Reading: Leah Hager Cohen, Train Go Sorry

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

On deck: Don Quijote, The London Rich, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Moving: gardening

House:

Garden: planted beefsteak, plum, and cherry tomato and eggplant seedlings

23 May 2002: Train Go Sorry

From the Manchester Guardian: A list of the 100 best works of fiction, alphabetically by author, "as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided."

• Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart (fall 1988, Modern English Lit)
  • Egg just read this and lent it to CoolBoss. I have almost no memory of it, besides laughing empathetically when the protagonist turns his back on the missionary describing how a tripartite god is a monotheism, since the man was obviously crazy
• Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories (childhood)
  • Especially after her teacher gave Anna A Child's Garden of Verses in Jean Little's From Anna
• 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
  • Whatever. Bring on End Game and Waiting for Godot
• Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron (spring 1990, Gender in European History 300-1800)
  • These are great stories. What I remember is that they're Renaissance, but Chaucer rewrote them as medieval because England was backward.
• Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions
  • I've read some but not all
• Emily Brontë, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights (fall 1993, Special Topics: Revenge in Literature)
  • Someone was on crack. This is not a great book.
• Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger (tenth grade)
  • Am I the only person to prefer The Fall?
• 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)
  • I hated the professor but liked this book.
• Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales (fall 1990, Chaucer)
  • I know someone named Alysoun.
• Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo
  • This is one of those things the list-makers put in to make you crazy. Everybody's read Heart of Darkness, so they put in this instead.
• Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
• Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations (tenth grade and fall 1993, Special Topics: Revenge in Literature)
  • I love this book. I have no desire to reread Oliver Twist or David Copperfield or to read Nicholas Nickleby but I love Great Expectations.
• 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; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov
• George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch
• Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man
  • I'm almost done, damn it. Ha! June 2002
• Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea (fall 1993, Special Topics: Revenge in Literature)
  • I also saw this staged. I can remember one of my companions but not the others. I hate that. Also, did it star that actor, whose name I also forget, instead of a woman?
• William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury (since 1992)
• Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary (1991: good timing!); A Sentimental Education
  • Egg's favorite novel is Madame Bovary but oh how she struggled with Sentimental Education. Also she recently put down Brothers Karamazov as not a summer book. To the Lighthouse might be just as hard but is shorter.
• Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera (1989 and 1990)
  • One of the most exhilarating last paragraphs and most searing first sentences ever, respectively
• Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC) (ninth grade history)
  • I continue to believe I learned more, more lastingly, in ninth and tenth grade histories, than from any other single course.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust
• Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls (spring 1989, Russian Lit)
  • This and Jude the Obscure and Live Girls vie for most depressing book ever in the history of the world
• Gunter 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.
• Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea (eleventh grade)
  • Had these list-makers not read For Whom the Bell Tolls? Or, RDC would ask, The Sun Also Rises?
• 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)
  • I bought a collection of his plays from PGN's book sales one year and eventually read this. Still not Peer Gynt, though
• The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC). (fall 1990, Special Topics: Evil in Literature)
• James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses
  • One day, I promise. (Ha! "One day!" Such a wit.)
• Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle (audio, 2001)
  • "The Metamorphosis" must be one of the stories.
• 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)
  • Failed to rock my world, despite wanting to like it for A.S. Byatt's sake. Does Lady Chatterly's Lover at least have some smut?
• Halldor K. Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People
• Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems
• Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook (2001)
  • Well, those lists were useful
• Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking (now and forever)
  • Pippi rocks, of course, being a girl who does what she wants when she wants and whose papa is a cannibal king, but my dear Scout is missing. On the other hand, no one would miss Catherine Earnshaw.
• 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)
  • This was just as good as RDC said it was.
• 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)
  • I'm halfway through Jazz and then I will be caught up with her opus.
• Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji
  • I've meant to read this since I first heard of Murasaki, which was in a coloring book called Great Women Paper Dolls that HEBD gave me in college.
• 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 (spring 1992, Women in Antiquity)
  • I am so glad Dewey Decimal puts Greek mythology next to the UFO books and the Guinness Book of World Records. Otherwise I might still be reading about the Loch Ness Monster
• 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
  • RJH told me years ago I would like this
• Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo
• Jalal ad-din Rumi, Iran, (1207-1273), Mathnawi
• Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children
  • Like Invisible Man, this is hanging over my head. Aha again, 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
• William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello (all in spring 1990, Shakespeare)
  • Hamlet first in twelfth grade and again in fall 1993, Special Topics: Revenge in Lit. That was a super class.
• 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
  • RDC's book of shame
• 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; 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
  • My book of shame.
• 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
• Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian