Reading List 2008

[saliotthomas]

"In dout refrain from abstinence" or is it the opposite a French philosopher once said?(forgot is name but one of the 18th century lads)
"Dans le doute abstient toi de ne rien faire" often shorten in "dans le doute abstient toi"

So here i go

August-

Humain love-Andrei makine
a country doctor's notebook-Buglakov
Esther Inheritance-Sandor Marai
The roof of voyaging-Garry Kilworth
Alien earth-Megan Lindholm 1/2
The pyramide-Ismael Kadare


September

What's so funny-Donald E Westlake
A stranger came to the farm-Mika Waltari
House of meetings-Martin Amis
Metamorphosis of a wedding-Sandor Marai
A purple place for dying-John McDonald
A partisans daughter-Bouis de Bernières
Silk -Alessandro Baricco
The Bal-Irene Nemirovsky
Foucaults pendulum-Umberto Eco
The elephant of the vizir-Ivo Andric
The falcon/Asters-Jun Ishikawa
Golden deserts-Hectore Biancotti -gave up after 60pages
The haunting of hill house-Shirley Jackson
After dark-Haruki Murakami -

Octobre

My name is red-Orhan Pamuk 160 p lost
The handle-Donald Westlake
Music of a life-Andrei makine
Blanche te Marie-Per orlov Enquist put to rest for the time
Mondo-J M LeCleziot
Austerlitz-Sebald, W. G
The Painter of Battles-Arturo Perez-Reverte -
Mishima-the sailor who fell from grace with thr sea
Driss chraibi-mother of spring
Chinua Achebe-things fall apart
Luis Sepulveda-An old man who read love novels
Benjamin Black-Christine falls
Ernesto Sabato-Alejandra-on wait

November

Colin thubron-Shadow of the silk road
John Wyndham-the kraken wakes
Muriel Babery- the elegance of the hedgehog
Bernard Cornwell-Sword song
Nevil Shute-On the beach
Aris Fakinos-Tale of lost times
Graham Green-travel with my aunt
Manil Suri - The Death of Vishnu-on wait
Jose saramago-History of the siege of lisbon-gave up 30 pages from the end
Magnus mills-The restrain of beats

December

Ismail Kadare-la niche de la honte
Allen steele-Coyote rising
Alan Lightman-Ghost
Sandor marai-A dog of charateres
Nadine Gordimer-Beethoven was one sixteenth black
Chinghiz Aitmatov-Djamilia
David Hajdu-Positivly 4th street
Antonio Tabucchi-Nocturne Indien
Knut Hamsun-Rosa
Erich Maria Remarque-The night in Lisbon

Stewart can we edit forever or is there a time limit?

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Stewart can we edit forever or is there a time limit?

There's a seven day time limit. I'm thinking of ways to allow for such reading list posts to be editable regularly, while still maintaining the seven day limit for regular posts.

[Max Cairnduff]

I checked my blog to see what I've read over the past six months (I blog everything I read, but only started six months back).

We have in order from earliest to most recent:

Notre-Dame de Paris - Victor Hugo, quite wonderful, read the architecture passages, they're central.

Casino Royale- Ian Fleming. Ugh.

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan. A quite brilliant updating of cyberpunk which goes right back to the genre's noir roots.

Goshawk Squadron - Derek Robinson. Much better than the title suggests, a tremendous work, deserving its Booker place

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe. Not much read now, which is a shame, well written and extremely well characterised

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins, shockingly bad. An important story told astonishingly poorly.

1974 - David Peace. Powerful contemporary British noir, well worth reading if you have any interest in the genre at all. Ugly but rewarding.

At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell. Brilliant.

My Revolutions - Hari Kunzru, I liked it a lot more than many.

He Died with his Eyes Open - Derek Raymond. A predecessor to Peace and successor to Patrick Hamilton, one of my best reads of the year.

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon. A beautiful novel written in Trinidadian dialect. Funny, intelligent, tremendously well written. One of my books of the year.

The Necropolis Railway - Andrew Martin, not to my taste sadly, not quite the right balance between the history and the crime.

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell. Brilliant.

Super-State - Brian Aldiss. Funny, clever, topical, well worth a read.

Night Train - Martin Amis, a deeper work than it appears at first blush, packed with ideas, I'll be rereading this in a few years.

Sputnik Caledonia - Andrew Crumey. This should have been on this year's Booker shortlist, tremendous work, clever and funny at the same time.

River of Gods - Ian McDonald. Science fiction at its best.

The Sun over Breda - Arturo Perez-Reverte. Enjoyable historical novel, but not as rewarding as his previous two in the series. A bit grim in places.

Die a Little - Megan Abbot. Contemporary novel set in 1950s LA, a solid piece of American noir which I enjoyed. I look forward to her other books crossing the pond.

Imperial Spain - JH Elliot, a masterly work of historical scholarship.

The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng. Hugely enjoyable, well written, dense with luxurious detail.

Lust, Caution - Eileen Chang. An excellent eye for small observations, I plan to read more of her.

Q & A - Vikas Swarup. I expect the film to be very good.

Neuromancer - William Gibson. Very enjoyable actually, and much fresher than I expected. Should be a Penguin Modern Classic.

The Devil's Home on Leave - Derek Raymond. Not quite there with He Died with his Eyes Open, but still a very rewarding piece of British noir.

Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell. Well written but emotionally hollow.

AK47 - Michael Hodges, reportage rather than fiction. First half a bit weak, second half thankfully very strong.

Generally looking at that it's been a good six months, very few of the above were disappointing though admittedly I choose what I read fairly carefully. I've written them all up, but I'm very happy to answer questions on any of them really should anyone have an interest but understandably lack the desire to read a full blog entry on any that spark interest.

[Stewart]

This has been my list for the year, so far.

073. Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo
072. Terra Amata, J.M.G. Le Clézio
071. Artificial Snow, Florian Zeller

November
070. The Armies, Evelio Rosero
069. The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
068. The Black Sheep and Other Fables, Augusto Monterroso
067. Bonsai, Alejandro Zambra
066. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
065. 1933 Was A Bad Year, John Fante

October
064. Home And Exile, Chinua Achebe
063. The Fire Gospel, Michel Faber
062. The Other Hand, Chris Cleave
061. Exercises In Style, Raymond Queneau
060. Nobody's Home, Dubravka Ugresic

September
059. The Key Of The Tower, Gilbert Adair
058. Monsieur, Jean-Philippe Toussaint
057. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk, Nikolai Leskov
056. The Story Of Mr Sommer, Patrick Süskind
055. The Mirror In The Well, Micheline Aharonian Marcom

August
054. The Death Of The Author, Gilbert Adair
053. Oscar And The Lady In Pink, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
052. The Clothes On Their Backs, Linda Grant
051. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
050. Child 44, Tom Rob Smith
049. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
048. Stick Out Your Tongue, Ma Jian

July
047. Julien Parme, Florian Zeller
046. The Spare Room, Helen Garner
045. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
044. Trauma, Patrick McGrath
043. Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith
042. The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa
041. A Clockwork Apple, Belinda Webb
040. The End Of Sleep, Rowan Somerville

June
039. The Changeling, Robin Jenkins
038. Jamelia, Chingiz Aitmatov
037. Alphabet Of The Night, Jean-Euphèle Milcé

May
036. Metropole, Ferenc Karinthy
035. Badenheim, 1939, Aharon Appelfeld
034. Mary, Vladimir Nabokov

April
033. Lobster, Guillaume Lescable
032. Sulphuric Acid, Amélie Nothomb
031. With Borges, Albert Manguel
030. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

March
029. Born Yesterday: The News As A Novel, Gordon Burn
028. Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth
027. Envy, Alain Elkann
026. Clean: An Unsanitised History Of Washing, Katherine Ashenburg
025. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, James Meek
024. Becoming Abigail, Chris Abani
023. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
022. Silk, Alessandro Baricco
021. Night Train, Martin Amis

February
020. The Book Of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck
019. A Man Without A Country, Kurt Vonnegut
018. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg
017. Black Dirt, Nell Layshon
016. The Hour Of The Star, Clarice Lispector
015. Snakes & Earrings, Hitomi Kanehara
014. Agamemnon's Daughter, Ismail Kadare
013. The Moon Opera, Bi Feiyu

January
012. A Matter Of Death And Life, Andrey Kurkov
011. The Woman Who Waited, Andreï Makine
010. The Dreamers, Gilbert Adair
009. No One Writes To The Colonel, Gabriel García Márquez
008. Continent, Jim Crace
007. Gentlemen Of The Road, Michael Chabon
006. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
005. Secret, Philippe Grimbert
004. The Invention Of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
003. Plain Girl, Arthur Miller
002. The Pilgrim Hawk, Glenway Wescott
001. Piercing, Ryu Murakami

[Max Cairnduff]

Howcome you didn't write up A Clockwork Orange Stewart?

Good idea with the hyperlinks.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Max Cairnduff

How come you didn't write up A Clockwork Orange Stewart?

Time or mood, probably. I wish I'd written up all the books. Some I'd intended to write up, then something would get in the way, and by the time I came to write it up I'd forgotten it, or lost what I wanted to say.

I'll read it again, anyway. What sucks most is that I've got that list of 1001 Books To Read Before You Die (awfully weighted in one direction) listed on my blog, and I'm linking to the books as and when I write about them. Sadly, having read a few (Silk, The Great Gatsby, and A Clockwork Orange) and not reviewed them, I'll need to return to them sooner than hoped.

[Heteronym]

The year isn't over yet, I still plan to read a few more novels. Then I'll post my list.

[nnyhav]

About 2/3 in translation, half the authors new to me; and a bit of lit nonfiction. Roughly chronologically, best in bold (translators in parentheses):

David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk
Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective
Stanley Elkin, Van Gogh's Room at Arles
Robert Pinget, Monsieur Levert (Richard Howard)
Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
Lyndall Gordon, A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art
Michel Butor, Passing Time (Jean Stewart)
Dave Eggers, What is the What
Jean Rouaud, Of Illustrious Men (Barbara Wright)
Javier Marías, Written Lives (Margaret Jull Costa)
Octavia Butler, Bloodchild
Dezső Kosztolányi, Anna Édes (George Szirtes)
Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas (Chris Andrews)
Imre Kertész, Detective Story (Tim Wilkinson)
Hermann Broch, The Spell (H.F.Broch de Rothermann)
Ricardo Piglia, The Absent City (Sergio Waisman)
Alfred Jarry, Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician (Simon Watson Taylor)
Robert Walser, The Assistant (SBernofsky)
Gabriel Josipovici, Goldberg: Variations
Claude Simon, The Flanders Road (RHoward)
José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (GPontiero)
Stanley Elkin, A Bad Man
J.G.Farrell, The Singapore Grip
Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing (Magnus Magnusson)
André Breton, The Lost Steps (Mark Polizzotti)
Alberto Savinio, The Lives of the God (James Brook & Susan Etlinger)
Joseph Roth, The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Michael Hofmann)
Krishna Dutta & Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man
William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain
Lydie Salvayre, The Power of Flies (Jane Kuntz)
Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish (Bogdan Radić & Stephen M. Dickey)
V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival
Gyula Krúdy, Sunflower (John Bátki)
Nagai Kafu, During the Rains & Flowers in the Shade (Lane Dunlop)
Stéphane Mallarmé, Divagations (Barbara Johnson)
Arno Schmidt, Collected Novellas (John E. Woods)
Witold Gombrowicz, Trans-Atlantyk (Carolyn French and Nina Karsov)
Imre Kertész, Liquidation (Tim Wilkinson)
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz (Alfred Mac Adam)
Anita Desai, Baumgartner's Bombay
Bruce Schechter, My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdös
Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot
Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (Edith Grossman)
Dubravka Ugrešić, The Ministry of Pain (Michael Henry Heim)
Thomas Bernhard, The Loser (Jack Dawson)
Tatyana Tolstaya, On the Golden Porch (Antonina W. Bouis)
Hermann Broch, The Guiltless (Ralph Manheim)
Georgi Gospodinov, And Other Stories (Alexis Levitin & Magdalena Levy)
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
Halldór Laxness, The Happy Warriors (Katherine John)
Raymond Queneau, Elementary Morality (Philip Terry)
Marguerite Yourcenar, Coup de Grâce (Grace Frick)
César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (Chris Andrews)
Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue (Nancy Andrew)
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
B.S.Johnson, The Unfortunates
Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun (Donald Keene)
L.P.Hartley, The Go-Between
Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (Ralph Manheim)
Francis Carco, Streetcorners (Gilbert Alter-Gilbert)
Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte (Anthony Kerrigan)
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
Amos Oz, A Perfect Peace (Hillel Halkin)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book (Thomas Teal)
G.V.Desani, all about H.Hatterr
Paul Verhaeghen, Omega Minor (Paul Verhaeghen)
Alan Bennett, Untold Tales
Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (Helen Lane)
Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa
Arno Schmidt, Collected Stories (John E. Woods)
Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup (Ralph McCarthy)
Venedikt Erofeev: Moscow To The End Of The Line (H. William Tjalsma)
Yury Dombrovsky, The Keeper of Antiquities (Michael Glenny)
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (Grace Frick)
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony (Tim Parks)
André Breton, Nadja (Richard Howard)
Camilo José Cela, The Hive (J.M.Cohen)
Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (Donald Keene)
Elie Wiesel, Night (Marion Wiesel)
Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (Toby Talbot)
Seamus Heaney, Electric Light
Flann O'Brien, An Béal Bocht/The Poor Mouth (Patrick Power)
Ignácio de Loyola Brandão: Zero (Ellen Watson)
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness (Katherine Silver)
Ariel Dorfman, Konfidenz
Shusaku Endo, The Sea and Poison (Michael Gallagher)
Christina Peri Rossi, The Museum of Useless Efforts (Tobias Hecht)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
J.F. Powers, Morte D'Urban
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Natasha Wimmer)
Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases
Ariel Dorfman, Widows (Stephen Kessler)
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (Edward G. Seidensticker)
Robert Coover, A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This
Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion (Ross Benjamin)
Clive James, Cultural Amnesia
[& halfway thru 5 vols of Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone (David Hawkes)]

[Jayaprakash]

As far as I can piece it together, here's what I read this year, in no special order, and with a few especially good graphic novels thrown in:

1. Station Island - Seamus Heaney
2. The Collected Poetry of Alan Ginsberg
3. Marcovaldo - Italo Calvino
4. The Enigmatic Lett - Georges Simenon
5. Love Of Seven Dolls - Paul Gallico
6. Pictures Of Fidelman - Bernard Malamud
7. On The Road - Jack Kerouack
8. The Heart Of The Matter - Graham Greene
9. Beowulf - Seamus Heaney Translation
10. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
11. A House For Mr Biswas - VS Naipaul
12. The Power And The Glory - Graham Greene
13. The Culture Industry - Theodor Adorno
14. Mythologies - Roland Barthes
15. Venus In Furs - Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
16. The Collected Father Brown - GK Chesterton
17. The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Nicholas Nickelby - Charles Dickens
19. The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years - Chingiz Aitmatov
20. The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
21. Doktor Faustus - Thomas Mann
22. Death In Venice and other stories - Thomas Mann
23. Zot! - Scott McCloud
24. Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me - Javier Marias
25. Written Lives - Javier Marias
26. All Souls - Javier Marias
27. Madam Crowl's Ghost And Other Short Stories - Sheridan Le Fanu
28. Carmilla - Sheridan Le Fanu
29. The Ceremonies - TED Klein
30. Shadowlands - Peter Straub
31. Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
32. Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
33. Austerlitz - WG Sebald
34. Red Lights - Georges Simenon
35. Maigret and the Ghost - Georges Simenon
36. Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids -Kenzaburo Oe
37. Great Apes - Will Self
38. My Idea Of Fun - Will Self
39. The Book Of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
40. St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves - Karen Russell
41. Goldberg: Variation - Gabriel Josipovici
42. Mr. Norris Changes Trains - Christopher Isherwood
43. Goodbye To Berlin - Christopher Isherwood
44. The Lambs Of London - Peter Ackroyd
45. The Eagle's Throne - Carlos Fuentes
46. The Old Gringo - Carlos Fuentes
47. Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
48. Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry
49. The People Of Paper - Salvador Plascencia
50. Gentlemen Of The Road - Michael Chabon
51. The Virgin In The Ice - Ellis Peters
52. The Solitaire Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
53. The Black Dossier - Alan Moore and Kevin O' Neill
54. The Rabbi's Cat 2 - Joann Sfar
55. Klezmer 1 - Joann Sfar
56. Onitsha - JMG Le Clezio
57. A Life's Music - Andrei Malkine
58. Ilium - Dan Simmons
59. Good-bye - Yoshihiro Tatsumi
60. The Street Of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
61. Snake Catcher - Naiyer Masud
62. Essays In Love - Alain De Botton
63. Written On THe Body - Jeanette Winterson
64. Kappa - Ryunosoke Akutagawa
65. Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome
66. Hot Water - PG Wodehouse
67. Money For Nothing - PG Wodehouse
68. The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
69. Inside Mr Enderby - Anthony Burgess
70. Enderby Outside - Anthony Burgess
71. Mozart And The Wolf Gang - Anthony Burgess
72. The Magician - Somerset Maugham
73. Sweeney Astray - Seamus Heaney
74. Mysteries Of Winterthurn - Joyce Carol Oates
75. Candide - Voltaire
76. Zadig - Voltaire
77. Seven Days At The Silberstein's - Etienne Leroux
78. Selected Essays - John Berger
79. The Legends Of Khasak - OV Vijayan
80. Lock 14 - Georges Simenon
81. A Man's Head - Georges Simenon
82. The Collected Ghost Stories of MR James
83. The Collected Poetry Of Cavafy

Bit of a slow year, but I'm learning to accept that my pace of reading has slown down a bit with all the tribulations of adult life and whatnot.

[nnyhav]

Rounding off the list:
Manuel Puig, Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages
W.S. Merwin, The Ends of the Earth
(and finally those I had to read in '08, two of which became available in translation this year, bookending the other which was originally published a century ago: )
Pierre Michon, Small Lives (Jody Gladding & Elizabeth Deshays)
Arthur Schnitzler, The Road into the Open (Roger Byers)
Ferenc Karinthy, Metropole (George Szirtes)

[Colette Jones]

My 2008 reading list:

December
55. The Courage Consort - Michel Faber
54. Night Visits - Ron Butlin
53. Royal Highness - Thomas Mann
52. The Believers - Zoe Heller
51. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John Le Carre - abandoned

November
50. Time's Arrow - Martin Amis
49. Catholics - Brian Moore
48. Give + Take - Stona Fitch
47. The Act of Love - Howard Jacobson - abandoned
46. The Story of a Marriage - Andrew Sean Greer
45. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks

October
44. The Crucible - Arthur Miller
43. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
42. The Professor of Desire - Philip Roth
41. The Spare Room - Helen Garner

September
40. The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher
39. Howards End - E M Forster

August
38. From A to X - John Berger
37. A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
36. The Lost Dog - Michelle de Kretser
35. Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith (abandoned)
34. The Clothes on their Backs - Linda Grant
33. The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

July
32. A Case of Exploding Mangoes - Mohammed Hanif
31. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
30. The Impostor - Damon Galgut
29. Sputnik Caledonia - Andrew Crumey

June
28. Breath - Tim Winton
27. Little Monsters - Charles Lambert
26. Kieron Smith, Boy - James Kelman

May
25. The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam - Lauren Leibenberg
24. Born Yesterday, the News as a Novel - Gordon Burn
23. The Master - Colm Tóibín

April
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -Junot Diaz
21. Washington Square - Henry James
20. The Emperor of Ice-Cream - Brian Moore
19. His Illegal Self - Peter Carey
18. When We Were Bad - Charlotte Mendelson

March
17. The Information - Martin Amis
16. Clear - Nicola Barker
15. Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
14. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
13. + What Are You Like? - Anne Enright

February
12. Day - A L Kennedy (abandoned)
11. Immaculate Conception - Gaeton Soucy
10. A Piece of Cake - Cupcake Brown (abandoned)
09. A Curious Earth - Gerard Woodward
08. I'm the King of the Castle - Susan Hill
07. Le Bal - Irène Némirovsky
06. Snow in Autumn - Irène Némirovsky
05. Amongst Women - John McGahern

January
04. The Statement - Brian Moore
03. I'll Go to Bed at Noon - Gerard Woodward
02. Suite Francaise - Irène Némirovsky (part one)
01. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

[Bjorn]

JANUARY

1. The Android's Dream - Scalzi, John
2. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
3. Foreskin's Lament - Auslander, Shalom
   
4. Propaganda - Holborn, Mark
5. Pereira Declares - Tabucchi, Antonio
6. The Audacity of Hope - Obama, Barack
   
   FEBRUARY
7. Lust, Caution - Chang, Eileen
8. No Country For Old Men - McCarthy, Cormac
9. Death And The Penguin - Kurkov, Andrey
10. Atonement - McEwan, Ian
11. Hour of the Star - Lispector, Clarice
12. När änglar dör - Roman, Andreas
    
    MARCH
13. The Atrocity Exhibition - Ballard, JG 1/2
14. Battle Royale - Takami, Koushun
15. Heartlands - Forsgård, Nils Erik
16. Kafka On The Shore - Murakami, Haruki
17. Childhood's End - Clarke, Arthur C
18. Jesus' Son - Johnson, Denis
    
    APRIL
19. Madame Bovary - Flaubert, Gustave
20. Gilead - Robinson, Marilynne
21. The Great Transformation - Armstrong, Karen
22. World War Z - Brooks, Max
23. Skapelsekonspirationen - Kornhall, Per
24. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Henderson, Bobby
    
    MAY
25. Cutting it Short - Hrabal, Bohumil
26. A Doll's House - Ibsen, Henrik
27. The Helmet of Horror - Pelevin, Viktor
28. The Sea - Banville, John
29. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly - Bauby, Jean-Dominique
30. We, The Drowned - Jensen, Carsten
31. The Way of a Serpent - Lindgren, Torgny
32. African Psycho - Mabanckou, Alain
    
    JUNE
33. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea - Mishima, Yukio
34. I Served the King of England - Hrabal, Bohumil
35. A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway, Ernest
36. Coraline - Gaiman, Neil
37. The Motel Life - Vlautin, Willy
38. The Alchemist - Coelho, Paulo
39. Mitt rätta jag - Glaser, Pernilla
40. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander
41. Doctor Whom (ET Shoots And Leaves) - Roberts, Adam
    
    JULY
42. Snow Crash - Stephenson, Neal
43. Reaper Man - Pratchett, Terry
44. Vi i villa - Koppel, Hans
45. Harlequin's Millions - Hrabal, Bohumil
46. Människohamn - Ajvide Lindqvist, John
47. Springsteenland - Larsson/Öser (ed.)
48. Celestial Harmonies - Esterházy, Peter
49. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (audio) - Adams, Douglas
50. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (audio) - Adams, Douglas
    
    AUGUST
51. Life, the Universe and Everything (audio) - Adams, Douglas
52. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish (audio) - Adams, Douglas
53. Measuring the World - Kehlmann, Daniel
54. The Stone Gods - Winterson, Jeanette
55. Mostly Harmless (audio) - Adams, Douglas
56. White Nights - Dostoevsky, Fyodor
    
    SEPTEMBER
57. Embers - Marai, Sandor
58. The Yacoubian Building - al-Aswany, Alaa
59. Imperium - Kapuscinski, Ryszard
60. Quo Vadis - Sienkiewicz, Henryk (abandoned)
61. Het Psalmenoproer - 't Hart, Maarten
62. Aké: The Years of Childhood - Soyinka, Wole
    
    OCTOBER
63. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time - Koselleck, Reinhart
64. Jag sköt Paulo Coelho - Vahlquist, Staffan
65. What's The Matter With Kansas? - Frank, Thomas
66. Terra Amata - Le Clézio, JMG
67. Under the Tongue - Vera, Yvonne
68. The Story of Mister Han - Hwang, Sok-yong
69. Dead Novices - Barakat, Salim
70. Petals of Blood - Ngugi wa Thiong'o
    
    NOVEMBER
71. Raga - Le Clézio, JMG
72. Norrlands Akvavit - Lindgren, Torgny
73. Les Honneurs Perdus - Beyala, Calixthe
74. Pale Fire - Nabokov, Vladimir
75. Den digitala framtiden - Skovdahl, Bernt
76. Is och vatten, vatten och is - Axelsson, Majgull
    
    DECEMBER
77. Binu and the Great Wall - Su Tong
    
78. Secrets - Farah, Nuruddin
79. Nowhere Man - Hemon, Aleksandar +
    
80. Revolutionary Road - Yates, Richard
81. Afganets - Bykau, Vasil
82. Cosmos - Gombrowicz, Witold
83. Letter to a Christian Nation - Harris, Sam
84. The Restless Supermarket - Vladislavic, Ivan

[saliotthomas]

Revolutionary road is mosdef my next read,in about 20 minutes.....

Did you find a way to edit forever Stewart?

[titania7]

I haven't any idea which months of the year I read these books in. But they are listed in order, with the exception of Snow Country (should be listed around #55), and The Little Demon (should be listed around #49).

Here goes:

1. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn +++
2.The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
3. Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham
4. Helena by Machado de Assis
5. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
6. Casonova in Bolzano by Sandor Marai
7. Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Emilio's Carnival by Italo Svevo
10. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
11. Them by Joyce Carol Oates
12. Sense and Sensibility (re-read) by Jane Austen
13. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
14. Quartet by Jean Rhys
15. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
16. Miss Marjoriebanks by Margaret Oliphant
17. Washington Square by Henry James
18. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
19. The Blessing by Nancy Mitford
20. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
21. Loving by Henry Green
22. King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov
23. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
24. The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor
25. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
26. Eustace and Hilda by L.P. Hartley
27. The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
28. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy
29. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
30. The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
31. Hester by Margaret Oliphant +
32. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
33. Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy ++
34. The Well-Beloved by Thomas Hardy
35. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy +
36. Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy +
37. The Ambassadors by Henry James
38. Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
39. A Tale of Two Cities (re-read) by Charles Dickens
40. A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant ++
41. Bleak House by Charles Dickens ++
42. The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic
43. The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence
44. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence +
45. The Maias by Eca de Queiroz
46. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence +
47. Cousin Bazilio by Eca De Queiroz +
48. The Crime of Father Amaro by Eca De Queiroz
49. The Rebels by Sandor Marai
50. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
51. The Little Demon by Fyodor Sologub
52. The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo
53. The Immoralist (re-read) by Andre Gide +
54. Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller +
55. A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov
56. The Shipyard by Juan-Carlos Onetti +
57. Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
58. Quicksand by Tanizaki Junichiro
59. Pan by Knut Hamsun
60. The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
61. Some Prefer Nettles by Tanizaki Junichiro
62. Great Expectations (re-read) by Charles Dickens ++
63. Beatrix by Honore de Balzac
64. Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata ++
65. Ursule Mirouet by Honore de Balzac ++
66. Responsibility and Judgment by Hannah Arendt
67. The Czar's Madman by Jaan Kross

I'm hoping 2009 will prove to be an even more productive year for me!
Of course, the length of the each book makes a difference. Several of the books on my list, including Bleak House, The Eustace Diamonds, and
Eustace and Hilda, were between 600-800 pages in length. Although it would be difficult for me to pick what the highlight of this past year's reading was, Cancer Ward would certainly be one of them. Solzhenitsyn is magnificent! Although I neglected to include this on my list of literary goals for 2009, I intend to read August 1914. I believe (if I remember correctly) that Thomas Saliot included this book on his 50 Favorite Books list.

Kudos to all of you who have posted your lists! Very impressive, I must say (and are you trying to make the rest of us feel guilty, Jayaprakash, by saying it's been a "slow year" for you ?)

Happy 2009 to all!

~Titania

[Heteronym]

Now that the year is over I can post my definitive list; this includes fiction and non-fiction. It doesn't includes dozens of comics I read throughout the year: I think this year I'll start including them too. The titles left in Portuguese refer to books I don't think have been translated into English:

Agualusa, José Eduardo: A Feira dos Assombrados
Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de: The Three-Pointed Hat
Alexandrian, Sarane: Surrealist Art
Andreiev, Leonid: Riso Vermelho
Assis, Machado de: Dom Casmurro
Assis, Machado de: Helena
Baum, Frank L.: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Benford, Gregory: Timescape
Bloy, Léon: Histórias Desagradáveis
Borges, Jorge Luis e Casares, Adolfo Bioy: O Livro do Céu e do Inferno
Bryson, Bill: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Buzzati, Dino: The Tartar Steppe
Buzzati, Dino: Os Sete Mensageiros
Buzzati, Dino: Pânico no Scala
Calvino, Italo: Why Read the Classics?
Camões, Luís de: The Lusiads
Casares, Adolfo Bioy: The Invention of Morel
Casares, Adolfo Bioy: A Dream for Heroes
Casares, Adolfo Bioy: A Plan for Escape
Cazotte, Jacques: The Devil in Love
Cela, José Camilo: A Cruz de Santo André
Cesariny, Mário: Manual de Prestidigitação
Chesterton, G.K.: The Complete Father Brown Stories
Chesterton, G.K.: The Man Who Was Thursday
Conrad, Joseph: Great Short Works
Cortázar, Julio: Cronopios and Famas
Cortázar, Julio: All the Fires the Fire
Couto, Mia: Vinte e Zinco
D'Aguiar, Fred: Dear Future
Dostoiévski, Fiódor: A Weak Heart
Edmonds, David & Eidnow, John: Rousseau's Dog
Epicurus & Srneca: Letter to Menoeceus/On the Happy Life
Erman, Adolf: Life in Ancient Egypt
Gaugin, Paul: Noa Noa
Gogol, Nikolai: The Portrait
Gribbin, John: Science: A History
Haggard, H. Rider: She
Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderland
Kadare, Ismail: The Palace of Dreams
Kafka, Franz: Letter to his Father
Kundera, Milan: The Joke
Kundera, Milan: Ignorance
Kundera, Milan: Slowness
Kundera, Milan: The Farewell Waltz
Kundera, Milan: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
Lee, Vernon: Hauntings
London, Jack: The Scarlet Plague
Lord Dunsany: The Gods of Pegana
Lord Dunsany: Time and the Gods
Lovecraft, H.P.: Herbert West: Reanimador
Machen, Arthur: The Great God Pan
Maclean, Norman: A River Runs Through It
Márai, Sándor: Casanova in Bolzano
Márquez, Gabriel García: Leaf Storm
Márquez, Gabriel García: In Evil Hour
Márquez, Gabriel García: Os Funerais da Mamã Grande
Martin, Sylvia: Futurism
Mitrani, Michel: Conversas com Albert Cossery
Munro: H.H.: The Collected Short Stories of Saki
Neruda, Pablo: Memories
Nesbit, E.: Five Children and It
Ondjaki: Good Morning Comrades
Papini, Giovani: Gog
Papini, Giovani: Palavras e Sangues
Pessoa, Fernando: The Book of Disquiet
Pinto, Fernão Mendes: Peregrinação
Puskine, Alexandre: The Queen of Spades
Queiroz, Eça de: To The Capital
Queiroz, Eça de: The City and the Mountains
Queiroz, Eça de: The Relic
Queiroz, Eça de: The Yellow Sofa
Queiroz, Eça de: O Conde de Abranhos
Queiroz, Eça de: Cousin Basilio
Queiroz, Eça de: The Maias
Quiroga, Horacio: Contos da Selva
Rhodes, Colin: Outsider Art
Rhodes, Colin: Primitivism and Modern Art
Ribeiro, Aquilino: Andam Faunos Pelos Bosques
Richter, Hans: Dada: Art and Anti-Art
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Stories of God
Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur: Illuminations/A Season in Hell
Rodenbach, Georges: Bruges-la-Morte
Sá-Carneiro, Mário de: Lucio's Confession
Sá-Carneiro, Mário de: Mistério
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: Wind, Sand and Stars
Saramago, José: Levantado do Chão
Saramago, José: Terra do Pecado
Schurian, Walter: Fantastic Art
Schwob, Marcel: A Cruzada das Crianças
Schwob, Marcel: Coração Duplo, vol.1
Schwob, Marcel: Coração Duplo, vol.2
Schwob, Marcel: O Livro de Monelle
Schwob, Marcel: O Rei da Máscara de Ouro
Svevo, Italo: A Perfect Hoax
Tabucchi, Antonio: Pereira Declares
Tchekov, Anton: My Wife
Walpole, Horace: Hieroglyphic Tales
Weisman, Alan: The World Without Us
Weiss, Jan: A Casa dos Mil Andares
Withfield, Sarah: Fauvism
X, Malcom: The Autobiography of Malcom X