Official Lists
feminista
Modern Library
Radcliffe
Modern Library readers Best
Ever Gay & Lesbian BBC
Combined, this is what I meant to
read in 2001, the first year of this endeavor; now that I've read the obvious
titles, chipping away at the others might not change much.
Feminista
Now being updated here: Feminista
Source: http://www.feminista.com/v2n3/100.html
Modern Library
Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
Validity: I probably could have spared myself this entire effort if when I
first came across the list had I not misread MLA as "Modern Library" (an
imprint of Random House) as "Modern Language Association." When
I thought it was the MLA I gave the list a lot more weight. Deliverance
but not To Kill a Mockingbird can mean only that the publishing house
wanted to sell titles it hadn't previously offered under that imprint.
How many I had read as of December , 2000, 27;
after the first year, December 2001, 47. As of December 2006, 67.
How many more I intend to read: I don't expect I'd ever manage Finnegans
Wake, but I believe it deserves its place. I figure I'll survive
without reading too much Henry James and I flatly refuse to read
another Dreiser
novel.
I submit that more than half of this list dates from the first half
of the century because the older books are cheaper for Modern Library
to
reprint, and not only
because the impact and import of newer books must be by definition less.
- James Joyce, Ulysses May
2004
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man January 2001
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February
2001
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon November
2000
- D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers December
2000
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
- Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh November
2004
- George Orwell, 1984
- Robert Graves, I, Claudius
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December
2002
- Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
- Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
February 2001
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May
2002
- Richard Wright, Native Son
- Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King January
2006
- John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra October
2005
- John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (trilogy)
- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
- E.M. Forster, A Passage to India February
2005
- Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
- Henry James, The Ambassadors
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
March 2001
- James T. Farrell, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy
- Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier December
2005
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- Henry James, The Golden Bowl
- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
- Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust May
2001
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men August
2004
- Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey October
2004
- E.M. Forster, Howards End
- James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
January 2001
- Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies
- James Dickey, Deliverance February
2001
- Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (series)
- Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
- Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
- Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
- D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
- D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October
2004
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
- Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
- Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint September
2006
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire June
2002
- William Faulkner, Light in August April
2001
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road March
2001
- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
- Ford Maddox Ford, Parade's End
- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
January 2001
- Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
- Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
- James Jones, From Here to Eternity
- John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicles
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Sinclair Lewis, Main Street October
2004
- Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth February
2001
- Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
- Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
- V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas
- Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
- Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim January
2001
- E.M. Forster, A Room With a View
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
- Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose July
2001
- V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
- Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
February 2001
- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
- E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime January
2001
- Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale
- Jack London, The Call of the Wild November
2004
- Henry Green, Loving
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
July 2002
- Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road July
2001
- William Kennedy, Ironweed April
2001
- John Fowles, The Magus March
2001
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
- Iris Murdoch, Under the Net August
2001
- William Styron, Sophie's Choice December
2004
- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
- James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice February
2003
- J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
- Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
February 2001
Radcliffe
Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100rivallist.html
Validity: I have no idea what the Radcliffe Publishing Course is like. I assume
it's accredited. I like this list because it's the only one to include children's
books. Also because I've read more of it than I have of the others.
How many I had read as of December 2000, 55; in
the first year, to December 2001, 61; and as of December
2006: 82.
How many more I intend to read: I figure most of these are worth trying.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
- John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
- Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
- Alice Walker, The Color Purple
- James Joyce, Ulysses May
2004
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- William Golding, The
Lord of the Flies
- George Orwell, 1984
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February
2001
- John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
- E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May
2002
- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
- Richard Wright, Native Son
- Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road March
2001
- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
- Jack London, Call of the Wild November
2004
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December
2002
- Henry James, Portrait of a Lady July
2004
- James Baldwin, Go Tell in On the Mountain January
2001
- John Irving, The World According To Garp
- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men August
2004
- E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
- Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List
- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
January 2001
- Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
- Upton Sinclair, Jungle
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
- L. Frank Baum, Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover April
2005
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
- Willa Cather, My Ántonia
- E.M. Forster, Howards End
- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood May
2001
- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
- Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses
- Toni Morrison, Jazz March
2002
- William Styron, Sophie's Choice December
2004
- William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! September
2004
- E.M. Forster, A Passage To India March
2005
- Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
- Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find October
2005
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
March 2001
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando December 2005
- D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers December
2000
- Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities
- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
- John Knowles, A Separate Peace
- William Faulkner, Light in August April
2001
- Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
- D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October 2004
- Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
- Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
- Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
- Dashiell Hammett, Maltese Falcon
- Norman Mailer, Naked and the Dead
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
- Don Delillo, White Noise
- Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
- H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds
- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
- Henry James, Bostonians
- Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
- Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop
- Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
- John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
- Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt May
2002
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim January
2005
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Beautiful and the Damned
- John Updike, Rabbit, Run
- E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear To Tread
- Sinclair Lewis, Main Street October
2004
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children July
2002
MLA Readers
Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
Validity: None. To Kill a Mockingbird is in the top ten, as it ought
to be and as Radcliffe has it (Feminista didn't order its choices), but so are
all four of Ayn Rand's novels and three by L. Ron Hubbard. Robert Heinlein might
be a fine writer (I wouldn't know), but not fine enough to capture seven places;
I'd never heard of Charles de Lint and he has eight. What this list shows is
that Objectivism and science fiction and Christian Science lend themselves to
zealotry and ballot-packing. Also any list that considers A Town Like Alice
to be worth reading at all obviously is severely flawed.
How many I had read as of December 2000, 38; as of June 2006, 55.
How many more I intend to read: Few that don't occur
in the other lists or in my own previous lists. I have meant to read Stranger
in a Strange Land since high school, and the Robertson Davies trilogies
since I came across The Lyre of Orpheus in 1991, and At Swim-Two-Birds since
it was assigned to me in the fall of 1989.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
- Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
- L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- George Orwell, 1984
- Ayn Rand, Anthem
- Ayn Rand, We the Living
- L. Ron Hubbard, Mission Earth
- L. Ron Hubbard, Fear
- James Joyce, Ulysses May
2004
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby
- Frank Herbert, Dune
- Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
- Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land October
2005
- Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
- Geroge Orwell, Animal Farm
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
- John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies
- Jack Schaefer, Shane
- Nevil Shute, Trustee From the Toolroom
- John Irving, A Prayer For Owen Meany
- Stephen King, The Stand
- John Fowles, French Lieutenant's Woman
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- E.R. Eddision, Worm Ouroboros
- William Faulkner, The Sound And the Fury
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February
2001
- Charles De Lint, Moonheart
- William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! September
2004
- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood December
2005
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
- Robertson Davies, Fifth Business August
2005
- Charles De Lint, Someplace To Be Flying
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road March
2001
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Charles De Lint, Yarrow
- H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
- Miceky Spillane, One Lonely Night
- Charles De Lint, Memory And Dream
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December
2002
- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
- Charles De Lint, Trader
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
- Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
February 2001
- Margaret Atwood, Handmaid's Tale
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- Nevil Shute, On the
Beach January 2001
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young
Man January 2001
- Charles De Lint, Greenmantle
- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game April
2003
- Charles De Lint, Little Country
- William Gaddis, Recognitions
- Robert Heinlein, Starship Trooper
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
- John Irving, The World According To Garp
- Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
May 2001
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May
2002
- Terri Windling, Wood Wife
- John Fowles, The Magus March
2001
- Robert Heinlein, Door Into Summer
- Robert Pirsig, Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Robert Graves, I, Claudius
- Jack London, Call of the Wild November
2004
- Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds January
2003
- Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
- Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
- Richard Adams, Watership Down
- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
- Tom Clancy, Hunt For Red October
- Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
- Robert Heinlein, Puppet Masters
- Stephen King, It
- Thomas Pynchon, V.
- Robert Heinlein, Double Star
- Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
- William Faulkner, Light in August April
2001
- Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms
- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
- Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
- Willa Cather, My Ántonia
- Charles De Lint, Mulengro
- Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
- Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood
- Richard Bach, Illusions
- Robertson Davies, Cunning Man
- Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses
The 2001 Lists Merged
In the four lists of 100 books each, there were 292 discrete titles. M, R,
F, and O exclusively listed 221 of them (M 45, R 8, F 85, and O 54) and 71 were
shared.
-----
Manchester Guardian reports a Norwegian book club's
poll of 54 worldwide authors' opinion of the 100 most important fictional
works
of all time. As of May 2002 when I started, I'd read 42; as of June 2006,
55. And The Aeneid is was my book of shame.
- Chinua Achebe, Nigeria (b. 1930), Things Fall
Apart (fall 1988, Modern English Lit)
- Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark (1805-1875), Fairy
Tales and Stories (childhood)
- Jane Austen, England (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice
(fall 1992 repeatedly through last week)
- Honore de Balzac, France (1799-1850), Old Goriot
- Samuel Beckett, Ireland (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies,
The Unnamable
- Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy (1313-1375), Decameron
(spring 1990: Gender in European History
300-1800)
- Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina (1899-1986), Collected Fictions
- Emily Bronte, England (1818-1848), Wuthering
Heights (fall 1993: Special Topics:
Revenge in Literature)
- Albert Camus, France (1913-1960), The Stranger
(tenth grade)
- Paul Celan, Romania/France (1920-1970), Poems.
- Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the
Night
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain (1547-1616), Don
Quixote (spring 1987: Renaissance & Modern
Western Lit)
- Geoffrey Chaucer, England (1340-1400), Canterbury
Tales (fall 1990: Chaucer)
- Joseph Conrad, England (1857-1924), Nostromo
- Dante Alighieri, Italy (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
- Charles Dickens, England (1812-1870), Great Expectations
(tenth grade and Special Topics: Revenge
in Literature, fall 1993)
- Denis Diderot, France (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
- Alfred Doblin, Germany (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, Russia (1821-1881), Crime
and Punishment 2003; The
Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov June
2005
- George Eliot, England (1819-1880), Middlemarch
August 2002
- Ralph Ellison, United States (1914-1994), Invisible
Man May 2002
- Euripides, Greece (c 480-406 BC), Medea
(Special Topics: Revenge in Literature, fall
1993)
- William Faulkner, United States (1897-1962), Absalom,
Absalom (September 2004);
The Sound and the Fury (since 1992)
- Gustave Flaubert, France (1821-1880), Madame
Bovary (1991: good timing!);
A Sentimental Education
- Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads
- Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia (b. 1928), One
Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera (1989
and 1990)
- Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC)
(ninth grade and freshling year histories)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany (1749-1832), Faust
- Nikolai Gogol, Russia (1809-1852), Dead Souls
(spring 1989: Russian Lit)
- Gunther Grass, Germany (b.1927), The Tin Drum
- Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
- Knut Hamsun, Norway (1859-1952), Hunger (November
2005)
- Ernest Hemingway, United States (1899-1961), The
Old Man and the Sea (eleventh grade)
- Homer, Greece (c 700 BC), The Iliad and
The Odyssey (fall
1986: Classic and Medieval Western Lit and ninth grade)
- Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House
(1990s)
- The Book of Job, Israel (600-400 BC). (fall
1990, Special Topics: Evil in Literature)
- James Joyce, Ireland (1882-1941), Ulysses (May
2004)
- Franz Kafka, Bohemia (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial;
The Castle (audio,
2001)
- Kalidasa, India (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
- Yasunari Kawabata, Japan (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain
- Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek
- D.H. Lawrence, England (1885-1930), Sons and
Lovers (2001)
- Halldor K. Laxness, Iceland (1902-1998), Independent
People (November 2005)
- Giacomo Leopardi, Italy (1798-1837), Complete Poems
- Doris Lessing, England (b.1919), The Golden Notebook
(2001)
- Astrid Lindgren, Sweden (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking
(now and forever)
- Lu Xun, China (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
- Mahabharata, India (c 500 BC).
- Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi
- Thomas Mann, Germany (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain
- Herman Melville, United States (1819-1891), Moby
Dick (audio,
1998)
- Michel de Montaigne, France (1533-1592), Essays.
- Elsa Morante, Italy (1918-1985), History
- Toni Morrison, United States (b. 1931), Beloved
(fall 1993: Special Topics: Revenge in Literature)
- Shikibu Murasaki, Japan (N/A), The Tale of Genji
- Robert Musil, Austria (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities
- Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States (1899-1977), Lolita
(2001)
- Njaals Saga,
Iceland (c 1300). (fall 1986: Classic and Medieval
Western Lit)
- George Orwell, England (1903-1950), 1984 (tenth
grade)
- Ovid, Italy (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses (1992:
Women in the Ancient Near East)
- Fernando Pessoa, Portugal (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet
- Edgar Allan Poe, United States (1809-1849), The
Complete Tales (1992)
- Marcel Proust, France (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past
- Francois Rabelais, France (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Juan Rulfo, Mexico (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo
- Jalal ad-din Rumi, Iran (1207-1273), Mathnawi
- Salman Rushdie, India/Britain (b. 1947), Midnight's
Children July 2002
- Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran (c 1200-1292), The Orchard
- Tayeb Salih, Sudan (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North
- Jose Saramago, Portugal (b. 1922), Blindness
(2002)
- William Shakespeare, England (1564-1616), Hamlet;
King Lear; Othello (12th grade and
spring 1990, Shakespeare)
- Sophocles, Greece (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
(high school)
- Stendhal, France (1783-1842), The Red and the Black
- Laurence Sterne, Ireland (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy
- Italo Svevo, Italy (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno
- Jonathan Swift, Ireland (1667-1745), Gulliver's
Travels (fall 1989, Restoration and
18th Century lit)
- Leo Tolstoy, Russia (1828-1910), War and Peace (2004);
Anna Karenina (2001);
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (certainly
the title and other stories)
- Anton P. Chekhov, Russia (1860-1904), Selected
Stories (which selection? But "Three
Sisters" and "Lady with a Pet Dog" and many others)
- Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt
(700-1500). (sometime during college)
- Mark Twain, United States (1835-1910), The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn (1991)
- Valmiki, India (c 300 BC), Ramayana
- Virgil, Italy (70-19 BC), The Aeneid March
2006
- Walt Whitman, United States (1819-1892), Leaves
of Grass (1992)
- Virginia Woolf, England (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway
(fall 1988, Modern English Lit);
To the Lighthouse (December
2002)
- Marguerite Yourcenar, France (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian
-----
"As published in the June 22, 1999 issue of The Advocate, the 100
best lesbian and gay novels, as selected by the Publishing
Triangle, an assocation of gay men and lesbians in publishing."
As of December 2006, 26. Several appear on the Feminista list.
- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
- James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
- Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
- Andre Gide, The Immoralist
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando December
2005
- Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
- Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman February
2005
- Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
- Audre Lorde, Zami
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray October
2005
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
- Herman Melville, Billy Budd (high
school, probably doesn't count)
- Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
- Andrew Holleran, Dancer From the Dance
- E.M. Forster, Maurice (early
college)
- Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar
- Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle January
2005
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (summer
of 1990 or 1991)
- Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
- Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding (2001)
- John Rechy, City of Night
- Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
- Isabel Miller, Patience & Sarah February
2006
- Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
- Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
- Henry James, The Bostonians
- Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
- Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina (1994ish)
- Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (2001)
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (fall
1988: Modern English lit)
- Mary Renault, The Persian Boy August
2006
- Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library
- Dorothy Bussy, Olivia
- Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
- Carol Anshaw, Aquamarine
- James Baldwin, Another Country
- Colette, Cheri
- Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (after
1995)
- Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1993ish)
- D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October
2004
- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1994)
- Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies December
2006
- Robert Musil, Young Rorless
- James Purdy, Eustace Chisholm and the Works
- Terry Andrews, The Story of Harold
- John Horne, The Gallery
- June Arnold, Sister Gin
- Neil Bartlett, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall
- Christopher Bram, Father of Frankenstein
- William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
- Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories
- Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil
- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only
Fruit (2002)
- Randall Kenan, A Visitation of Spirits
- Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
- Ronald Firbank, Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli
- Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (2002)
- Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters
- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (>2000)
- Bertha Harris, Lover
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1997)
- Violette Leduc, La Batarde
- Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1997ish)
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (high
school)
- Petronius, The Satyricon
- Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
- Roger Peyrefitte, Special Friendships
- Jo Sinclair, The Changelings
- Jose Lezama Lima, Paradiso
- Irving Rosenthal, Sheeper
- Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres
- Christa Winsloe, The Child Manuela (Madchen in Uniform)
- Mark Merlis, An Arrow's Flight
- William Talsman, The Gaudy Image
- Alfred Chester, The Exquisite Corpse
- Geoff Ryman, Was 2004
- Violette Leduc, Therese and Isabelle
- Michel Tournier, Gemini
- Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty
- Rebecca Brown, The Children's Crusade
- Colm Tiobin, The Story of the Night
- Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)
- Jose Donoso, Hell Has No Limits
- Elana Nachman (Dykewomon), Riverfinger Women
- Tom Spanbauer, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon
- Dennis Cooper, Closer
- Honore de Balzac, Lost Illusions
- Elizabeth Jolley, Miss Peabody's Inheritance
- Virgillio Pinera, Rene's Flesh
- Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy
- Jo Sinclair, Wasteland
- May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing December
2006
- Paul Russell, Sea of Tranquillity
- Jacqueline Woodson, Autobiography of a Family Photo
- Jane DeLynn, In Thrall
- Joanna Russ, On Strike Against God
- Kate Millett, Sita
Another list, from here
(a Hungarian journalist offers this as a list that Waterstone's, in
association with the BBC, developed in September 1996) and
linked courtesy of Mo. As of
19 June 2004, I had read 62; as of June 2006, 70. This is a readers' list,
slightly more dignified than the MLA readers' list;
I doubt I'm going to read any more Stephen King or start on Michael Crichton
but I've never
heard
of
Jung
Chang or Wild Swans and that, along with others, is going on my to-read
list.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
- George Orwell, 1984
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- James Joyce, Ulysses
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
- Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
- Jung Chang, Wild Swans
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- William Golding, The Lord of the Flies
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
- Alice Walker, The Color Purple
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
- Albert Camus, The Outsider Camus had
no such title in English and I figure this is the Englished Hungarian for L'Étranger.
- C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- Franz Kafka, The Trial
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Primo Levi, If This is a Man
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
- Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory
- Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu
- Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- A. S. Byatt, Possession
- Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
- E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
- Richard Adams, Watership Down
- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
- E. M. Forster, Howard's End
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
- Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
- Frank Herbert, Dune
- John Irvine, A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Patrick Süskind, Perfume
- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
- Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
- Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
- Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
- John Fowles, The Magus
- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock December
2005
- Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
- Armistead Maupin, Tales from the City
- John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
- Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- E. M. Forster, A Room with a View
- Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim July
2006
- Stephen King, It
- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
- Stephen King, The Stand
- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western
Front
- Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
- Roald Dahl, Matilda
- Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho
- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
- Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
- D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
- Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Delia Smith, Complete Cookery Course
- Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling
- D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
- George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 - A Space Odyssey
- Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
- Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
- Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country
- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
- Roddy Doyle, The Van
- Roald Dahl, The BFG
- Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
- Robert Graves, I, Claudius
- Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer
Either I've got to develop some resistance or people have got to stop making
up lists, especially ones requiring as much cleaning up as this one did, in
formatting, misspellings, and inconsistent inclusions of first names, even
for the same author in different entries. A Montana
State University graduate English class developed this list, which I also
discovered through
Mo. As of December 2004, 47; as of June
2006, 56. I like that the first five are before 1650 and that of those five,
the two English
ones are Jacobian. Whether anyone ever actually spoke English like that, certainly
no
one's written
it that evocatively, purely yet imaginatively, utterly beautifully, since.
- The Collected Works of Shakespeare (I've read about a third)
- The Bible (which? I'll go with the King James)
- Cervantes, Don Quixote
- Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
- Ovid, Metamorphoses
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
- Oresteia of Aeschylus
- Tao Te Ching-Lao Tzu
- Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov June
2005
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred
Years of Solitude
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
- Dante, Divine Comedy
- Poems of Wallace Stevens
- Arabian Nights
- Tolstoy, War and Peace
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Isak Dinesen, Anecdotes of Destiny
- Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy
- Roberto Calasso, Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony
- Somadeva, Katasaratsagura (Oceans of Story)
- Chekhov, short stories
- Bhagavad Gita
- James Joyce, Ulysses
- Brothers Grimm, fairy tales
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
- William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
- D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
- Plato: Dialogues
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
- Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
- Flannery O'Connor: Short Stories
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
- Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
- Freud, Interpretation of Dreams
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
- Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
- William Yeats, Collected Poems (which collection? I've read lots and lots
but not all)
- James Frazer, Golden Bough
- Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
- Jan Potaki, Manuscript found at Saragossa
- Euripides, Bacchae
- William Thackery, Vanity Fair
- Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
- Virgil, Aeneid March
2006
- Tristan & Iseult, but which?
- William Blake, Collected Poems (again, which?)
- Golden Ass of Apuleius
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Endgame
- Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
- Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
- Jean Racine, Phaedre
- Poetics of Aristotle
- Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
- Aristophanes, Lysistrata June
2006
- Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
- Oscar Wilde, Importance of Being Earnest
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
- Maria Vargos Llosa, Storyteller
- Heraclitus, Fragments
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
- Epic of Gilgamesh
- Dostoevsky, The Idiot
- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Lady Murisaki, Tale of Genji
- Montaigne's Essays
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- Richard Wright, Native Son
- Emerson, On Nature
- Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus but
not Goethe's Faust?
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
- John Milton, Paradise Lost winter
2005-2006
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
- Richard Wright, Native Son.Does its
appearing twice mean it's twice as good as anything else?
- Frances Yates, The Art of Memory
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
- Voltaire, Candide
- Fredrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
- E.M. Forster, Passage to India March
2005
- Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea December
2004
- Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God
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