JUST LISTS

Who doesn't love a book list? Post a list, respond to a list, ask for help to create a list, or avoid these lists altogether.

My 11th grade AP English recommend reading list -- novels



Emma by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
The Stranger by Albert Camus
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Red Badge of Courage- by Stephen Crane
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Passage to India by E. M. Forster
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Billy Budd, Foretopman by Herman Melville
The Octopus by Frank Norris
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Kidnapped by R. L. Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Vanity Fair by William M. Thackeray
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Mrs. Dalloway by Virgina Woolf
To the Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Native Son by Richard Wright

My 11th grade AP English recommend reading list -- drama



Agamemnon by Aeschylus
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Everyman by Anonymous
The Second Shepherd's Play by Anonymous
The Frogs by Aristophanes
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
A Man for all Seasons by Robert Bolt
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertold Brecht
R.U.R by Karel Capek
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Sea Gull by Anton Chekhov
The Way of the World by William Congreve
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot
Medea by Euripides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
The Mikado by W. S. Gilbert
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
A Raisin the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
The Enemy of the People. by Henrik Ibsen
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco
My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe
J. B. by Archibald MacLeish
Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Tartuffe by Molière
The Physician in Spite of Himself by Molière
Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey
The Plough and Stars by Sean O'Casey
The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
No Exit by Jean-Pau Sartre
The Flies by Jean-Pau Sartre
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Othello by William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
The Rivals by Richard Sheridan
The School for Scandal by Richard Sheridan
Antigone by Sophocles
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge
Visit to a Small Planet by Gore Vidal
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

My 11th grade AP English recommend reading list -- poetry



anonymous - Beowulf
anonymous - 13th & 14th Century ballads
Chaucer
William Shakespeare - sonnets
William Shakespeare - songs from plays
Sir Philip Sidney - sonnets
Edmund Spencer - sonnets
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder - poems
Anne Bradstreet - poems
John Donne - sonnets
John Dryden - poems
John Gay - poems
Robert Herrick - poems
George Herbert - poems
Samuel Johnson - poems
Ben Jonson - poems
Andrew Marvell - poems
John Milton - "On His Blindness"
John Milton - Paradise Lost
Alexander Pope - "Ode on Solitude"
Alexander Pope - "An Essay on Man"
Robert Burns - poems
Thomas Gray - "Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard"
William Blake - Songs of Innocence
William Blake - Songs of Experience
William Cullen Bryant - "Thanatopsis"
Lord Byron - "She Walks in Beauty"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "Kubla Khan"
John Keats - "Ode to a Grecian Urn"
John Keats - "Ode to a Nightingale"
Percy Bysshe Shelley - "Ozymandias"
Percy Bysshe Shelley - "Ode to the West Wind"
William Wordsworth - poems
Matthew Arnold - "Dover Beach"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Sonnets from the Portuguese
Robert Browning - poems
Lewis Carroll - "Jabberwocky"
Emily Dickinson - poems
Ralph Waldo Emerson - poems
Edward Fitzgerald - "The Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyam of Naishápúr"
Thomas Hardy - poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins - "Pied Beauty"
Gerard Manley Hopkins - "Spring and Fall"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - poems
Herman Melville - "Clarissa"
Edgar Allan Poe - "To Helen"
Edgar Allan Poe - "Annabel Lee"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - "Ulysses"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - "Crossing the Bar"
Henry David Thoreau - poems
Walt Whitman - "Our of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
Walt Whitman - "A Noiseless Patient Spider"
Walt Whitman - poems
Rupert Brooke - poems
T. S. Eliot - "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock"
T. S. Eliot - "The Hollow Men"
T. S. Eliot - "Journey of the Magi"
T. S. Eliot - Four Quartets
Robert Frost - "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Robert Frost - "The Road Not Taken"
Robert Frost - "Design"
Robert Frost - poems
A.E. Housman - A Shropshire Lad
Randall Jarrell - poems
Philip Larkin - poems
D.H. Lawrence - poems
Robert Lowell - poems
Archibald MacLeish - "Ars Poetica"
Archibald MacLeish - "You, Andrew Marvell"
W. S. Merwin - poems
Marianne Moore - poems
Ezra Pound - "In a Station of the Metro"
Ezra Pound - poems
John Crowe Ransom - poems
E.A. Robinson - "Miniver Cheevy"
Carl Sandburg - "Fog"
Anne Sexton - poems
Wallace Stevens - "The Snow Man"
Wallace Stevens - all poems
William Carlos Williams - "The Dance"
William Carlos Williams - "The Red Wheelbarrow"
William Carlos Williams - "The Yachts"
William Butler Yeats - "Leda and the Swan"
William Butler Yeats - "When You are Old"
William Butler Yeats - "Sailing to Byzantium"
William Butler Yeats - "The Second Coming"
William Butler Yeats - poems

My 11th grade AP English recommend reading list -- short stories



Conrad Aiken - "Silent Snow, Secret Snow"
Sholom Aleichem - "Teyve Wins a Fortune"
Hans C. Andersen - "The Emperor's New-Clothes"
Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson - "The Egg"
Isaac Babel - "The Story of my Dovecot"
Donald Barthelme - "Report"
Stephen Vincent Benet - "The Devil and Daniel Webster"
Heinrich Böll - "Christmas Every Day"
Jorge Luis Borges - "Deutsches Requiem"
Ray Bradbury - "1 Sing the Body Electric"
Ray Bradbury - "A Medicine for Melancholy"
Albert Camus - "The Funeral"
Karel Capek - "Money"
Willa Cather - "Paul's Case"
John Cheever - "The Enormous Radio"
John Cheever - The World of Apples
Anton Chekhov - "The Bet"
Anton Chekhov - "Gooseberries"
Anton Chekhov - "Gusev"
Anton Chekhov - "Misery"
Anton Chekhov - "A Father"
Anton Chekhov - "The Kiss"
Anton Chekhov - "A Problem"
Anton Chekhov - "Ward No. 6"
Anton Chekhov - "In Exile"
Anton Chekhov - "My Life"
Anton Chekhov - "Peasants"
Anton Chekhov - "The Darling"
Richard Connell - "The Most Dangerous Game"
Joseph Conrad - "The Secret Sharer"
Stephen Crane - "The Blue Hotel"
Stephen Crane - "The Open Boat"
Stephen Crane - "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"
Maureen Daly - "Sixteen"
Daniel Defoe - "The True Relation of the Apparition of One
Daniel Defoe - Mrs. Veal"
Floyd Dell - "The Blanket"
Guy de Maupassant - "The Diamond Necklace"
Guy de Maupassant - "Useless Beauty"
Guy de Maupassant - "A Normandy Joke"
Guy de Maupassant - "Ball-of-Fat"
Guy de Maupassant - "A Piece of String"
Guy de Maupassant - "Mlle. Fifi"
Guy de Maupassant - "A Fishing Excursion"
Guy de Maupassant - "The Little Cask"
Guy de Maupassant - "The False Gems"
Charles Dickens - "A-Christmas Carol"
Washington Irving - The Sketch Book
Washington Irving - "Rip Van Winkle"
Washington Irving - "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Washington Irving - "The Spectre Bridegroom"
Washington Irving - "The Broken Heart"
Washington Irving - Tales of a Traveller
Washington Irving - "Adventures of the German Student"
Washington Irving - "The Devil and Tom Walker"
Shirley Jackson - "The Lottery"
Shirley Jackson - "Charles"
W. W. Jacobs - "The Monkey's Paw"
Henry James - "The Jolly Corner"
Henry James - "The Beast in the Jungle"
Henry James - "The Tree of Knowledge"
Henry James - "The Turn of the Screw"
James Joyce - Dubliners
Franz Kafka - The Penal Colony
Franz Kafka - "The Metamorphosis"
Franz Kafka - "A Country Doctor"
Franz Kafka - "A Little Fable"
Franz Kafka - "A Hunger Artist"
Rudyard Kipling - "The Gardener
Ring Lardner - "Haircut"
Ring Lardner - "The Golden Honeymoon"
D. H. Lawrence - "The Rocking Horse Winner"
D. H. Lawrence - "The Man Who Loved Islands"
Doris Lessing - "To Room Nineteen"
Doris Lessing - Stories
Bernard Malamud - The Magic Barrel
Bernard Malamud - "Angel Levine"
Thomas Mann - "Little Herr Friedmann"
Katherine Mansfield - "Garden Party"
Katherine Mansfield - "The Dill Pickle"
Katherine Mansfield - "Bliss"
Herman Melville - "Bartelby the Scrivener"
Flannery O'Connor - Complete Stories
Liam O'Flaherty - "The Sniper"
John O'Hara - The O'Hara Generation
Dorothy Parker - "Standard of Living"
Dorothy Parker - "The Waltz"
Luigi. Pirandello - "The Cat, A Goldfinch, and the Stars"
K. A Porter - "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
K. A Porter - "Noon Wine"
Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Marcel Proust - "Overture"
Philip Roth - "Defender of the Faith"
Saki - "The Open Window"
J. D. Salinger - Nine Stories
J. P. Sartre - "The Wall"
John Steinbeck - "Chrysanthemums"
R. L Stevenson - "The Bottle Imp"
Frank Stockton - "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
Elizabeth Taylor - "Spry Old Character"
Peter Taylor - The Complete Stories
James Thurber - "The Catbird Seat"
James Thurber - "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
Lionel Trilling - "Of This Time, of that Place
Mark Twain - The Great Short Works of Mark Twain
Mark Twain - "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
Mark Twain - "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut"
Mark Twain - "Jim Baker's Blue Jay"
Mark Twain - "Letter to the Earth"
Mark Twain - "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"
Mark Twain - "The Mysterious Stranger"
John Updike - "A & P"
H. G. Wells - The Time Machine
Eudora Welty - The Complete Stories of Eudora Welty
Edith Wharton - "Roman Fever"
E. B. White - "The Door"
W. C. Williams - "Use of Force"
Richard Wright - "Bright and Morning Star"
Kurt Vonnegut - "Report on the Barnhouse Effect"

My 11th grade AP English recommend reading list -- essays



"The following authors have all written important essays"

Louis Adamic
Joseph Addison
Francis Bacon
James Baldwin
Simone de Beauvoir
Robert Benchley
Ruth Benedict
Heywood Broun
Rachel Carson
Norman Cousins
John Donne
W.E.B. Du Bois
R. W. Emerson
William Faulkner
E. M. Forster
John Galsworthy
Ernest Hemingway
Patrick Henry
John Hersey
Thomas Huxley
Washington Irving
Thomas Jefferson
Helen Keller
John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther, Jr. King
Joseph Wood Krutch
Charles Lamb
Mary McCarthy
Margaret Mead
Vance Packard
Carl Sandburg
Susan Sontag
Lincoln Steffens
John Steinbeck
R. L. Stevenson
Jonathan Swift
H. D. Thoreau
James Thurber
Lionel Trilling
Mark Twain
W. A. White
Edmund Wilson
Virginia Woolf

Thanks for this! ❤️

>2 ELiz_M: fantastic!

>2 ELiz_M: Cool! I just counted. I've read 40 of those.

I’ve read 23, and read some or all of nine others back in high school before I kept track.

Well, I love lists, so ...

Some years ago for my sister's 50th birthday, I gave her 50 books I'd enjoyed. A little bit of all kinds of things—mostly fiction, a couple of memoirs, one nonfiction.

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
A Midnight Clear by William Wharton
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Autumn Rounds by Jacques Poulin
Callisto by Torsten Krol
Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses by David Lodge
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Peterson
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden
Floating Island by Emily Kimbrough
From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov
Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni
Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter by Edward Streeter
Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
My Name is Aram by William Saroyan
Naked Came the Manatee by Carl Hiaasen
No Garlic in the Soup by Leonard Wibberley
Potiki by Patricia Grace
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Secrets of a Family Album by Isla Dewar
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
Straight Man by Richard Russo
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The Complete Works of O. Henry by O. Henry
The Cradle of the Deep by Joan Lowell
The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leonard Q. Ross
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Fencing Master by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
The Fish Can Sing by Haldor Laxness
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
The Kapillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories by Tayeb Salih
The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

>7 dchaikin: You're welcome!

>8 rocketjk:, >9 dchaikin: I have yet to read the following books from this list:
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (I will read this eventually)
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding (I have read Tom Jones)
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (I've read three others, but will probably read this one as well)
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
The Octopus by Frank Norris
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (~sigh~ at one point I owned four copies of this -- it's definitely my biggest "SHOULD". I may never get to it.)
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (I read The Executioner's Song instead)
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (I've read four of his novels and that is enough for me)

>10 TadAD: here i’ve read two - one classic - Cry, the Beloved Country, and one wonderful novel - The Polish Boxer.

>10 TadAD: what a fantastic gift! And an interesting list, some I've read & enjoyed, some on the TBR and many of which I have never heard.

>4 ELiz_M: the poetry list looks like a life goal list.

CR recommendations for Dutch Literature from Dilara's thread:

De historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart
Lucifer by Joost van den Vondel
May: An Epic Poem about Youth by Herman Gorter
Eline Vere by Louis Couperus
Qui sème le vent
Belle van Zuylen
Bitter Herbs by Marga Minco
A Posthumous Confession by Marcellus Emants written in 1894
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
The Twins by Tessa de Loo
An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans
The Assault by Harry Mulisch

Plus some from Simone2 (BarbaraBB) on Litsy:
This one is about WWII and Surinam people in the Netherlands (our former colony): The Boy Between Worlds: A Story of Love and Loss
I loved this one. It‘s about colonial times in Indonesia: Country of Origin
This one is about Amsterdam in the roaring Eighties: Gimmick!
This one is by one of our most renowned authors: Rituals
And another one by the author of Eline Vere, about Indonesian people of whom many came to live in the Netherlands (my grandparents among them!): The Hidden Force
One more about Indonesia, now set in the Japanese camps of WWII: Sunken Red
Contemporary literature: Love, If That's What It Is
And one more about Surinam: The Cost of Sugar
About life in Holland during WWII by one of our most renowned authors again: The Assault
A personal favorite: Beyond Sleep

For anyone interested, the list of this year's Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards Winners is here:

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/74th-national-jewish-book-award-winne...

>16 rocketjk: Wow. There are numerous very interesting books amongst those award winners. Let us know if you decide to read any of them, Jerry.

After a discussion on Alison's thread last night and this morning I was inspired to ask a question: who are your favorite living novelists? I have already marked my favorite writers, living or deceased, and regardless of genre, and my criterion was that the author had to write five or more novels or short story collections that earned at least four stars from me. This is my list:

Javier Cercas
JMG Le Clézio
JM Coetzee
Jean Echenoz
Annie Ernaux
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Mario Vargas Llosa
Sarah Moss
Salman Rushdie
Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Annie Ernaux would have also made the list if her major works are considered to be in the fiction category. Several other female authors would have been included if I made four novels the cut off point, such as Edwidge Danticat, Aminatta Forna, Jamaica Kincaid, and Hillary Mantel.

Wonderful, Darryl!

Off the top of my head is Ali Smith and Deborah Levy, and Siri Hustvedt. And you have Gurnah, which reminds me of him too. What has Le Clezio published recently? I loved two of the books I tried by him, but they’re fairly dated now. Oh… of course Valeria Luiselli

Le Clézio recently wrote a short story collection titled Avers, which was translated into English as On the Wrong Side and published last month by Seagull Press. Here's a description of it:

A short story collection from Nobel Prize winner J. M. G. Le Clézio offers a poignant and powerful exploration of the lives of the underprivileged and marginalized.

J. M. G. Le Clézio’s On the Wrong Side, a collection of eight short stories, continues the author’s life-long pursuit of granting visibility to the unseen and a voice to the voiceless. Here, the author focuses on the underclasses, primarily children who have been left behind, abandoned, and subjected to unspeakable violence.

In these haunting tales, we encounter Maureez Samson, a mistreated orphan from Rodrigues Island, who, thanks to her exceptional voice, becomes a famous singer and defies all expectations; some young Indians in Darién, a region straddling Panama and Colombia, struggle to raise their young son and save their idyllic land from its invasion and destruction by drug lords; Juanico and Chuche, two slave children who are taken in by the community of Saint Kateri Takakwitha after an arduous and perilous journey; and in Nogales, on the border between Mexico and the United States, the “street rats,” children who cross through the sewers to wreak havoc and perhaps indulge their dreams of life on the other side.

In Le Clézio’s own words, these stories are not simply meant to reveal or describe the plight of the “rejected,” but to “create in the reader a feeling of revolt in the face of the injustice of what is happening to them.”

Despite its grim stories I'll probably read it.

Because of the criterion I chose—which no one else has to follow—my list includes authors I haven't read in years, namely Coetzee and Le Clézio. I could have chosen to read, say, four books than earned at least four stars from me which I've read in the past decade, which would have produced a completely different list.

>20 kidzdoc: a new Le Clezio appeals a lot! Thanks!

>18 kidzdoc: Love this question, Darryl, and looking forward to everyone's answers. Yours is a fine list.

Hmm - being alive and having five novels where I've given 4 stars or above cuts off quite a few for me; my list now looks very sparse. Clearly I'm not a Completer Finisher when it comes to authors (both you and Dan are good author Completer Finishers).

Ian McEwan
Alan Hollinghurst
Karl Ove Knausgaard

Almost making the cut was Lionel Shriver. Sadly, death cut a few others out of the list (Hilary Mantel, Thomas Hardy, John Updike).

Further to the conversation on my thread, this question has been excellent for bringing new light to my questioning that I read a lot of McEwan and Hollinghurst even though in my head they're flawed authors. Clearly they must have less flaws than most other authors I read as they're part of a very short and exclusive list of living authors I've given 5 or more 4 stars to.

There are other authors who I've read and loved but actually haven't read 5 or more novels by yet, so your question prompts me to come round and look at their other work again at some point, rather than getting distracted by new shiny things.

I am definitely not an author completist. I only have one favorite author by your criteria, Fredrik Backman with five out of six novels and two short stories rating 4* or more.

>22 AlisonY:, >23 labfs39: Thanks, Alison and Lisa! Don't feel obligated to follow my strict criteria; I was hoping to come up with a top 10 list, which worked out perfectly. If I had chosen four books that earned at least 4 stars from me my list would probably have been twice as long. I would rather see your favorite authors than those which are limited to my criteria.

When I think of favorite authors, it's a much more emotional response for me. I have only read one book by Karl Marlantes (Matterhorn), Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands), and Anne Applebaum (Gulag: A History), but when I think of favorites, these authors spring to mind. I found each of their books profoundly effecting.

Using a more data driven approach, these authors percolate up:

Fredrik Backman (5 out of 6 books read rated 4 or more *)
Diana Gabaldon (9/11)
Philip Claudel (4/4)

But emotionally I would add:

Eowyn Ivey (2/2)
Kim Thuy (2/3)
Jacques Poulin (2/3)
Mary Doria Russell (3/5)
Connie Willis (3/7)
Abraham Verghese (2/2)

I would add these to the two nonfiction authors mentioned above:

Ben Macintyre (3/4)
Barbara Demick (2/2)
Caroline Moorehead (2/2)

I also have a hard time limiting favorites to living authors, but I think all of these are still above ground. Poulin must be over 90 though.

>2 ELiz_M: What does the “AP” stand for? And how many books are children at this level required to read? And is this just for New York State or city or borough? Like most non native Americans without young children I have little idea how syllabuses work in the US. I’m interred in how it compares with my home country as I have a grandson there.

That's a great list, Lisa! If I were to adopt your criteria of choosing authors that are the most emotionally appealing to me but fall just short of my five 4 star books criteria I come up with an entirely different top 10 list:

Tahmima Anam
Edwidge Danticat
Tan Twan Eng
Percival Everett
Aminatta Forna
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Alain Mabanckou
Hilary Mantel
Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Abraham Verghese

ETA: How could I have forgotten Jesmyn Ward? Make that a top 11 list.

>26 kjuliff: in US schools AP (Advanced Placement) are high school classes with a test at the end. If students pass that test, they get college credit and may not need to take that class in college. The test determines the credit. (Don't confuse with DC - Dual Credit - which high school classes that are supposed to be taught as if they were a college course, tuition free in public schools.)

>27 kidzdoc: not all those are living. sadly. My list was entirely based off asking myself - who do I want to read if they came out with a new book? It was not based on past ratings (which are so of the moment and inconsistent for me). I did limit it to authors I've read more than one book from.

>29 dchaikin: I keep forgetting that Hilary Mantel passed away a few years ago. Everyone else is alive, though.

ETA: My list in >27 kidzdoc: is more similar to yours.

>27 kidzdoc: Ooh, Tan Twan Eng. Good one. He's another 2/2 for me.

Interesting discussion:
My favorites (living):
Siri Hustvedt
Julia Alvarez
Ali Smith
Louise Erdrich
Margaret Atwood
Kate Atkinson
Penelope Lively

who do I want to read if they came out with a new book? I did limit it to authors I've read more than one book from. I'm also not including series authors

Tracy Chevalier
Kate Atkinson
Ann Patchett
Elizabeth Strout
Heather O'Neill
Liane Moriarty
Tana French
Emma Donoghue
Maggie O'Farrell
Deon Meyer

What about five writers you warm to as a person? Some of my favorite books are by people I would probably not like in the real world.

I’d like (living)
Percival Everett
Anne Enright
Ian McEwan
HelenGarner
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

>34 kjuliff: I would love to sit next to Anne Fadiman at a dinner party or better yet over a pot of tea.

>34 kjuliff: i could probably add Percival Everett to my list

>32 BLBera:, >33 raidergirl3: Nice lists.

>34 kjuliff: Good one, Kate. I tried to come up with authors who I've spoken with in person and read and liked at least one of their books. This is what I came up with:

Dr Kathryn Mannix (2 books): She is a British palliative care physician, and after I read and positively reviewed her book With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial on Goodreads she reached out to me after reading my profile and learning that my work group worked with the hospital's palliative care team. We met when she spoke at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in, I think, 2016 or 2017, and after she signed my copy of her book we had lunch and both saw Ali Smith and Karl Ove Knausgaard speak before I left to see a performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. BTW, Ali Smith was also a very warm and humorous speaker.

Dr Atul Gawande (3 books): I was able to chat with him for a good 10 minutes after he gave a talk about his book Complications: A Surgeon"s Notes on an Imperfect Science at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. He was a very engaging speaker and was very easy to talk to.

Linton Kwesi Johnson (2 books): He is a British Caribbean dub poet who is well known in the UK, and I spoke to him after he interviewed fellow British Caribbean author Caryl Phillips about his nonfiction book Foreigners at the flagship Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London. I had read the book in advance of the talk so I asked several questions about it, which Phillips appreciated. When I got in line to sign books by each of them Johnson noted my US accent and asked where I was from. When I told him "Atlanta" he recalled a hilarious incident that occurred there which had everyone in line laughing uproariously; I can still hear his accent in my head many years later. Phillips, on the other hand, was surprisingly prickly after the one question I asked him.

Petina Gappah (1 book): I attended her talk about her novel Rotten Row at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2016 or 2017, and because I was last in the book signing line we were able to talk for a solid 20-30 minutes, which was a pleasure.

Although I haven't met him I'm certain that I would enjoy sharing a meal with Dr Abraham Verghese (4 books).

>37 kidzdoc: I’ve liked Caryl Phillips work for ages and read most of his books when I lived in Australia. His books seem to get more publicity there, possibly because of his UK publishers.

Helen Garner - I’ve met several times as we ar from the same social circle in Melbourne. She is a very compassionate woman.

I sent a mail message to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie after her book Half of a Yellow Sun was published and she was kind enough to send me a long-ish letter back. I was hoping to meet her when she visited New York, but somehow - I forget why - it didn’t happen.

I’ve met quite a few well-known writers, but the ones I listed were ones I feel a special connection to.

Looking over your "living writers" lists, I realize how little reading of "current" novels I read compared to most of you folks, here. That plus the fact that I've outlived some of my favorite writers, like Philip Roth, Paul Auster and Toni Morrison. I will take a swing at this nevertheless:

Roddy Doyle
Louise Erdrich
James McBride
Mary Roach*
Jasper Fforde
Ocean Vuong**
Charles Frazier

*If we're including nonfiction authors
**I've only read one of his but I thought On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was so good that I'm very much looking forward to reading more of his work.

A note that once I get around to reading James, I'm sure I'll have Percival Everett on my list. I've only read Erasure which I didn't really think was that great.

My emotional choice (i.e. not 5 books or more with 4 stars plus, and living or dead) would add Thomas Hardy, Susan Hill, Virginia Woolf, Richard Yates, Annie Proulx and Esther Freud to my list above. Plus probably Iris Murdoch, even though I'm only 3 books in.

The American National Book Critics Circle longlists are here, in several categories (autobiography, biography, etc): https://www.bookcritics.org/2025/01/23/national-book-critics-circle-announces-fi...

I'm listing out the categories I found interesting:

FICTION
Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Joseph O’Neill, Godwin (Pantheon)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday)
Hisham Matar, My Friends (Random House)
Nora Lange, Us Fools (Two Dollar Radio)

GREGG BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE
Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies, The Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea (Archipelago), Fiction
László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, Herscht 07769 (New Directions), Fiction
Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics), Nonfiction
Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden, Melvill (Open Letter), Fiction
Judith Kiros, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson, O (World Poetry), Poetry
Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger, Traces of Enayat (Transit), Nonfiction

I'm very intrigued by Traces of Enayat which has been on my list since last year, as well as the Fresan novel.

The Goethe Institut's Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for translations from German, published in the USA and UK has released their latest longlist:
https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/bks/hkw/e25.html

>18 kidzdoc: This is a fascinating question because when I went to look at which authors fit this bill for me, the list felt wrong!

Well, first of all I had to reduce it to 3* reads, as there aren't many authors that I've read five books by, never mind loved. But also, there are several authors that I would say are favourites, where I've read a couple of books that I've rated very highly and one that hasn’t worked for me (but hasn't been bad enough to knock the writer off my list of favourites). It also got me thinking about when you mentally remove a writer from you favourites list - I know if I've enjoyed the first couple of books I've read by someone, I keep on buying and reading them even if none of the others have the same effect.

So - favourite authors who don't fit the criteria:
Jenny Erpenbeck - loved two of her books, rated one OK - but I own Kairos so I'll have to read it and see if that bumps her onto the "objective favourites" list!
Francis Spufford - ditto actually, in this case I have Cahokia Jazz on the TBR
Sarah Perry - other than Melmoth I think all her books have been interesting and worth reading
Jon McGregor - I have only read two books by him, but they were both 5 stars
Zadie Smith - NW and White Teeth are favourites by her, others have been rated 3.5 or lower
Andrea Barrett - because I have read most of her books before I started logging/rating reads on LT

"Literary" writers who have at least 3 top-rated books for me:
Margaret Atwood
Nicola Barker
Julian Barnes
AS Byatt
Jennifer Egan
Elena Ferrante
Amitav Ghosh
Linda Grant
Andrew Miller
Michael Ondaatje
Ann Patchett
Salman Rushdie
Ali Smith
Jane Stevenson
Sarah Waters
all of whom "feel" right, and
Haruki Murakami
Jeanette Winterson
both of whom are pretty variable in terms of how much I like what they have read (but I've read a lot of it).

And then favourites in genre fiction are:

Crime:
Harry Bingham
Jane Harper
Reginald Hill
Tana French

Spy fiction:
Dan Fesperman

SF:
Ann Leckie
Jo Walton
Connie Willis

Romance:
Marian Keyes

all of whom feel right for this list, they are reliably enjoyable reads.

>35 labfs39: Hard agree!!

>43 wandering_star: Great list, Margaret! Thanks for posting your favorite authors.

The Women's Prize for *NonFiction 2025 Longlist:
https://www.womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-non-fiction/

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor
A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry
The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
Ootlin by Jenni Fagan
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka by Clare Mulley
By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean by Helen Scales
The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale
Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men by Harriet Wistrich
Tracker by Alexis Wright
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang

Of these, the Yuan Yuang, Sue Prideaux and Helen Scales books were already on my list, but I'm intrigued by Helen Castor's history of Richard II and Henry IV, and also by the Wistrich book.

>46 rasdhar: I'm sad to say that the only author on this list that I've ever read is Anne Applebaum.

>47 labfs39: I’m sad to say I have none at all on my list, though I read a favorable review of The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place, which I’m waiting to appear on audio.

>46 rasdhar: Neneh Cherry's memoir looks interesting. I remember her from her early music career. I have her second release, Home Brew, in CD format, and I think that's quite a good album. I was always intrigued, also, by the fact that she's the step-daughter of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, who is one of my musical heroes.

I have Anne Applebaum's book, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956, on my shelves. I might read that one later this year, as it would be an interesting companion piece to the book I'm currently reading, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. As I guess most here already know, Applebaum won a Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for her book, Gulag: A History.

>49 rocketjk: I though Gulag: A History was fantastic. Access to new archival material brought to light the economic underpinnings of the system, beyond what was obvious from survivor testimonies.

>46 rasdhar: ooh. Nonfiction longlist. Yes, Richard II/Henry IV catches my attention too, especially after reading Chaucer…and, Shakespeare… i’ll have to explore more what these are about…and what they’re doing.

A lot of really fascinating stuff here. Reviews are generally really positive. These aren’t all new books. Why Fish don’t Exist is from 2020, another was from 2023.

I think i’m most interested in A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry - a punk rock music memoir, The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarkec, which looks like a nice mixture of science history and personal stories. Ootlin by Jenni Fagan - which took 20 years to write - a memoir on growing up in the British foster system. And Why Fish Don’t Exist, despite the topic - a depressed memoir mixed with the biography of an unpleasant taxonomist obsessed eugenics. However, i was surprised how positive reviews are for Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang and By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle. Seems both are well written.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 longlist

https://www.walterscottprize.co.uk/the-2025-prize/the-2025-longlist/?fbclid=IwZX...

Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. With a total value of over £30,000, and now in its sixteenth year, the Prize is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past.

The Prize celebrates quality, innovation, durability and ambition of writing, and is open to books first published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Reflecting the subtitle ‘Sixty Years Since’ of Scott’s most famous work Waverley, the majority of the storyline must be set at least 60 years ago.

THE HEART IN WINTER Kevin Barry (Canongate)

1890s Montana and as a hard winter approaches, the city of Butte bustles with immigrant Irish workers seeking wealth in the copper mines. Tom Rourke, a poet, is no different from all the other degenerate hard-livers, until Polly Gillespie arrives as the new bride of devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. As Polly and Tom’s love affair burns, they steal a horse and ride out west, through Montana and Idaho, before they are hotly pursued by a posse of Cornish gunsmen who will stop at nothing to catch the runaway lovers.

THE CATCHERS Xan Brooks (Salt)

Set against the backdrop of the 1927 Mississippi flood, The Catchers explores some of the most painful episodes of African American history via two main characters, John Coughlin and Moss Evans. Through the dual narratives of the so-called ‘song-catchers’ like Coughlin, who trawl for hill country music to sell to record companies, and the poor, exploited musicians like Moss Evans – subsistence farmers, or labourers, who make the music in the hope of bagging their measly financial share if the song is a ‘firefly’ hit – Brooks builds a picture of the politics of race, mirrored in the natural disaster engulfing the state.

MOTHER NAKED Glen James Brown (Peninsula Press)

Durham, 1434, and an aging minstrel arrives at court to entertain the most powerful men in the city. This is Modyr Nakett, or Mother Naked, as immortalised in Durham Cathedral’s rolls as receiving a single payment, the lowest payment to a performer ever made amongst 200 years of records. The legend he’s come to tell is that of Fell Wraith, the ‘walking ghost’ who is said to have slaughtered the people of the local village of Segerston forty years before. But is the myth just that, or do the murders have their roots in the stories of those fated to a lifetime of labour? Mother Naked is a tale told from the margins of society, with the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt looming large in the background.

CLEAR Carys Davies (Granta)

Desperate for money after breaking away to help found the Free Church of Scotland in 1843, rebel minister John Ferguson agrees to assist a landowner’s factor who is engaged in the final throes of the Highland Clearances. Ferguson will travel to a nameless island halfway to Norway, at the farthest reaches of the landowner’s estate, to survey the land and ensure that Ivar — the last remaining inhabitant, who speaks neither English or Scots — is evicted. The Factor gives Ferguson an introduction to a schoolmaster with a few words of Ivar’s language, some basic supplies and a pistol. The boat will return in one month to collect him. But when Ferguson falls from a cliff and is rescued by Ivar, slowly, as the minister regains his strength, the two men form a bond.

THE MARE Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press)

Hermine Braunsteiner lived most of her life in the US as a loving New York suburban housewife, valued friend and neighbour. But when a New York Times journalist knocked on their door, the couple’s life was blown apart. Braunsteiner had been one of only a few thousand female guards in the Nazi concentration camps, nicknamed ‘the Mare’ by prisoners because of her habit of kicking inmates to death. When the camps were liberated, she had managed to flee to Vienna and subsequently met and married an American holidaying in Austria. How could a seemingly ordinary woman have descended into such evil? And why did her husband stay with her even after he learned of her past? Hampshire’s fictionalised retelling explores the roles of propaganda, fear, ideology and cognitive dissonance in the story of the first person to be extradited from the US for Nazi war crimes.

THE BOOK OF DAYS Francesca Kay (Swift Press)

Narrator Alice has lost one child and is married to the aging, sclerotic – slowly dying – lord of the manor,who lost his first wife in childbirth and all but one of his other children. He has ordered the building of a chantry chapel in the local church, the creation of which will destroy shrines to saints that are important to the villagers. But the chapel itself is doomed anyway, because this is 1546, and on the march are those Anglican reformists enforcing the ban on prayers for the dead. Paced through the passing of saints’ days that are soon to be abolished in the Reformation that remains nameless throughout, the novel grounds itself in the turning of the seasons and the natural world, which stands firm as the religious world continues to change relentlessly alongside.

THE FIRST FRIEND Malcolm Knox (Allen & Unwin Aus)

In this chilling black satirical comedy set in Stalin’s Soviet Union of 1938, Knox imagines the real life gangster mob in charge of a global superpower, as ‘The Boss’, Lavrentiy Beria, prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from ‘The Boss of Bosses’, fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. By Beria’s side as pressure builds on him, from enemies and allies alike, is childhood friend Vasil Murtov – after all, even the worst person has a best friend. But Murtov has a family to protect, too, and must play his own thrilling survival game in the shadow of the increasingly paranoid and unstable threat that is Beria and the monstrous society he has spawned.

GLORIOUS EXPLOITS Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)

Sicily, 412 BC, and thousands of defeated Athenians are imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, seemingly destined to die of starvation in the scorching heat. Enter stage left Sicilians Gelon – a visionary, dreamer and theatre lover – and Lampo, who is jobless, heartbroken and in need of some distraction. Despite their frailty, the captured Athenians can still recite lines from Greek tragedies, and as they’re tempted by Gelon and Lampo with wine and scraps of food, the rather unorthodox staging of one of Euripides’s greatest tragedies begins, with Ferdia Lennon’s reimagining inspired by a reference in Plutarch’s Lives, and exploring the healing power of art. After all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.

A SIGN OF HER OWN Sarah Marsh (Tinder Press)

1876, the United States on the eve of their centennial, and the soon-to-be-married Ellen Lark receives an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell. She knows immediately what he wants from her. Ellen is deaf – like debut novelist Sarah Marsh herself — and was, in her younger years, a student of Bell’s in a technique called Visible Speech. During their time together, Bell also confided in Ellen about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now Bell’s claim to the patent on the telephone is being challenged by his rivals, standing in the way of the wealth and fame that Bell craves, and he needs Ellen to speak up. But Ellen has a different story to tell: of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in the name of ambition and personal gain; and of how he cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. Ellen knows she must tell her story, but those around her would rather she retain her silence.

THE LAND IN WINTER Andrew Miller (Sceptre)

It is the winter of 1962 in the West Country, and in an old asylum, a young man opens a bottle of sleeping pills in the dark. Close by, two couples begin their day: local doctor Eric Parry gets an early start on his rounds while his pregnant wife sleeps on; and, over the fields, Rita sleeps on in her cold farmhouse, dreaming of her past life, as her husband – trying to forget any past life — tends to the dairy farm he has bought in an effort to reinvent himself. The two marriages are wildly different, each is loving in its own way. But when the harshest winter in living memory hits – seasonal cold giving way to violent blizzards – each couple is suddenly a prisoner in their own domestic bubble, and each must try to navigate a shrunken world in which they cannot leave home and cannot escape the frozen land around them.

MUNICHS David Peace (Faber)

On 6th February 1958 the young Manchester United team – the Busby Babes – attempted to take off from a snowy Munich Airport, along with the journalists travelling with the celebrated team. The British European Airways Flight 609 skidded off the runway and crashed, leaving 21 declared dead on impact, 4 fighting for their lives and 6 critically injured. Twenty-four hours later and Assistant Manager Jimmy Murphy addressed the press at the Rechts der Isar hospital, promising that, despite the inconceivable tragedy, ‘the Red Devils would rise again.’ This is the story of how that phoenix did indeed rise: the tales of the crash survivors and the victims; of how Britain and football changed in the wake of the accident and how it did not; of what it takes to dare to hope in amongst unimaginable tragedy.

THE SAFEKEEP Yael van der Wouden (Viking)

Fifteen years on from the Second World War and Isabel has built a solitary life for herself in her late mother’s country home: routine, order and discipline are everything. But when Isabel’s brother Louis arrives unexpectedly with his new girlfriend, Eva, and announces that Eva is to stay with Isabel for the summer season, everything is upended. As the two women swelter together in the summer heat of Yael van der Wouden’s debut, Isabel’s need for control is at fever pitch, and what happens between the women will bring about a revelation that threatens to unravel everything that Isabel thought she knew.

>53 dchaikin: That's the kind of list I like! However, I'm surprised by how many have US settings, given the criteria for inclusion.

Will definitely be looking for The First Friend, and a couple of others.

Clear gets a lot of positive comments, and I’m very interested. I’ve read The Safekeep - but i have issues with it. It’s a first novel. Note that it’s not really time-period-building, but merely placed at a time where everyone is the right age. So I didn’t think of it as historical fiction.

>55 dchaikin: I read Clear last year, and liked it more than I thought I would (I usually resist books you "must" read, until long after the dust settles). It raises a lot of questions about isolation and declining communities, questions that are still current.

>54 SassyLassy: I agree: the kind of list I like, surprising number of US settings, and The First Friend.

Whoops, computer glitch

Great list! Glorious Exploits was already on my wishlist, but I'm adding The First Friend and The Book of Days.

>53 dchaikin: Interesting! The Malcolm Knox book sounds like something I might read.

More for literary Nonfiction readers

Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University are pleased to announce the 2025 shortlists for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize. The Lukas Prizes, established in 1998, honor the best in American nonfiction book writing.

The winners and finalists of the 2025 Lukas Prizes will be announced on Tuesday, March 18.

https://journalism.columbia.edu/news/lukas-shortlists-2025

2025 International Booker longlist was just released about 2 hours ago

The longlisted books are:

The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon)

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J Haveland

There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated from German by Daniel Bowles

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi

On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson

>62 dchaikin: I was just coming here to post this.

I recently bought On the Calculation of Volume I and have On a Woman’s Madness checked out from the library (for my global challenge -- the author is from Suriname). Reservoir Bitches is on my TBR after neglecting to buy it at the Brooklyn Book Festival.

>63 ELiz_M: On the Calculation of Volume I looks interesting. I’ve put it on my wish list.

My notes on the IB longlist. The only title i had of before was Solenoid. So lots to learn.

The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon
- Author: Born in Jaffa (1974?). She is Palestinian short story writer, novelist, and journalist, based in New York who works as a senior correspondent covering the United Nations for the Arabic daily al-Araby al-Jadeed.
- Original: 2014, translation 2019
- Pages 256, Audio - none, Availability: ebook and pb ~$15, My library: in use

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J Haveland
- Author: Danish. She was born in 1962 in Jutland
- Original: 2020, translation November 2024
- Pages: 160 (Septology planned. Books 1-5 are published. Book 2 is translated - 176 pages), Audio: 4:40 (book 2: 5:12) Availability: ebook ~$9, pb ~$15, My library: available

There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
- Author: French. She was born in 1984 in Saint-Benoît, Réunion - an island in the Indian Ocean.
- Original: 2022, translation October 2024
- Pages: 176, Audio: none, Availability: hard to find €15 at https://bullaunpress.com/books/theres-a-monster-behind-the-door/ , My library: unavailable

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter
- Author: A Romanian novelist, poet, short-story writer, literary critic, and essayist. He was born in 1956 in Bucharest
- Original: 2015, translation November 2022
- Pages: 672, Audio: 34:04, Availability: ebook ~$13, pb ~$14, My library: available

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches - not in library
- Author: She is a Mexican author born in 1985 in Aguascalientes
- Original (?) & translation 2024
- Pages: 193, Audio: none, Availability: ebook ~$10, pb ~$16, My library: unavailable

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson
- Author: He is French author born in 1969 in Paris
- Original ??, translation April 2025
- Pages: 160, Audio: none, Availability: May 5 in the UK only £12, My library: unavailable

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton
- Author: She is a Japanese author born in 1979 Kanagawa, Japan
- Original 2023, translation March 18, 2025
- Pages: 119, Audio: 5:00, Availability: march 18 - ebook ~$10, My library: unavailable

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda
- Author: She is a Japanese author born in 1958 in Tokyo
- Original 2016, translation 2024
- Pages: 288, Audio: none, Availability: ebook $15, $18, My library: available

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated from German by Daniel Bowles
- Author: He is a Swiss author born in 1966 in Saanen, Switzerland
- Original 2021, translation October 2024
- Pages: 192, Audio: 4:16, Availability: ebook $12 pb $19, My library: available

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes
- Author: He is a Italian author born in 1984 in Rome, and lives in Berlin
- Original ??, translation Feb 2025
- Pages: 136, Audio: none, Availability: March 18 ebook $10 pb $16, My library: unavailable

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi - stories
- Author: She is a writer, activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India
- Original ??, translation April 8, 2025
- Pages: 192, Audio: none, Availability: April 8 ebook $18 pb $20, My library: unavailable

On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott
- Author: She is a Surinamese-Dutch writer and teacher born in 1947 in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname
- Original 2006, translation November 2023
- Pages: 284, Audio: none, Availability: April 8 ebook $13 pb $12, My library: unavailable

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson
- Author: She is a French writer born in Bordeaux in 1960
- Original ??, translation September 2023
- Pages: 122, Audio: none, Availability: April 8 ebook $10 pb $14, My library: unavailable

Wow. Quadruple post. I’m annoyed, but also kind of impressed. Deleting the next two

>62 dchaikin:
I don't usually follow this prize but I'm eyeing this one for the win:
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton

You guys are going to really enjoy this one when it comes out in March.

>69 lilisin: Thanks! That’s fantastic to know from your perspective.

I bought Solenoid last night. So… that’s a commitment. Hopefully i will get to a second book.

By the way, all 13 IB longlisted authors are first time nominees, and this has never happened before.

>71 dchaikin: "all 13 IB longlisted authors are first time nominees, and this has never happened before."

Except the first year of the award, right?

Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

>72 rocketjk: 🙂 I definitely feel corrected.

>62 dchaikin: Oh gosh, thanks for posting this. Surprised and pleased to see a Kannada book on the list - not a lot of Kannada language work makes it to English translation.

>74 rasdhar: a language i had never heard of before

Everybody Is Talking About A.I. What the Heck Is It, Anyway? A guide to the best books about artificial intelligence. (behind a paywall) dated 1/31/2024 lists 5 titles that are recommended reading about artificial intelligence.

The Alignment Problem, by Brian Christian Brian Christian
The problem with A.I. isn’t that it’s going to end the world, Christian says. The problem is determining how to “align” machine behavior with human values, a conundrum we have been trying and mostly failing to solve since the invention of the cotton gin.

Artificial Intelligence, by Melanie Mitchell Melanie Mitchell
"This is the Honda Civic of A.I. books; I mean that as a compliment. It’s reliable, it’s durable; it gets you where you need to go without a lot of fuss. . . after reading Mitchell’s guide, you’ll know what you don’t know and what other people don’t know, even though they claim to know it."

The Algorithm, by Hilke Schellmann Hilke Schellmann
"if you want to know the nitty-gritty of the alignment problem — how people are actually responding to it — “The Algorithm” is the best available case study." (It looks at how HR departments are using AI.)

Progressive Capitalism: how to make tech work for all of us, by Ro Khanna Ro Khanna
"Khanna, a Democrat representing California’s 17th Congressional District, offers some hints of what a serious political response to A.I. might look like." (Ardene doubts his ideas will get much traction in the next 4 years.)

AI 2041: 10 visions for our future, by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan
Lee, a Taiwanese-born, American-educated venture capitalist who is a prominent figure in China’s A.I. scene and a former president of Google China, provides the intellectual foundation for the book, but he was smart enough to join forces with a proper writer, Chen, a leading author of realistic science fiction, to articulate the visions of the future. Each chapter consists of a story by Chen followed by explanations of key concepts by Lee.

AI 2041 is the other title on this list I (Ardene) will most likely read, because I'm a science fiction fan.

ETA: Although the author's names are in double brackets, LT seems to be self referring to the titles. I'm adding authors names with no links.

ETA: Although the author's names are in double brackets, LT seems to be self referring to the titles. I'm adding authors names with no links.
I’ve had that happen to me at times and have tried to pinpoint the circumstances under which it occurs. It seems to happen when there are several touchstones in a post, but not always. I keep meaning to report it to the Bug Catcher group but. Need to get a good example.

>74 rasdhar:, >75 dchaikin: Kannada
My family lived in Mysore (Mysuru) for several months when I was a kid, and I've been back twice since. I used to know the alphabet well enough to be sure I was on the right bus. The book looks interesting.

>78 qebo: how interesting! I’ve never heard if Mysore, so glad you posted the link.

>79 dchaikin: Off topic but Mysuru has some incredible food, and a great annual literary festival.

And Loot by Tania James is a fun historical novel set during the reign of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. (posted for those who like to learn about things by reading fiction!)

Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist was released

The full list in alphabetical order by author surname is:

Good Girl by Aria Aber (published by Bloomsbury)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (published by Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette)

Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches (published by Scotland Street Press)

Amma by Saraid de Silva (published by Weatherglass Books)

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (published by Holland House Books)

All Fours by Miranda July (published by Canongate Books)

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury)

The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)

Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (published by Scribner, Simon & Schuster)

A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (published by Fig Tree, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

Birding by Rose Ruane (published by Corsair, Little, Brown Book Group, Hachette)

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (published by John Murray, John Murray Press, Hachette)

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette)

https://womensprize.com/announcing-the-2025-womens-prize-for-fiction-longlist/

I usually find several books on the Women's Prize list. I need to dig through it, but I will definitely read Dream Count (I actually pre-ordered that and it should come this week). I am also looking forward to Karen Jenning's new book after really enjoying An Island.

I'm not an Elizabeth Strout fan - I know, unpopular opinion in this group! And I saw enough "meh" reviews of The Safekeep that I'm not running to read that one. I started All Fours by Miranda July and it was not for me.

Looking forward to exploring the rest of the list and seeing what appeals!

Announcing the Finalists for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

BY STAFF | MAR 3, 2025 | AWARD NEWS

Judges have selected the five finalists for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, America’s most prestigious peer-juried literary prize. The finalists are Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda (W.W. Norton & Company), Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj (Harpervia), James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), Small Rain by Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Riverhead).

https://www.penfaulkner.org/2025/03/03/announcing-the-finalists-for-the-2025-pen...

>83 japaul22: the Karen Jennings caught my attention too. But my brain is swamped with lists. 🙂 I’m going to try to make some progress on the International Booker longlist

>65 dchaikin: A big thank you for this list. It’s saved me a lot of searching.
So far I’ve read two of the four available in audio
- On the Calculation of Volume, Book I which I’ve reviewed and
Eurotrash - a surprisingly beautiful novel I’ve yet to review.
I have Solenoid on hold ant NYPL and will buy Hunchback when it’s released on audio later this month.

>86 kjuliff: I’m hoping to get to all four of those. I have started On the Calculation of Volume. I opened Eurotrash last night, but found it a bit - something i need to adapt to. I appreciate knowing your response!

>82 dchaikin: Thanks for posting this. I'm reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley right now. It starts very strong but I don't know how it will pay out. I'm interested in Amma by Saraid De Silva as well, as it is set in Singapore in part.

Finalists for the 2024 Nebula Awards were announced here March 12. I'm listing candidates for best novel. Follow the link above for other categories.

Nebula Award for Novel published in 2024

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, Yaroslav Barsukov (Caezik SF & Fantasy)
Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom)
A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra UK)
Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK)

ETA: I started Rakesfall earlier this year and loved it, but it wasn't a fast read for me. I'll have to give it another try.

The Climate Fiction Prize inaugural shortlist had been announced:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
And So I Roar by Abi Daré
Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (
The Morningside by Téa Obreht

The Longlist was announced on 20 November 2024. The 4 that did not make it to the shortlist are:
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
Water Baby by Chioma Okereke
Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Shortlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, which is awarded annually to "exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under"

Rapture's Road by Seán Hewitt (Jonathon Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House) – poetry collection (UK/Ireland)
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree, Penguin Random House) – novel (Ireland)
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking, Penguin Random House UK) – novel (The Netherlands)
I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson (Faber & Faber) – novel (UK)
Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams (4th Estate) – short story collection (UK)
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (Footnote Press) – novel (Palestine)

https://www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office/news-events/news/2025/03/swansea-universi...

I've had my eye on Ferdia Lennon's Glorious Exploits already, but looking forward to Rapture's Road as well.

>41 rasdhar: The American National Book Critics Circle awards were revealed tonight. My Friends by Hirsham Matar won the fiction category

Full list here: https://lithub.com/here-are-the-winners-of-this-years-national-book-critics-circ...

>93 dchaikin: I read Challenger, the nonfiction winner. It was quite good, if rather detailed.

PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

To a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.

longlist:

Dead in Long Beach, California, Venita Blackburn (MCD)
With My Back to the World: Poems, Victoria Chang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, Jason de Léon (Viking)
James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
All Fours, Miranda July (Riverhead Books)
On Freedom, Timothy Snyder (Crown)
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, Wright Thompson (Penguin Press)

PEN Translation Prize

For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English.

longlist:

Selamlik, Khaled Alesmael
Translated from Arabic by Leri Price (World Editions)

Planes Flying Over a Monster, Daniel Saldaña
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman (Catapult)

Verdigris, Michele Mari
Translated from Italian by Brian Robert Moore (And Other Stories)

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books)

The Tale of a Wall, Nasser Abu Srour
Translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren (Other Press)

The Book Against Death, Elias Canetti
Translated from German by Peter Filkins (New Directions)

Banana King Ngôo Tsín-suī, Wang-Tai Lee
Translated from Mandarin, Hoklo, and Japanese by Timothy Smith (Shadelandhouse Modern Press)

Fragments of a Paradise, Jean Giono
Translated from French by Paul Eprile (Archipelago)

I Talk About It All the Time, Camara Lundestad Joof
Translated from Norwegian by Olivia Noble Gunn (University of Wisconsin Press)

Great Fear on the Mountain, Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
Translated from French by Bill Johnston (Archipelago)

The International Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist

On the Calculation of Volume I
Solvej Balle
Translated from Danish by Barbara J Haveland

Small Boat
Vincent Delecroix
Translated from French by Helen Stevensor

Under the Eye of the Big Bird
Hiromi Kawakami
Translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda

Perfection
Vincenzo Latronico
Translated from ltalian by Sophie Hughes

Heart Lamp
Banu Mushtaq
Translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi.

A Leopard-Skin Hat
Anne Serre
Translated from French by Mark Hutchinson

I’ve read On the Calculation of Volume, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird. I enjoyed both. Calculation thinks internally, Big Bird is a sort of post-apocalypse dystopia, but not exactly.

I have found that my Booker Club readers find Small Boat political and interesting, Perfection nice but light, Heart Lamp awkward or marmite-ish, and A Leopard-Skin Hat overly complicated but intriguing.

>97 dchaikin: I’m disappointed that Eurotrash didn’t make it. On the Calculation of Volume - hmmm. I’ll be interested in reading why.

>98 kjuliff: I’m surprised Solenoid and Hunchback didn’t make it. Both are well liked and Solenoid, which I’m halfway through, is an experience.

>99 dchaikin: I haven’t read either of those but was about to start Solenoid. I had it on hold whith a 16 week wait, and suddenly on Tuesday evening it became available. Guess a lot of people decided to give it a miss when it didn’t h make the top four. I decided to read it later as it sounds interesting.

>100 kjuliff: you might love it. I’m curious how audio handles it

The Stella Prize shortlist

> The Stella prize celebrates “original, excellent and engaging” fiction, nonfiction and poetry by Australian women and non-binary writers. The winner takes home $60,000, with each of the shortlisted writers receiving $4,000.

I pulled book descriptions from here: https://www.womensweekly.com.au/news/books/nominees-stella-prize-2025/

Black Convicts by Santilla Chingaipe (non-fiction)
Even on the First Fleet, 15 convicts were of African descent. Furthermore, by 1840, there were almost 500 Black convicts living in the colony. Filmmaker, historian and author Santilla Chingaipe uncovers this long-neglected aspect of Australia’s history.

Black Witness by Amy McQuire (non-fiction)
A searing collection of essays by renowned Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist and academic, Amy McQuire, criticising the colonial nature of the Australian media and furthermore calling for the elevation of Black voices, Black perspectives, Black stories and truth.

Cactus Pear For My Beloved by Samah Sabawi (non-fiction)
A love of family, country and also a deep respect for humanity are cornerstones of Cactus Pear For My Beloved. Samal Sabawi tells the courageous, heartfelt story of her family across generations, leading to her parents’ flight from their Palestinian homeland to make a new life in Queensland.

The Burrow by Melanie Cheng (fiction)
Set during the pandemic, this tale of unimaginable grief, hope and healing begins when a rabbit is adopted as a pet in an inner city share house. The Burrow has also been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award and the ABIA Small Publisher’s Adult Book of the Year.

Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (fiction)
From the author of the Miles Franklin winning Questions of Travel and The Life to Come, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory and Practice plays with the limits of what a novel can be, while exploring a relationship that is similarly pushing boundaries in bohemian St Kilda in 1986.

Translations by Jumaana Abdu (fiction)
A mother and her nine-year-old daughter move west, escaping past tragedy and building a new life in rural NSW. It is a beautiful, engrossing, thoughtful book about friendship, trauma, identity and also community. This is Jumaana Abdu’s debut novel.

>102 rasdhar: Thanks, Rasdhar. That's a very interesting shortlist.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 Shortlist, including judges' citations for each book
https://www.walterscottprize.co.uk/2025-shortlist-announced-from-abbotsford/

THE HEART IN WINTER by Kevin Barry (Canongate)
It’s 1891 in Butte Montana and miners are luring brides out from the east by mail. Tom Rourke, an addict, too soft for the mines, too weak to return to his painful past, stumbles upon Polly Gillespie, another man’s wife. She has “eyes of wren’s-egg blue and one inclined to say hello to the other but not unattractively.” When these two flawed characters meet, an epic love story unfolds. Woven from humour, poetry, emotion and sheer brio, Kevin Barry’s palpable delight in language, in life, in his lovers, sweeps us along on their own wild ride, showing rather than telling how it feels to live wholly, love wholly and wholly surrender to being what one is – at least until fate catches up.

THE MARE by Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press)
Good and evil, truth and lies, remembering and forgetting are themes explored in this harrowing novel. We are introduced to Hermine, a young Austrian woman, working in an idyllic lakeside hotel. There she meets Russell, a former American serviceman. They marry, move to the States and for many years lead a bland and blameless suburban life. But a journalist’s knock forces the couple to face Hermine’s horrific past as a particularly cruel concentration camp commandant. Can love survive such revelations? Is it right or possible to forgive? Do we not all tell ourselves lies to reshape our pasts and make the present bearable?

THE BOOK OF DAYS by Francesca Kay (Swift Press)
A quiet book set in unstable times requires particular writerly skills and Francesca Kay displays them in full. Carefully, meticulously, beautifully, she draws us into the entire world of the young wife of a dying husband, his main concern the fate of his immortal soul. Henry VIII, that religious wrecking-ball, is dying, so immortal souls are political as well as personal, and the building of a chantry, evoked by Kay with such skill you can see it, smell it, marvel at it, drives the narrative tension with expert control. But that’s not all. Like a medieval Book of Hours, in her Book of Days Kay intertwines the natural seasons with the liturgical year so the two are braided together like an illuminated manuscript. The Book of Days may be a quiet book, but it shines.

GLORIOUS EXPLOITS by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
The year is 412 BC, and Athens’s invasion of Syracuse has ended disastrously. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are left starving and hopeless in the island’s quarries, doomed to die as prisoners. Enter the parochial Lampo and his melancholy friend Gelon, two local potters with “barely two obols to rub together” and a dream: a performance of Euripides’s Medea staged in their local quarry, with the defeated Athenians as players. Could this be the prisoners’ unlikely form of salvation, or will it only lead to tragedy for all involved? Told in the author’s Dublin accent – which captures the relationship between Syracuse and Athens to great effect – Glorious Exploits is at once witty, bold, heartbreaking and profound. An extreme case of how we can love the art but hate the artist, Ferdia Lennon’s debut novel is an examination of culture in times of conflict, and the perils of human nature.

THE LAND IN WINTER by Andrew Miller (Sceptre)
The Great Freeze during the winter of 1962/3 is the setting for this fine book by Andrew Miller. Two couples, hemmed in by the snow in their rural cottages, are put to the test by isolation and the challenges set by the relentless cold. The inner world of each of the four characters is dissected in memorably fine writing with Miller’s characteristic delicacy. The doctor has secrets he is desperate to hide while his wife nurtures her first pregnancy. The farmer pursues an impossible dream for the future of his farm, while his wife huddles by the stove in their freezing cottage, tormented by voices from her past. Like all powerful historical fiction, THE LAND IN WINTER speaks of today as well as of the past. The challenges of isolation are still all too real to us, as lockdown memories remain fresh in our minds.

THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden (Viking)
Set in rural Holland, fifteen years after the end of WWII, The Safekeep is a novel of historical interiors, both literal and emotional. Its prickly heroine, Isabel, lives a tense, ordered life in her late mother’s house, obsessively guarding the treasured objects within. Into this determined quiet arrives Eva, girlfriend of Isa’s elder brother Louis, to spend a month which feels, to the reluctant hostess, like a lifetime, the pressure of sharing her space, unbearable. Van der Wouden’s exquisite, precise, edgy writing thrums with long supressed, half-understood truths, leading to devastating emotional and sexual discovery. The pantheon of post-war novels is large, but she has found new space and a raw intensity in the seemingly everyday.

The Atlantic has published a list of what they call 'the most consequential' American poetry collections of the past 25 years. I'll admit to being not very well versed in American poetry. But I was very pleased to see Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem there, which I really enjoyed, as well as Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic. At numbers 2 and 1 on the list are American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes and Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, which I also read and thought were very powerful. I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of the list.

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/03/best-american-poetry-21st-cent...

>105 rasdhar: Cool! Thanks for posting that.

>105 rasdhar: fascinating list. Thanks!

Indigenous Pacific Islander Authors included in Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures

Audrey Brown-Pereira - Cook Islands
Vilsoni Hereniko - Fiji
Katerina Teaiwa - Fiji
Daren Kamali - Fiji/NZ
Moetai Brotherson - French Polynesia
Chantal T. Spitz - French Polynesia
Déwé Gorodé - New Caledonia
Flora Devatine - Tahiti
Evelyn Flores - Guam
Arielle Taitano Lowe - Guam
Peter R. Onedera - Guam
Craig Santos Perez - Guam
Lehua M. Taitano - Guam
Emelihter Kihleng - Guam
Teweiariki Teaero - Kiribati
Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa - Kiribati
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner - Marshall Islands
Hermana Ramarui - Palau
John Kasaipwalova - Papua New Guinea
Steven Winduo - Papua New Guinea
Sia Figiel - Samoa
Albert Wendt - Samoa
Jully Makini - Solomon Island
Konai Helu Thaman - Tonga
Epeli Hau'ofa - Tonga/Fiji
Grace Mera Molisa - Vanuatu
Bonnie Etherington - NZ/West Papua (Indonesia)
John Waromi - West Papua (Indonesia)

Many of the authors are significantly associated with multiple islands/countries, but the ones above seem to the primary location emphasized in the mini bios.

>108 ELiz_M: Thank you for this list: that is a fantastic resource. Déwé Gorodé is the only author I've read out of all those names...

>109 Dilara86: I also want to get ahold of Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia, but worldcat only shows it held by university libraries.

>108 ELiz_M: Wow, thanks for the list. I haven't read much from this region, so I'm saving it for future reference.

The Mystery Writers' Association has announced the 2025 Edgar Allen Poe awards for mystery fiction. The full list is here: https://edgarawards.com/

Best Novel:
Winner - The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell
Shortlist:
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
Rough Trade by Katrina Carrasco
Things Don’t Break on Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins
My Favorite Scar by Nicolás Ferraro
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Of these, I've read The Tainted Cup which is excellent and recommended.

The Oxford Weidenfeld Prize for Translation has released their 2025 longlist. The prize is awarded to book length translations to English from any European language. Some interesting choices. https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/the-oxford-weidenfeld-prize

Erminia Dell’Oro, Abandonment (Heloise) translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
Mariana Enríquez, A Sunny Place for Shady People (Granta) translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Megan McDowell
Lale Gül, I Will Live (Virago) translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
Balsam Karam, The Singularity (Fitzcarraldo) translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Andrey Kurkov, The Silver Bone (MacLehose) translated from the Ukrainian by Boris Dralyuk
Sara Mesa, Un Amor (Peirene) translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore
Claudia Piñeiro, Time of the Flies (Charco) translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Frances Riddle
Susanna Rafart, Chrysalis, Pastoral in B Minor (Fum d’Estampa) translated from the Catalan by Megan Berkobien and María Cristina Hall
Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favourite (Faber) translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison
Adèle Rosenfeld, Jellyfish Have No Ears (MacLehose) translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Ulrike Almut Sandig, Shining Sheep (Seagull) translated from the German by Karen Leeder
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Silence of the Choir (Europa) translated from the French (Senegal) by Alison Anderson
Krzysztof Siwczyk, A Calligraphy of Days (Seagull Books) translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk and Alice-Catherine Carls
Slobodan Šnajder, The Brass Age (Mountain Leopard) translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Your Absence is Darkness (MacLehose) translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton
Alejandro Zambra, Childish Literature (Fitzcarraldo) translated from the Spanish (Chile) by Megan McDowell

---

The only one on this list that I've personally read is The Silver Bone by Andrei Kurkov, which I really enjoyed: a murder mystery set in 1919 Ukraine, which is really more a meditation about living during war. The Silence of the Choir, which is Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's book about African refugees in rural Sicily, is on my list, as is Adele Rosenfeld's Jellyfish Have No Ears which is about a young woman awaiting a cochlear implant. I'm also interested in A Sunny Place for Shady People. All in all, a very rich list.

>113 rasdhar: I’m interested in Claudia Piñeiro’s Time of the Flies - I’ve read here Elena Sabe which remains one of my memorable books. I reviewed it earlier this year I think. If I could get this one on audio it would be on top of my TBR list.
Great list. Thanks. I’ll check through it for audio versions.

>113 rasdhar: I just noticed Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favourite on the list which is in my library. I started it but it was too dark for me. I had high hopes for it as I’d read their earlier The Discomfort of Evening which won the 2020 international Booker, and which I thought was exceptional.

>104 rasdhar: Michelle de Kretser's Theory & Practice won the Stella Prize. Her acceptance speech is here: https://stella.org.au/2025/05/michelle-de-kretsers-2025-acceptance-speech/

>116 rasdhar: i own this. I was already excited to read it

The Dublin Literary Award 2025 went to Michael Crummey's The Adversary. Crummey is one of my favourite authors, and I'm currently reading the book, so I'm very happy about it.

The remaining shortlist was:
James by Percival Everett
North Woods by Daniel Mason
Not a River by Selva Almada translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
We Are Light by Gerda Blues translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison

The award "honours excellence in world literature since 1996". It's worth €100,000 if originally in English. It the work has been translated into English, the author receives €75,000 and the translator €25,000. Nominations come from invited public libraries around the world. Crummey's nomination came from Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries.

Past winners here: https://dublinliteraryaward.ie/the-library/books/

>118 SassyLassy: I keep meaning to read something by Michael Crummey. Galore has caught my eye.

>118 SassyLassy: i haven’t read him yet. Congrats to him. Sounds terrific

I'm reading The Balkan Trilogy and the Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning this year, and it has me thinking about how much I enjoy reading a series or multi-volume novel over the course of a year. I'm going to try to come up with a list and I'd love some help. I think I'd like to avoid mystery series since that's sort of a unique series genre. Here's what I've come up with - some that I've read, some that I haven't. I know it's a weird mix of classics and historical fiction . . .

*Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning
*Remembrance of Time Past by Proust
*Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson
Ibis Trilogy by Amitov Ghosh
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
*Barsetshire Series by Trollope
*Palliser Series by Trollope
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
*The Cazalets by Elizabeth Jane Howard
*Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel
*Lucia and Mapp by E.F. Benson
*The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
Strangers and Brothers by C.P. Snow
*Les Rougon-Macquart by Zola
*The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
*Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson
U.S.A by John Dos Passos
The Tale of Genji
Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Perez-Galdos
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis
*Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
*The Barrøy Chronicles by Roy Jacobsen
*Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Pentagonia by Reinaldo Arenas
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
*Old Filth by Jane Gardam
The Three Musketeers by Dumas
*La Reine Margot series by Dumas
Lonesome Dove quartet by Larry McMurtry
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演) by Luo Guanzhong
Journey to the West (西遊記) by Wu Cheng'en
The Water Margin （水浒传）by Shi Nai'an
Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) by Cao Xueqin
*Robertson Davies
Tales of the City by Armisted Maupin
Pramoedya Ananta Toer - The Buru Quartet
* Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name , Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child)
* Chinua Achebe - The African Trilogy - (Things Fall Apart; Arrow of God; No Longer at Ease)
Naguib Mahfouz - The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street
Yukio Mishima - The Sea of Fertility quartet
My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard
*Margaret Laurence
*Louise Erdrich
Iremonger Trilogy by Edward Carey
*Regeneration by Pat Barker
*Blue Sky Trilogy by Galsan Tschinag
Bangladesh Trilogy by Tahmima Anam
*Empire Trilogy by J. G. Farrell
Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
*Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

*series I've read or am in process of reading

>121 japaul22: I've been enjoying C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. Although the first two novels were a little slow, the rest, about English middle- to upper-class life from the 1930s through the 1980s, have been quite good. The two novels dealing with WW2 were exceptionally enjoyable, and The Masters, about life and rivalries within the world of English academia, is also excellent.

There's a group reading through Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series. I've read the first book in the series and liked it a lot.

You've already got the Mapp and Lucia books on your list. Those books are a hoot.

>122 rocketjk: I'm in that group reading Zola! Can't believe I forgot to add it . . .
I've added Zola and Strangers and Brothers, thanks!

>121 japaul22: Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl thoroughly enjoyable book set in 1968 NYC with flashbacks/memories of childhood in East Germany. Written as entries for each day sometimes it moves the story forward sometimes it is from the point of view of The New York Times.

Another collage long novel/trilogy: U.S.A.

I loved The Tale of Genji, which is episodic enough that reading it over three months felt like investing in a watch of a several-season-long sitcom.

I have two of three books from Stalingrad Trilogy by Vasily Grossman on my physical TBR.

I forgot, have you already read The Forsyte Saga?

I really enjoyed Fortunata and Jacinta and The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll.

>124 ELiz_M: thanks I've added these. I read Anniversaries and The Forsyte Saga, but I haven't read the rest.

>121 japaul22: This makes me think of so many series from childhood (Swallows and Amazons anyone?), but for your adult self, series not mentioned above:

Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel
Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset - get the right translation - Tina Nunnally
The Barrøy Chronicles Roy Jacobsen 4 books
Pentagonia by Reinaldo Arenas 5 books
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute evolved into four novels

I think I remember you reading some of these suggestions. Great list you've made above.

Edited to Add:

Old Filth by Jane Gardam a trilogy

>126 SassyLassy: Yes, up there with the best:
Old Filth by Jane Gardam a trilogy

ETA
The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov

I'm enjoying all of these and seeing lots that I'd like to try!

>121 japaul22:

Definitely missing some pivotal Dumas!
The Three Musketeers trilogy by Alexandre Dumas
The Valois Romance trilogy by Alexandre Dumas, first book being La Reine Margot

Also:
The Lonesome Dove quartet by Larry McMurtry
MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood
- I definitely recommend reading the books to this one back to back as to not forget all the details in the series; also the 1st and 2nd book are repeats of each other just from different point of views so reading them close to one another helps a lot

Great muliti volume novels would be the four major Chinese classics:
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演) by Luo Guanzhong
Journey to the West (西遊記) by Wu Cheng'en
The Water Margin （水浒传）by Shi Nai'an
Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) by Cao Xueqin

>121 japaul22: There are three trilogies by Canadian novelist Robertson Davies: the Salterton trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties); the Deptford trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders); and the Cornish trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus).

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series is now up to ten volumes. He says that's all, but he's said that after every book since the sixth, so who knows?

>130 KeithChaffee: Series don’t really qualify as trilogies.

No, they don't, but the original post said "series or multi-volume novel," so I didn't think it was necessary to restrict myself to three-volume works. In fact, some of the series listed in that post are more than three volumes.

The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, The Diviners

Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Four Souls, The Painted Drum

My Struggle, books 1-6

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction , Franny and Zooey, and some of Nine Stories

>121 japaul22:

* Pramoedya Ananta Toer - The Buru Quartet
* Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name , Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child)
* Chinua Achebe - The African Trilogy - (Things Fall Apart; Arrow of God; No Longer at Ease)
* Naguib Mahfouz - The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street
* Yukio Mishima - The Sea of Fertility quartet

>132 KeithChaffee: Oh sorry, I came to topic a bit late and miss the OP. Apologies..

So many great series to explore! It's interesting that I've actually started a lot of these. Some I didn't know were connected series (like the Margaret Laurence books) and quite a few I've read the first but knew I didn't want to continue (Robertson Davies, Elena Ferrante, Gormenghast Trilogy).

Oh, how could I have forgotten the very strange Iremonger Trilogy by Edward Carey!

Wonderful idea for a list!

There's also

Regeneration by Pat Barker
Blue Sky Trilogy by Galsan Tschinag
Bangladesh Trilogy by Tahmima Anam
Empire Trilogy by J. G. Farrell
Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Sassy, you might like Tide Trilogy by Elisabeth Ogilvie

>138 labfs39: I was also going to recommend the Bangladesh Trilogy by Tahmima Anam, Lisa.

>138 labfs39: Thanks for the suggestion. Looks great and I see they have a Joe McLaren like cover too. Hmm... what does that make me think of?

I'm trying to put together a list of books that focus on one author's engagement with another author's work and life, like Pico Iyer's The Man Within My Head, which is a book about his lifelong interest in the works and life of Graham Greene, and follows him as he traces Greene's travels across the world. I'm not looking for standard biographies, but I've included Tan Twan Eng's House of Doors, which is a fictionalised account of Somerset Maugham's time in Malaysia, during which he wrote several short stories. I included this because Eng has discussed in interviews how this book was borne out of a lifelong engagement with Maugham's writing. I am a bit wary of fictionalised retellings because the quality can be very poor and sometimes, the content can be ethically suspect but if it is really well researched and sensitively told, then I am interested!

Does anyone else have ideas? I've included some more examples in the list below:

* Tan Twan Eng - House of Doors - fictionalised retelling of Somerset Maugham's life
* Pico Iyer - The Man Within My Head - on Iyer's fascination with Graham Greene, following his footsteps.
* Colm Toibin - The Master - a fictionalised account of the last few years of Henry James' life
* Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot, Arthur and George (about Flaubert and Arthur Conan Doyle, respectively)
* Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
* Rebecca Mead -My Life in Middlemarch - about her lifelong passion for George Eliot's novel Middlemarch

>141 rasdhar: I would have to research each book, but would one of Simone de Beauvoir books concerning Sartre be appropriate? Probably not as they knew each other intimately.

I immediately thought of Rebecca Mead’s book about George Eliot, which I see you listed.
Michael Gorra’s book about Faulkner is similar - The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War

Or Flaubert”s Parrot by Julian Barnes?

>143 japaul22: I thought of Flaubert’s Parrot too be see its already there,

>144 kjuliff: oh - ha! Shouldn't have thought about this so early in the morning!

I feel like I should know more of these.

>141 rasdhar: I haven't read these, but maybe:
March by Geraldine Brooks
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
The Paris Wife
Vanessa and Her Sister
The Book of Salt

>141 rasdhar: so many books talk. For example, i read Perfection last week, which is a sort of remake of Things: A Story of the Sixties by Georges Perec (1965). Would that count? Or, of course, James (and other Huck Finn explorations, like Finn - which I haven’t read). Years ago i read An Orchestra of Minorities, but only this year learned it’s a reimagining of The Odyssey. And Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is an homage to William Blake, the title a Blake quote. Each of these have numerous similar book-to-book talk that roughly “focus on one author's engagement with another author's work and life”. 🙂

>141 rasdhar: Coincidentally read back to back in the summer of 2015, two novels about well known authors, each of whom was dying on an island far from home.

The first one especially might fit:

Stevenson under the Palm Trees by Alberto Manguel in which Manguel even manages to write like Stevenson.

The other was
Firefly by Janette Jenkins in which a dyspeptic Noel Coward is facing his demise.

----
The Master was a great example.

Wow, so many suggestions! I'm very grateful to you all for contributing to this extremely specific and slightly obscure request.

>142 kjuliff: I don't see why not! I hadn't considered works by contemporaries, but this sounds good.

>143 japaul22: I hadn't heard of Michael Gorra’s book about Faulkner - thank you!

>146 ELiz_M: I came across an article listing these - most seem to be fictionalised retellings of the authors' lives, but I will look closely at whether they also engage with the author's work. I'm skipping The Paris Wife because the subject is Hadley Richardson more than Hemingway, and she wasn't a writer, but Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, and The Book of Salt look like they are perfect for this list! Thank you.

>147 dchaikin: Such wonderful suggestions. Thank you! I hadn't considered rewrites like Perfection - perhaps that might be a good separate list on its own, including Percival Everett's James.

>148 SassyLassy: These are great suggestions, thank you! I am looking up the Manguel book in particular, as I currently have another one by him on my reading list (Bride of Frankenstein).

Does it have to be a single author? If not The Possessed by Elif Batuman might fit.

FYI, from the New York Public Library website:

The New York Public Library is proud to announce that Alexander Sammartino has won the 25th annual Young Lions Fiction Award for his book Last Acts (Simon & Schuster).

This year's finalists, all available to borrow with a library card or purchase from the Library Shop, were:

'Pemi Aguda for Ghostroots
Eliza Barry Callahan for The Hearing Test
Alexander Sammartino for Last Acts
Santiago Jose Sanchez for Hombrecito
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio for Catalina

More about the award is here: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2025/06/12/announcing-winner-2025-young-lions-fiction-...

>121 japaul22: Very late to the series discussion, but I really liked the Dina Trilogy by Herbjørg Wassmo.

>152 FlorenceArt: Thank you! I really liked The House with the Blind Glass Windows, so I might give this trilogy a try.

Not sure when the list was announced, but here is the short list for the 2025 Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for fiction. I have a lot of reading to do!

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Archangels of funk by Andrea Hairston
Blackheart man by Nalo Hopkinson
The sapling cage by Margaret Killjoy
The west passage by Jared Pechaček
Remember, you will die by Eden Robins
The city in glass by Nghi Vo
North continent ribbon by Ursula Whitcher

>154 markon: Oh wow. The only one already on my radar was The City in Glass. Thanks for sharing, I'm looking forward to reading these.

Since we are discussing TBRs on another thread, here's 249 - two hundred and forty-nine! - new books coming out in the latter half of this year for you to check out.

Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025, Part Two
https://lithub.com/lit-hubs-most-anticipated-books-of-2025-part-two

On one hand, I do enjoy browsing these lists. On the other hand, though, I wonder if some curation might have been possible - the numbers are huge!

My favorite bookstore is more than a bookstore, among other things they have a prize.

The Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize Longlist:
Good Girl By Aria Aber
Crown By Evanthia Bromiley
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh By Colwill Brown
Dominion By Addie E. Citchens
Pan By Michael Clune
Songs of No Provenance By Lydi Conklin
The Catch By Yrsa Daley-Ward
This Is the Only Kingdom By Jaquira Díaz
The Correspondent By Virginia Evans
If the Dead Belong Here By Carson Faust
The Devil Three Times By Rickey Fayne
Sky Daddy By Kate Folk
Circular Motion By Alex Foster
Great Black Hope By Rob Franklin
Mayra By Nicky Gonzalez
The Snares By Rav Grewal-Kök
Ibis By Justin Haynes
Loca By Alejandro Heredia
The Fantasies of Future Things By Doug Jones
Sleep By Honor Jones
Natch By Darrell Kinsey
Awake in the Floating City By Susanna Kwan
Behind the Waterline By Kionna Walker LeMalle
Florenzer By Phil Melanson
Work Nights By Erica Peplin
Liquid By Mariam Rahmani
North Sun By Ethan Rutherford
Woodworking By Emily St. James
Optional Practical Training By Shubha Sunder

>156 rasdhar: i’m not ready!

>157 ELiz_M: cool!!

Booker Prize longlist will announced at 2 pm London time

Longlist 2025

Love Forms by Claire Adam
The South by Tash Aw
Universality by Natasha Brown
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
Flashlight by Susan Choi
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
Endling by Maria Reva
Flesh by David Szalay
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

No Theft by Gurnah, Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser, Sarah Hall’s Helm, Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Amity by Nathan Harris, Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood or What We Can Know by Ian McEwan or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count … to name a few prediction favorites

I want to read Tash Aw's The south, but my library doesn't own it yet. I'm going to give Maria Reva's Endling a try.

I want to read Tash Aw's The south, but my library doesn't own it yet. I'm going to give Maria Reva's \Endling a try.

A random selection of books about sisters (mostly written by women):

Bear
Blue Sisters
Bunner Sisters
The Color Purple
Hello Beautiful
Housekeeping
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Like Water for Chocalate
Little Women
The Makioka Sisters*
My Sister, the Serial Killer
Once There Were Wolves
The Poisonwood Bible
Sense and Sensibility
Sisters
A Thousand Acres
Vanessa and Her Sister
The Vanishing Half
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Wise Children

The only work with a female Asian author I could think of is Jenny Han, but I was hoping to find non-YA titles to add to the list above. So, what am I missing? Amy Tan must have something....

Atonement?
A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates (3.5*)
The Brontës went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson (DNF)
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (4*)
The Hundred Secret Senses
I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits (4*)
Into the Forest by Jean Hegland (4*)
A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (4*)
A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri (3.5*)
Three daughters by Letty Cottin Pogrebin (3*)

Nonfiction:
The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels (4*)
Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home (unread)

>164 ELiz_M: and >165 labfs39:

Love these! Endling, which I just finished, has a sister element. By i probably wouldn’t add it to the lists. And i also just read Bunner Sisters, which is terrific. (No “The” in Bunner Sisters, a perhaps pointed authorial decision).

Katharine Weber's The Little Women is about sisters; the title's allusion to Alcott is deliberate, and there are additional pleasures to be derived from the book if you've read Alcott, but the Weber stands well on its own even if you haven't.

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

>168 kjuliff: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is special. Enjoy!

Popping in to post the Cundhill History Prize longlist :
https://www.cundillprize.com/news/the-2025-cundill-history-prize-longlist

Manan Ahmed Asif – Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore (The New Press)
Emily Callaci – Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Allen Lane)
Kornel Chang – A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation (The Belknap Press of Harvard University)
Santilla Chingaipe – Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia (Scribner Australia, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)
Marlene L. Daut – The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf)
Jonathan Gienapp – Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (Yale University Press)
Greg Grandin – America, América: A New History of the New World (Penguin Press)
Tiya Miles – Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press)
Benjamin Nathans – To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press) Josephine Quinn – How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History (Random House)
Seth Rockman – Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (University of Chicago Press)
Lyndal Roper – Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (John Murray Press)
Sophia Rosenfeld – The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life (Princeton University Press)
Martha A. Sandweiss – The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West (Princeton University Press)
Sanjay Subrahmanyam – Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440–1640 (Saqi Books)

>170 rasdhar: Those all sound so good!

>170 rasdhar: Thanks for posting this longlist, Rasdhar. I bought a copy of America, América: A New History of the New World a few weeks ago — it's a door stopper! — and I may start it as soon as this week.

>170 rasdhar: Several interesting titles there. Thanks for posting.

I know this is a bit niche, and not for everyone here, but the Indian government has just banned a list of 25 titles relating to the region of Kashmir, which has been a site of contestation between India, Pakistan, and now China for decades. It is also a region that has witnessed continuous brutality against its citizens, in addition to countless terror attacks. The Indian government says these titles "“have been identified that propagate false narrative and secessionism”. One of them is a book by Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy. Several are academic titles from qualified scholars, published by Yale, Harvard, and Oxford University Presses. I personally think it's a pretty well-curated list of titles that give you a variety of perspectives on Kashmir. So I'm linking a list of the books with descriptions here: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/arundhati-roy-noorani-jk-bans-publicatio...

Some titles on the list:

Azadi (Freedom) by Arundhati Roy (Penguin)
The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012 by A G Noorani (Oxford University Press)
Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka By Sumantra Bose (Harvard University Press)
Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of Belonging along Kashmir's Frontier by Radhika Gupta (Cambridge University Press)
Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict by Sumantra Bose (Yale University Press)
Between Democracy and Nation Gender and Militarization in Kashmir By Seema Kazi (Women Unlimited)
A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 by Anuradha Bhasin (Harper Collins)
Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir by Ather Zia (University of Washington Press)
In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir by David Davidas (Penguin)
Confronting terrorism by Maroof Raza (Penguin)
Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War - Victoria Schofield (Tauris)

https://apnews.com/article/kashmir-india-books-banned-conflict-e055a43becd240ea3...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/india-bans-books-jammu-kashmir-aru...

>174 rasdhar: Seems that freedom of speech is regressing everywhere. Thanks for the list. I read one book by Arundhati Roy and loved it. The others may not be suitable to my level of ignorance, unfortunately.

>175 FlorenceArt: I'm not planning on reading any of these either (I've read two already and don't want to go any further) but I think the best response to bookbans is to counter suppression by spreading as much news as possible about those books everywhere. Hopefully the Streisand effect takes place and this makes a series of somewhat obscure academic texts more popular than ever.

>174 rasdhar: of all book bans, this one seems a particularly helpful guide for the curious reader

>174 rasdhar: of all book bans, this one seems a particularly helpful guide for the curious reader

>174 rasdhar: Thanks for the information about banning and the list. It's time for me to update myself on the region.

Authors attending the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sep 21, in person, that I am interested in seeing:

Amy Bloom
Susan Choi
S. A. Cosby
Marlon James
Stephen Graham Jones
Katie Kitamura
Celia Laskey
Eimear McBride
Sigrid Nunez
Pádraig Ó Tuama
Joyce Carol Oates
Nnedi Okorafor
Việt Thanh Nguyễn
Madeleine Thien
Jeremy Tiang
Weike Wang
Shuāng-Zǐ Yáng

(There will also be day of virtual events on Sep 14th.)

>180 ELiz_M: wow. Fantastic!

Choi and Kitamura are on the Booker longlist. Marlon James is a Booker winner. Madeliene Thien’s new book, The Book of Records is getting great feedback. To name a few…

>180 ELiz_M: Wow! That's a great line up. Thanks for mentioning the day of virtual events. That reminds me; I should check to see if videos of author interviews from this month's Edinburgh International Book Festival will be available on its website.

>180 ELiz_M: That's a great list. Jeremy Tiang has done some great translations in the last few years.

>180 ELiz_M: i’d love to be at the physical event, but I’ll certainly be at the virtual one. Thanks for letting us know..

This webpage features links to several award shortlists:
https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/longlists-for-2025-brooklyn-public-library-...

Included are
Longlists for Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize
Shortlists for Canada’s Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature and
Australia’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

>185 rocketjk: the links are nice!

A selection of mystery stories/novels published in the 1800s:

The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings by L.T. Meade, 1898
The Dead Letter by Metta Fuller Victor, 1866
The Dorrington Deed-Box by Arthur Morrison, 1897
The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, 1894
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester, 1864
Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low by H. Heron, 1899
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, 1862
The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green, 1877
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allen, 1899
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, 1841
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume, 1886
The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams, 1862
Pauline's Passion and Punishment by Louisa May Alcott, 1862
A Prince of Swindlers by Guy Boothby, 1897
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung, 1898
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887
The Widow Lerouge by Émile Gaboriau, 1863
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 1859

>187 ELiz_M: fantastic!!

>121 japaul22: I have a series collection called the sinai tapestry I remember when I read it in college it blew my mind but I haven't heard anything much about it since Wondered if anybody else did

>187 ELiz_M: Wow! The only ones I've read are Collins and Doyle. I didn't know Louisa May Alcott wrote a mystery! Looking for a copy now. Thanks for posting this.

>189 cindydavid4: that trilogy looks good, Cindy, and I had never heard of it!

>190 rasdhar: It might be a list of "mystery" stories (some more melodrama or thriller) but i couldn't resist adding LMA when I saw it referenced.

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction 2025 Longlist:

Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016 (Tom McTague, Picador)
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief (Richard Holmes, HarperCollins)
Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World (Justin Marozzi, Allen Lane)
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins (Barbara Demick, Text)
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark (Frances Wilson, Bloomsbury Circus)
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan (Lyse Doucet, Hutchinson Heinemann)
How to End a Story: Collected Diaries (Helen Garner, Text)
John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs (Ian Leslie, Faber Nonfiction)
The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940-1945 (Adam LeBor, Apollo)
Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe (Adam Weymouth, Hutchinson Heinemann)
The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s (Jason Burke, Bodley Head)
Things in Nature Merely Grow (Yiyun Li, Fourth Estate).

As an aside, I find it deeply annoying that the Baillie Gifford website chooses to have the longlist announced as a video and a photograph of the books. Can they not merely post a list? I hope this trend does not pick up. I refuse to sit through a video for information I could glean in a few seconds by reading.

>193 rasdhar: i so agree with your aside. So easy to just add a text list everyone can copy. But, fascinating list.

2025 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:

Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume Book III
Translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
New Directions Publishing

Jazmina Barrera, The Queen of Swords
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Two Lines Press

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
New Directions Publishing

Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
New Vessel Press

Saou Ichikawa, Hunchback
Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel
Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Yale University Press

Han Kang, We Do Not Part
Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Mohamed Kheir, Sleep Phase
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines Press

Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection
Translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
New York Review Books

Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
Seven Stories Press

>195 ELiz_M: such an enticing list this year

>195 ELiz_M: I'm currently reading The Remembered Soldier. I'm only 1/3 of the way through (it's quite hefty), but it's very well written, and the translation is smooth. Have you read any of these yet?

National Book Award longlists - except no fiction yet: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/2025-national-book-awards-longlist?f...

NBA longlists

Nonfiction
- Omar El Akkad, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”
Knopf / Penguin Random House
- Caleb Gayle, “Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State ”
Riverhead / Penguin Random House
- Julia Ioffe, “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy”
 Ecco / HarperCollins
- Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, “For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising”
Pantheon / Penguin Random House
- Yiyun Li, “Things in Nature Merely Grow”
 Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Macmillan
- Lana Lin, “The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam”
 Dorothy
- Ben Ratliff, “Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening”
 Graywolf
- Claudia Rowe, “Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care”
 Abrams
- Jordan Thomas, “When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World”
Riverhead / Penguin Random House
- Helen Whybrow, “The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life”
 Milkweed Editions

Poetry

- Gbenga Adesina, “Death Does Not End at the Sea”
University of Nebraska
- Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “The New Economy”
Copper Canyon
- Cathy Linh Che, “Becoming Ghost”
Washington Square / Simon & Schuster
- Tiana Clark, “Scorched Earth”
Washington Square / Simon & Schuster
- Rickey Laurentiis, “Death of the First Idea”
Knopf / Penguin Random House
- Esther Lin, “Cold Thief Place”
Alice James Books
- Natalie Shapero, “Stay Dead”
Copper Canyon
- Richard Siken, “I Do Know Some Things”
Copper Canyon
- Patricia Smith, “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems”
Scribner / Simon & Schuster
- Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, “Terror Counter”
Deep Vellum

Translated Literature

- Solvej Balle, “On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)”
 Translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
New Directions
- Jazmina Barrera, “The Queen of Swords”
 Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Two Lines
- Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, “We Are Green and Trembling”
 Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
New Directions
- Anjet Daanje, “The Remembered Soldier”
 Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
New Vessel
- Saou Ichikawa, “Hunchback”
Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton
Hogarth / Penguin Random House
- Hamid Ismailov, “We Computers: A Ghazal Novel” 
Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Yale
- Han Kang, “We Do Not Part”
Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Hogarth / Penguin Random House
- Mohamed Kheir, “Sleep Phase” 
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines
- Vincenzo Latronico, “Perfection”
 Translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
New York Review Books
- Neige Sinno, “Sad Tiger”
 Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
Seven Stories

Today Fiction:

2025 Longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:

Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
Grove Press / Grove Atlantic

Susan Choi, Flashlight
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness
Mariner Books / HarperCollins Publishers

Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Kevin Moffett, Only Son
McSweeney’s

Karen Russell, The Antidote
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther
A Strange Object / Deep Vellum Publishing

Bryan Washington, Palaver
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Joy Williams, The Pelican Child
Knopf / Penguin Random House

>200 dchaikin: I really enjoyed Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman; this is a good prompt to read something else by him.

I love lists

>202 baswood: 🙂

Tournement of Books Horror face-off:

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Shining by Stephen King
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
The Talented Mister Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Terror by Dan Simmons
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/welcome-to-the-horror-popup

Canada's Giller Prize is "awarded annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English, either originally, or in translation".

The longlist for 2025:

Other Worlds by André Alexis
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
An Astonishment of Stars (stories) by Kirti Bhadresa
The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan
Sugaring Off by Fanny Britt
Still by Joanna Cockerline
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight
Wild Life by Amanda LeDuc
We, The Kindling by Otoniya J Okot Bitek
The Road between Us by Bindu Suresh
Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
You've Changed by Ian Williams (author is a previous winner in 2019)

Shortlist to be announced in three weeks.

>205 SassyLassy: Have you read any of these yet, Sassy?

What a tournament! I've only read Dracula and Frankenstein from those lists but they are such heavy hitters and I thought, legitimately horrifying! Seems like it'll boil down to modern versus old definitions of horror, and with how modern audiences are used to more and more gore and terror, maybe those won't "hold up".

>205 SassyLassy: I'm really looking forward to Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa. I read her excellent short story collection earlier How To Pronounce Knife and loved it.

Booker Shortlst:
Flashlight Susan Choi
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny - Kiran Desai
Audition - Katie Kitamura
The Rest of our Lives - Benjamin Markovits
The Land in Winter - Andrew Miller
Flesh - David Szalay

Two history book prizes have released their shortlists:

Cundill History Prize (McGill University, Canada)

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Knopf)
A dramatic biography of Henry Christophe, the most pivotal figure of the Haitian Revolution, who rose from enslavement to become Haiti’s first and only king. Daut’s work uncovers a story of Black freedom and self-determination that reverberated across the Atlantic world.

Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper (John Murray Press/Basic Books)
Roper examines the sixteenth-century uprising that shook Europe to its core. Told through the voices of the peasants themselves, this deeply researched and vivid account captures the revolutionary spirit of one of the most significant popular movements before the French Revolution.

The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life by Sophia Rosenfeld (Princeton University Press)
Rosenfeld traces the history of personal choice over four centuries, exploring how it came to define modern ideas of freedom. Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from novels and restaurant menus to the latest scientific findings, The Age of Choice urges us to rethink the meaning of choice and its promise and limitations in modern life.

Wolfson History Prize (UK)
(Including the judges' citations on each book)

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough (Profile Books)
“Beautifully and dynamically written, this book fuses history and archaeology to offer intimate and compelling insights into the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary people in the Viking period.”

The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor (Allen Lane)
“An authoritative account of two monarchs whose power struggles, personalities and contrasting fortunes shaped the fate of medieval England, told with clarity, pace and tremendous verve.”
Multicultural Britain: A People’s History by Kieran Connell (Hurst Publishing)

Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Hannah Durkin (William Collins)
“A superb reconstruction of the lives of the survivors of the slave ship, Clotilda. This searing book conveys the survivors’ sufferings and remarkable resilience, bringing to life their personal stories in a compelling way.”

Multicultural Britain: A People’s History by Kieran Connell (Hurst Publishing)
“Original and captivating, this book is an evocative exploration of multiculturalism in Britain from the 1940s onwards, seen through the overlooked experiences of four communities.”

The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda by Andrew Fleming (Birlinn)
“An absorbing and powerful book about St Kilda, written with deft humour and human sympathy. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and social, political and religious history, it brings the island’s story to life.”

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge (Yale University Press)
“Offering fresh insight into gender and policing in Victorian Britain, this book provides an innovative exploration of the roles of women working in policing and private agencies, elegantly set alongside their fictional counterparts.”

Edit: links to prize pages
https://www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/2025-wolfson-history-prize-shortlist-anno...
https://www.cundillprize.com/news/freedom-independence-and-choice-finalists-for-...

>210 rasdhar: Very interested in The Age of Choice! Thanks for the lists.

>210 rasdhar: interested in everything there 🙂

>210 rasdhar: I might have to get a hold of Multicultural Britain, assuming that it isn't in either of the two library systems I belong to.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Longlist 2025.

The only ones I've heard of are the Han Kang, Elsa Morante, and Olga Tokarczuk novels, looking forward to learning more about the others.

Johanna Ekström and Sigrid Rausing, And the Walls Became the World All Around, translated from Swedish (Sweden) by Sigrid Rausing (Granta)
Evelyne Trouillot, Désirée Congo, translated from French (Haiti) by M.A. Salvodon (University of Virginia Press)
Fatma Aydemir, Djinns, translated from German (Germany) by Jon Cho-Polizzi (Peirene Press)
Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium, translated from Polish (Poland) by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Maylis Besserie, Francis Bacon's Nanny, translated from French (France) by Clíona Ní Ríordáin (The Lilliput Press)
María Bastarós, Hungry for What, translated from Spanish (Spain) by Kevin Gerry Dunn (Daunt Books Publishing)
Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery, translated from Italian (Italy) by Jenny McPhee (Penguin Press)
Krisztina Tóth, My Secret Life, translated from Hungarian (Hungary) by George Szirtes (Bloodaxe Books)
Kim Hyesoon, Phantom Pain Wings, translated from Korean (South Korea) by Don Mee Choi (And Other Stories)
Liliana Corobca, Too Great A Sky, translated from Romanian (Romania) by Monica Cure (Seven Stories Press UK)
Laura Wittner, Translation of the Route, translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Juana Adcock (Bloodaxe Books and Poetry Translation Centre)
Sara Mesa, Un Amor, translated from Spanish (Spain) by Katie Whittemore (Peirene Press)
Lucija Stupica, Vanishing Points, translated from Slovenian (Slovenia) by Andrej Peric (Arc Publications)
Han Kang, We Do Not Part, translated from Korean (South Korea) by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK)

>210 rasdhar: & >214 rasdhar: Thanks for posting these lists rasdhar!

How about some titles from the American History Association's prizes?

Imperial island: an alternative history of the British Empire by Charlotte Lydia Riley (Herbert Baxter Adams prize)

The first Asians in the Americas:a transpacific history by Diego Javier Luis (Jerry Bentley prize in world history)

A maritime Vietnam: from earliest times to the nineteenth century by Tana Li (Patricia Buckley Ebrey prize in East Asian history)

The fox spirit, the stone maiden, and other transgender histories from Imperial China by Matthew H. Sommer (John K. Fairbanks prize in East Asian history.)

Time offers its list of the 100 "must-read books" of the year:

https://time.com/collections/the-100-must-read-books-of-2025/

>216 KeithChaffee: I always think it's fascinating that with all the readers I follow on LT and goodreads, I've heard of so few of the "must read" books each year. I've read 4 of those and only heard of about a dozen more.

>216 KeithChaffee: Rody Doyle, a Booker Prize judge, had to read 150 books, and said only 30 were any good. 🙂 So, seventy others, at least

>215 markon: Thanks for sharing these. So many books and just not enough time. I'm very interested in The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China! I'm going to see if I can convince the university library to buy it...otherwise it might be tricky to find in Singapore. I notice the Tana Li book is one of many new ones around this subject. It's not my field but I truly think we're in a golden period for maritime history: so much good scholarship around Indian Ocean migrations has been published in the last year.

>216 KeithChaffee: My pet peeve with these 'best of 2025' lists is that they get earlier every year, it's only decent to wait until halfway through December at the least, and ideally, publish them in 2026.

>216 KeithChaffee: I looked through this list and I've only read 1 (Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito) out of 100! I think >217 japaul22: is right.

>216 KeithChaffee: I haven’t read any, and haven’t even heard of most of the authors yet, but I expect I will read the Atwood memoir and the Abdulrazak Gurnah novel at some point, and probably the new James Baldwin bio as well. And no doubt others, when hindsight has had time to show us which are ephemeral and which lasting…

>218 dchaikin:
And yet he also said "There were so many contenders, so many excellent books". Presumably 'so many' means 'just 30'.
Bearing in mind that they are only reading books published in one language, even if that is perhaps the most widely read language. I'd be interested to know what books were submitted, and what books were included in his 30.
Chatting to one book seller today, who commented they've never seen so little interest in a winner in the week after the announcement. Not helped by the fact that it's still only available in hardback.

>216 KeithChaffee: >217 japaul22: >18 kidzdoc:
Interesting that only 3 of the Booker shortlist are there (the only three from the longlist?), with the winner missing. So not a lot of agreement between Time and the Booker judges. Aside from just 2 I've read off that list (Audition, Flashlight), another 8 were already on my 'potential'/TBR lists, mainly non-fiction - 2 actually on our shelves (Sonia and Sunny, Raising Hare - read by OH).

>222 Willoyd: they have to keep all that secret. No public rejections. Interesting about Self. (Marketing department needs to get on the ball.)

>224 dchaikin: Sadly so, but can understand why. Would be fascinating though, especially to see if there was more crossover between them and Time.
Being almost 100 pages into Helm and enjoying it so much more than any of the Booker books so far, I'd be doubly interested to know what Doyle means by any good. I suspect quite a few readers might disagree.

The 2026 Tournament of Books long list is here:
https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/the-year-in-fiction-2025

Robert Drake’s selections for The gay canon: great books every gay man should read in 1998

### Part One: The Age of Inspiration

(11th-10th century в.с.E.) Unknown, 1 Samuel
800-750 B.C.E. Homer, The Iliad
750-700 B.C.E. Homer, The Odyssey
700 B.C.E. Archilochus, The Fragments
627 B.C.E. Sin-Leqi-Unninnì, Gilgamesh
400 B.C.E. Plato, The Dialogues
400 B.C.E. Xenophon, Symposium
(384-322 B.C.E.) Aristotle, Ethics
(384-322 B.C.E.) Aristotle, Poetics
(85-55 в.C.E.) Catullus, Poems
(70-19 в.C.E.) Virgil, Eclogues
(70-19 в.C.E.) Virgil, The Aeneid
(43 в.C.E.-17 с.E.) Ovid, The Metamorphoses
23-15 B.C.E. Horace, The Complete Odes and Epodes
(27-66 с.E.) Petronius, Satyrica
86-98 C.E. Martial, Epigrams
(100 C.E.) Unknown, "The Cut Sleeve"
100 C.E. Plutarch, Lives
110 C.E. Plutarch, The Dialogue on Love
(1st-2nd century C.E.) John, The Gospel

### Part Two: The Age of Enlightenment

1501-1560 Michelangelo, Poetry
(1564-1593) Christopher Marlowe, Complete Plays and Poems
1625 Francis Bacon, Essays
1782 Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom
1786 William Beckford, Vathek
(1788-1824) Lord Byron, Poetry
1841 Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
1849 Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
1851 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
1857 Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays
1869-1873 Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works
1875 Henry James, Roderick Hudson
1881 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
(1809-1892) Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems
1896 Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, Sexual Inversion
(1854-1900) Oscar Wilde, Complete Works
(1859-1936) A. E. Housman, Collected Poems
1903 published (1902 deceased) Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
1906 Mikhail Kuzmin, Selected Prose and Poetry
(1875-1955) Thomas Mann, Stories of Three Decades
1914 (1971 published; 1970 deceased) E. M. Forster, Maurice
1915 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
1918 Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose
1918 Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians
(1893-1918) Wilfred Owen, Collected Poems
1909-1922 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
1924 André Gide, Corydon
1919, 1924, 1926 Ronald Firbank, Five Novels
1928 Jean Cocteau, The White Book
1916-1933 Hart Crane, The Poems
1884-1933 (1935 published) C. P. Cavafy, Complete Poems
(1898-1936) Federico García Lorca, Selected Poems
1935, 1939 Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories
1943 Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
1944-1945 Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
1945 William Maxwell, The Folded Leaf
1945 Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
1949 Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
1949 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
1951 Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
1952 Angus Wilson, Hemlock and After
1950, 1953, 1955, 1957 William Inge, Four Plays
1956 James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
1956 J. R. Ackerley, We Think the World of You
1956 Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
1959 James Purdy, Malcolm
(1926-1966) Frank O'Hara, Collected Poems
(1902-1967) Langston Hughes, Selected Poems
1963-1967 Joe Orton, The Complete Plays
1965, 1966 Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
1967 John Rechy, Numbers
1968 Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
1969 Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
1957-1971 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Poems
(1907-1973) W. H. Auden, Collected Poems

### Part Three: The Age of Chaos

1970 Gordon Merrick, The Lord Won't Mind
1970 Michel Tournier, The Ogre
1971 William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead
1975 Umberto Saba, Ernesto
1975 Agustín Gómez-Arcos, The Carnivorous Lamb
1977 John Cheever, Falconer
1978 Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
1978 Edward Swift, Splendora
1978 1979 Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City
1979 Thomas M. Disch, On Wings of Song
1981 Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair
1981 Guy Davenport, Eclogues
1982 Charles Nelson, The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up
1985 James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover
1988 Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
1989 Paul Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir
1989 Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
1991 John Ashbery, Flow Chart
1992 Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, The Legion of Super-Heroes
1992 Robert Rodi, Fag Hag
1992-1993 Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
1993 Geoff Ryman, Was
1993 Matthew Stadler, The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee
1996 Reynolds Price, Three Gospels
1998 David Watmough, I Told You So(*)

(*) I can’t find any record of this book, which Drake refers to as the last volume of Watmough’s Chronicles of Davey Bryant series. Given the date, I wonder if Drake read it in proof and it was eventually issued under a different title: maybe it could be The Moor is Dark Beneath the Moon, published 2002.

>227 thorold: i need spend some time looking over this list.

A new prize to me has an interesting long list - The Gordon Burns Prize

The Gordon Burn Prize recognises exceptional writing which has an unconventional perspective, style or subject matter and often defies easy categorisation. It celebrates literary outliers and daring and experimental work that often speaks to broader societal issues.

The 12 books on the longlist are:

TonyInterruptor, Nicola Barker (Granta)
Deviants, Santanu Bhattacharya (Fig Tree)
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, Colwill Brown (Chatto & Windus)
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad (Canongate)
The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine (Sceptre)
Helm, Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
This Part Is Silent: A Life Between Cultures, SJ Kim (&Other Stories)
Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line, Elizabeth Lovatt (Dialogue Books)
Death of an Ordinary Man, Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape)
Endling, Maria Reva (Virago)
A Room Above a Shop, Anthony Shapland (Granta)
Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty (&Other Stories)

Note that TonyInterruptor, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, and Helm are books I’ve heard a lot about, in enticing ways. (I’ve read Endling and was smitten )

https://newwritingnorth.com/longlist-announced-for-the-gordon-burn-prize-2026/

>227 thorold: That is a good list. I am not gay but I have read quite a lot of those books in part 2

>227 thorold: Interesting and thought-provoking, in that I'm not sure why some of the titles are in the list (which probably says more about me than the list :-)) Tom Brown's Schooldays? Dead Souls?

>231 Dilara86: Yes, exactly. Apparently Gogol was gay, although that’s not reflected in the text in any obvious way, and Tom Brown’s schooldays is presented as the source document for everything that followed in the English homosocial tradition, although it has neither gay content nor a gay author.
You could question a few others too — W Somerset Maugham is another gay author who went out of his way not to put anything remotely queer into his fiction, Thoreau is only there because Drake sees his tax-strike as inspiration for Act Up! and other protest movements (a touch US-centric), Truman Capote never wrote a straighter book then In cold blood, and so on. But that kind of project would be boring if all the choices were obvious…

>227 thorold: a lot of surprises. One in absence - Shakespeare’s sonnets are missing! (Also there is Coriolanus)

>233 dchaikin: Yes, that’s just wrong. Drake mentions the sonnets when he’s talking about Wilde’s “The portrait of Mr WH”, but he’s very dismissive about them. He bizarrely suggests there that Shakespeare is writing imaginatively from the pov of a straight woman, when it would seem much more likely that he’s adopting a conventional homoerotic viewpoint based on classical models — I don’t think he is particularly interested in renaissance literature at all, he just throws in a few unavoidables like Marlowe and Michelangelo to get him over the gap between classical and 19th century.

Personally I’m not too sure about the references to Homer and Gilgamesh. Those come from cultures that had the same stereotypes for male friendship that we apply to heterosexual romantic love. I suppose you can still read Achilles and Patroclus as a gay couple, but I think that’s our reading, not necessarily what the author meant.

>227 thorold: Some other omissions that strike me:
- medieval Arabic and Persian poetry
- John Milton — wasn’t obviously gay, but “Lycidas” has far more gay vibes than Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”. Drake would presumably argue that it is inspired by Tom Brown…
- Mary Renault — the Madeline Miller of the 1950s, but better at it
- Alan Hollinghurst — The swimming-pool library is the key British gay novel of the AIDS era
- William S Burroughs — Queer, etc.
- Gerard Reve — for a long time the most aggressively ‘out’ gay male writer anywhere
- Louis Couperus — The mountain of light, etc.
- Jacob Israël de Haan — Pijpelijntjes / Pathologiën
- Klaus Mann

>235 FlorenceArt: Agreed. Same applies to the Bible passages Drake spends so much time on. He sort-of admits that they are more important for what modern queer readers can take from them than for what they actually tell us about contemporary attitudes.

>235 FlorenceArt: Achilles and Patroclus - i just assumed.

>238 dchaikin: Venture into that area at your peril, Dan — there’s a whole literature about what the Greeks actually did in bed and whether or not we can read anything into it. It was a long time ago and the world was very different.

>239 thorold: interesting

>229 dchaikin:
That looks an absolutely fascinating list. As you know, I've just read Helm, and loved it, but there are several others on there that immediately appeal, Endling amongst them. Just been taking a look at the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist, and bought the winner, We Live Here Now, which has a similar take (although just fiction).

>241 Willoyd: I’m curious about that one. And the Giller winner - Pick a Color.

Rabbit hole dive: in >241 Willoyd: I looked up the Goldsmith prize for investigative journalsim by mistake, and found an interesting to me article about a man who worked to make coal mining safer in the US (and around the world.)

>241 Willoyd: also, when i read Helm, you will be among the guilty nudgers and pushers and inspirers.

(crossposted from my CR thread: I thought it could be of general interest AND it is a list)

For some reason, Dear Daughter asked ChatGPT "about starting a library" and she gave me its answer because she "figured it would amuse (me)".

So here goes:

Perfect. I’ll treat this as a founding collection, not a “best of” list.

I’ll group the first 100 books by function.
Languages are mixed intentionally (French / English / translated works).

---

📚 The First 100 Books of the Library

I. Foundations: How humans think & live (20)

Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition
Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace
Confucius – Analects
Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics
Ibn Khaldun – The Muqaddimah
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Discourse on Inequality
Michel de Montaigne – Essays
Amartya Sen – Development as Freedom
Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth
bell hooks – All About Love
Václav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
Confucius – Doctrine of the Mean
Kwame Anthony Appiah – Cosmopolitanism
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
Édouard Glissant – Poetics of Relation
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
Rabindranath Tagore – Nationalism
Simone de Beauvoir – The Ethics of Ambiguity

---

II. Memory, history, and warning (15)

Primo Levi – If This Is a Man
Svetlana Alexievich – Voices from Chernobyl
Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States
Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens
Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun
Orlando Figes – A People’s Tragedy
W.E.B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk
Assia Djebar – Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Timothy Snyder – On Tyranny
Nawal El Saadawi – Woman at Point Zero
Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel
Natalie Zemon Davis – The Return of Martin Guerre
Eduardo Galeano – Open Veins of Latin America
Margaret MacMillan – Paris 1919

---

III. Fiction that teaches without preaching (20)

Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed
Toni Morrison – Beloved
Albert Camus – The Plague
George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia
Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
Marguerite Yourcenar – Memoirs of Hadrian
José Saramago – Blindness
Clarice Lispector – The Hour of the Star
Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – A Grain of Wheat
Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
Isabel Allende – The House of the Spirits
Doris Lessing – The Grass Is Singing
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
N.K. Jemisin – The Fifth Season
Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Amin Maalouf – Leo Africanus
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go

---

IV. Practical knowledge (20)

Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Vandana Shiva – Staying Alive
E.F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful
Maslow – Motivation and Personality
Peter Wohlleben – The Hidden Life of Trees
David Macaulay – The Way Things Work
Braudel – Structures of Everyday Life
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual – Bill Mollison
Richard Sennett – The Craftsman
Temple Grandin – Animals in Translation
John Seymour – The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It
Elinor Ostrom – Governing the Commons
Maria Montessori – The Absorbent Mind
Rebecca Solnit – A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Peter Gray – Free to Learn
Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics
Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
Wendell Berry – The Unsettling of America
Practical Stone Masonry Manual (traditional, anonymous craft text)
FAO Small-Scale Fisheries Handbook

---

V. Children, learning, and future generations (15)

Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Longstocking
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
Ursula Le Guin – A Wizard of Earthsea
Tove Jansson – Moominland Midwinter
Malala Yousafzai – I Am Malala (Young Readers)
Michael Ende – Momo
Roald Dahl – Matilda
Fatima Sharafeddine – Sultan’s Story
Grace Lin – Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Leo Lionni – Frederick
Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Shaun Tan – The Arrival
Jacqueline Woodson – Brown Girl Dreaming
Jean de Brunhoff – Babar
Cornelia Funke – Inkheart

---

VI. Poetry & reflection (10)

Emily Dickinson – Selected Poems
Mahmoud Darwish – Unfortunately, It Was Paradise
Maya Angelou – And Still I Rise
Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet
Anna Akhmatova – Requiem
Paul Éluard – Poems
Warsan Shire – Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
Octavio Paz – The Labyrinth of Solitude
Wisława Szymborska – Selected Poems
Seamus Heaney – Death of a Naturalist

I am not sure I am amused. In agreement with some, puzzled by others, but most of all, wondering how it came up with this particular list: what the criteria and basic assumptions were, if there were any. Also wondering whether this list has already been turned into one of those listicles, which if you think it is the result of dozens of such listicles being fed to Chat GPT in the first place, would be a kind of hellish literary closed circuit.
I also don't understand the logic behind those 6 categories.

>245 Dilara86: I like the categories. I always want that section of “good books per my own mind” but that’s a little tricky to design

I've been spending time on this page:

Top 50 Masterpieces of Medieval Literature
https://www.medievalists.net/2024/09/top-50-masterpieces-of-medieval-literature/

The page has 50 works in some kind of rating order. I've rewritten it in a short form for me, roughly in date order. (And I added one - the Norse Völsunga derived from the Poetic Edda). Numbers are just a counter

1. Kalīla wa-Dimna (or Kelileh o Demneh) - a collection of interconnected animal fables derived from the ancient Indian Panchatantra (4th-6th centuries CE). It became known throughout the Middle East and beyond through a long process of translation, adaptation, and retelling. Traditional accounts describe its creation by the philosopher Bidpai for the Indian king Dabshalim and its later transmission to Sasanian Iran through the physician Burzuya.
2. On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius – ce 523
3. Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) - an Irish epic from the 7th century, central to the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology.
4. Kadambari - a classical Sanskrit romance written by the 7th-century poet Banabhatta.
5. Daredevils of Sassoun - an Armenian epic dating back to the 8th century, though it was passed down orally for centuries before being written down in the 19th century.
6. Beowulf - Disputed (c. 700–1000 AD)
7. The Romance of Antar – credited to al-Asmaʿi (c. 740–828/833), a poet in the court of Hārūn al-Rashīd. It’s a celebrated Arabic epic, recounting the life of pre-Islamic Arabian poet and knight Antarah ibn Shaddad (525–608 AD). Antarah ibn Shaddad’s own chief poem forms part of the Mu'allaqāt, a collection of seven "hanging odes" legendarily said to have been suspended in the Kaaba at Mecca.
8. Yingying's Story - Written in the 9th century by the Tang dynasty poet Yuan Zhen- a short romantic tale
9. Barlaam and Josaphat - a Christianized version of the life of the Buddha, written in the Byzantine Empire in the 10th century.
10. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter - written in the 10th century - Japan’s prose fiction
11. Dulcitius - a play written by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in the 10th century. Christian virgin martyr women resist the advances of the Roman governor Dulcitius Written between 935–973
12. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu around the peak of the Heian period, in the early 11th century Japan
13. The Shahnameh by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran
14. The Kathasaritsagara (The Ocean of the Rivers of Story), compiled by the Kashmiri poet Somadeva in the 11th century, is a vast collection of Indian folktales, legends, and parables.
15. Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī - a collection of fifty tales written at the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century by al-Ḥarīrī of Basra (1054–1122) of the Seljuk Empire.
16. Song of Roland – An old French chanson de geste based on the deeds of the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in AD 778, during the reign of Charlemagne. Written between approximately 1040 and 1115
17. Poetic Edda - an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse between the 10th and 13th centuries
18. The Tales of Sendebar - medieval Jewish version of the Seven Sages (or Seven Wise Masters) cycle with Sinbad - this Hebrew version is believed to originate from the 12th Century
19. The Mabinogion - a collection of medieval Welsh tales, compiled from oral traditions and written down between the 11th and 13th centuries.
20. Scivias - a visionary work written by the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen in the 1151/2
21. Hayy ibn Yaqzan by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufail (c. 1105 – 1185), a philosophical novel about a boy raised by a gazelle on a deserted island.
22. Tristan and Iseult is a medieval romance dating back to the 12th century with several versions. The two earliest known, and highly distinct from one another, traditions come from the French verse romances written by Béroul and Thomas of Britain (considered origins of the-called "common branch" and the "courtly branch", respectively). Each wrote c. 1170, based on uncertain origins. A later major tradition is that of cyclical prose works beginning c. 1240, markedly different from those by both Thomas and Béroul.
23. The Lais of Marie de France - twelve narratives on courtly love and adventure - most likely written between 1155–1170
24. Chrétien de Troyes wrote five Arthurian Romances: Erec and Enide c1170, Cliges c1176, Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart c1181, Yvain or the Knight with the Lion c1181, and Perceval or the Story of the Grail 1191-unfinished
25. The Nibelungenlied or The Song of the Nibelungs - an epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German
26. The Song of My Cid - anonymous Castilian epic poem on knight Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar—known as El Cid - Composed between 1140 and 1207
27. Khosrow and Shirin by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209) - Persian romantic literature
28. The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur – Persian poem - Composed in the 12th century
29. Njal’s Saga - one of the Icelandic sagas written in the 13th century
30. The Epic of Sundiata - a West African oral epic passed down through generations before being written down in the 20th century.
31. Digenes Akritas - 12th-century Byzantine epic tells the story of a heroic figure who defends the Byzantine Empire’s eastern frontiers from invaders. The work blends historical events with elements of Greek and Arabic folklore.
32. Reynard the Fox - a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date from the second half of the 12th century.
33. The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (part 1, c. 1230) and Jean de Meun (part 2, c. 1275)
34. Huon of Bordeaux - French chanson de geste (13th century)
35. The Völsunga - a late 13th-century prose rendition in Old Norse of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan – derived from Poetic Edda
36. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320)
37. Libro de Buen Amor (The Book of Good Love) by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita - pseudo-biographical - the earliest version dates from 1330; completed 1343
38. Romance of the Three Kingdoms - a 14th-century Chinese historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong.
39. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio - thought to be written between 1348 and 1353
40. Water Margin, also called Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers - a Chinese novel from the Ming dynasty that is one of the preeminent Classic Chinese Novels. Attributed to Shi Nai'an, written in vernacular Mandarin Chinese. Publication date uncertain, perhaps mid-14th century; definitely before 1524
41. Revelations of Divine Love - a series of mystical visions experienced by Julian of Norwich, an anchoress and mystic. Written in the late 14th century - sixteen mystical visions or "shewings" she received in 1373
42. Piers Plowman by William Langland - written c. 1370–86; possibly c. 1377
43. Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer - probably completed during the mid-1380s
44. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - late 14th century
45. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - 1400
46. The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan c1405 - an allegorical defense of women and their capabilities.
47. Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe - later Byzantine romance (possibly in the early 14th C) (no touchstone)
48. The Book of Dede Korkut - a collection of heroic stories originating from the Oghuz Turks, written down in the 14th or 15th century
49. Le Jouvencel by Jean V de Bueil - a French chivalric romance that tells the story of a young knight’s rise to fame through his military exploits - semi-autobiographical (c. 1466)
50. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (published 1485 - 1st printed book here)
51. Journey to the West (Xiyouji) by Wu Cheng’en - Written in the 16th century but reflecting much older oral traditions, a Chinese novel that follows the pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang as he travels to India to retrieve sacred Buddhist texts, accompanied by the trickster Monkey King.

>247 dchaikin: I have read 17 of those - the western European selection. I am done with medieval literature for the moment. but the renaissance is still of interest.

It is a very interesting list and there are some great reads on it. I am thinking of Boethius, The Romance of the Rose, Troilus and Creseyde, The book of the city of ladies, the Divine comedy and Piers plowman to name but six

>248 baswood: nine for me and I’m almost halfway through Malory. But I’m actually going to try really hard (🙂) not to pursue this beautiful tempting list. I’m ready for some of the slightly younger classics i haven’t read yet.

Personally I encourage anyone interested to read Dante and Chaucer. Easily the most enjoyable of my own 9 and 1/2.

Literary Hub's Ultimate Best Books of 2025 List (aka List of Lists) is here:

https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2025-list/

21 lists:
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

20 lists:
Katie Kitamura, Audition

19 lists:
Lily King, Heart the Lover

18 lists:
Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and A Thief

16 lists:
Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story
Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Ian McEwan, What We Can Know
David Szalay, Flesh

15 lists:
Susan Choi, Flashlight
Sophie Elmhirst, A Marriage at Sea

14 lists:
Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness

13 lists:
Daniel Kehlmann, tr. Ross Benjamin, The Director
R.F. Kuang, Katabasis
Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

12 lists:
S.A. Cosby, King of Ashes
Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Han Kang, tr. e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, We Do Not Part

11 lists:
Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare
Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?
Karen Russell, The Antidote

10 lists:
V.E. Schwab, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace
Sarrah Wynn-Williams, Careless People

9 lists:
Allegra Goodman, Isola
Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel
Jill Lepore, We the People
Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket

8 lists:
Scott Anderson, King of Kings
Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days
Caroline Fraser, Murderland
Haley Cohen Gilliland, A Flower Traveled in My Blood
Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder
Vincenzo Latronico, tr. Sophie Hughes, Perfection
Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore
Imani Perry, Black in Blues
Torrey Peters, Stag Dance
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere
Patrick Ryan, Buckeye
Francesca Wade, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife
Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

7 lists:
Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author
Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley

6 lists:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count
Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives
Ron Chernow, Mark Twain
Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping
Melissa Febos, The Dry Season
John Green, Everything is Tuberculosis
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Theft
Mick Herron, Clown Town
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance
Ian Leslie, John & Paul
Ed Park, An Oral History of Atlantis
Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding
Lucas Schaefer, The Slip
Patti Smith, Bread of Angels
Vauhini Vara, Searches : Selfhood in the Visual Age
Frances Wilson, Electric Spark

5 lists:
Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day
Tash Aw, The South
Alison Bechdel, Spent
Leo Damrosch, Storyteller
Lyse Doucet, The Finest Hotel in Kabul
Neko Case, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You
Virginia Evans, The Correspondent
Kate Folk, Sky Daddy
Amity Gaige, Heartwood
Caleb Gayle, Black Moses
Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl
Sarah Hall, Helm
Seamus Heaney, The Poems of Seamus Heaney
Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life
Florence Knapp, The Names
Beth Macy, Paper Girl
Keith McNally, I Regret Almost Everything
Suzanne O’Sullivan, The Age of Diagnosis
Olga Ravn, tr. Martin Aitkin, The Wax Child
Mary Roach, Replaceable You
Adam Ross, Playworld
Eli Sharabi, Hostage
Brandon Taylor, Minor Black Figures
Stephanie Wambugu, Lonely Crowds
Bryan Washington, Palaver
Charmaine Wilkerson, Good Dirt
Nussaibah Younis, Fundamentally

>250 mejix: so interesting. I'm curious about Heart the lover

I first learned about this last year. I like the concept, very useful I think. That Lily King book for example was not in my radar until reading this year's list. Or A Guardian and A Thief

>252 mejix: I hadn’t heard of Megha Majumdar or the title before now.

>247 dchaikin:, >248 baswood:
I definitely recommend the Asian side of that list. Some really good books from China and obviously Genji from Japan.

personal lists - I made a 2026 plan yesterday. :) The first picture is the plan, as of yesterday, and the second picture are some options if I happen to get ahead (sadly unlikely) or just tire of my plan (possible)

>255 dchaikin: Very cool! I have little notebooks where I try and outline monthly plans. Still in the paper age, I fear!

>256 WelshBookworm: I love handwritten lists too!

My recommendation if you end up reading Oryx and Crake is to read the whole trilogy at once as if it were one book. Book two is a repetition of book one via a different point of view and then book three concludes everything. There is a lot to remember that it’s best not to leave too much time between books.

>258 lilisin: thanks! (Note to self: The Year of the Flood is next, then Maddaddam )

>247 dchaikin: What a fabulous list, and just this year we had a new translation of Nezami Ganjavi's Khosrow and Shirin by Dick Davis (via Penguin Classics) that I am looking forward to reading.