Hey all!
Back after 2 years with another round of 100 novels. I wish I was reading more consistently, but this probably represents a
pace I can actually maintain.
Over the
course of round 3 I took part in my first two book clubs: Kelly Pappageorge’s
excellent Women Authors book club and the small Vacek-Josh book club, consisting
of only my father, brother, friend Josh and myself. With both Kelly and Josh
having moved away, these closed shop, but other doors opened. I joined the St.
Louis Science Fiction book club at the Clayton public library, met the
wonderful Chance and joined his book club, and started GNIFty, a graphic novel
and interactive fiction club, along with friends Sarah S. and Emre.
In addition, I enjoyed reading and discussing 2015’s Hugo nominees for science fiction with friends Ben and Katie W. It was the first year I’ve taken part in voting. Though it was inspired by a low-point in the SF community (a sabotage campaign by embittered right-wing internet trolls), it was fun to get back into my favorite genre. I managed 20 SF works and 6 fantasy; more than in recent memory.
In addition, I enjoyed reading and discussing 2015’s Hugo nominees for science fiction with friends Ben and Katie W. It was the first year I’ve taken part in voting. Though it was inspired by a low-point in the SF community (a sabotage campaign by embittered right-wing internet trolls), it was fun to get back into my favorite genre. I managed 20 SF works and 6 fantasy; more than in recent memory.
This last
round I also delved deeper into plays than ever before. For several months I was
reading them exclusively, although I've found foreign plays very hard to track down in libraries. I’ve also made graphic novels a major part of my
reading diet. I’ve decided to start listing them separately.
I fulfilled
a goal of reading several major ancient classics by the likes of Homer,
Virgil and Milton, as well as modern works that rely on an awareness of these
and more prose poetry in general. I'd like to get into some ancient Eastern works at some point in the future (but they're all so long!).
US: 33
UK: 19
France: 5
Russia: 4
Canada: 3
Argentina,
Australia, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Sweden: 2
Belgium,
Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Finland, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya,
Romania, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Switzerland, Zimbabwe: 1
This was my
first time reading novels from Belgium, China, Croatia, Finland, Iceland,
Kenya, Romania, Senegal, Sudan, Switzerland and Zimbabwe. At this point I’m
half way to my goal of reading a novel from 100 countries. I’m seriously
considering a Novel Atlas (similar to the Film Atlas), though it is a very long term project.
I’ve seen
movie adaptation of 19 of these books. Of them, I might argue that Casino
Royale, Tom Jones, and The Guide are better than their sources. The Ladies of
the Bois de Boulogne (adapted from Jacques the Fatalist), several of the many
Dangerous Liaisons adaptions and Doctor Zhivago are also quite good. The 15
hour Berlin Alexanderplatz miniseries, however, was a colossal waste of time.
I find that
despite a conscious effort to read more women authors, authors of color and
authors who identify as LGBT, I’m still not doing a terribly good job. Of the
100 novels in this round, only 29 are by women (which is at least up from 22
last round, despite being in a women author book club). I’ve recently started
tracking my progress on two awesome lists: Feminista’s 100 20th
century novels by women and The Publishing Triangle’s
100 best lesbian and gay novels, which are filling in some of my blind
spots.
Overall favorite: Voss
Best SF: Permutation
City and The Sparrow
Best
fantasy: American Gods and A Game of Thrones
Best crime
fiction: Shadow without a Name and Kiss of the Spider Woman
Best graphic
novel: Are You My Mother? and Ghost World
Best play: The Tragedy of Man (tragedy) and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (comedy)
Best
romance: Dangerous Liaisons and The Passion
Best
obscurities: Aniara (Swedish existentialist epic poem about a runaway
spaceship) and Pointed Roofs (Unfairly neglected modernist work that gave birth
to the “stream of consciousness” style)
Best
premise: Zoo City (A Johannesburg
detective and her sloth work a missing persons case in a future where criminals are bonded to
animal familiars)
Most wasted
premise: Accelerando
Best story: The
Goldfinch and House of Suns
Best prose: Independent
People and The Summer Book
Best
structure: A Visit from the Goon Squad and I’m Not Stiller
Most
Difficult: The Recognitions and The Death of Virgil
Longest: A
Dance to the Music of Time (3013 pages)
Funniest: Cold
Comfort Farm and The Napoleon of Notting Hill
Angriest: The
Elementary Particles and Woman at Point Zero
Weirdest sex: Bear
Most fun: The
Martian
Most
depressing: The Land of Green Plums
Most
energetic: The Sot-Weed Factor
Most
emotional: Independent People
Most
ambiguous: Pedro Paramo and The Southern Reach Trilogy
Most
decadent: Against Nature
Most
disappointing: The Castle
Best
bookclub discussion of a book I liked: Are You My Mother?
Best
bookclub discussion of a book I disliked: Geek Love
Best title: By
Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Key:
** Excellent
* Very Good
[blank] Fair
to Good
^ Bad
The List:
-710: The
Iliad by Homer (Greece)
-700: The
Odyssey by Homer (Greece) *
-19: The
Aeneid by Virgil (Italy) *
1664:
Paradise Lost by John Milton (UK) *
1749: Tom
Jones by Henry Fielding (UK)
1780:
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot (France) *
1782: Dangerous
Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (France) **
1839: The
Charterhouse of Parma by Marie-Henri Stendhal (France)
1840: A Hero
of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (Russia) **
1854: Walden
by Henry David Thoreau (USA)
1883:
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (UK) *
1884:
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans (France) *
1891: Tess
of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (UK) *
1899: Dom
Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Brazil) *
1904: The
Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton (UK) *
1908: The
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (UK) *
1910: The
Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke (Czech)
1911: Ethan
Frome by Edith Wharton (USA)
1914: Kokoro
by Natsume Soseki (Japan) *
1915:
Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson (UK) *
1926: The
Castle by Franz Kafka (Czech) ^
1929: Berlin
Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin (Germany) **
1930: The
Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov (Russia) ^
1932: Cold
Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (UK)
1932: Light
in August by William Faulkner (USA) *
1934:
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara (USA)
1934: Call
It Sleep by Henry Roth (USA) **
1935:
Independent People by Halldor Laxness (Iceland) **
1938: On the
Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleza (Croatia) *
1940: The
Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina) *
1945: Pippi
Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden) ^
1945: By
Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart (Canada)
1945: The
Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (Austria) *
1946: Titus
Groan by Mervyn Peake (UK)
1951: The
Hive by Camilo Jose Cela (Spain) **
1951:
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (Belgium) **
1952: The
Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (USA) *
1953: Casino
Royale by Ian Fleming (UK)
1954: I'm
Not Stiller by Max Frisch (Switzerland) **
1955: Pedro
Paramo by Juan Rulfo (Mexico) **
1955: The
Recognitions by William Gaddis (USA) *
1956: Aniara
by Harry Martinson (Sweden) *
1956:
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (USA) *
1957: Voss
by Patrick White (Australia) **
1957: Doctor
Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Russia) *
1958: The
Once and Future King by T.H. White (UK) ^
1958: The
Guide by R.K. Narayan (India) *
1960: God's
Bit of Wood by Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) **
1960: The
Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (USA)
1965: The
River Between by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya)
1966: Season
of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (Sudan) *
1966: To
Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia (Italy) *
1969: The
French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (UK) **
1970: Moscow
to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev (Russia) ^
1970: Are
You There God? It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume (USA)
1972: The
Summer Book by Tove Jansson (Finland) **
1975: A
Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (UK) *
1975: Woman
at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt) *
1976: Kiss
of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig (Argentina) **
1976: Bear
by Marian Engel (Canada) *
1977:
Falconer by John Cheever (USA) *
1979:
Kindred by Octavia Butler (USA) **
1979: On
Wings of Song by Thomas M Disch (USA) ^
1980: The
Color Purple by Alice Walker (USA) *
1984:
Cassandra by Christa Wolf (Germany) *
1984: The
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (USA) **
1985: Eon by
Greg Bear (USA) *
1986: The
Sportswriter by Richard Ford (USA) *
1987:
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks (UK) ^
1987: The
Passion by Jeanette Winterson (UK) **
1988:
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)
1989: A
Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (USA) *
1989: Cyteen
by C.J. Cherryh (USA)
1989: Geek
Love by Katherine Dunn (USA) ^
1994:
Permutation City by Greg Egan (Australia) **
1994: The
Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller (Romania) **
1996: A Game
of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (USA) **
1997: The
Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (USA) **
1998: The
Elementary Particles / Atomized by Michel Houellebecq (France) *
2000: Shadow
Without a Name by Ignacio Padilla (Mexico) **
2000: White
Teeth by Zadie Smith (UK) **
2001:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (USA) **
2004: River
of Gods by Ian McDonald (Ireland)
2005:
Accelerando by Charles Stross (UK) ^
2006: Life
and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan (China)
2008: The
Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (China)
2008: House
of Suns by Alastair Reynolds (UK) **
2010: Zoo
City by Lauren Beukes (South Africa) *
2010: A
Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (USA) **
2011: The
Martian by Andy Weir (USA) *
2011: Ready
Player One by Ernest Cline (USA)
2012: The
Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters (USA)
2012: The
Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan (USA) ^
2013:
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (USA) *
2013: Life
After Life by Kate Atkinson (UK) *
2013: The
Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (USA) **
2013: The
Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey (USA) *
2014: The
Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (USA)
2014:
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Canada) *
2014:
Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer (USA) *
-458: The
Oresteia by Aeschylus (Greece)
-442: Antigone
by Sophocles (Greece) *
-431: Medea
by Euripides (Greece)
-411:
Lysistrata by Aristophanes (Greece) ^
400: Shakuntala
by Kalidasa (India) *
1510: Everyman
by Anonymous (UK) ^
1592: Doctor
Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (UK) ^
1602: Twelfth
Night by William Shakespeare (UK)
1605: Volpone,
or The Foxe by Ben Jonson (UK) *
1619: Fuenteovejuna
by Felix Lope de Vega (Spain) ^
1635: Life
Is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (Spain) **
1637: Le Cid
by Pierre Corneille (France) *
1666: The
Misanthrope by Jean-Baptiste Moliere (France) **
1677: The
Rover by Aphra Behn (UK) *
1700: The
Way of the World by William Congreve (UK) ^
1721: The
Love Suicides at Amijima by Monzaemon Chikamatsu (Japan)
1746: Servant
of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni (Italy)
1773: The
Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais (France)
1777: The
School for Scandal by Robert Brinsley Sheridan (Ireland) *
1778: The
Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais (France) *
1799: Wallenstein
by Friedrich Schiller (Germany) **
1837: Woyzeck
by Georg Buchner (Germany) *
1842: The
Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol (Russia) ^
1859: The
Storm by Alexander Ostrovsky (Russia) ^
1861: The
Tragedy of Man by Imre Madach (Hungary) **
1884: The
Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (Norway) **
1891: Spring
Awakening by Frank Wedekind (Germany) *
1895: An
Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (Ireland) *
1897: Cyrano
de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (France) **
1897: The
Round by Arthur Schnitzler (Austria)
1904: Peter
Pan by J.M. Barrie (UK) *
1907: The
Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge (Ireland) *
1913: Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland) **
1921: The
Verge by Susan Glaspell (USA) *
1928: The
Suicide by Nikolai Erdman (Russia) *
1930: Private
Lives by Noel Coward (UK)
1932: Blood
Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain)
1934: Thunderstorm
by Cao Yu (China) *
1934: The
Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman (USA) *
1938: The
Imposter by Rodolfo Usigli (Mexico) **
1943: The
Wedding Dress by Nelson Rodrigues (Brazil) **
1944: The
Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht (Germany) *
1950: The
Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco (France) *
1957: The
Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (UK)
1959: A
Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (USA) **
1962: Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (USA) *
1964: Tango
by Slawomir Mrozek (Poland) *
1964: Marat/Sade
by Peter Weiss (Germany) *
1970: The
Burdens by John Ruganda (Uganda) *
1973: The
Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn (UK) *
1975: Death
and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
1980: True
West by Sam Shepard (USA) **
1982: Top
Girls by Caryl Churchill (UK) **
1982: Master
Harold… and the Boys by Athol Fugard (South Africa) *
1983: Glengarry
Glen Ross by David Mamet (USA) *
1985: Fences
by August Wilson (USA) **
1987: The
Piano Lesson by August Wilson (USA) ^
1988: M.
Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (USA) **
1990: Death
and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman (Chile) **
1990: Six
Degrees of Separation by John Guare (USA) **
1991: Angels
in America by Tony Kushner (USA) **
1993: Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard (UK) **
1994: Art by
Yasmina Reza (France) *
1995: Wit by
Margaret Edson (USA) **
2001: The
Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh (Ireland) **
2004: The History
Boys by Alan Bennett (UK) **
2010: Clybourne
Park by Bruce Norris (USA) **
1959: Tintin
in Tibet by Herge (Belgium)
1970: Onward
Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki (Japan)
1986: Batman
(compilation) by Frank Miller (USA) *
1992: Flood
by Eric Drooker (USA) ^
1995: The
Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot (UK) *
1996: From
Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (UK) **
1997: Ghost
World by Daniel Clowes (USA) **
1998: Ethel
and Ernest by Raymond Briggs (UK)
1999: Uzumaki
by Junji Ito (Japan) *
2000: David
Boring by Daniel Clowes (USA)
2000: Safe
Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco (USA) **
2000: Blacksad
by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (Spain) **
2002: One
Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry (USA)
2003: What I
Did: Hey, Wait... / Sshhhh! / The Iron Wagon by Jason Saeteroy (Norway)
2003: Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi (Iran) **
2003: Superman:
Red Son by Mark Millar (USA) *
2005: Black
Hole by Charles Burns (USA)
2006: The
Arrival by Shaun Tan (Australia) *
2008: Heads
or Tails by Lilli Carre (USA)
2009: Stitches
by David Small (USA) *
2011: Daytripper
by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba (Brazil) **
2012: Are
You My Mother by Alison Bechdel (USA) **
2013: Bad
Houses by Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil (USA) **
2013: The
Property by Rutu Modan (Israel)
2014: Here
by Richard McGuire (USA) *
2014: Seconds
by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Canada) *
2015: The
Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua (UK) *
