Group Challenge: Read ALL of the books off of the combined "1001 Books" lists

Thanks to the hard work by JonnySaunders in compiling the books that we’ve read off of the combined edition lists, we know that we have only 213 books out of the 1305 to read before we have completed the list as a group. This thread is to track our reading of the list as a group to see if we can complete the list together.

I know there are some who post in this group who chose not to be a part of the Progress Index. Please feel free to contribute to this group challenge regardless. All who are tracking their 1001 books reading are welcome here! As you read books off of this list, please post your completions and I will keep the list updated. Happy reading!




This challenge began on 11/18/2013.

Unread books from the Combined 1001 Books lists

Pre-1700s
Tirant lo Blanc - Joanot Martorell - 1490 StevenTX
La Celestina - Fernando de Rojas - 1499 StevenTX
Amadis of Gaul - Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo - 1508
The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - 1617
The Conquest of New Spain - Bernal Díaz del Castillo – 1632 puckers

1700s
COMPLETE

1800s
The Monastery - Sir Walter Scott - 1820 puckers
The Albigenses - Charles Robert Maturin - 1824 QuartInSession
The Lion of Flanders - Hendrick Conscience - 1838 JustJoey4
Camera Obscura - Hildebrand - 1839 JustJoey4
Facundo - Domingo Faustino Sarmiento - 1845 soffitta1
Castle Richmond - Anthony Trollope - 1860 puckers
King Lear of the Steppes - Ivan Turgenev - 1870 hdcclassic
Pepita Jimenéz - Juan Valera - 1874 puckers
The Crime of Father Amado - José Maria Eça de Queirós - 1876 wayne44
Virgin Soil - Ivan Turgenev - 1877 BekkaJo
Bouvard and Pécuchet - Gustave Flaubert - 1881 BekkaJo
The Regent's Wife - Clarín Leopoldo Alas - 1884
Marius the Epicurean - Walter Pater - 1885
The Quest - Frederik van Eeden - 1885 simone2
The Manors of Ulloa - Emilia Pardo Bazán - 1886
The People of Hemsö - August Strindberg - 1887 andejons
Under the Yoke - Ivan Vazov - 1888 wayne44
By the Open Sea - August Strindberg - 1890 andejons
Thaïs - Anatole France - 1890 StevenTX
The Real Charlotte - Somerville and Ross - 1894 japaul22
The Viceroys - Federico De Roberto - 1894 Deern
Compassion - Benito Pérez Galdós - 1897
Dom Casmurro - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis – 1899 annamorphic

1900-1949
Solitude - Víctor Català - 1905 JustJoey4
Three Lives - Gertrude Stein - 1909 soffitta1
Martin Eden - Jack London - 1909 aliciamay
Impressions of Africa - Raymond Roussel - 1910
Locus Solus - Raymond Roussel - 1914 StevenTX
Pallieter - Felix Timmermans - 1916 JustJoey4
The Shadow Line - Joseph Conrad - 1917 puckers
Life of Christ Giovanni Papini - 1921
The Last Days of Humanity - Karl Kraus - 1922
Aaron's Rod - D.H. Lawrence - 1922 QuartInSession
The Green Hat - Michael Arlen - 1924 puckers
The Making of Americans - Gertrude Stein - 1925
The Counterfeiters - André Gide - 1925 Cecilturtle
The Artamonov Business - Maxim Gorky - 1925 wayne44
The New World - Heruy Wäldä-Sellassé - 1925
Chaka the Zulu - Thomas Mofolo - 1925 Eliz_M
The Plumed Serpent - D.H. Lawrence - 1926 puckers
Under Satan's Sun - Geroges Bernanos - 1926
Alberta and Jacob - Cora Sandel - 1926 annamorphic
The Case of Sergeant Grischa - Arnold Zweig - 1927 Deern
The Childermass - Wyndham Lewis - 1928
Hebdomeros - Giorgio de Chirico - 1929
Harriet Hume - Rebecca West - 1929 puckers
Retreat Without Song - Shahan Shahnoor - 1929
I Thought of Daisy - Edmund Wilson - 1929
The Apes of God - Wyndham Lewis - 1930
Her Privates We - Frederic Manning - 1930 wayne44
Insatiability - Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz - 1930
To the North - Elizabeth Bowen - 1932 annamorphic
The Forbidden Realm - J. J. Slauerhoff - 1932
A Day Off - Storm Jameson - 1933 annamorphic
The Bells of Basel - Louis Aragon - 1934
Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1936 annamorphic
Eyeless in Gaza - Aldous Huxley - 1936 wayne44
The Thinking Reed - Rebecca West - 1936 japaul22
Wild Harbour - Ian MacPherson - 1936 nickelini
In Parenthesis - David Jones - 1937
The Revenge for Love - Wyndham Lewis - 1937
After the Death of Don Juan - Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1938 QuartInSession
Alamut - Vladimir Bartol - 1938 QuartInSession
On the Edge of Reason - Miroslav Krleza - 1938 wayne44
The Hamlet - William Faulkner - 1940 Cecilturtle
Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton - 1941 soffitta1
Between the Acts - Virginia Woolf - 1941 puckers
Broad and Alien is the World - Ciro Alegría - 1941
The Harvesters - Cesare Pavese - 1941 Simone2
Caught - Henry Green - 1943 puckers
Transit - Anna Seghers - 1944 Eliz_M
Arcanum 17 - André Breton - 1945 paruline
Bosnian Chronicle - Ivo Andric - 1945 GerrysBookshelf
Andrea - Carmen Laforet - 1945
Back - Henry Green - 1946
House in the Uplands - Erskine Caldwell - 1946
Froth on the Daydream - Boris Vian - 1947 Bur
All About H. Hatterr - G.V. Desani - 1948 QuartInSession
Disobedience - Alberto Moravia - 1948
Journey to the Alcarria - Camilo José Cela - 1948 soffitta1
Ashes and Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski - 1948
The Case of Comrade Tulayev - Victor Serge – 1949 Eliz_M

1950-1999
The Guiltless - Hermann Broch - 1950
The Opposing Shore - Julien Gracq - 1951
Watt - Samuel Beckett - 1953
The Hothouse - Wolfgang Koeppen - 1953
Self Condemned - Wyndham Lewis - 1954
A Ghost at Noon - Alberto Moravia - 1954 hdcclassic
The Unknown Soldier - Väinö Linna - 1954 laura_88
A World of Love - Elizabeth Bowen - 1955 hdcclassic, annamorphic
The Trusting and the Maimed - James Plunkett - 1955
The Ragazzi - Pier Paulo Pasolini - 1955 Deern
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - João Guimarães Rosa - 1956
The Glass Bees - Ernst Jünger - 1957 Anoplophora
Our Ancestors - Italo Calvino - 1959 hdcclassic
Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse - 1959 annamorphic
Down Second Avenue - Ezekiel Mphahlele - 1959 wayne44
Promise at Dawn - Romain Gary - 1960 Bur
The Magician of Lublin - Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1960 ursula
Halftime - Martin Walser - 1960
Bebo's Girl - Carlo Cassola - 1960 hdcclassic
How It Is - Samuel Beckett - 1961
Memoirs of a Peasant Boy - Xosé Neira Vilas - 1961 Eliz_M
Girl With Green Eyes - Edna O'Brien - 1962 Eliz_M
Time of Silence - Luis Martín-Santos - 1962
Inside Mr. Enderby - Anthony Burgess - 1963 puckers
The Third Wedding - Costas Taktsis - 1963 wayne44
Dog Years - Günter Grass - 1963
The Passion According to G.H. - Clarice Lispector - 1964 StevenTX
Albert Angelo - B.S. Johnson - 1964 annamorphic
Garden, Ashes - Danilo Kis - 1965 Deern
The Birds Fall Down - Rebecca West - 1966
Trawl - B.S. Johnson - 1966 puckers
Death and the Dervish - Mesa Selimovic - 1966
Pilgrimage - Dorothy Richardson - 1967 StevenTX
No Laughing Matter - Angus Wilson - 1967 annamorphic
Z - Vassilis Vassilikos - 1967 wayne44
The Manor - Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1967 puckers
Belle du Seigneur - Albert Cohen - 1968 Cecilturtle
The Cathedral - Oles Honchar - 1968 wayne44
Tent of Miracles - Jorge Amado - 1969 Bur
Ada - Vladimir Nabokov - 1969 QuartInSession
Jacob the Liar - Jurek Becker - 1969 amaryann21
Heartbreak Tango - Manuel Puig - 1969 hdcclassic
Here's to You, Jesusa! - Elena Poniatowska - 1969
Mercier et Camier - Samuel Beckett - 1970 CayenneEllis
Jahrestage - Uwe Johnson - 1970
A World for Julius - Alfredo Bryce Echenique - 1970
The Wild Boys - William Burroughs - 1971 puckers
Cataract - Mykhaylo Osadchyl - 1971
G - John Berger - 1972 QuartInSession
The Honorary Consul - Graham Greene - 1973 arukiyomi
The Port - Antun Soljan - 1974
W, or the Memory of Childhood - Georges Perec - 1975
Amateurs - Donald Barthelme - 1976
Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor - 1976 Deern
The Public Burning - Robert Coover - 1977
The Engineer of the Human Soul - Josef Skvorecky - 1977
Yes - Thomas Bernhard - 1978
The Safety Net - Heinrich Böll - 1979 hdcclassic
Fool's Gold - Maro Douka - 1979
Southern Seas - Manuel Vásquez Montalbán - 1979
Smell of Sadness - Alfred Kossmann - 1980
Lanark: A Life in Four Books - Alasdair Gray - 1981 puckers
Couples, Passerby - Botho Strauss - 1981
Concrete - Thomas Bernhard - 1982
The Names - Don DeLillo - 1982
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa - 1982
Worstward Ho - Samuel Beckett - 1983
The Christmas Oratorio - Göran Tunström - 1983
Fado Alexandrino - António Lobo Antunes - 1983 wayne44
The Bus Conductor Hines - James Kelman - 1984
Professor Martens' Departure - Jaan Kross - 1984
Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel - Julián Ríos - 1984
The Young Man - Botho Strauss - 1984
A Maggot - John Fowles - 1985 soffitta1
Anagrams - Lorrie Moore - 1986 Eliz_M
Extinction - Thomas Bernhard - 1986
Ancestral Voices - Etienne van Heerden - 1986
The Afternoon of a Writer - Peter Handke - 1987 QuartInSession
Cigarettes - Harry Mathews - 1987
World's End - T. Coraghessan Boyle - 1987 ALWINN
Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul - 1987 arukiyomi
The Taebek Mountains - Jo Jung-rae - 1987
Ballad for Georg Henig - Viktor Pasokov - 1987
All Souls - Javier Marías - 1987
The Last World - Christoph Ransmayr - 1988
A Disaffection - James Kelman - 1989
Obabakoak - Bernardo Atzaga - 1989
The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor - 1989
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon - 1990 amaryann21
Vertigo - W.G. Sebald - 1990
Stone Junction - Jim Dodge - 1990
The Midnight Examiner - William Kotzwinkle - 1990
The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh - 1990 soffitta1
The Daughter - Pavlos Matesis - 1990
Typical - Padgett Powell - 1991
Downriver - Iain Sinclair - 1991
Astradeni - Eugenia Fakinou - 1991
Life is a Caravanserai - Emine Özdamar - 1992
A Heart So White - Javier Marias - 1992
Asphodel - H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) - 1992
The Triple Mirror of the Self - Zulfikar Ghose - 1992
Disappearance - David Dabydeen - 1993 soffitta1
Looking for the Possible Dance - A.L. Kennedy - 1993 puckers
Operation Shylock - Philip Roth - 1993
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Álvaro Mutis - 1993 QuartInSession
Land - Park Kyong-ni - 1994
City Sister Silver - Jàchym Topol - 1994
Love's Work - Gillian Rose - 1995 JoLynnsbooks
The Clay Machine-Gun - Victor Pelevin - 1996
Democracy - Joan Didion - 1996 paruline
Dirty Havana Trilogy - Pedro Juan Gutiérrez - 1998 soffitta1
Pavel's Letters - Monika Moron – 1999

2000s
Small Remedies - Shashi Deshpande - 2000
Bartleby and Co - Enrique Vila-Matas - 2000 Deern
That They May Face the Rising Sun - John McGahern - 2001 arukiyomi
Gabriel's Gift - Hanif Kureishi - 2001 jdaniel3760
At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill - 2001 amaryann21
London Orbital - Iain Sinclair - 2002
Your Face Tomorrow - Javier Marías - 2002 Simone2
Thursbitch - Alan Garner - 2003 soffitta1
Islands - Dan Sleigh - 2003 puckers
Lady Number Thirteen - José Carlos Somoza - 2003 Bur
Dining on Stones - Iain Sinclair - 2004
Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee - 2005 puckers
The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell - 2006 Bur
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore - 2009 bucketyell

Great idea, Jennifer! I can help. I have a couple of these on my shelves and I'll pick one as my next 1001 read.

Yay - will help where I can :)

And so we learn that really, NOBODY wants to read books by Wyndham Lewis! Or Samuel Beckett. And I recognize quite a few other titles from my NRT (Never Read This) category. However, there are also some from my TBR pile, including A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen (I love her! Why so many of her books on this list?) and especially Caught by Henry Green -- I've been saving that book for the right moment because I am so eager to read it!
So I will gladly do my bit on this challenge.

Who's going to take on The Taebek Mountains? ;-)

Weeeelllll, it's been translated in French, maybe with an ILL I could get hold of it....? Not before I become more familiar with Asian literature though.

I already own at least 9 of those, so I will try to read them sooner rather than later.

I'm not in the index (I would some work to keep the English books apart from the Swedish, even if I try to mark them), but I can at least help here a little bit: I've read The People of Hemsö and By the Open Sea.

I also own some of them, which I will move upwards on my TBR pile. Great initiative, Jennifer.

I recognise 36 of these from the TBR pile in the garden shed so maybe I should make that my challenge for 2014. There again, maybe I'll quickly realise why they are on the "unread" list!

I'm currently half way through The Conquest of New Spain so should finish that this year (its a long, non-fictional account of Cortes' defeat of the Aztecs - interesting but not sure why its on the list as it is not fiction)

I'm glad there's so much interest! I agree that at a certain point there may not be anyone who wants to read the books that are left, but it will be interesting to see at what point that happens and which books are left!

I'm not sure what I'll start with, but there are quite a few I'm interested in. I'm particularly looking at The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West. Most of these books I've never heard of, though!

I already had The opposing shore lined up for next year and I've been interested in The kindly ones for quite some time. Maybe this list will give me the push I need to read it.

>9 by @annamorphic, Er, I like (what I've read of) Beckett... Just because I've not managed to complete all 1305 books yet doesn't mean I don't like/have an interest in many of them. ;)

Like I commented in the other thread, I've just bought Lion of Flanders so will probably be reading that next year. Also my library has Slow Man so I'm considering picking it up next trip. :)

Just because I've not managed to complete all 1305 books yet doesn't mean I don't like/have an interest in many of them. ;)

I completely agree. I also think that some of those writers, like Beckett and Lewis, aren't currently fashionable, so when we're out and about at the book shop, charity shop, or libarary sale, we just don't come across their books, but we do see others that we buy.

Looks like I have four on my TBR pile that haven't been read by anyone. I was already planning on reading Martin Eden in December and then The Names, The Shadow Line and Promise at Dawn have now floated closer to the top of the pile.

>19 Nickelini: Exactly, the bulk of my books I get at those kind of things, and hence I can only get what happens to be there. Beckett is definitely not normally there. A couple of his shorter works are apparently in some of my husband's huge volumes for some of his uni classes but I have no idea what ones, I only know when I was trying to find some at the library (which has very limited of his work also) he mentioned it. I don't even know what book(s) he was specifically referring to. So, yeah.

I've read Girl With Green Eyes, but my copy was titled The Lonely Girl ;)

ETA: Thanks for this thread! It'll be fun to watch the group numbers dwindle.

On a detailed review of the list above I find I have 50 of these at home (my obsession with reading from the List is exceeded only by my obsession with hunting for and buying books on the List!).

Sounds like a nice number to aim for over the next 12 months.

If you're obsessed what does that make me? I own 196 (all but 16) of them.

I am reading The Ragazzi for this month's TIOLI.
And seeing that no-one else has read it yet I am considering buying Walser's Halbzeit/Halftime. It's very difficult to find, seems to be out of paperback print even in German.

Wow. I'm afraid I can't help and say I have read any of these but that list is quite surprising! There's heaps on there that I knew about and wanted to read and aren't at all obscure or hard to find like I thought they would be. I own a few of them too, including the Javier Marias books - I'll get on to reading them.

#24. Just give me more time, money and shelf-space...!

As mentioned, I have actually read Our Ancestors by Calvino already so that one can be knocked off from the list.
Maybe I should get around to The Safety Net by Böll soonish...

Your Face Tomorrow has been highly recommended to me by a friend, so I think it is time I should read that one (it is a trilogy). I am also planning to read Smell of Sadness, G, Ada and The Green Hat because I already own them. Last but not least, I think I can get easily get a copy of the Dutch ones: De kleine Johannes/The Quest, Camera Obscura and The Forbidden Realm.
Looking forward to finishing this list together!

> 23 and 24: I love to hear that you have so many of those books on your shelves already. It is reassuring that I am not alone with my obsession. My TBR shelves are filling up so quickly, I had to ask 2 new bookcases for my birthday, so that gives me about 12 metres of extra space. I am collecting so much faster than I am reading and nothing can stop me...

#24, 27, We're all enablers here ;-)

I just asked Jonny to add my list to the index in the index thread, and I have several of these on my 'read' list -

G
Aaron's Rod
Ada
The Afternoon of a Writer
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

Happy to contribute! :)

#29, is the Felix Timmermans also Dutch? Are you going to read that one? I was thinking of trying it (but I wasn't thinking very hard). I am going to go for the Elizabeth Bowens, the Sylvia Townsend-Warners, William Faulkner's The Hamlet, and Transit by Anna Seghers. I've put a lot of them into my Amazon shopping cart already. I cannot pretend to already own that many unread novels myself but am admiring of the optimism and fanaticism of those who do!

# 33 I think it is Dutch indeed, but please feel free to read that one :-). It isn't very high on my wishlist as well!

I have read The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna. This is one of the biggest classics in Finnish literature and it was a mandatory read for me in school. Not really sure how well it's known outside Finland...

35> oh good, the pressure for me to read it is off (ok, I might read it at some point).
Really well known here, even though I haven't read it I've seen a movie and know quotations, characters etc.
Probably less so elsewhere and it is not helped by apparent difficulty of translation: Linna uses a lot of colloquialisms and dialects, also to build characters, and that is always problematic (I've seen some parts of the older translation in English and frankly that sucked more than any "real" translation I have seen, don't know if there are newer available nowadays).

#36 Well my boyfriend is pressuring me to read Täällä Pohjantähden alla which is one of his favourite books... Not ready for it yet because it's so long. I really liked The Unknown Soldier even though I rarely read books about war.

Just finished After the Death of Don Juan by Sylvia Townsend Warner - another one knocked off!

Next one in my sights is Alamut but it won't be for awhile yet - I won't be offended if someone gets to it before me. ;)

I've read The Honorary Consul and That they May Face the Rising Sun so you can cross them off.

While my list-reading hasn't made much progress lately because picking something from a list of 1100+ titles is a bit hard, such smaller group of titles is better to get things moving: now reading King Lear of the Steppes by Turgenev (and it's short, only about hundred pages) and borrowed from the library also two other titles from the list here...

Though, is the book linked on the list the correct one? King Lear of the Steppes or King Lear of the Steppes/Rudin? Someone look at the Boxall if Rudin is also included?

hdcclassic - definitely don't trust the links I put in. It was hard to find the proper link for a lot of them which is why many are missing. I'm not sure of the answer to your question.

Check out the ticker, everyone. 200 books to go!

On that one the "1001 books" honor is listed on Lear/Rudin too, so someone should check if it should be moved to Lear one (I don't have a copy of Boxall myself).

It is just King Lear of the Steppes. Rudin is not mentioned in Boxall--they just happen to be published together in some editions.

I finished The Ragazzi by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

1107. The Green Hat - Michael Arlen. The narrator documents his infatuation with a notorious "femme fatale". This book was apparently extremely popular on release, a reputation borne out by my copy from 1924 (the year of first publication) being the twelfth impression. Since then it has fallen on hard times and its LT rating of 2.87 makes it the 13th lowest rated book of the 1305 on the List (JonnySaunders is not the only source of List trivia!). I can understand this low rating as the narration is somewhat disjointed and the dialogue very stilted, like a stage play. On the other hand Arlen has some nice turns of phrase, and the plot picks up as it heads towards the dramatic conclusion on the last page. However I'm not going to help its LT ranking with a 2.5/5.

Oh, I realized I just read one of these ... The Magician of Lublin.

Just finished the mediocre The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West. Quite a disappointment since I loved The Return of the Soldier.

Two of us have now read A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen but hdcclassic finished first! Reviews on our threads.

1111. Inside Mr Enderby - Anthony Burgess. The tale of Mr Enderby, a poet who seeks inspiration while in the toilet. The opening word is an onomatopoetic rendering of a "posterior blast", and sets the scene early on for much of what is to follow! The story reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces - an antisocial physically awkward individual finds himself thrust into the everyday world with disastrous but amusing consequences. This story is less farcical than the latter (notwithstanding the opening line!) and has much witty wordplay. I really enjoyed this and found myself chortling out loud on the train on a number of occasions. 4/5

Didn't realise A Gate at the Stairs by Moore was on the list. I read that this year. I will have to add it to my list.

My blurb was: I liked it more than I thought. The story meandered a bit and I was confused at times about what the main plot was (there were a few threads throughout) but at the end, it came together nicely. I loved the last few sentences! And the sarcastic wit.

I finished De kleine Johannes (The Quest), a fairy tale symbolizing the coming of age of a young boy. I understand why no one read it and I guess it will be a whack for some time to come. The novel, to me, is quite outdated, and certainly not the best one of Frederik van Eeden.

1114. Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee. After an accident Paul Reyment has to come to terms with losing a leg. This is my sixth Coetzee from the List, and like the previous five the writing is very skilful. Where most of the others let me down was that they were dull and/or depressing. This is neither. When Elizabeth Costello the fictional Australian authoress who forms the centre of another Coetzee List novel arrives unexpectedly on the scene the novel develops into a sort of metafiction as the authoress and Reyment strive to direct Reyment's future. 3.5/5

1115. Martin Eden - Jack London. The semi-autobiographical novel about an aspiring writer. Very good, but also rather cynical and depressing.

I just finished Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric. I thought this was a very good historical fiction novel & will post my review on my 1001 thread.

King Lear of the Steppes - Ivan Turgenev. Novella that in plot stays close to Shakespeare, but moved to a more realistic setting in Russia.

I am sorry, I couldn't finish The Forbidden Realm and so I cannot recommend it to you. Slauerhoff was a famous poet, he wrote few novels, one of which is this one. And although he wrote in Dutch and I read it in Dutch, I didn't understand what the story was all about and I'm afraid I wasn't interested enough to find out.

1118. The Conquest of New Spain - Bernal Diaz del Castillo. An eyewitness account of Cortes' remarkable defeat of the vast armies of Montezuma with a few hundred Conquistadores. The book was written to balance the more colourful histories written by others (esp Gomara), and to outline the contribution of the ordinary soldiers. As such it is largely unembellished facts, yet this tale of heroism, luck, loyalty and greed is still one of history's most amazing stories and proof that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. 3.5/5

1119 - Democracy by Joan Didion. Not sure I can recommend it. I hope to have a review later today on my thread.

1120. The Safety Net by Heinrich Böll.
Weakest of the Bölls on the list, though not completely charmless.

In vague future I should probably tackle A Ghost at Noon by Moravia (love the movie) and Heartbreak Tango by Puig. When, we'll see.

Is it just me who jumps on this every time anyone posts, hoping against hope that someone hasn't beaten you to it on the one you're reading?

Or are you like me, and created an Excel spreadsheet with all the titles and delete them with each new post? :-D

This looks like a really fun thing to do. I'm actually surprised that there are so many left to read, considering this is LT.

Which are the ones that are nigh impossible to find? I know you need either French or Korean for The Taebeak Mountains.

Well, there are some native French among us... So we should be fine :-)

And oh, Paruline, your spreadsheet! I like this group so much, just because there are people making spreadsheets and other lists which shows their obsession and makes me feel in good company!

The real challenge will be The New World (Addis Aläm) by Heruy Wäldä-Sellassé which was written in Amharic and, as far as I can discover, has never been translated into any other language.

#64. . . I'm really wondering how that made the list. Who knew about it?

WHAT?!?!?! A List that I didnt even think about doing.......... Now I have something to do at lunch ahhhhhhhhhh.

#65: I think sometimes they just want to be original... There's an Italian edition of the list where many works unavailable in Italian were substituted with Italian books. The German edition (identical with the international 2012 one) at least shows for which works there's no German translation, so unless you learn some other languages, you can never get to 1,001.

#60: you're right! I feel some pressure to read faster. The one I am now reading however is really obstinate, it doesn't want to be conquered, I guess.

I started checking on the "What are you reading thread" and here as well to see if somebody already signed up for one I am interested in. This month I started Transit and then I saw that annamorphic already booked it, so I put it back on the shelf.

...but sometimes it's nice to read something at the same time by accident...or at least I liked to see what annamorphic said about A World of Love when it was fresh in my mind too.

re: The New World (Addis Aläm) by Heruy Wäldä-Sellassé

This made me very curious so I checked out the review in the 2012 edition of the book, saw who contributed it, checked him out. I have my suspicions. Can he really read Amharic? Has he really read the book? I'm at work right now so can't give any specific details (um like his name lol) but his bio says he knows a lot about European Fiction particularly post WW2 French fiction. Has the book been translated into a European language like French?

#69 - I did the same thing. The contributor's name is Reg Grant, described as a freelance writer. He also contributed the article on Margot and the Angels, which as far as I can tell has been published only in Dutch.

I've done a lot of searching the web and can't find that Addis Aläm has been translated into any other language.

Maybe they did it so that we all live for ever....!!

Today I finished Pilgrimage by Dorothy M. Richardson. I believe this is the longest work on our "unread" list with the exception of the untranslated Taebaek Mountains.

#67, yes, I am going to readTransit as soon as I finish The Roots of Heaven, although I also want to read the other Romain Gary from the list. Anyway, I have ordered both of those.
#72, congratulations on finishing Pilgrimage. I must confess that it is one of the works on the combine lists that I figured I would die before reading. Glad you managed it!

was it worth it Steven... or did it feel like you had just done one?

I will give myself the hardcover edition of Halbzeit/ Halftime as a Christmas present. Just ordered it at amazon.de and have it sent to my parents. I'm not really looking forward to it, it seems to be very long and dry and he's not among my favorite authors. There are many other Walser books far more popular with some literary value, one is even part of the school syllabus. This one is quite unknown here as well.

Jahrestage is available in my library, another very long one, consisting of 4 books. Today I marked all the group-unread ones in my 2008 excel sheet and will try to cover some of the German and Italian ones which might be hard to find as translations.

Isn't the extralong Taebek Mountains being translated into English with planned publishing date around 2018? It says so on wiki, so we just need some patience... I didn't even find the French version available anywhere. Also didn't find an Italian or French translation of The New World, although I tried several spellings of title and author's name.

The French translation of the Taebaek Mountains seems to be available on amazon.com under the name La chaîne des monts Taebaek and is split into a bunch of volumes (I didn't verify how many, but there are at least nine volumes), each at a hefty price (over $60.00 per).

#76: another book is added to my "I will die before reading this" list.

# 70 I have indeed read Margot en de engelen in Dutch, but it has been translated in German: Das Lächeln der Engel.

I tried to find a publisher that translates Amharic works, but failed. I couldn't even find a single book translated from Amharic into English in the last 40 years. Thought maybe if a bunch of people emailed a publisher that already has translators they might translate A New World.

There are plenty of 1001 books I could get in 5 seconds, yet I don't, but because this one is unattainable it is the most interesting.

I also have a copy of Transit, but I have a lot of other books queued in front of it.

Finished The Viceroys/ I Viceré by Federico de Roberto. In the end I rated it with 4 stars because the third part was really great. It's quite different from other family sagas I've read, not as gripping, maybe because there wasn't a single likeable character for whom I could have cared. But it's also full of timeless truths, especially the last part that deals with a political career.

Just finished All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani. I'll pop a review up shortly, but for now, one word: Ugh.

Bouvard and Pecuchet - Flaubert

Flaubert thought it would be his masterpiece, to far out shine Madame Bovary. It's not. Unfinished (though I thought the ending fitted well) it is more painful than humorous (which it is supposed to be).

Can see why it remained unread.

1125. The Shadow Line - Joseph Conrad. A young man in charge of his first ship finds it becalmed and diseased, with the boat's plight blamed on the curse of the previous captain. Another nicely written and atmospheric tale from Conrad. 3.5/5

I've finished the first one on our list, Tirant lo Blanc, one of the epics of chivalry that drove Don Quixote mad. Long but fun.

I've just begun Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett for a quick read to knock off one of the ones on this list. Just a few pages in, but already confused. Oh well, should have it done by tonight.

I've read Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen which is one of my favorites ever, The Hamlet by Faulkner, which was interesting because I read it from a translation (into French) point of view and studied Faulkner's (very dark) humour and how it doesn't translate well... and Les faux-monnayeurs by Gide which I read a long time ago and should probably read again :-)

#84: Thank you - and I really mean it! - for releasing me from the pressure of finishing this book any time soon! Yay! :-)

I am reading and reading and still only about 20% in, quite hating it and now I can put it on hold for a while.
I guess half of my dislike comes from the translation that reads like Burton's "1,001 Nights". It's so monotonous that my brain can't process it although I see that the stories must be quite exciting. Then I generally don't enjoy knight's tales very much (Ivanhoe and Don Quixote having been exceptions). And maybe I'm just tired and can't digest the logic of "knight's honor" right now.

Edit: Just downloaded and started The Case of Sergeant Grischa (Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa) by Arnold Zweig. Must check the 1,001 book if they want us to read the cycle or just this first book.

#87 - I didn't realize anyone else was reading it. I wasn't reading it because it is on our "unread" list, but just because it is the earliest book from the combined list that I haven't read. I'm just taking the whole list in chronological order whether anyone else has read them or not. Soon I'll come to Amadis of Gaul, which is more than double the size of Tirant. That'll slow me down for a while!

Tirant lo Blanc gets much better once Tirant falls in love and you have some sex to go along with the violence ;-)

#88: That''s just where I stopped reading - Tirant just admitted to having fallen in love. So there's hope I'm through the worst part! :-)

When I select a book from the unread list, I feel some added pressure to finish it and also some kind of extra responsibility to "appreciate its value". Therefore I was really relieved to see your above post and dropped this book immediately. Okay, so now I might pick it up again within the next days, when I'm done with "Grischa".

LOL! I was/am reading it too! I rather like it though...

76 -

And here I was thinking I'd look for the book now that I'm in France. Maybe I'll still keep an eye for it out of curiosity but I wonder which bookstore would carry it.

>67 Deern:, 73

Oops, I left on a work trip Dec. 9th and took the newish NYRB edition of Transit with me. It was good! And fun to read in various airport lounges/planes.

>92 ELiz_M:
Yay! Now I can read it and not feel guilty.

#92 Sigh. Well, it's a good read anyway, glad I'm doing it even if not to contribute to our challenge.

1131. Islands - Dan Sleigh. An historical semi-fiction detailing 60 years of Dutch occupation of the Cape and Mauritius from 1650 to 1710. A more mainstream book than many on the List. Sleigh is a researcher in the National Archives in Cape Town, South Africa, so the book is more detail than drama. The title refers to the quote "no man is an island, entire of itself" and alludes to the way the pioneers lives were continually interfered with by the Dutch East India Company and its appointed governors. I found the stories engrossing if inevitably grim. 4/5

You can add
the kindly ones : very good but hard sometimes because of the subject (nazi persécutions)
lady number thirteen : it´s not the best book written by somoza.
tent of miracles : good book Which makes you love Brazil even if you never went there
promise at dawn : 5 stars!!!!

#96, Promise at Dawn was going to be my next read! At least it's a 5-star one.

This group is just too good for me, or I am too slow for you. I'm still on Transit.

#97 hope it will be a 5 star for you too!

It's been one month since we started our challenge and we've knocked 43 books off the list. 170 to go!

Great reading, everyone!

I have just completed Mercier and Camier by Samuel Beckett. I guess I uh...I dunno, all I really have to say about this is that I don't think I'm smart enough for it. My edition was only 123 pages, but boy, what a struggle.

I brought The Bus Conductor Hines and Anagrams on vacation with me. Hopefully I'll get to them this week.

I just saw over on the Best/Worst thread that someone listed Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. (On their "worst" list, unfortunately ...)

Virgin Soil - Not sure why this was still unread. Fairly short (220 pages) and some beautiful writing in there. Of course its about the Russian revolution so it's a little depressing in some places. i also feel that it had a sort of 'end' just shoved on. Still, glad I read it.

1138. The Monastery - Sir Walter Scott. A Catholic Monastery tries to defend itself against the increasing influence of Protestants in the Border country of Scotland. Scott doesn't attempt to disguise his sympathises for the Protestant cause, with the Catholics painted as misguided at best. Add to this an arrogant English knight who speaks in the Euphuism style of John Lyly. and a ghost that sings in rhyming couplets, and you have a book that feels both dated and bigoted. 2.5/5

I finished The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig.

spoilers for the first 30% of the book:
The true story of a Russian POW in 1917 who runs away from the German camp in Poland eastward to see his wife and child again. He is captured months later, pretending to be a Russian AWOL soldier of a different name. He is sentenced to death following a brand new law that presumes every deserter from the enemy's side must be a spy. He reveals his true identity as an ex-POW and seems safe, but then administration decides the first sentence must be executed. What follows is a long political struggle. And while everyone admits how ridiculous it is that German high officials spend so much energy trying to save the life of a Russian while sacrificing thousands of soldier lives without thinking twice, it becomes apparent that Grischa's case stands for so much more: the necessity to be able to believe in the own country's system of justice. A war demands victims, it is agreed, but if the government allows a death sentence for an obviously innocent man, all values are in question and the country is lost.

Another important element of the book are the numerous reflections on Jewish life. Seen that this novel is set in 1917 and was published in 1927, pre-Hitler, pre-Holocaust, it gives an open and unspoiled account: conscience-ridden German officials in the army who are widely accepted, poor Russian Jews living in small communities suffering all kinds of repression and still managing to keep their faith and following their religious laws. Reading this almost 100 years later, knowing what is going to happen, was quite terrible. There's so much hope for more liberties, for a better time after the war....

This is a very wordy novel that's also written in a partly satirical style which in the beginning clashes (horribly) with the story and went against me. I don't know how else to express it, it seemed almost "Disney-fied". Chapters begin often with extensive descriptions of nature (a female lynx searching food for her cubs, enamoured squirrels jumping from branch to branch...), before they finally turn to the starving fugitive hiding in the forest. Only when Grischa is imprisoned again and the many philosophical and political contemplations begin, it all starts making sense and it becomes quite a great book.

And I just finished The Case of Comrade Tulayev.

Considered picking up How It Is by Samuel Beckett today...it looks like a real trip. Strange formatting, no capitals where they do belong and too many where they don't...I put it back down. Just a heads up for anyone considering this one. It's not even 200 pages but it looks scary!

I've just spotted that Anatole France is the only Nobel Prize winning author that hasn't been read by anyone from the group/index.

So if anyone fancies taking a pop at Thaïs that would knock that challenge on the head!

Keep up the good work all.

#108 - You come up with the most interesting ideas!

I'll give Thaïs a go -- any excuse to read a short one. (With a naked lady on the cover how could I not already have read this one? ;-)

1141. Between The Acts - Virginia Woolf. A day at a country house in southern England at which the annual village pageant is being staged. Published posthumously, Woolf regarded this as her most quintessential book. Certainly it is similar to other Woolf novels I've read with numerous evocative and beautiful observations sprinkled through a narrative that isn't always easy to follow. There is much poetry in the dialogue as individuals reflect on the play they are observing. 3/5

Finally finished Transit, once again behind another reader! I cannot keep up with this group. Am thinking of starting a thread entitled something like "What Makes You Read So Much and What Keeps You From Reading More?"
Anyway, review of Transit on my thread.

The answer to both of those questions is Librarything.

Finished Anagrams. Moore is an excellent writer, but man, not a good book to read during the holidays!

Finished Thaïs, so we now have no more unread Nobelists. It wasn't at all what I expected, but a very thought-provoking book featuring at one point a sort of roundtable discussion on the nature of good and evil between representatives of various religions, philosophies and sects. My review is on the book page and on my 1001 Books thread.

Speedy work Steven!

I read "Nobelists" as rhyming with "Novelists" which made me chuckle!

Merry Christmas!

If I can find my copy of Dirty Havana Trilogy, I'll make it a priority. I know it's around here somewhere...

Just started Dom Casmurro since I loved the Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.

>117 annamorphic: I have both The Bus Conductor Hines and Dom Casmurro on deck, but it looks like I should tackle Kelman first ;)

I have finished The Passion According to G. H. by Clarice Lispector.

I've finished Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis. Review coming on my thread.

I started Your Face Tomorrow, however, with 1,300 pages, this will take a while.

I've read
The Lion of Flanders - Hendrick Conscience - 1838
Camera Obscura - Hildebrand - 1839
Solitud - Víctor Català - 1905
Pallieter - Felix Timmermans - 1916

Just seen this thread, a great way to bump some books up the pile! I am not in the index, will have to find out what that is all about, but can help with a few books, if it counts.

I read Facundo last year, recommended.
I've also read Hangover Square Came free with The Times.
Journey to the Alcarria I read this while living in Spain as well as The shadow lines and Disappearance.
Dirty Havana trilogy I red a ehile ago, not realising it was on the list.

I've just finished Thursbitch, one of my last books for 2013.

I finished Celestina this evening.

#123 -- drat! I just ordered Hangover Square this afternoon. I hope it is at least a good read!

#123 & 125 - and I'm almost finished with Facundo--but I would have read it anyway.

Castle Richmond - Anthony Trollope. Review to follow when I get decent Internet access!

Re 125, I enjoyed it. I had heard nothing about it before reading.
Re 126 Facundo was fascinating, very bloodthirsty too.

#127 -- another one I just ordered! This group is incredible.
I'm now reading Summer Will Show. Don't anybody else start this one because it may take me a while to finish it.

#129. Sorry anamorphic. I promise not to touch Summer Will Show.

Hi Folks,

I haven't posted in this group for years (sorry)
However I have read Gabriel's Gift.......

I missed A Maggot last year for the 2013 Category Challenge. Worth a read, strange at the end.

hdcclassic, were you still going to read Heartbreak Tango? I checked it out from the library a while ago, but I won't have to return it for months so no rush.

#133 eventually yes, but haven't picked it up from a library yet (it fits well also on another reading challenge I have). But feel free to read it anyway :)

ALWINN just finished World's End by T.C. Boyle:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/148049

A Ghost at Noon by Alberto Moravia
Writer obsesses why his wife doesn't love him anymore, repeat for 266 pages. Godard made a good film out of this, go watch it and forget the book.

1163. The Wild Boys - William S Burroughs. You lucky people with enough foresight to have this on your "Not Read" list. A trippy combination of barely coherent images and gay porn fantasy. There were a handful of pages that made some sense and provided a bit of entertainment but overall 1/5

1164. Caught - Henry Green. Published in 1943, this book follows the life of a station of volunteer fire fighters during the Blitz. The personal lives of the characters overrides the routine of operations in the station, and it is only in the last few pages that the drama of the fire-fighting is described. Initially a little difficult to get in to due to odd phrasing and sudden time shifts, it develops in to an interesting character study. 3/5

Finished Chaka which was both compelling in some places and flat in others.

I finished The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger. The author is an entomologist and so the book actually featured bees. Glass ones.

I just finished Summer Will Show (review coming soon on my thread) and next will read No Laughing Matter so hands off that one. The characters had better be more humane and more light-hearted than those in SWS or in the other book I have going, Measuring the World. I want laughing matters!

I've just finished and reviewed Locus Solus.

Three Lives - reviewed here: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8504314/

1170. Pepita Jimenez - Juan Valera. A young candidate for priesthood visits his father and finds himself falling in love with his father's intended, Pepita Jimenez. The plot of this story is fairly simple and predictable. It is the structure of the book that makes it more interesting - a series of increasingly desperate letters from the young man to his mentor uncle which terminate abruptly and are then followed by a third party narrative of what occured next. 3/5

1171. The Manor - Isaac Bashevis Singer. Life among Jews in Poland in the late nineteenth century. This was a vey well written story with a nice sense of place and time, and informative about the culture of conservative Jews in Poland. Many of the story lines remain open at the end of this book and I'd be keen to seek out the (non-List) sequel, The Estate. 4/5

I just finished Memoirs of a Peasant Boy. A charming story of life in a Galician village in the 1930s/40s.

Arcane 17 has just arrived from the library. Nobody else start it :)

#147 -- I know, every time somebody posts to this list I check in dread lest it be the book I am currently reading or have at the top of the TBR pile! I'm almost half way through No Laughing Matter and have A Day Off coming up next.

Darn it! I had Pepita Jimenez lined up... ;)

I am starting The Harvesters and still working on Your Face Tomorrow. So you can all relax and leave those two to me :)

I finished The Harvesters. It should have been read sooner by us, it is definitely worth reading.

#151, read your review and it sounds great (and like a book that should probably be read before I'm Not Scared) -- but it's out of print in English and impossible to get for under $50 on Bookfinder. It is not even in the UC Berkeley library! Hmm, the challenge is intriguing...

Finished Angus Wilson, No Laughing Matter. Review coming soon, but this was a worthy 1001-er.

Finished Your Face Tomorrow.

Finished Storm Jameson's A Day Off. Next up, Cora Sandel, Alberta and Jacob.

>154 Simone2: Wow.

I finished Jakob the Liar last week. I'm actually surprised I'm the first to have read it. I (mistakenly) assume those that haven't been read by anyone yet are the more difficult books.

No, I think a lot of it is simply a matter of availability and chance. Of course some will be intentionally avoided, but I don't think that's the case for most.

157 - I just unpacked all my books and was going to read that one :) Hopefully it was good? I quite liked the movie.

>159 Yells: It WAS good. Very easy to read. Poignant.

Has really no-one read Blaming by Elizabeth Tylor yet? Can't believe it, she's so popular here.
Well, if not - I just did. :-)
Great book (though sad Story), 200p, quick read, 4 stars.

#161. My turn to be gazumped! I'll finish Blaming today - agree that it is a nicely written story.

I'm a recent convert to Taylor so haven't got around to that one yet.

It's good to see such a long string of people actually enjoying these books! The next time I feel like listing I might go through this thread and tally up which ones people recommend and which ones people thought were slogs.

Heartbreak Tango by Manuel Puig
Romantic entanglements in a small town in Argentina told in fragmentary style mixing letters, newspaper clippings, conversations and so forth. As far as themes go, I find the ironic view on middle class ennui an unforgivable cliche but watching some of these relationships unfold was not without interest.
Nevertheless, I did not particularly care about this.

#162: OMG, I am so sorry!!! I checked this thread before I got the book to see if someone had reserved it, but I am currently not up to date with all the other threads!

Okay, I ordered some of the other unread ones for my TA, if someone is already reading them, please tell me - I'll give them lower priority:

- I just saw that annamorphic is also reading Alberta and Jacob, so I'm putting that one on hold for now
- Garden, Ashes
- Bartleby and Co

I also planned Halftime by Martin Walser for February.

#166, thank you for holding off on Alberta and Jacob. I'm about 2/3 of the way through. Expecting to start Billy Liar on Audio soon, and Albert Angelo on paper when I finish A&J. The Albert theme seemed worth pursuing ; -).

#166. Not a problem at all. I've been taking my chances so far and if I'd known you were reading Blaming I would have missed out on a very good read.

Currently on Looking for a Possible Dance and then have The Midnight Examiner, Eyeless in Gaza , Harriet Hume, Lanark, The Plumed Serpent, Downriver, The Enigma of Arrival, and At Swim two Boys lined up! If someone gets to these first please read them - some of them look like hard work!

Ooh, I am interested in hearing comments about Lanark, and Albert Angelo too (House Mother Normal by the same author left me cautious but interested).

I have Bebo's Girl on my desk, but before that have to read some other stuff...

I've got Ancestral Voices and Down Second Avenue lined up for the near future.

Finished Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel, review on my thread. Basically this was a book worth reading, but rather painful. And cold.

Last Time I wrote, I Forgot to mention froth on the daydream by Boris Vian that I read a few years ago. An excellent book which was adapted for the cinema last year.

1181. (I think!) Looking for the Possible Dance - A.L. Kennedy. A woman on a train from Glasgow to London reminisces about her relationships with her father and her lover. Snatches of conversations and memories, and an often difficult relationship with her lover, made this hard to connect with for much of the book. However I did find bits I could relate to. 3/5

I just finished Arcanum 17 by Andre Breton.

I'm starting The Enigma of Arrival today as I got it for Christmas.

puckers - I think that was book #1182.

A request to everyone, though, to feel free to double check my numbers occasionally. I'm trying hard not to mess anything up, but I make no guarantees!

Only 122 books to go!

>176 japaul22: japaul22 wrote: "Only 122 books to go!

Oooh! Thanks for the update. I was going to ask, but didn't want to admit I was too lazy to count. ;)

Eliz_M - There is a ticker in the first message of this thread where I'm keeping track of the numbers, so no counting necessary - just scroll to the top!

Thanks, I didn't realize the ticker updates updates, even though the post was last edited in Nov.!

You can't edit a ticker through an LT post, the ticker isn't part of LT.

Right, I just update the ticker each time I cross out a book.

I just joined this group because I looked at the list and thought "Hey, I've read some of these." Here they are:

The Crime of Father Amado
Under the Yoke
The Artamonov Business
Her Privates We
Eyeless in Gaza
On the Edge of Reason
Down Second Avenue
The Third Wedding
Z
The Cathedral
Fado Alexandrino

I've also read the UNESCO version of Land, but I'm not sure if that should count because it ends about 2/3 of the way through the novel.

I also have Wild Harbour and Life is a Caravanserai sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and I have London Orbital on hold at the library and should get it in a couple of weeks.

Wow! Welcome Wayne!

Welcome, Wayne! I started updating our list, but LT is moving annoyingly slow for me this morning, so I'll finish later. I think I'll leave Land for someone to complete.

Thanks for joining in!

Hey Wayne... what is the "UNESCO version of Land"?

UNESCO Collection of Representative WorksFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The projects purpose was to translate masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more international language such as English and/or French.1 As of 2005 there were 1060 works in the catalog2 representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty Oriental languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of literatures and languages from Africa and Oceania.1 It also translated some works into lesser known languages, such as the translation of the Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata into Indonesian (in addition to 8 other languages), or the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz into Hungarian (in addition to 2 other languages). UNESCO financed the translations and publications, but UNESCO itself was not a publisher, instead working with other publishers who then sold the books independently

I read the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works translation of Land, thinking it was unabridged. I later discovered that there is a much longer version available in English translation. The UNESCO translation isn't a condensed novel; the translation ended at a climactic point in the novel.

thanks for that.

Done with Bartleby & Co. Loved it and must have caught 100 new book bullets. It's not fiction, it's a book of annotations about writers who at some point in their careers stopped publishing. I wish I had read it earlier, it throws a new light on some listed authors. Now I must get to some more Calvino, Kafka, Melville, Hawthorne and Gide soon! And Pessoa, and Queneau, and.... :)

>188 Deern: That is a book I started and couldn't finish. Maybe I should try again and read in smaller doses...

1196. Harriet Hume - Rebecca West. Follows the developing relationship between Harriet Hume, a clairvoyant musician, and Arthur Condorex, an ambitious politician. Despite having only two characters of note, and being told in the form of long conversations with sometimes strangely phrased stream-of-consciousness narrative, I quite enjoyed this. West's writing is both subtly witty and evocative, with blurring between fantasy and reality that maintains interest. 3.5/5

puckers, I'm 300+ pages into At Swim Two Boys, hoping to finish by next week. I know you'd said you had it lined up. It's my small contribution to the cause!

No problem. I've started on The Plumed Serpent.

1197: Bebo's Girl by Carlo Cassola
A teenage girl in Italy immediately after the war gets together with a partisan friend of her brother. When the boy commits a murder, the girl has to grow up too and make decisions.
I'm not that fond of neorealism but this was an interesting book, I liked the main character and how her development was handled here (as well as the political development of post-war Italy on the background, I didn't get all the details there but that didn't diminish the book).

1198. At Swim Two Boys It's a shame this book is only on the original list, I really enjoyed it. Some knowledge of Irish history might be beneficial.

I've started Vineland by Pynchon.

Just finished Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse. I enjoyed this one a lot. Review coming soon on my thread.

I can't keep up! I now have three on the go that other people have since finished. Ah well - less whacks eventually I guess! :)

1200. The Plumed Serpent - D.H. Lawrence. An Irish woman in Mexico is caught up in the revival of the Aztec cult of Quetzalcoatl. On the positive side Lawrence describes scenes and places vividly and that aspect of the book I enjoyed. As for the rest... the religious aspects are dense, dull and slightly silly, Mexicans are seen as cruel and lazy, and women can only exist as subservient to men. Glad its over with. 2/5

1201. Albert Angelo by B. S. Johnson. I could seriously have died without reading this. One star, maybe 1.5. Review coming on my thread. At the same time I am listening to Vernon God Little on audio which is possibly worse; so this is not a good literary week for me. I have dibs on Elizabeth Bowen, To the North as my next read for this challenge because I feel pretty sure I won't actually hate it. Starting that tonight.

I'm planning to read The Real Charlotte in March if no one else has started it.

Just finished Alamut - will get a review up in the next couple of days on my thread, but for now I'll say that it was unexpectedly quite enjoyable and thought-provoking. I've received The Albigenses via inter library loan, so about to crack that one open now.

Most of the books that I owned on this list here have since been read, but I still found one to read: Wild Harbour. It looks like a fairly quick read, so I hope it will only take me a few days.

1203. Vineland is done. If you like postmodern literature that wanders, have fun. I'm just glad it's over.

halfway through The Enigma of Arrival. An important book for all of Naipaul's other works it seems. Should be on the read this before that list.

Finished Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis. Basically very sad story of a childhood in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust with the dominating personality of the Jewish father, a clairvoyant, over-sensitive, depressive dreamer. The whole thing packed in heartbreakingly beautiful prose, often told like a dream. Only 170 pages in English, a book I enjoyed very much despite its sad background.

Read about 10 pages (of 777) of Halbzeit by Martin Walser... So far all I see is wannabe artistic language that wants to keep the reader out, complicated enough in the original German, which certainly doesn't translate well into English. This one will be a very slow read I fear.

1205. Lanark: A Life in 4 Books - Alasdair Gray. As the title says, this book describes the life of a man called Lanark, in four books. It is the varied styles and structures of these books that makes this book interesting. It opens with Book 3, an imaginative dystopian piece of science-fiction, reminiscent of Pynchon's Against the Day. Books 1 and 2 describe the life of boy/youth growing up in Glasgow. Book 4 and an Epilogue return to the world of Book 3, and include metafiction and freeway signs. While Lanark is not a sympathetic protagonist, I enjoyed the twists and turns. 4/5

Woo-hoo! 100 books to go!

Japaul - please cross off Wild Harbour(1936). I will write a review on it after I've thought about it for a bit.

Finished Elizabeth Bowen, To the North. Even better than I expected. Review coming soon on my thread. I think my next from the challenge list will be In Parenthesis although I may be interrupted by the March group read...

I have read Love's Work by Gillian Rose. Not one of the best on the list imho. But okay.

I think I'm going to pass the privilege of reading In Parenthesis along to somebody else. I do like books by WWI fighters (like Under Fire was one of my favorite discoveries of the 1001 list). But this one, not so much. When the introduction begins with something to the effect of "People say this book is very difficult but really, it's no more difficult than Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake" I say Yikes! Life is too short.

Just finished The Real Charlotte by Somerville and Ross.

This is an Irish novel written in 1894 by cousins Edith Somerville and Violet Martin. It sets up an interesting contrast between two cousins - the 40-something, unattractive, scheming, and bitter Charlotte vs. the 20-something flirtatious, naive, and beautiful Francie. The novel revolves around Francie's three love interests and Charlotte's jealousy of one of these in particular. The characters are well-drawn and complex and I wasn't sure where Somerville and Ross were going with some of them, especially Charlotte. The rather abrupt and unsatisfying ending of the book was the only low point for me. Otherwise, I found it interesting and readable with memorable characters.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes writers from this era (Trollope, the Brontes, Gaskell, etc.).

Finished The Albigenses this weekend. Quite a bit more enjoyable than anticipated - will post a review on my thread shortly.

Up next for me is Henry Green's Back so please nobody take that one!

The Enigma of Arrival has been read. This is a very carefully (almost tenderly) written and poignant book where Naipaul displays many of the characteristics which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's autobiographical too and you get quite a bit of insight into the settings in which he wrote some of his earlier novels. Highly recommended for those who like literature for the way it reveals that the everyday is laden with meaning... a la Proust.

1212. Trawl - B.S. Johnson. A man volunteers to join the crew of a North Sea trawler so he can reflect on his life. Life on a trawler was nicely described - you could feel each roll and lurch - and the incomplete reminiscences were easy enough to read. However I failed to really connect the two, and only reason for the main character to be on a trawler seemed to be to enable a play on the word "trawl" (physical v mental). 3/5