The Reading List that ate the world...

[promtbr]

This 3 yr reading list is distilled, over-tweaked and highly refined over a two month period. The length is based on what I should be able to conservatively read per year (including secondary lit and some bios). I tried to select representative works of each author. The authors country of origin is unsystematically and entirely subjective representative of world literarary fiction. It is obviuosly heavy leaning toward's works written in english, as I am lamentably monolingual!
It is gleaned from too many Online ?best of?, ?most meaningful?, lists, multiple lit forums (including our own influential ?50 favorite lists?), lets see, Bloom?s Canon... many Lit Crit books on ?Novels of-______ period or Country?.

As stated before, the Moderns are more heavily weighted as there were simply so many major works that influenced subsequent authors. I reduced the 19 cent list, as I have found I luv reading works from this period and I want to leave a good selection that I can read for the first time later. I will savor going through most of Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Balzac and Zola....

Authors/works that would have otherwise been listed but are not because I recently read them:
Balzac, Stendhal, Eca Dequeiros, Proust, Don Quixote, Madame Bovary and Blood Meridian, Tristram Shandy

Authors/works otherwise should be listed if I hadn?t been over-exposed back in the day:
Austen, Hardy, Solzhenitsyn, Hemingway, Twain, Fitzgerald, Barthelme, Burgess, Waugh, Durrell, Kesey, One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

Authors who are not listed just ?cause I simply don?t care for 'em or what I have read didn?t impress: Maugham, Lessing, Orwell, Steinbeck, Drieser, Miller.

Many great works obviously had to be left out, but I get the satisfaction that they will be the first TBR after this list is read though... Authors I have to wait three years to read: Tanizaki, Mishima, Musil, Updike, Welty, Storm, Koepen, Lagerkvist, Undset, Yan, Moore, Manzoni, Roussel, Moravia, Carey, MANY authors from India! This was hard and I am not so intractable that I won't swap some out...

Authors whose works are acknowledged ?must- reads? but whose english translations do the work a disservice: Bely?s Petersburg, Doblin?s Alexanderplatz... I think Latin American fiction is somewhat over-representated, but my god, if you delve into it, there is a reason they call it the "boom". Eastern lit is for sure way under-represented and that will be my heavily 'attacked' by me after this..But oh well..

(It is in no particular order and my reading selection will be random from each list)

19th Century:

Dead Souls? Gogol
On the Eve/Rudin? Turgenev
Great Expectations? Dickens
The Idiot-- Dostoevsky (Pevear tr)
Brothers Karamazov? Dostoevsky (Pevear tr)
Middlemarch? Eliot
Sentimental Education? Flaubert
Novellas-Cossacks-- Tolstoy
Anna Karenina? Tolstoy (Pevear tr)
Moby Dick? Melville
I?lassamoir? Zola
Stories? Chekhov (Pevear tr)
Posthumous Papers...- De Assis
Dom Casmuro- De Assis
Aspern Papers/TOTS? James
Portrait of a Lady--James
Hunger? Hamsun

1900-WWII:
The Good Soldier? Ford
Portrait of the Artist ? Joyce
Complete Stories? Kafka
Mrs. Dalloway? Woolf
To The Lighthouse? Woolf
Buddenbrooks? Mann
Magic Mountain? Mann
The Rainbow? Lawrence
Howards End? Forster
Lord Jim? Conrad
Nostromo? Conrad
Sound and the Fury- Faulkner
As I Lay Dying- Faulkner
Zeno?s Conscience- Svevo
Age of Innocence- Wharton
My Antonia? Cather
Man?s Fate? Malraux
At Swim 2 Birds? O?Brien
Journey To The End..--Celine
Jacob Von Gunten? Walser
Tartar Steppe? Buzatti
The Immoralist-- Gide
Cont'd Below:

[promtbr]

WWII-1990:
Lolita? Nabakov
Pale Fire? Nabakov
Bend Sinister? Nabakov
Laughter in the Dark-- Nabakov
The Tin Drum ? Grass
The Flounder-- Grass
The Rat? Grass
Fictions? Borges
The Recognitions? Gaddis
Hopscotch? Cortazar
62 a Model Kit-- Cortazar
Crying of Lot 49? Pynchon
Gravity?s Rainbow? Pynchon
Love-In the Time of Cholera? Marquez
Frost? Bernhard
Concrete? Bernhard
The Woodcutters-- Bernhard
Henderson the Rain King? Bellow
Humboldt?s Gift? Bellow
If on a Winters Night..? Calvino
Invisible Cities? Calvino
Wide Sargasso Sea? Rhys
Good Morning, Midnight--Rhys
Sotweed Factor? Barth
Garden, Ashes & Boris Davidovich- Kis
Memoirs of Hadrian-- Yorcenar
Woman in the Dunes? Abe
Gattenbein? Frisch
Power & the Glory? Greene
Pedro Paramo? Rulfo
The Sea, The Sea? Murdoch
Malina? Bachman
Sound of Mountain? Kawabata
The Leopard ? Lampedusa
Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unameable-- Beckett
Collected Short Prose-- Beckett
Too Loud a Solitude. & C.W.Trains.? Hrabal
Ferdydurke? Gombrow
Novellas? Schmidt
Things Fall Apart? Achebe
Paradiso? Lima
House for Mr. Biswas? Naipaul
Death of Artemio Cruz? Fuentes
Terrra Nostra- Fuentes
Independent People? Laxness
Beloved? Morrison
Silent Cry? Oe
Lost Steps? Carpentier
Discovery of Heaven- Mulisch
Engineer of Human Souls- Skvoreky
Portnoys' Complaint-- Roth
American Pastoral- Roth
Counterlife? Roth
Sutree? McCarthy
Gospel Accord. To G.H.? Lispector
Beyond Sleep? Hermans
Stories? O?Connor
Makbarra? Goytisolo
Marks of Identity? Goytisolo
War at the End of the World? Llosa
Revolutionary Road-- Yates
Easter Parade-- Yates
White Noise? Delilo
The Hive? Cela
Omensetters Luck? Gass
Lanark-- Gray
Conducting Bodies-- Simon
Beatle Leg-- Hawkes
Universal Baseball Association-- Coover
Invention of the Morrel-- Casares
Snowhite-- Barthelme
The Dwarf-- Lagerkvist
Palm Wine Drunkard-- Tutola
The Guide-- Narrayan
The Slave-- IB Singer
The Living End-- Elkin
Project for a Revolution in New York-- Robbe-Grillet


Contemporary: (my arbitrary def. meaning published after 1990)
Midnight?s Children? Rushdie
The Moor's Last Sigh-- Rushdie
Night In Chile ? Bolano
2666 -- Bolano
All the Names- Saramago
Blindness? Saramago
Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis-- Saramago
Disgrace? Coetzee
Rings of Saturn? Sebald
Kafka on the Shore? Murakima
Requiem for the East- Makine
Music of a Life-- Makine
Goalies Anxiety... & On a Dark Night..- Handke
Television? Toussaint
Alias Grace? Atwood
Messiah of Stockholm- Ozick
News from the Empire- De Pessos
White Teeth? Smith
Oblivion? DF Wallace
Your Face Tomorow Fever & Spear- Marias
Tomorow in the Batle Think of Me-- Marias
Lazarus Project- Hemon
Grain of Wheat-- Thiong'o
Little, Big-- Crowley
Housekeeping? Robinson
A Fine Balance-- Mistry
Ghosts-- Aira
Remainder-- Tom McCarthy
Netherland-- O'Niell


Life events, health, time and reading muses allowing, I may be able squeeze in additional books, and it would be such as these last contemporary notables....

[Flower]

Im very impressed! And thank you for posting this as its a big inspiration to me. I have read a few of the books and lots of the authors I do not know and some are on my own TBR list.

[Daniel del Real]

I loved the title of your post, it could've been the title of a Borges tale. Good luck with all of this, an excellent selection of authors. I took the permit to write you down the ones from that list I've read. In bold the ones I liked the most.


Brothers Karamazov? Dostoevsky (Pevear tr)
Anna Karenina? Tolstoy (Pevear tr)
Germinal? Zola
Stories? Chekhov (Pevear tr)
Hunger? Hamsun
The Trial? Kafka
Magic Mountain? Mann
As I Lay Dying- Faulkner
Tartar Steppe? Buzatti
Lolita? Nabakov
The Tin Drum & The Mouse? Grass
Fictions? Borges
Hopscotch? Cortazar
Love-In the Time of Cholera? Marquez
Invisible Cities? Calvino
Memoirs of Hadrian-- Yorcenar
Woman in the Dunes? Abe
Pedro Paramo? Rulfo
Sound of Mountain? Kawabata
The Leopard ? Lampedusa
Death of Artemio Cruz? Fuentes
War at the End of the World? Llosa
The Hive? Cela
Night In Chile & LEOE ? Bolano (these maybe swapped with 2666 or SD)All the Names- Saramago
Blindness? Saramago
Disgrace? Coetzee
Kafka on the Shore? Murakima

[Decipher_the_fire]

Thanks.
Are there any recommendation of poetry?

[promtbr]

as I expected, couldn't leave my mits off the eraser...late editing (the 7 day clock for this is ticking)

Based on recent gleaning:

In 1900-WWII, swapped out Zwieg's Chess Story for Roth's Radetzky March, as I can 'sneak' in reading Chess Story anytime as its so slim).

In WWII-1990, settled on Simon's Georgics as the French PW novel to read..

In Contemporary..swapped out Foer's Incredibly Loud... (as too slight, narrow) for Thiong'o -- Grain of Wheat, and decided on Mistry's Fine Balance. My intent being to broaden the reading list geographically and culturally.

Thanks.
Are there any recommendation of poetry?

I am not the one to recommend a world poetry 'Survey' or Selection...Hopefully Mirabell or others will jump in here....

(Posting my TBR is total whimsy on my part, and I could care less where the topic meanders off to ... )

[obooki]

I love Carpentier too, but you're going to read The Lost Steps twice? - Maybe you'd consider switching one with something by the equally as good LatinAm writer Juan Carlos Onetti.

[promtbr]

I love Carpentier too, but you're going to read The Lost Steps twice? - Maybe you'd consider switching one with something by the equally as good LatinAm writer Juan Carlos Onetti.

The most telling goof imaginable in cutting and pasting. Sam Beckett's great trilogy digitally disintegrated in favor of two Lost Steps. There's a poetic there that he would appreciate .

I have Onetti's Shipyard and it was among several L/A novels that didn't make the 3 year cut (No Puig, Casares, Aira, Rosa not avail in English yet--- Sabbatini- ditto) Look forward to reading these tho.

One thing that was made apparent in its formulation that there is just SO MANY important works of world literaturary fiction that BEG to be read! If I made a subsequent 3 year 150 booklist after this is done, I would still be cutting out great works...

[Decipher_the_fire]

I am not the one to recommend a world poetry 'Survey' or Selection...Hopefully Mirabell or others will jump in here....

(Posting my TBR is total whimsy on my part, and I could care less where the topic meanders off to ... )

Who is Mirabell? Where are the others?

What about you:


Retreat, retreat, retreat
You, where?
To the moment of nothingness
To the losing all drives of reading philosophy and fantasies


At the moment you look up
Blue wind and red cloud in a fight
Sky breaks in ferocious heat of fire
In weightless and lightness
You meet you final destiny


To read, keep wanting more and more
Is to become wanting no more any more
Then you break the first unbearable limits
The very Limits


Poetry don't necessary tell a story
It tells,
The truly difficult lives of all men

[e joseph]

I placed Blindness by Saramago where it truly belonged- the trash bin.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. Anything in particular that you thought made it trashworthy? Content? Style? Just curious.

[Heteronym]

I placed Blindness by Saramago where it truly belonged- the trash bin.

I'm warning you once, sir: write that again and I'll box you in the ears.

[Daniel del Real]

I placed Blindness by Saramago where it truly belonged- the trash bin.

Obviously you need to read first and understand, otherwise, book doesn't get so useful for you and ends in the trash can.

[rburdock]

This is a splendid list promtbr. I'll be sure to pick at it for a few reading ideas myself. There's certainly plenty of choice.

I have one question though. For some of the Russian works you show Pevear as your favoured translator. I'm presuming this is because you prefer his translations, but I just wondered what you think he has over any other Russian translator?
Many thanks
Rob

[Cyrena]

Pevear and Volokhonsky are my preffered Russian translators as well. I tried reading "The Idiot" by a different translator and gave up, as the sentences seemed broken and choppy.

Pevear and Volokhonsky are a married team and they work in phases. First, a literal translation, then, a second translation to put the shades and figures back into the language. Their version of "Anna Karenina" is a seamless tapestry...

I do not like the Nabokovian style of translating, which is to say, totally literal. Nabokov was a purist and didnt want anything uttered by Gogol (or himself) to be dilluted by any sophmore liberties. But Nabokov, I think, was being sort of a brat -- we cannot ALL be masters of both Russian and English..and I think it is important to account for the discrepancies between the languages. When you account for rhythm and alliteration and other style tactics...of course...there is going to be a lot lost in translation.

[waalkwriter]

This list looks great, but I think it would be unwise for me to try and match it. I tend to spend long chunks of time slowly and haphazardly reading my way through impressive literary tombs; I spent a month on Doctor Zhivago, a month on The Sound and the Fury, and a summer on The Glass Bead Game. For some reason those kinds of exhausting works just don't lend themselves to an enjoyable 8 hour Saturday reading session wherein I read a 500 page book in it's entirety.

Right now I'm just wondering whether I'm going to keep up Laxness, (it's interesting, but slightly dull, a bit exhausting considering how much incredibly bleak and dull poli sci and sociology writing I have to read for school), or just focus on finishing these two Mishima books I took out, Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

[Amoxcalli]

Beyond Sleep? Hermans

I'd recommend The Darkroom of Damocles instead. I find Hermans' style in general rather wooden and archaic (although you'd be reading it in translation, which may be in your favour) and Beyond Sleep just doesn't have the narrative punch to compensate. The Darkroom of Damocles, however, is a great novel.

And I know it's a mighty list already, but how about Flemish authors? Dimitri Verhulst wrote a good short novel called Goddamn days on a goddamn globe, which may have been translated to English. There's swearing in the novel though.

[Daniel del Real]

I'd recommend The Darkroom of Damocles instead. I find Hermans' style in general rather wooden and archaic (although you'd be reading it in translation, which may be in your favour) and Beyond Sleep just doesn't have the narrative punch to compensate. The Darkroom of Damocles, however, is a great novel.

And I know it's a mighty list already, but how about Flemish authors? Dimitri Verhulst wrote a good short novel called Goddamn days on a goddamn globe, which may have been translated to English. There's swearing in the novel though.

I really liked Beyond Sleep. This whole sensation of the cold weather in the North in order to face the human life in an existential issue is a great philosopical perspective. Probably he is no the best stylist in language but he manages to create and imposive sense of fatelesness and impotence for men against nature and life itself.

[Amoxcalli]

I really liked Beyond Sleep. This whole sensation of the cold weather in the North in order to face the human life in an existential issue is a great philosopical perspective. Probably he is no the best stylist in language but he manages to create and imposive sense of fatelesness and impotence for men against nature and life itself.

Hmm, good point. Maybe the nihilistic message (as Hermans called it himself) somewhat muted my enjoyment of the novel. I never thought Beyond Sleep was a bad novel, but I found The Darkroom of Damocles a lot better. It's difficult to say anything about it without giving away things (moreso because it's been a while since I read it), but it's really one of the best works of Dutch literature. Don't get me wrong, Beyond Sleep is good, but if I had to choose between Beyond Sleep and The Darkroom of Damocles, I'd go for the latter any day.

The English title of Beyond Sleep is much better though. Literally, it would translate to something like "Never sleep again", which makes it sound like a bad whodunnit in my humble opinion.

[Daniel del Real]

Hmm, good point. Maybe the nihilistic message (as Hermans called it himself) somewhat muted my enjoyment of the novel. I never thought Beyond Sleep was a bad novel, but I found The Darkroom of Damocles a lot better. It's difficult to say anything about it without giving away things (moreso because it's been a while since I read it), but it's really one of the best works of Dutch literature. Don't get me wrong, Beyond Sleep is good, but if I had to choose between Beyond Sleep and The Darkroom of Damocles, I'd go for the latter any day.

The English title of Beyond Sleep is much better though. Literally, it would translate to something like "Never sleep again", which makes it sound like a bad whodunnit in my humble opinion.

Then I really gotta try Darkroom of Damocles. This year appeared a couple of new editions (don't know if translated for the first time to Spanish) of Hermas works. First came the above mentioned novel and in december the translation of No More Sleep is due. This last one I read it in English, I think it is closer to its original plus it wasn't available in Spanish early this year when I read it. It is also cheaper in English.

[waalkwriter]

Then I really gotta try Darkroom of Damocles. This year appeared a couple of new editions (don't know if translated for the first time to Spanish) of Hermas works. First came the above mentioned novel and in december the translation of No More Sleep is due. This last one I read it in English, I think it is closer to its original plus it wasn't available in Spanish early this year when I read it. It is also cheaper in English.

What is this book/author that you two are talking about?