Cecilturtle's 1001 Reads

I have been working on this list for several years now. While I find most of the books challenging, they have almost always been rewarding. I'm not sure I'll ever attain all 1001, I'll definitely keep plugging away diligently!

2000s
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
There but for the by Ali Smith
Le Livre des enfants by AS Byatt
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
L'élégance du hérisson by Muriel Barbery
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Suite française by Irène Némirovsky
2666 by Roberto Bolano
La couleur des rêves by Rose Tremain
Tout ce que j'aimais by Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-time by Mark Haddon
Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
Tout est illuminé by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Unless by Carol Sheilds
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
Neige by Orhan Pamuk
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Schooling by Heather McGowan
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coehlo
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
La fête au Bouc by Mario Vargas Llosa

1990s

Stupeur et tremblements by Amélie Nothomb
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coehlo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Soie by Alessandro Baricco
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
Un parfum de cèdre by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
The Dumas Club by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Possession by A.S. Byatt

1980s

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
The Afternoon of a Writer by Peter Handke
Le pigeon by Patrick Süskind
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Marya by Joyce Carol Oates
L'amour aux temps du choléra by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
Le parfum by Patrick Süskin
L'année de la mort de Ricardo Reis by José Saramago
L'amant by Marguerite Duras
L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être by Milan Kunderas
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
La maison aux esprits by Isabel Allende
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

1970s

Le livre du rire et de l'oubli by Milan Kundera
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Wars by Timothy Findley
Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
The Shining by Stephen King
Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

1960s

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Ada ou l'ardeur by Vladimir Nabokov
Belle du seigneur by Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf
Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz
Cent ans de solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
La plaisanterie by Milan Kundera
The Magus by John Fowles
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Herzog by Saul Bellow
The Graduate by Charles Webb
Manon des sources by Marcel Pagnol
The Spy who Came in from the Cold by John LeCarré
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Labyrinthes by Jorge Luis Borges
La promesse de l'aube by Romain Gary
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1950s

Le guépard by Guiseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring by Kenzaburo Oe
Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Le docteur Jivago by Boris Pasternak
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Les racines du ciel by Romain Gary
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Casino Royale by Ian Flemming
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

1940s

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Exercices de style by Raymond Queneau
La peste by Albert Camus
L'Écume des jours by Boris Vian
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Bonheur d'occasion by Gabrielle Roy
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
L'étranger by Albert Camus
Le joueur d'échec by Stefan Zweig
The Hamlet by William Faulkner
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

1930s

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson
La nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Years by Virginia Woolf
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Le nœud de vipères by François Mauriac
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

1920s

Les enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Sous le soleil de Satan by Georges Bernanos
Mrs Dalloway by Virigina Woolf
Claudine en ménage by Colette
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Les faux-monnayeurs by André Gide
Le procès by Franz Kafka
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

1910s

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsen
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Mort à Venise by Thomas Mann
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

1900s

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
L'immoraliste by André Gide
Les Buddenbrook by Thomas Mann
L'appel de la forêt by Jack London

1850-1899

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
La guerre des mondes by HG Wells
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
What Maisie Knew by Henry James
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Bel ami by Guy de Maupassant
Une vie by Guy de Maupassant
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Anna Karénine by Leo Tolstoy
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Pères et fils by Ivan Turgeniev
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

1800-1849

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
La chartreuse de Parme by Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Le nez by Nicolas Gogol
Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
Le rouge et le noir by Stendhal
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

1700s

Les liaisons dangeureuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Les rêveries d'un promeneur solitaire by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Les souffrances du jeune Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Candide by Voltaire
Jacques le fataliste by Denis Diderot
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

I'm currently reading The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek.

Eh bien, bienvenue! Fais comme chez toi. Une 'tite tasse de thé?

J'y compte bien! Merci :)

Good to see you here! And looking forward to seeing what you'll read.

I finished reading Schooling by Heather McGowan. Her prose was difficult to get used to, but the plot was ambiguous and compelling. I wasn't expecting the book to finish as it did and I found it very adroit.

I finished reading Claudine en ménage - a remarkably sweet story. Some might see it as 'sickly sweet' but I thoroughly enjoyed the natural simplicity of the plot and Claudine's easy-going (if not a little spoiled) personality.

I read The Afternoon of a Writer by Peter Handke. There aren't often disappointments in this list, but this was one for me. I didn't find the treatment of writer's block or of solitude very interesting. I probably missed something but I'm also likely to forget this book as quickly as I read it.

I took me a really long time to get into the rhythm of the story, in Tout est illuminé by Safran Foer (I was struggling a bit with the translation), but once I got a feel for the characters and the sway of the narrative through time, I had a hard time putting it down. A truly powerful story.

I loved La promesse de l'aube (Promise at Dawn) by Romain Gary. What a beautiful homage to his mother who seems like an incredible character.

It gave me good insight as well into Les racines du ciel (The Roots of Heaven) which I finished earlier this month in terms of tenacity and idealism.

Both wonderful reads.

Under the Skin was a big disappointment: I loved The Crimson Petal and the White, and was hoping to find something similar. Unfortunately, they couldn't be more different (a point in the author's favour for versatility at least). Although I thought the allegory clever, the plot and characters left me cold.

I also finished L'immoraliste, which I found insipid. I think it's one of those books that has aged poorly and Michel's dilemmas come off as vapid and superficial. La symphonie pastorale and Lafcadio's Adventures were, in my opinion, much better reads.

Just finished Saturday which I loved. I'm thinking of tackling Les Bienveillantes by Littell - it's beautifully written but I'm not sure I'll be able to wade through all the military terms...

I finished The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett - I think it's my favourite of the lot: less complicated than the The Maltese Falcon and more moody than The Thin Man, it's a good mix of suspense and political thriller.

Finished La fête au Bouc (The Feast of the Goat) by Mario Vargas Llosa - it's the kind of book that will never leave me - what a masterpiece of writing - if only history were written with such brilliance and understanding of the human mind and spirit.

I'm done wjth Like Water for Chocolate. A wonderful read!

Argh, managed to plod through Sous le soleil de Satan. I hope this is the only book by Bernanos; I'm not sure I can take a second.

>30 Cecilturtle: It is. I also found it tough going -- occasional fascinating stories followed by pages and pages of uninteresting inner catholic turmoil.

#31 ELiz_M : yes, that's exactly my take as well. It started off strong and then I just kept dozing off until a new bit of action reappeared.
I guess that's the beauty of this list: to be exposed to works we might not otherwise read; some are great discoveries, others not so much...

I finished La guerre des mondes - picked it up for someone else and realised I hadn't read it myself. I'm glad I made the effort: it stands the test of time quite well.

Finally finished Le Livre des enfants by AS Byatt. It took me way to long to finish it, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. Nothing like a good dose of 19th century idealism to feel like great ideas aren't quite dead yet.