It's Monday! What are You Reading? (20 Jan)

I tend to read a hundred books at once (only a slight exaggeration), so I believe this meme will be quite fun to participate in. Yay!

On the blog:

Aside from the plethora of lists and this year's challenges, I only managed to post about Dickens's a Christmas Carol. Don't think I'll be joining any more challenges, but there'll be more lists popping up here and there as I format them all -- or encounter new ones. Sorry, I just love lists. I've lists of lists, and also a general index of all lists referencing other lists, and really, it never ends.

Anyway. Apart from posting lists, I added several pages to this place. They're all linked in the tabs above.

Read:

• 101 Best Jokes (nope); 
• a Dog of Flanders (yep, more or less); I have the anime on a DVD, so I wanted to read the story before watching the film. And now I need a break, because I just know I'm going to weep when I watch the movie. (Didn't cry during the book though.)

Reading:

Finally started Catcher in the Rye, as per recommendation of one person I'm rather fond of. Currently about halfway through. At a loss of what to say about it once I'm done reading it, though. 

I was also in the mood for Jane Austen, so I picked up Northanger Abbey. Currently about 10 chapters in, and loving it, though do want to smack John Thorpe over the head with something heavy every time he mentions another horse or carriage. 

Les Miserables I've been reading for about a year now. I started reading it last January or February, as part of my Oscar watching prep, but obviously I haven't finished it in time. I'm still not even half done with the book. At this pace I'll finish it in 2016. Don't know why it's being such a slow read, because I like it.

I sees, I wants:

The following books have all caught my attention in one way or another, and have consequently been added to my ever growing 'to read' list.

• Lolly Willowes; as I understand, it's public domain, so I'll be downloading it shortly.
• the Machine; via a review at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm. The plot seems to hit many of my buttons, so it's on my wish list.
• Kokoro; I have another book by Soseki Natsume on my TBR (that'd be I am a Cat), so this one might take a while to get to.
• Cat Out of Hell; due to be released at the end of next month. I'm wary of purchasing any more books, because my Kindle overfloweth, and my paper books are triple shelved at times. But how can I ignore such a lovely title?

Lists: Joseph Brodsky's Reading List

... for having an intelligent conversation. At this point, I can barely converse, it seems. So barely, I almost want to say 'conversate'.

Secretly I enjoy the lack of Tolstoy in this list. 

I've read some of these before, like Homer, Gilgamesh, New and Old Testament, Quixote, Montaigne, Kant, etc., etc. But it was either long ago, or very cursory, for my uni reading. Plus I'm not going to pretend that I understood WTF Kant was talking about when I read it at 15. So I'm not marking them until I read them in earnest.

Start: officially January 2014

Updated: 19.01.2014

End:

1. Bhagavatgita
2. Mahabharata
3. Gilgamesh
4. The Old Testament
5. Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
6. Herodotus: Histories
7. Sophocles: Plays
8. Aeschyles: Plays
9. Euripedes: Plays (Hippolytus, Bachants, Electra, The Phornician Women)
10. Thucydides: The Peloponesian War
11. Plato: Dialogues
12. Aristotle: Poetics, Physics, Ethics, De Anima
13. Alexandrian Poetry: The Greek Anthology
14. Lucretius: The Nature of Things
15. Plutarch: Lives
16. Virgil: Aenid, Bucolics, Georgics
17. Tacitus: Annals
18. Ovid: Metamorphoses, Heroides, Ars Amatoria
19. The New Testament
20. Svetonius: Lives of 12 Caesars
21. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
22. Catullus: Poems
23. Horace: Poems
24. Epictetus: Discourses
25. Aristophanes: Plays
26. Aelian: Historical Miscellanies, Characters of Animals
27. Appololarces (Appololorces?): Argonautica
28. Psellus: Lives of Byzantine Rulers
29. Gibbon: Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
30. Plotinus: The Enneads
31. Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History
32. Boethius: Constelationes of Philosophy
33. Pliny the Younger: Letters
34. Byzantine Verse Romances
35. Heraclytus: Fragments
36. Augustine: Confessions
37. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
38. St. Francis: The Little Flowers
39. Nicolo Machiavelli: The Prince
40. Dante: Divine Comedy (Tr. By John Ciardi)
41. Franko Sachetti: Novellas
42. Icelandic Sagas
43. Shakespeare (Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry 5)
44. Rabelais
45. Bacon
46. Martin Luther: Selected Works
47. Calvin: Institutes
48. Montaigne: Essays
49. Cervantes: Don Quixote
50. Descartes: Discourses
51. Song of Roland
52. Beowulf
53. Belvenuto (?) Cellini
54. Henry Adams: Education of Henry Adams
55. Hobbes: Leviathan
56. Pascal: Pensees
57. Milton: Paradise Lost
58. Jone Donne
59. Andrew Marvell
60. George Herbert
61. Richard Crashaw
62. Spinoza: Treatises
63. Stendhal: Charterhouse of Parma, Red and Black, The Life of Andre Ballard
64. Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
65. Lawrence Sterne: Tristram Shandy
66. Choderlos de Laclois: Les Liaisons Dangereuses
67. Montesqui: The Persian Letters
68. Locke: Second Treatise on Government
69. Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
70. Leibmitz (?) Leibvitz?: Discourses (J's note: Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics, I think, but I can be terribly wrong)
71. Hume: Everything
72. The Federalist Papers
73. Kant: Critis of Pure Reason
74. Soren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling, Either/Or, Philosophical Fragments
75. Dostoevsky: Notes From the Underground, The Possessed
76. Tocqueville: Democracy in America
77. Goethe: Faust, Italian Journey
78. De Cuistine: Journey for our Time (Empire of the Czar)
79. Eric Auerbach: Mimesis
80. Prescott: Conquest of Mexico
81. Octavio Paz: Labyrinths of Solitude
82. Sir Karl Popper: The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Open Society and Its Enemies
83. Eliac Canetti: Crowds Are Power

References:

• Goodreads Listopia List
• Open Culture
• Brodsky Reading Group

Lists: 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, Guardian version

Published in 2009, original here.

Start: no idea.
Updated: 19.01.2014
End:

Comedy

• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
• Money by Martin Amis
• The Information by Martin Amis
• The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
• According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
• A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
• Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford
• Molloy by Samuel Beckett
• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Queen Lucia by EF Benson
• The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman
• A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
• No Bed for Bacon by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon
• Illywhacker by Peter Carey
• A Season in Sinji by JL Carr
• The Harpole Report by JL Carr
• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
• Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary
• The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
• Just William by Richmal Crompton
• The Provincial Lady by EM Delafield
• Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
• Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot
• A Fairy Tale of New York by JP Donleavy
• The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
• Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
• Cheese by Willem Elsschot
• Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
• Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Caprice by Ronald Firbank
• Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert
• Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
• The Polygots by William Gerhardie
• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
• Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Brewster's Millions by Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon)
• Squire Haggard's Journal by Michael Green
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
• Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
• Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
• The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgkins
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
• The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
• Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
• The Mighty Walzer Howard by Jacobson
• Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• The Castle by Franz Kafka
• Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
• Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
• The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
• L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Gil Blas) Alain-René Lesage
• Changing Places by David Lodge
• Nice Work by David Lodge
• The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
• England, Their England by AG Macdonell
• Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
• Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen
• Cakes and Ale - Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard by W Somerset Maugham
• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
• Puckoon by Spike Milligan
• The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills
• Charade by John Mortimer
• Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer
• Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
• Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
• La Disparition by Georges Perec
• Les Revenentes by Georges Perec
• La Vie Mode d'Emploi by Georges Perec
• My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunkett
• A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
• A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
• Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
• Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
• Alms for Oblivion by Simon Raven
• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
• The Westminster Alice by Saki
• The Unbearable Bassington by Saki 
• Hurrah for St Trinian's by Ronald Searle
• Great Apes by Will Self
• Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe
• Blott on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe
• Office Politics by Wilfrid Sheed
• Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel by Charles Simmons
• Moo by Jane Smiley
• Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith
• The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett
• The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
• The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
• The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
• Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
• A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
• White Man Falling by Mike Stocks
• Handley Cross by RS Surtees
• A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
• Penrod by Booth Tarkington
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
• Tropic of Ruislip by Leslie Thomas
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout
• The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
• A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh 
• The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
• Tono Bungay by HG Wells
• Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
• The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams
• Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson
• Something Fresh by PG Wodehouse
• Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse
• Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
• Heavy Weather by PG Wodehouse
• The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
• Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse

Crime

• The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
• Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
• The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
• Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
• Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley
• The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
• The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake
• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary E Braddon
• The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
• The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
• The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
• Greenmantle by John Buchan
• The Asphalt Jungle by WR Burnett
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain
• Double Indemnity by James M Cain
• True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
• No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
• The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
• Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
• The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
• Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
• The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter
• Ratking by Michael Dibdin
• Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin
• Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin
• A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
• Vendetta by Michael Dibdin
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt
• The Crime of Father Amado by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
• LA Confidential by James Ellroy
• The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
• A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
• Sanctuary by William Faulkner
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
• Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
• You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
• A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
• The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
• The Third Man by Graham Greene
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham
• The King of Torts by John Grisham
• Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
• The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
• The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
• Fatherland by Robert Harris
• Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
• Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
• Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins
• Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
• The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
• A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
• Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
• Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
• Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles
• Silence of the Grave by Arnadur Indridason
• Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes
• Cover Her Face by PD James
• A Taste for Death by PD James
• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
• Misery by Stephen King
• Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling
• The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard
• Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
• Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
• The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
• Cop Hater by Ed McBain
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
• Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
• Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
• The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim
• The Strange Borders of Palace Crescent by E Phillips Oppenheim
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
• Toxic Shock by Sara Paretsky
• Blacklist by Sara Paretsky
• Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
• Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
• The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
• Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• V by Thomas Pynchon
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
• The Hanging Gardens by Ian Rankin
• Exit Music by Ian Rankin
• Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell
• Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell
• Dissolution by CJ Sansom
• Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Le Sayers
• The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon
• The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
• Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
• Perfume by Patrick Suskind
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• The Getaway by Jim Thompson
• Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
• A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine
• A Fatal inversion by Barbara Vine
• King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine
• The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters 
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Family and self

• The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
• Epileptic by David B
• Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker
• Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac
• Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
• The Crow Road by Iain Banks
• The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
• A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
• Herzog by Saul Bellow
• Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
• G by John Berger
• Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
• Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
• Any Human Heart by William Boyd
• The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
• Evelina by Fanny Burney
• The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
• The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin
• The Outsider by Albert Camus
• Wise Children by Angela Carter
• The Professor's House by Willa Cather
• The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cocteau
• The Vagabond by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
• Manservant and Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett
• Being Dead by Jim Crace
• Quarantine by Jim Crace
• The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
• Roxana by Daniel Defoe
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• My New York Diary by Julie Doucet
• The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• Silence by Shusaku Endo
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
• Howards End by EM Forster
• Spies by Michael Frayn
• Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
• The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Immoralist by Andre Gide
• The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide
• The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• Hunger by Knut Hamsun
• The Shrimp and the Anemone by LP Hartley
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
• Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
• The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier
• Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Washington Square by Henry James
• The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
• The Unfortunates by BS Johnson
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
• Memet my Hawk by Yasar Kemal
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
• Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
• Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
• Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
• Martin Eden by Jack London
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
• The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
• Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
• The Chateau by William Maxwell
• The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor 
• The Ordeal of Richard Feverek by George Meredith
• Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
• Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
• The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro
• The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
• The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil 
• A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
• At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
• Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kezaburo Oe
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
• The Good Companions by JB Priestley
• The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
• Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
• A Married Man by Piers Paul Read
• Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson
• Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
• Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
• Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel 
• A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
• Unless by Carol Shields
• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
• The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
• The Family Moskat or The Manor or The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
• Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
• Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
• Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
• The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
• Death in Summer by William Trevor
• Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
• Peace in War by Miguel de Unamuno 
• The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Jimmy Corrigan, The Smarest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
• Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
• The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells
• The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
• Frost in May by Antonia White
• The Tree of Man by Patrick White
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
• I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Love

• Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
• Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani
• Love for Lydia by HE Bates
• More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
• Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
• The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Look At Me by Anita Brookner
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Possession by AS Byatt
• Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
• A Month in the Country by JL Carr
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
• Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
• Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
• Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
• The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
• The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• The Lover by Marguerite Duras
• Adam Bede by George Eliot
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
• Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• A Room with a View by EM Forster
• The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
• The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
• Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
• Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• Living by Henry Green
• The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
• The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
• The Go-Between by LP Hartley
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
• Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
• The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
• Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
• Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata
• The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
• Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
• Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos 
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
• The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
• Women in Love by DH Lawrence
• The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
• The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
• Zami by Audre Lorde
• Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
• The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
• A Heart So White by Javier Marias
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
• So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
• The Egoist by George Meredith
• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
• Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
• Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
• Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan
• Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
• All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
• Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
• Light Years by James Salter
• A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter
• The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
• The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale
• Love Story by Eric Segal
• Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• Waterland by Graham Swift
• Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
• First Love by Ivan Turgenev
• Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
• The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• The Graduate by Charles Webb
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
• East Lynne by Ellen Wood
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Science fiction and fantasy

• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
• The Drowned World by JG Ballard
• Crash by JG Ballard
• Millennium People by JG Ballard
• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
• Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
• Weaveworld by Clive Barker
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker 
• The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
• Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
• Vathek by William Beckford
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
• Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
• Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Erewhon by Samuel Butler
• The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
• The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
• Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter 
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon 
• The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
• Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
• Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
• House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
• Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
• The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
• Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• Under the Skin by Michel Faber
• The Magus by John Fowles
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Red Shift by Alan Garner
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• Light by M John Harrison
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
• Dune by Frank L Herbert
• The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban 
• The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
• Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Children of Men by PD James
• After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
• Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
• Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
• Solaris by Stanislaw Lem 
• Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
• The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
• The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
• Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
• Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
• The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Ascent by Jed Mercurio
• The Scar by China Mieville
• Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Mother London by Michael Moorcock
• News from Nowhere by William Morris
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• Vurt by Jeff Noon
• The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
• The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
• A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
• The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
• The Prestige by Christopher Priest
• His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
• Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
• Air by Geoff Ryman
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Blindness by Jose Saramago
• How the Dead Live by Will Self
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Insult by Rupert Thomson
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
• Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
• Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner 
• Affinity by Sarah Waters 
• The Time Machine by HG Wells
• The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
• The Sword in the Stone by TH White
• The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
• The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
• The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

State of the nation

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
• London Fields by Martin Amis
• Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
• Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• La Comedie Humaine by Honore de Balzac
• They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy
• A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn
• Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
• The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
• Room at the Top by John Braine
• A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
• Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
• Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
• The Virgin in the Garden by AS Byatt
• Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier
• What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
• Disgrace by JM Coetzee
• Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
• Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• White Noise by Don DeLillo
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
• Hard Times by Charles Dickens
• Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
• Sybil or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
• Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
• The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
• Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• USA by John Dos Passos
• Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser
• Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
• Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
• Independence Day by Richard Ford
• A Passage to India by EM Forster
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• The Recognitions by William Gaddis
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
• The Odd Women by George Gissing
• New Grub Street by George Gissing
• July's People by Nadine Gordimer
• Mother by Maxim Gorky
• Lanark by Alastair Gray
• Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
• A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• South Riding by Winifred Holtby
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
• Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare
• How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
• The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa
• A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
• Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
• Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
• Amongst Women by John McGahern
• The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
• Of Love & Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross
• Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
• Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia
• A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
• McTeague by Frank Norris
• Personality by Andrew O'Hagan
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• The Ragazzi Pier by Paolo Pasolini
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
• The Moon and the Bonfire by Cesare Pavese
• GB84 by David Peace
• Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
• Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell
• Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
• The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• The Human Stain by Philip Roth
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
• Shame by Salman Rushdie
• To Each his Own by Leonardo Sciascia
• Staying On by Paul Scott
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
• The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
• God's Bit of Wood by Ousmane Sembene
• The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
• Richshaw Boy by Lao She
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Red and the Black by Stendhal
• This Sporting Life by David Storey
• The Red Room by August Stringberg
• The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
• The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
• The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Couples by John Updike
• Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
• Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
• Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
• The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
• The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Germinal by Emile Zola
• La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

War and travel

• Silver Stallion by Junghyo Ahn
• Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
• Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
• Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin
• Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
• Regeneration by Pat Barker
• A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
• Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates
• Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd
• When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti
• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
• Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
• Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
• Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell
• The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry
• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Bomber by Len Deighton
• Deliverance by James Dickey
• Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
• South Wind by Norman Douglas
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
• Justine by Lawrence Durrell
• The Bamboo Bed by William Eastlake
• The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
• Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
• Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
• The African Queen by CS Forester
• The Ship by CS Forester
• Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• The Beach by Alex Garland
• To The Ends of the Earth trilogy by William Golding
• Asterix the Gaul by Rene Goscinny
• The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
• Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
• Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
• De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
• King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard
• She: A History of Adventure by H Rider Haggard
• The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
• Covenant with Death by John Harris
• Enigma by Robert Harris
• The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
• From Here to Eternity by James Jones
• Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• Confederates by Thomas Keneally
• Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
• Day by AL Kennedy
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
• The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
• If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London
• The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• La Condition Humaine by Andre Malraux
• Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat
• Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
• Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
• The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
• History by Elsa Morante
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
• The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
• Burmese Days by George Orwell
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
• The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
• The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Crab with the Golden Claws by Georges Remi Herge
• Tintin in Tibet by Georges Remi Herge
• The Castafiore Emerald by Georges Remi Herge
• The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
• Sacaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
• Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
• The Hunters by James Salter
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
• Austerlitz by WG Sebald
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
• The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• Maus by Art Spiegelman
• The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
• Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
• A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
• Sophie's Choice by William Styron
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
• A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
• Williwaw by Gore Vidal
• Candide by Voltaire
• Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
• Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
• The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
• The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall
• Voss by Patrick White
• The Virginian by Owen Wister 
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• The Debacle by Emile Zola

Lists: NPR's Top Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Back in 2011 NPR posted a Top 100 list of science fiction and fantasy books. It was, of course, duly copied and saved by me. I'm posting it here today, with items that I've already read in bold.

I believe these were ranked, so #1 is a #1.

1. the Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, y Orson Scott Card
4. the Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. a Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. the Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. the Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
18. the Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
22. the Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. the Dark Tower series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: a Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. the Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. the Martian Chronices, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. the Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. a Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
35. a Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
36. the Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
39. the War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny
41. the Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. the Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. Mistborn Trilogy, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, y Larry Niven
45. the Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
46. the Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. the Once and Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. the Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. the Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. the Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods (of Discworld), by Terry Pratchett
58. the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. the Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal (Discworld), by Terry Pratchett
61. the Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
62. the Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. the Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. the Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. the Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks
68. Conan the Barbarian, by Robert E. Howard and Mark Schultz
69. the Farseer, by Robin Hobb
70. the Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. the Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
73. the Legend of Drizzt, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. the Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
76. Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. the Kushuel's Legacy, by Jacqueline Carey
78. the Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. the Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson
82. the Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. the Culture Series, by Iain Banks
84. the Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. the Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. the Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. the Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. the Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon
90. the Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. the Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. a Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. the Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. the Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. the Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. the Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Lists: Gothic Books

There used to be a blog by the name of Gothic Reading Challenge and, well, the challenge itself. Unfortunately, it seems to be defunct or misappropriated as of now, but back when it was online, I copied the list of fiction suggested on that site and kept it for easier reference.

I never joined the challenge back then, but now it's become one of those Perpetual Challenges for me. I identify as Goth, and I've loved Gothic themes in fiction since as long as I can remember, so eventually I want to read as many books that have these themes and elements as possible.

Start: (officially) April 2011

Last updated: 16.01.2014

End:

• A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Beast by Peter Benchley
• Belefleur by Joyce Carol Oates
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Black Creek Crossing by John Saul
• The Black Tower by P.D. James
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
• Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Girl in the Swing by Richard Adams
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
• The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest by Ludwig Flammenberg
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
• Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
• The Shining by Stephen King
• Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
• Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
• The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Villette, by Charlotte Bronte
• One Thousand and One Ghosts, by Alexandre Dumas-father

Additional resources:

• List of Gothic fiction works
• the Literary Gothic
• Gothic Fiction shelf on Gutenberg
• Gothic Novelists Biographies

Challenges 2014: Vintage Mystery Bingo (Silver and Golden)

Oh dear. Obviously I am insane to be joining so many challenges this year, and I am bound to fail at least one of them if I plan to do anything other than reading and maintaining homeostasis, but I just couldn't pass this one up. Never mind the fact that this is technically a double challenge, so I'm twice likely to fail this one. Too good!

(hosted by My Reader's Block)

From the challenge's page:

All books must be from the mystery category (crime fiction, detective fiction, espionage, etc.). The mystery/crime must be the primary feature of the book--ghost stories, paranormal, romance, humor, etc are all welcome as ingredients, but must not be the primary category under which these books would be labeled at the library or bookstore.

Challengers may play either the Silver Age or Golden Age Card—or both. For the purposes of this challenge, the Golden Age Vintage Mysteries must have been first published before 1960. [..] Silver Age Vintage Mysteries may be first published any time from 1960 to 1989 (inclusive). [..] 

I decided to try to complete at least one line from each card. I have a lot of mysteries around the house, so even at a cursory glance finding suitable books shouldn't be a problem, but you never know.

Challenges 2014: TBR Pile

(hosted by the Bookish)
From the challenge's page:

We all have those books. We buy them, win them, they're gifted to us.. Then we put them up on a bookshelf and there they stay, collecting dust, waiting for the time when we'll finally decide to pick them up..
Join us on a quest to dust off your TBR Pile and read all the books you've been telling yourself you'll read next time you'll get a chance.. This is your chance! And we've got PRIZES!!! :D

I'm aiming for the second level, a Friendly Hug, which means I should read 11-20 books from my TBR.
For this challenge I'm going to use only the books that I've personally bought myself or the ones that were gifted for me. That is, no books from family library, although technically I own them all and at least 30% of those are in my TBR mountain pile, and no Gutenberg downloads (although if bought a translation of the book, and then found the original on Gutenberg, then I can read the original in electronic form, and it'll count).
This still leaves me with a wide selection of hundreds of books, though.