Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "This discussion has some interesting info on running the list through Goodreads ratings:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

That's an interesting statistic if one is interested in what the average Goodreader has to say, thanks, Amy.

As for me, I trust the average Goodreader even less than I trust book critics and literature scholars and lists like this one, heh. Hence a list of select GR 'friends' who have similar taste to mine. I find that works quite well for me.

No hurry, Amy! As you know, our threads are here to stay. :)

Here's the list for 2000 and on in Alphabetical order:

1. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
2. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
3. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
4. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
5. Atonement – Ian McEwan
6. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
7. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
8. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
9. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
10. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
11. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
12. Dead Air – Iain Banks
13. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
14. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
15. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
16. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
17. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
18. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
19. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
20. Fury – Salman Rushdie
21. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
22. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
23. How the Dead Live – Will Self
24. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
25. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
26. Islands – Dan Sleigh
27. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
28. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
29. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
30. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
31. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
32. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
33. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
34. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
35. Pastoralia – George Saunders
36. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
37. Saturday – Ian McEwan
38. Schooling – Heather McGowan
39. Shroud – John Banville
40. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
41. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
42. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
43. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
44. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
45. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood XXX
46. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
47. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
48. The Colour – Rose Tremain
49. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
50. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
51. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
52. The Double – José Saramago
53. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
54. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
55. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
56. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
57. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
58. The Master – Colm Tóibín
59. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
60. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
61. The Sea – John Banville
62. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
63. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
64. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
65. Unless – Carol Shields
66. Vanishing Point – David Markson
67. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
68. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
69. Youth – J.M. Coetzee

Out of those, we've only done The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood so far.

Yolande wrote: "I don't understand why Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller makes just about every list I see. I hate the utter sexist nature of that book. I wish it could just be buried already and disappear into obl..."

Yeah, he appears to have been somewhat of a sexpot. But in his case, I suspect it was because of his general literary influence; you know, he influenced the Beat Generation among others etc.

I have noticed that with lists like these, they try to include at least one work of a well-known author, and I don't always agree with their choices. I see in the case of J.M. Coetzee, however, they included quite a few. I've not yet read a single one of his. :P

I'll play around with the above data to make it more meaningful. I think dates might help, and alphabetization might help too.

801. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
802. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
803. Born in Exile – George Gissing
804. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
805. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
806. News from Nowhere – William Morris
807. New Grub Street – George Gissing
808. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
809. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
810. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
811. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
812. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
813. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
814. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
815. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
816. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
817. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
818. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
819. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
820. She – H. Rider Haggard
821. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
822. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
823. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
824. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
825. Germinal – Émile Zola
826. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
827. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
828. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
829. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
830. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
831. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
832. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
833. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
834. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
835. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
836. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
837. Nana – Émile Zola
838. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
839. The Red Room – August Strindberg
840. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
841. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
842. Drunkard – Émile Zola
843. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
844. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
845. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
846. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
847. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
848. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
849. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
850. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
851. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
852. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
853. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
854. Middlemarch – George Eliot
855. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
856. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
857. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
858. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
859. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
860. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
861. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
862. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
863. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
864. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
865. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
866. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
867. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
868. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
869. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
870. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
871. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
872. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
873. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
874. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
875. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
876. Silas Marner – George Eliot
877. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
878. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
879. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
880. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
881. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
882. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
883. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
884. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
885. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
886. Adam Bede – George Eliot
887. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
888. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
889. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
890. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
891. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
892. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
893. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
894. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
895. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
897. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
898. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
899. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
900. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
901. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
902. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
903. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
904. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
905. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
906. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
907. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
908. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
909. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
910. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
911. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
912. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
913. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
914. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
915. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
916. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
917. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
918. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
919. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
920. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
921. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
922. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
923. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
924. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
925. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
926. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
927. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
928. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
929. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
930. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
931. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
932. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
933. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
934. Persuasion – Jane Austen
935. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
936. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
937. Emma – Jane Austen
938. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
939. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
940. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
941. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
942. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
943. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
944. 1700s
945. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
946. The Nun – Denis Diderot
947. Camilla – Fanny Burney
948. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
949. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
950. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
951. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
952. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
953. Justine – Marquis de Sade
954. Vathek – William Beckford
955. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
956. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
957. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
958. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
959. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
960. Evelina – Fanny Burney
961. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
962. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
963. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
964. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
965. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
966. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
967. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
968. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
969. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
970. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
971. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
972. Candide – Voltaire
973. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
974. Amelia – Henry Fielding
975. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
976. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
977. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
978. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
979. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
980. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
981. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
982. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
983. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
984. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
985. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
986. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
987. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
988. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
989. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
990. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
991. Pre-1700
992. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
993. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
994. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
995. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
996. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
997. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
998. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
999. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
1000. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
1001. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
1002. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
1003. Metamorphoses – Ovid
1004. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

601. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
602. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
603. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
604. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
605. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
606. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
607. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
608. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
609. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
610. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
611. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
612. Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
613. In Parenthesis – David Jones
614. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
615. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
616. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
617. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
618. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
619. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
620. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
621. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
622. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
623. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
624. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
625. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
626. Independent People – Halldór Laxness
627. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
628. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
629. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
630. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
631. England Made Me – Graham Greene
632. Burmese Days – George Orwell
633. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
634. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
635. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
636. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
637. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
638. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
639. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
640. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
641. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
642. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
643. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
644. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
645. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
646. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
647. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
648. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
649. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
650. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
651. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
652. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
653. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
654. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
655. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
656. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
657. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
658. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
659. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
660. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
661. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
662. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
663. Passing – Nella Larsen
664. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
665. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
666. Living – Henry Green
667. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
668. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
669. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
670. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
671. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
672. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
673. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
674. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
675. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
676. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
677. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
678. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
679. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
680. Quartet – Jean Rhys
681. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
682. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
683. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
684. Nadja – André Breton
685. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
686. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
687. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
688. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
689. Amerika – Franz Kafka
690. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
691. Blindness – Henry Green
692. The Castle – Franz Kafka
693. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
694. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
695. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
696. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
697. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
698. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
699. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
700. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
701. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
702. The Trial – Franz Kafka
703. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
704. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
705. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
706. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
707. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
708. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
709. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
710. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
711. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
712. Cane – Jean Toomer
713. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
714. Amok – Stefan Zweig
715. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
716. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
717. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
718. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
719. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
720. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
721. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
722. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
723. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
724. Ulysses – James Joyce
725. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
726. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
727. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
728. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
729. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
730. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
731. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
732. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
733. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
734. Summer – Edith Wharton
735. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
736. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
737. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
738. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
739. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
740. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
741. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
742. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
743. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
744. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
745. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
746. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
747. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
748. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
749. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
750. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
751. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
754. Howards End – E.M. Forster
755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
757. Martin Eden – Jack London
758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
762. The Iron Heel – Jack London
763. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
765. Mother – Maxim Gorky
766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
768. Young Törless – Robert Musil
769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
776. The Ambassadors – Henry James
777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
778. The Immoralist – André Gide
779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
785. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
786. 1800s
787. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
788. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
789. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
790. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
791. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
792. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
793. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
794. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
795. Dracula – Bram Stoker
796. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
797. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
798. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
799. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
800. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

351. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
352. The Breast – Philip Roth
353. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
354. G – John Berger
355. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
356. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
357. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
358. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
359. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
360. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
361. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
362. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
363. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
364. The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
365. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
366. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
367. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
368. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
369. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
370. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
371. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
372. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
373. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
374. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
375. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
376. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
377. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
378. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
379. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
380. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
381. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
382. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
383. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
384. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
385. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
386. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
387. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
388. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
389. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
390. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
391. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
392. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
393. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
394. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
395. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
396. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
397. Chocky – John Wyndham
398. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
399. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
400. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
401. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
402. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
403. The Joke – Milan Kundera
404. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
405. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
406. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
407. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
408. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
409. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
410. The Magus – John Fowles
411. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
412. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
413. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
414. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
415. Things – Georges Perec
416. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
417. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
418. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
419. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
420. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
421. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
422. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
423. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
424. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
425. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
426. Herzog – Saul Bellow
427. V. – Thomas Pynchon
428. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
429. The Graduate – Charles Webb
430. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
431. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
432. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
433. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
434. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
435. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
436. The Collector – John Fowles
437. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
438. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
439. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
440. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
441. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
442. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
443. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
444. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
445. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
446. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
447. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
448. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
449. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
450. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
451. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
452. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
453. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
454. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
455. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
456. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
457. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
458. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
459. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
460. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
461. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
462. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
463. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
464. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
465. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
466. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
467. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
468. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
469. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
470. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
471. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
472. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
473. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
474. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
475. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
476. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
477. The End of the Road – John Barth
478. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
479. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
480. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
481. Voss – Patrick White
482. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
483. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
484. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
485. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
486. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
487. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
488. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
489. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
490. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
491. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
492. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
493. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
494. The Floating Opera – John Barth
495. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
496. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
497. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
498. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
499. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
500. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
501. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
502. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
503. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
504. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
505. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
506. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
507. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
508. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
509. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
510. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
511. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
512. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
513. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
514. Watt – Samuel Beckett
515. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
516. Junkie – William Burroughs
517. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
518. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
519. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
520. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
521. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
522. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
523. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
524. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
525. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
526. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
527. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
528. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
529. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
530. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
531. The Rebel – Albert Camus
532. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
533. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
534. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
535. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
536. The Third Man – Graham Greene
537. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
538. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
539. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
540. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
541. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
542. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
543. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
544. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
545. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
546. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
547. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
548. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
549. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
550. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
551. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
552. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
553. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
554. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
555. The Victim – Saul Bellow
556. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
557. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
558. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
559. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
560. The Plague – Albert Camus
561. Back – Henry Green
562. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
563. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
564. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
565. Animal Farm – George Orwell
566. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
567. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
568. Loving – Henry Green
569. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
570. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
571. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
572. Transit – Anna Seghers
573. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
574. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
575. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
576. Caught – Henry Green
577. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
578. Embers – Sandor Marai
579. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
580. The Outsider – Albert Camus
581. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
582. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
583. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
584. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
585. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
586. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
587. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
588. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
589. Native Son – Richard Wright
590. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
591. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
592. Party Going – Henry Green
593. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
594. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
595. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
596. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
597. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
598. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
599. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
600. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

141. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
142. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
143. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
144. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
145. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
146. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
147. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
148. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
149. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
150. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
151. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
152. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
153. Indigo – Marina Warner
154. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
155. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
156. Jazz – Toni Morrison
157. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
158. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
159. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
160. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
161. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
162. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
163. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
164. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
165. Arcadia – Jim Crace
166. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
167. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
168. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
169. Mao II – Don DeLillo
170. Typical – Padgett Powell
171. Regeneration – Pat Barker
172. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
173. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
174. Wise Children – Angela Carter
175. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
176. Amongst Women – John McGahern
177. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
178. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
179. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
180. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
181. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
182. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
183. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
184. Possession – A.S. Byatt
185. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
186. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
187. A Disaffection – James Kelman
188. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
189. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
190. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
191. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
192. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
193. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
194. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
195. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
196. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
197. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
198. London Fields – Martin Amis
199. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
200. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
201. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
202. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
203. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
204. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
205. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
206. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
207. Libra – Don DeLillo
208. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
209. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
210. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
211. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
212. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
213. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
214. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
215. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
216. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
217. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
218. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
219. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
220. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
221. World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
222. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
223. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
224. Beloved – Toni Morrison
225. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
226. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
227. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
228. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
229. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
230. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
231. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
232. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
233. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
234. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
235. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
236. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
237. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
238. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
239. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
240. A Maggot – John Fowles
241. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
242. Contact – Carl Sagan
243. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
244. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
245. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
246. White Noise – Don DeLillo
247. Queer – William Burroughs
248. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
249. Legend – David Gemmell
250. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
251. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
252. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
253. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
254. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
255. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
256. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
257. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
258. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
259. Neuromancer – William Gibson
260. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
261. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
262. Shame – Salman Rushdie
263. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
264. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
265. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
266. Waterland – Graham Swift
267. The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
268. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
269. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
270. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
271. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
272. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
273. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
274. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
275. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
276. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
277. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
278. The Newton Letter – John Banville
279. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
280. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
281. The Names – Don DeLillo
282. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
283. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
284. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
285. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
286. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
287. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
288. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
289. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
290. Rites of Passage – William Golding
291. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
292. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
293. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
294. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
295. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
296. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
297. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
298. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
299. Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
300. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
301. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
302. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
303. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
304. The World According to Garp – John Irving
305. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
306. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
307. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
308. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
309. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
310. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
311. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
312. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
313. The Shining – Stephen King
314. Dispatches – Michael Herr
315. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
316. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
317. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
318. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
319. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
320. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
321. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
322. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
323. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
324. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
325. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
326. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
327. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
328. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
329. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
330. Fateless – Imre Kertész
331. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
332. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
333. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
334. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
335. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
336. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
337. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
338. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
339. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
340. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
341. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
342. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
343. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
344. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
345. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
346. Crash – J.G. Ballard
347. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
348. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
349. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
350. Sula – Toni Morrison

I'm sure you all know about the book by now.

Personally, I'm not really one for lists of this kind, but I've seen a few of our members seem to be going for it, so I thought it would be fun to cross them off if we do happen to read anything on it.

So, here's the list:
THE LIST
• 2000s
1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
6. The Sea – John Banville
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
25. The Double – José Saramago
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
27. Unless – Carol Shields
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
32. Shroud – John Banville
33. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia – George Saunders
70. • 1900s
71. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
72. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
73. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
74. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
75. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
76. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
77. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
78. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
79. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
80. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
81. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
82. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
83. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
84. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
85. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
86. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
87. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
88. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
89. Another World – Pat Barker
90. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
91. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
92. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
93. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
94. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
95. Great Apes – Will Self
96. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
97. Underworld – Don DeLillo
98. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
99. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
100. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
101. The Untouchable – John Banville
102. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
103. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
104. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
105. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
106. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
107. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
108. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
109. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
110. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
111. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
112. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
113. The Information – Martin Amis
114. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
115. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
116. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
117. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
118. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
119. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
120. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
121. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
122. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
123. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
124. Land – Park Kyong-ni
125. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
126. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
127. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
128. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
129. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
130. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
131. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
132. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
133. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
134. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
135. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
136. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
137. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
138. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
139. Complicity – Iain Banks
140. On Love – Alain de Botton

American/Southern Gothic:

Here is a link to a few examples of Southern Gothic stories: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/S...

Shirley's stories are thought to be set in New England, so in that sense her work is not SOUTHERN Gothic (which is set in the American South and tend to have certain common characteristics), but they have enough characteristics similar to SG and American Gothic to see it as a sort of hybrid American Gothic.
American Gothic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...

I will post a bit more on this soon.

Linda wrote: "I just read it for the first time in October. Will try to jump in without spoiling. I hate spoiling!"

It would be very nice if you joined the discussion. I'll go a bit faster with this one, plus you can use spoiler tags. :)

I want to put out a warning not to read past page 2 of the introduction by Lethem, or perhaps save the entire introduction until later.

Perhaps I can post a more general introduction, poached off Wikipedia, that will spoil less of that "viriginal initial approach" that we are trying to go for in our discussions here at 'On Paths'.

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American author. She was a popular writer in her time, and her work has received increased attention from literary critics in recent years. She influenced Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.[1]

She is best known for the short story "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests a secret, sinister underside to bucolic small-town America, and for The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which is widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written. In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received". Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse". In the July 22, 1948, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Jackson offered the following in response to persistent queries from her readers about her intentions:

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work, "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies", but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb", to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears.

-From Wikipedia.

Hi everyone.
Opening thread for discussion of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Members can clock in here with pre-reading thoughts and with initial impressions.
Discussion officially opens 8 December, but you can start posting initial thoughts, just no spoilers, please!

Have fun!

Ronald wrote: "Hopefully Dzanc will eventually make good on their promise to reissue Women and Men, as it's damn pricey at the moment unfortunately.
"

Whoops, I'd better go check if I still have mine where I thought it was...

Anyway, sounds as if your wave took you on a good trip! ;)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Recognitions and 2666 were already on my list because of the 1001 BYMRBYD list; I added Women and Men.
..."

In that case, we must all support one another in these arduous endeavors. :)

..and yes, Ronald's feats are admirable!

Linda wrote: "I couldn´t dream of it til perhaps summer (even though it´s on my shelf) ..."

Good, then we'll support one another in our procrastination. >:D

Ronald wrote: "Yeah, I don't really mind discussing books in process, as long as it's targeted to the context of only what's been read up to a certain point.

And I love reading about books and diving into suppor..."

Indeed, which also makes it difficult to write a review on Goodreads; some people write them for those who had already read the text under discussion, and some people write them for those who had not read it yet.

I try to mix and match and make use of spoiler tags when the bits meant for the readers with the T-shirt become too involved. :)

Ronald wrote: "as I note in my review, that designation doesn't always mean the same thing across books. Not sure if its reputation is more specific about how difficult it is or not - I try to avoid knowing almost anything about a book prior to reading it, so it's possible I would have been better prepared had I been better informed. ..."

We've discussed that dilemma elsewhere on this group. It makes it very difficult to have a discussion group when some of the participants (myself included) believe that texts are best approached virginally and researched LATER, when questions out of the text itself arise.

This has not been the modus operandi of most prominent discussion groups and of Goodreads and the internet in general; but it's a philosophy that I have come to value, because overresearching a text before you've even read it prevents an "innocent" experience of it, and fiction, even if it is densely allusive stuff like that of Pynchon, needs to be experienced at first hand, I feel.

...but not all people understand this approach and expect you to give them a ton of background before they start reading a text.

I prefer reading it and discussing the issues as one goes along.

Ronald wrote: "W&M was more difficult than I anticipated, by a decent measure. It's amazing though, on a number of levels (language, narrative, construction, description)."

Mm, it has a reputation, yes. You mean, in spite of the reputation? :|