libro de las Odas
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Jessie Coulson)
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog
Horacio Castellanos Moya, La Diabla en el Espejo
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (trans. Marian Schwartz)

April
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red (trans. Erdağ M. Göknar)
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis (trans. Stanley F. Conrad)
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Athol Fugard, Selected Plays ('Master Harold'... and the Boys, Blood Knot, Hello and Goodbye, Boesman and Lena)
Robert Coover, The Public Burning
Arthur Schnitzler, La Ronde (trans. Stephen Unwin and Peter Zombory-Moldovan)
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (trans. Daniel Hahn)
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun (trans. Philip Gabriel)
Roberto Bolaño, Monsieur Pain (trans. Chris Andrews)

Even if reading would be my full-time job I wouldn't manage to read so incredibly much in such a short period of time... I've got a lot of practicing to do...

[Eric]

I agree with Peter D and his purple frown icon. In my opinion there is something manic and attention-seeking for any reader to want to clock up a hugely impressive list - numerically speaking - of books they've read.

Unlike Peter, perhaps, I won't even try to practise. I like to savour books. Sometimes, this does mean that I never finish them, which is wrong. But I couldn't stand the sheer pressure of reading three-quarters of a book a day (judging by Mesnalty's January). How can you possibly take this all in? Won't you have forgotten what Chekhov was saying by the time you're reading Adiga?

Reading should be part of your own life rather than a competition to impress others.

[Amoxcalli]

Originally Posted by Eric

I agree with Peter D and his purple frown icon. In my opinion there is something manic and attention-seeking for any reader to want to clock up a hugely impressive list - numerically speaking - of books they've read.

I can't speak for mesnalty of course, but I put all fiction I read on the reading list in the way they're presented to me. This is pretty straight-forward when it comes to novels, but when it comes to short stories, I list them the way I read them. When I read multiple short stories in a collection by a single author (such as Sartre's Le Mur), I'll list them in a single entry. When I come across them as a single short story (such as García Márquez' The trail of your blood in the snow or Franz Kafka's In the Penal Colony), or when I read a collection by various authors (such as Hemon's anthology Best of European Fiction 2010), I list them separately. This way, I can easily read three "books" a day. It's not so much a competitive element as it is a convenient way of listing them.

On top of that, I'm a student, I've got a lot of time to read. I travel 100 minutes by bus every weekday, which does mean you go through your novels a lot faster than the average person.

Then there's fiction read during class, but that's never more than a handful of works a year.

Reading is a drug. The more you read, the more you need.

[mesnalty]

Originally Posted by Eric

I agree with Peter D and his purple frown icon. In my opinion there is something manic and attention-seeking for any reader to want to clock up a hugely impressive list - numerically speaking - of books they've read.

Unlike Peter, perhaps, I won't even try to practise. I like to savour books. Sometimes, this does mean that I never finish them, which is wrong. But I couldn't stand the sheer pressure of reading three-quarters of a book a day (judging by Mesnalty's January). How can you possibly take this all in? Won't you have forgotten what Chekhov was saying by the time you're reading Adiga?

Reading should be part of your own life rather than a competition to impress others.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. During his prime, Harold Bloom could supposedly read 1,000 pages an hour with almost total comprehension (enough to write detailed literary criticism). Not comparing myself to Harold Bloom, just making the point that reading at such a pace doesn't necessarily imply speeding through books without really taking them in. I'm sure you get more out of the books you read than I do, but I like to sample a wide range of literature. I do tend to reread my favourite books and authors, and savour them - I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy probably ten times, for example.

The assumption that I read to impress others or to seek attention is baseless.

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by Eric

Reading should be part of your own life rather than a competition to impress others.

Because you think we read just to impressed a sad old busker like you.
The day you realise your arse isn't the center of this board or more broadly the universe, you do yourself a favor, and us too.


Since everybody mess up with this list thread, let's go on with it.
None of us will find anything in it anymore.

[Igu Soni]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Since everybody mess up with this list thread, let's go on with it.
None of us will find anything in it anymore.

It was rather untenable to have two different threads anyway.

[saliotthomas]

Not if one us his brain or try to fuck up a thread they have no plave in.

[peter_d]

My 2010 reading list so far:

January
Paul Auster, The book of Illusions
Vonne van der Meer, Eilandgasten
Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
J. Slauerhoff, Schuim en As

February
Paul Theroux, The great railway bazaar
Ismail Kadare, The file on H. +
Ismail Kadare, The dark year
Ismail Kadare, The three-arched bridge +
Alejandro Zambra, Bonsai

March
Marek van der Jagt, Gstaad 95-98
Jeroen Brouwers, Datumloze dagen
J.W. Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther
Arnon Grunberg, Onze Oom
J.M. Coetzee, In the heart of the country

April
Peter Terrin, De bewaker +
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

[Eric]

Variety is the spice of life. Why did you read two books by the same author during March, Peter D?

Another topic. I would like to suggest that one's arse has one exclusive function. Because you think we read just to impressed a sad old busker like you. The day you realise your arse isn't the center of this board or more broadly the universe, you do yourself a favor, and us too. Not if one us his brain or try to fuck up a thread they have no plave in.

I like to write as I am in your plave. You are being as you are. Let us be whom we are. As Heracleitos said: parathrenounos, karabalilia, proufororokia.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by Eric

I would like to suggest that one's arse has one exclusive function.

Now, now, Eric, don't be so hasty! I can think of a couple of other uses you can put your arse to. (You DO sit on it, don't you? ). Etc.


And as for the other thing, I do agree. It is, I suppose, possible, to gulp down a three-course meal in less than 10 minutes, or you can sit down and enjoy it; the same goes for books. If I'm not savoring it as a work of art, why am I bothering to read it in the first place?

(The only time that I speed-read through something is when I'm studying for exams).



L.

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by Liam

And as for the other thing, I do agree. It is, I suppose, possible, to gulp down a three-course meal in less than 10 minutes, or you can sit down and enjoy it; the same goes for books. If I'm not savoring it as a work of art, why am I bothering to read it in the first place?

(The only time that I speed-read through something is when I'm studying for exams).

And Liam, maybe , just maybe people have different ways of reading. I never Speed read but i do listen to book when i work, wich make it possible to read most of the day and so read a lot without over load.
Plus i try to vary the type of genre, sizes, light or not in my choice of books, so instead of being so sure of obvious quality/ quantity fast judgement.
Obvious statement seems to become national sport over here.

[Sibyl]

I don't speed read either, wouldn't even know how it's done, I just make a lot of time to read. Also, not all of the books on my list are equally substantial works of literature.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

I never Speed read but i do listen to book when i work, wich make it possible to read most of the day and so read a lot without over load.

Ah, but listening is not reading. Same difference as between attending a lecture and reading a print-out of the lecture. In many ways, listening to a book-on-tape is a more passive and relaxing activity; I'm sure you could do it for a far longer time than reading an actual book.

I can't speak from experience though; I've never tried books-on-tape in my life.

I do take your (and Sibyl's) last point about the quality/quantity, but Eric's comment was specifically directed at Mesnalty's list. I'm sure if he saw Mesnalty read twenty Animal Farm-sized novellas per month, he wouldn't have said anything. But most of the novels on the list are serious works of literature, in the 350-650 pp. range, and there are tons of them on the list.

I'm sure the kid doesn't have a day-job, either, .



L.

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by Liam

I do take your (and Sibyl's) last point about the quality/quantity, but Eric's comment was specifically directed at Mesnalty's list. I'm sure if he saw Mesnalty read twenty Animal Farm-sized novellas per month, he wouldn't have said anything. But most of the novels on the list are serious works of literature, in the 350-650 pp. range, and there are tons of them on the list.

I'm sure the kid doesn't have a day-job, either, .

We all know what Rico think about big books thank you very much.
Audio is absolutly the same as reading if you got in the habit it for a while.

Last this thread was suppose to be about book lists and nether you nor the babbling geriatric shared your reads with us, so i find a bit misplaced your mighty judgement about Mesnalty ways.
There is always people dubious and critic about out of the way choices, be it reading, traveling, and living in general.
Bitterness is the choice weapon of the mediocres.

[titania7]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Bitterness is the choice weapon of the mediocres.

Very aptly put, Thomas.

And. . . .


"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." ~Albert Einstein



~Titania

[Liam]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Bitterness is the choice weapon of the mediocres.

Ouch!



L.

[titania7]

Originally Posted by Liam

Ouch!

L.

Oh darling, I'm quite sure that Thomas couldn't have possibly have been implying that you are mediocre. . .and if he was. . .well, Thomas, sweeetheart, whatever were you thinking? Such general observations cannot be taken personally, Liam. If and when they are, we deprive ourselves of the peace of mind that we might be able to enjoy otherwise.

You are certainly not mediocre, yet the comment about those who are mediocre tormenting those who aren't with bitterness was quite well put. Einstein's observation was rather sagacious as well.

I miss you, by the way. Where art thou, Liam? Have you, too, deserted me in my time of need?

Alexis/Titania