Rhea's List

Here's my list. I'm working off a combined spreadsheet that has 1296 books on it, and I've read 152/1296. I really need to pick up the speed if I want to finish before I die, especially since much of what I've read are short stories or novellas.

pre-1800s
1294- Aesop's Fabels
1293- Metamorphoses
1292- Chaireas and Kallirhoe
(1290)- The Thousand and One Nights (partial)
(1288)- The Tale of Genji (partial)
(1297)- Romance of the Three Kingdoms (partial)
(1286)- Water Margin (partial)
(1283)- Amadis of Gaul (partial)
(1281)- Gargantua and Pantagruel (partial)
(1274)- Don Quixote (partial)
1270- The Pilgrim's Progress
1268- Oroonoko
1265- Love in Excess
(1262)- Gulliver's Travels (partial)
1261- A Modest Proposal
(1255)- Tom Jones (partial)
1250- Candide
1246- The Castle of Otranto
1232- Vathek
1231- Justine
(1230)- A Dream of Red Mansions (partial)
1225- The Monk

1800s
1036- The Awakening
1038- The Turn of the Screw
1040-The War of the Worlds
1046- Dracula
1049- The Time Machine
1054- The Yellow Wallpaper
1057- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1060- Gösta Berling’s Saga
1061- Tess of the D'Urbervilles
1063- The Picture of Dorian Gray
1064- The Kreutzer Sonata
1068- Hunger
1076- The Manors of Ulloa
(1078)- She (partial)
1079- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1081- The Mayor of Casterbridge
1085- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1092- Treasure Island
1108- Daniel Deronda
1113- Around the World in Eighty Days
1117- Spring Torrents
1119- Through the Looking Glass
1127- Little Women
1128- The Moonstone
1132- Journey to the Centre of the Earth
1133- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1139- Fathers and Sons
1146- The Mill on the Floss
1148- A Tale of Two Cities
1152- Madame Bovary
(1156)- Walden (partial)
1158- Villette
1162- The House of the Seven Gables
1163- Moby-Dick
1164- The Scarlet Letter
(1165)- David Copperfield (partial)
1169- Wuthering Heights
1170- Agnes Grey
1172- Jane Eyre
1174- The Devil's Pool
1178- The Purloined Letter
1180- The Pit and the Pendulum
1182- A Christmas Carol
1186- The Fall of the House of Usher
(1187)- The Chartehouse of Parma (partial)
1206- Frankenstein
1208- Persuasion
1213- Pride and Prejudice
1214- Sense and Sensibility

1900s
Disgrace, The Hours, Veronika Decides to Die, Memoirs of a Geisha, A Fine Balance, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Black Water, American Psycho, Like Water for Chocolate, Kitchen, Watchmen, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Perfume, The Handmaid's Tale, The Wasp Factory, The Color Purple, The House of the Spirits, A Bend in the River, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Requiem for a Dream, The Shining, Song of Solomon, The Hour of the Star, Interview with the Vampire, Sula, Surfacing, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Slaughterhouse Five, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Crying of Lot 49, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Cat's Cradle, The Bell Jar, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, A Clockwork Orange, Labyrinths, Solaris, Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Rabbit, Run, Naked Lunch, Things Fall Apart, The Once and Future King, Pnin, Giovanni's Room, Seize the Day, The Lord of the Rings, Lolita, Lord of the Flies, Go Tell it on the Mountain, The Old Man and the Sea, The Catcher in the Rye, Gormenghast, I, Robot, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Titus Groan, Animal Farm, Ficciones, The Little Prince, The Outsider, The Grapes of Wrath, Nausea, Rebecca, Of Mice and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Hobbit, Gone with the Wind, War with the Newts, Miss Lonelyhearts, Brave New World, Passing, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Sound and the Fury, The Sun Also Rises, Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, The Trial, The Magic Mountain, Siddhartha, Main Street, The Good Soldier, Ethan Frome, Howard's End, The House on the Borderlands, Young Torless, The Call of the Wild, Heart of Darkness, The Hound of the Baskervilles

2000s
23- Never Let me Go
25- On Beauty
45- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
68- Middlesex
80- Life of Pi
91- The Devil and Miss Prym
107- House of Leaves

I finally finished Moby-Dick, so I've now read 136 books. Moby-Dick took me almost 2 years to read, not because it was bad or boring, but because the brilliance of it was just so taxing to read. I kept hitting passages that were so meaningful it was painful. It's like nothing happens in that book that isn't meant to represent humanity as a whole. I ended up having to listen to the LibriVox audiobook to slow it down, and after finishing it I'm still a bit in shock. That speech in "The Candles" was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

Finished The House on the Borderlands, and discovered a couple more on the list I've read: Surfacing, Foundation, Solaris, Kristin Lavransdatter, and Kitchen.

That brings my total to 142/1294. I did the math, and considering I've only been reading seriously for 9 years, I might live to finish. Unless they add more books to list.

I finished Vathek, which was just alright. One of the ones I think is more on there for its influence.

That brings me to 146. I must live to be 96 years old to finish at my current pace.

Wow, you make me curious of Moby Dick which until now didn't interest me much!
And do you know the combined spreadsheet already exists?

>8 Simone2:
I hope you do read it. The first couple of chapters are pretty funny.

Do you mean Arukiyomi's spreadsheet? I got mine from someone else, it's either an alternate version or a bootleg one. It doesn't have the 2012 edition's extras, and I made a mistake when I said how many books were on it. There are 1294.

I will read it now, after your recommendation! And yes, I meant Arukiyomi's spreadsheet. It's quite nice to use!

I feel Moby-Dick is really a love-it or hate-it work, so I wish you well!

I finished War with the Newts, which was another one that was just okay. I have really high expectations for 1001 books.

And by 146 last time, I meant 143. I'm not being very good with numbers lately. I've now read 144 books and and must live to 94.875 years old.

I'm also intrigued by Moby Dick now...it has been glaring at me from my shelf for months, but you've transformed that glare into a inviting glance now!

Now that I've bought it, the glance has for me become a glare. It doesn't look very inviting to me, in fact it scares me a little! I think I am gonna keep it a while on my TBR

Moby-Dick is surprisingly readable. The "boring bits" that people tend to complain about, were not that boring. (Perhaps because I didn't read it in an academic setting where the themes & symbolism were discussed ad nauseum). I found the structure remarkable at pulling me along -- the "informational" chapters alternating with the plot/characterization chapters. And as a friend mentioned to me in discussion, without the dozen or so chapters dwelling on the massiveness, the history, and the importance of whaling in the time period, Moby-Dick's belated appearance would have been quite undramatic.

Im with Simone2 I kinda read Moby Dick in high school I remember hating it and havent been intrigued to pick it back up again because I dont mark it as read on my 1001 score card unless I have read it as an adult. But then again I love Grapes of Wrath and it was just okay in high school so maybe one day it may happen.

I'm glad to have motivated you guys, but I'm really wary since I know so many people hate the book. I really hope you like it, or at least don't completely hate it.

>15 ALWINN:
If I cut out all the books I read in high school my list would take a giant hit. I'm actually counting The Call of the Wild and The Hobbit from all the way back in elementary school.

Finished The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof. It was decent. I also discovered that Black Water is on the list.

I've now read 146 books and must live to be 93.767 years old.

Finished The Hour of the Star, I've read 147 books, and must live to be 93.224 years old.

Finished Miss Lonelyhearts. I've read 148 books and must live to be 92.68 years old.

I am also reading Moby Dick during my lunchbreaks at the moment. I really like it, but then they've only just set sail so I have a way to go.

Anyway, just wanted to comment to Anolophora that I really like the way you put how old you must live until! What a great idea. Hope you make it!

I saw your comment, and sent the link to the spreadsheet I'm using. I don't think it's yours, it says it's made by someone else and it doesn't have the extra information yours says it has.

My age calculation is this. It assumes I keep up the reading at my current pace so it's not very accurate. I divide the number of books I have left to read by the average number of 1001 books I've read per year since I was 14, and then add it to my current age. I see your spreadsheet also has a time calculation, but I don't know if it's the same.

= "current age"+ (1294-"books read") / ("books read" / ("current age"- 14))

curious... thanks for forwarding that spreadsheet. After opening it, I can safely rest assured that there's no fear of competition from that source!

the age calculations in the spreadsheet rely on UN average life expectancies for males and females for every country in the world. This is then used, with however many books you say you average a month, to calculate how many books you will read before you die. It then determines if this is larger or not than the total you have left to read.

So, it's a different approach to yours which I like just as much.

Planning!

So it's getting close to the end of the year, so that means I get to plan what to read next year! I do much better with getting things read if I plan first, otherwise the choices are too overwhelming. I am combining this with other challenges.

As part of a ROOT challenge I am reading the following 1001 books that I own. (16 books total)

The Golden Ass by Apuleius, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, The Leopard by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa, The Bell by Iris Murdoch, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, and Callirhoe by Chariton.

I also want to read some more Latin American writers, so-
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, The Cubs and Other Stories by Mario Vargas Llosa, Kiss of the Spider Women by Manuel Puig, The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, The Burning Plain and Other Stories by Juan Rulfo, Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado, and Memoirs of a Peasant Boy by Xosé Neira Vilas

I am attempting to read Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Monkey, and A Dream of Red Mansions, and participating in the book a month read of A Dance to the Music of Time.

And some other ones that look interesting are The Magician of Lublin by Isaach Bashevis Singer, Aithiopika by Heliodorus, Rickshaw Boy by Lao She, and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.

That is more than plenty.

It seems like you have quite a list! I hope you enjoy Gone with the Wind it's a favorite of mine, only recently bumped out of the first place slot by another on the list. Give it time - there is one scene I remember early in the book of a meeting on a road that seemed to last a lifetime, but it picks up quickly.

what was the other that bumped out Gone?

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - guess I should have put that in my last post, huh? Whoops!

I finished The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy, making my low average page count even lower.

Tolstoy's opinions on life and morality (they are Tolstoy's opinions, Tolstoy's afterward makes this clear), to avoid swearing because I'm not sure if it's allowed here, are utter nonsense. The story was interesting enough though, once I got past the lectures. And although this was not Tolstoy's goal, the novella is an interesting portrayal of the anguish a strict religious morality puts people through when they try to conform in vain.

I recently read Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw, and was surprised to see many of the ideas about marriage in Man and Superman echoed here, exemplified by this passage from the Kreuzter Sonata.

"Now the woman lacks the right which the man has. And now, in order to get this right, she plays on the passions of man; by means of his passions, she subdues him so that, while seemingly he chooses, she is really the one. And having once learned this power, she abuses it and acquires a terrible control over men."

I researched a bit, and Shaw actually sent a copy of "Man and Superman" to Tolstoy, implying the borrowing was deliberate on Shaw's part. Shaw got a response from Tolstoy, where Tolstoy criticized him on for not focusing on Christianity, not being serious enough, and trying "to surprise and astonish readers by your great erudition, talent and cleverness."

I have read 149 books and must live to be 92.2 years old.

Shaw was pathologically afraid of women; I don't know what Tolstoy's excuse was. I remember The Kreutzer sonata as one of the most misogynistic texts ever, it devastated me as a teen (I was about 14-15 when I read it).

Eff them all.

Lola, that's interesting to know, but too bad about Shaw. It explains a lot.

It's good to know that someone else recognizes The Kreutzer Sonata for what it is, thanks. It's also good to know that the misogyny was exceptionally bad, a couple of the classics I've read lately had exceptionally bad misogyny and it's good to know I can expect better.

it's good to know I can expect better.

Not so faaaaast! :)

Classic lit is pretty dire in that regard, better steel yourself. OTOH, it works beautifully to make one appreciate current times, however beastly.

I was a Shavian disciple in my teens and could ramble about him for pages (probably not required...) Suffice it to say that he was eccentric and very complicated in matters psycho-sexual, and, for all the OCEANS of scribbling he produced about himself, ultimately very reticent. But we are wiser today than the wisest men of yester-centuries.

Shaw's positives (which Tolstoy didn't share, not a smidgen) are that he was a genuine feminist, actively agitating for civil rights for women, and he believed women actually had minds, could think, hold any description of intellectual jobs.

Nevertheless, he also saw women as primal, instinctual votaries of the Life Force--bent on sex and procreation first and foremost.

Shaw thought that his own brand of uber-rational intellectualism and sex-avoidance (it is unclear whether he ever had sex in his life, of any kind) might temper those primal urges and bring women and, secondarily, their male victims, men of weaker constitution than Shaw, to civilization. His plays are filled with clever, energetic young ladies who order their instincts "rationally" and thus bring about the better organised, just and truthful society.

Got nothing to do with real life, of course.

to avoid swearing because I'm not sure if it's allowed here

It is entirely allowed. LT is very proactive on "free speech" and the only thing you can't do here, is to make a personal attack another member (though you can attack their ideas all you want), or post spam. :P

I've read neither Tolstoy or Shaw, but appreciate the erudition you bunch bring to the topic. Though it could stand more cussing.

Thank you for the lesson! I am certainty glad I live now and not then, but who knows what the world will be like in another 100 years.

I have finished Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, which was very good. 5 stars. I must live to be 91.64.

(MAJOR SPOILERS!!)

As if the books I'm reading work in a chain, this one features another husband, Mustafa, who kills his wife in a jealous bout of rage. However, the wife in Season of Migration to the North seems to have had a death wish, and the motivations behind the characters are much more complex and not spelled out as clearly as in The Kreutzer Sonata. This story is given to us by the narrator at the end of the novel, after the suicide of Mustafa, in a way that confuses the boundary between which experiences are the narrator's and which experiences are Mustafa's. There is also another husband/wife story involving a village man Wad Rayyes and Mustafa's widow, where it is the wife who kills the husband.

The novel shocked me because in the first 1/5 you have a nice man returning to his happy village, the next part makes you think the happy village is just a frame story, and then the madness breaks out in the last 1/5. I thought it was safe to get attached to the characters and the ending had me in tears, but at least there was hope in it.

I finished The Glass Bees, have read 151 books, and must live to be 91.13.

came back to the UK on leave and so had an early January family Christmas party... and guess what I got in my stack of presents? Yep... A Season of Migration... wonderful.

I finished Gone with the Wind, I have read 152 books, and I must live to be 91.62.

I finished The Blind Owl, I have read 153 books, and I must live to be 91.12.

I finished We, I have read 154 books, and I must live to be 98.03.

How come you need to live longer now?

My calculation is very rough and my birthday passed. Since I'm a year older my books read per year rate is less. :(

It actually passed a while ago, but I forgot to adjust it. In post 37 it should say 98.56, and in post 36 it should say 99.13.

I finished The House of Ulloa and Chaireas and Kallirhoe. 156 books.

I accidentally deleted my age calculation, and the rewritten one says 105.24 years. Hmm. I am clearly not very good at math.

105 it is then.

I finished The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, which was one of the best things I have ever read. Every single paragraph was meaningful. I must wait a couple of weeks and then read it again.

I do hold a bit of a grudge against the person who spoiled the focal object of the novel on me, as I would have been ecstatic to come across it accidentally, but it serves me right for reading posts about books I haven't read.

I found my mistake with my age calculation, but it turns out I have also been forgetting how old I am for a while now, so once again my number is different. Gah.

I have read 157 books and must live to be 96.42 years old.

I have finished The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, have read 158 books, and must live to be 95.90 years old.

Looks like each book is giving you several months of life. That's quite an incentive!

I haven't updated this in a while, and so I've read The Secret History, Little Women, Alberta and Jacob, Nada (Andrea), and The Golden Notebook.

I have read 163 books and must live to be 93.39 years old.

I've read Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Sense and Sensibility, Daniel Deronda, Paradise of the Blind, and The Lover.

I've read 168 books.

I've finished House of Mirth, Beloved, House with the Blind Glass Windows, and Possession.

So that's 172.

I've finished The Country Girls, The Mill on the Floss, The Age of Innocence, Love in Excess, The Shipping News, The Return of the Soldier, and So Long a Letter.

So that's 179. Last year was not a good year for reading 1001 books.

This year I finished July's People and The Girls of Slender Means. Yet again not a good year for 1,001 books.

So that's 181.

Finished The Tale of Genji

182.

Finished The Bluest Eye and Arrow of God.

184.

Currently struggling with the point of reading from the 1,001 book list.

It's heavily weighted towards single-authored novels by western, male authors. My idea of a good list of 1,001 fiction books to read before you die would include the best from as many literary traditions as possible, including a great deal of anthologies with works by multiple authors.

Nothing wrong with lists of the best novels written in English or the Western-canon, but the 1,001 books list does not present itself as such. There are works that have never been translated into English on the list, begging the question that if such works are acceptable, why are there so few? Also if translated works written outside the Western-canon are acceptable, why is the Western-canon weighted so heavily?

The 1,001 books list really is a great list though. Personally think it's the best list of its kind I've ever seen. It was a monumental undertaking, and the kind of expansive list I'm describing, that goes beyond the novel and includes anthologies and as many perspectives as possible, would be an even more monumental task. I'm not aware of anything.

This isn't an answer to your question, but one of the things that reading from the list has done for me is it's changed the way I read. I am more willing to push through the boring or difficult language, because some of these works are important. They changed history, or reflected history in a way I never thought about.

The list has also brought me to non-Western writers I may not have otherwise encountered- Endo, Achebe, Mistry, Murakami, and others. I found a love for Asian writing that I never anticipated.

Just my thoughts.

>53 amaryann21:

Happy to hear anyone's thoughts. Thank you.

>52 Settings: The list is not flawless. Even within a Western-canon context, it is heavily skewed towards literature in English, which is probably why many of the translated versions have expanded it with more works in their own language.

I still enjoy reading from the list, however, because it's a nice mixture of books I have wanted to read for a long time and some books I never would have known were classics without it.

But I also read other stuff to mix things up. It would definitely be interesting to see a truly global version of the list. I'm sure we could all do without a couple of novels about middle-aged men in crises.

Think supplementing is the way to go. The Lister in me wants to do it in a systematic way though.

The first book on the list is Aesop's Fables. Agree that the fable is a notable literary form and that on a list of 1,001 books to read before you die, there should be some fables. Based on the Wikipedia pages, there's a collection of Indian fables called the Panchatantra which appears to be just as influential as Aesop's Fables.

Though I think it is also impossible to create a sensible universal list, and with this English-language list the bias is definitely there and thus it's concentrated on North American and British authors and other Western canon (though the editions after the first one have also made a strong effort to expand beyond the anglophone west, but the bias is still existing).
And as someone who comes from Western-but-not-Anglophone country, I must mention that there are a number of books on the list that probably are relevant only to North Americans or Brits. As a counter-point to "middle-aged men in crisis" (which is actually pretty global theme) I don't really see the interest in reading couple of dozens of books about slavery in US.

But IMO biases like that do make sense, the list is in English so it is geared to the anglophone. On what criteria could one make a truly universal list, when cultural contexts, histories etc are so diverse that what is relevant in one place is not that in another.
And so that the list doesn't get any more deep than a minor scratch to the surface, there might be a long list of books but many of them such that reading only them outside the context (e.g. other books) don't give you any understanding why this book was so relevant or sometimes what it even is about (several smaller language sections in 1001 Books list already suffer from this).

>57 hdcanis:

I get the impression that many literary traditions did not stress the novel, and the focus on the novel is what's driving a lot of the bias.

Ancient Greek literature, which you'd assume would be well-represented given the list's Western canon bias, is represented by Aesop, Chariton, and Heliodorus. Think the Chariton is a good example of what you mean by a small-language novel that seems out-of-context.

If you present a novel as separate from all the poetry, short stories, epics, etc., that informed it, of course it seems outside of context. That's one of the reasons I think including multiple-author anthologies would be so useful. But then we get back to your point about what cultural contexts to consider - who should these anthologies be compiled by and directed at?