hdc versus 1001 books (2008)

2006 edition gave me 59 books, 2008 edition was a bit better so I got 62.

One could complain about many things, including the fact that I prefer short stories which for the most part were left out (but curiously not all).
And that there are some books I have started and if I had to choose between death and finishing that book, death would be less painful (I'm looking at you, Mr. Proust). So I will be taking this challenge very loosely.

Read so far:
1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time Mark Haddon
2. The Crow RoadIain Banks
3. Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
4. Foucault’s Pendulum Umberto Eco
5. The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
6. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency Douglas Adams
7. Kitchen Banana Yoshimoto
8. Watchmen Alan Moore
9. The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
10. The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco
11. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler Italo Calvino
12. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
13. The Shining Stephen King
14. Interview With the Vampire Anne Rice
15. The Year of the Hare Arto Paasilinna
16. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum Heinrich Böll
17. Invisible Cities Italo Calvino
18. Group Portrait With Lady Heinrich Böll
19. Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut
20. Myra Breckinridge Gore Vidal
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
22. The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
23. Everything That Rises Must Converge Flannery O’Connor
24. A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
25. Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges
26. Solaris Stanislaw Lem
27. Billiards at Half-Past Nine Heinrich Böll
28. The Once and Future King T.H. White
29. The Manila Rope Veijo Meri
30. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
31. The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith
32. The Sound of Waves Yukio Mishima
33. Bonjour Tristesse Françoise Sagan
34. Lord of the Flies William Golding
35. Wise Blood Flannery O’Connor
36. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
37. The Outsider Albert Camus
38. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
39. At the Mountains of Madness H.P. Lovecraft
40. The Nine Tailors Dorothy L. Sayers
41. Miss Lonelyhearts Nathanael West
42. The Thin Man Dashiell Hammett
43. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie
44. Kokoro Natsume Soseki
45. Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs
46. Quo Vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz
47. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
48. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
49. Around the World in Eighty Days Jules Verne
50. Little Women Louisa May Alcott
51. Journey to the Centre of the Earth Jules Verne
52. The Count of Monte-Cristo Alexandre Dumas
53. The Pit and the Pendulum Edgar Allan Poe
54. Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott
55. Emma Jane Austen
56. Mansfield Park Jane Austen
57. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
58. Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
59. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
60. Fanny Hill John Cleland
61. Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
62. The Thousand and One Nights Anonymous

A couple of books more I had read but missed:

63. The Nose Nikolay Gogol
64. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Then, after another discussion here, I proceeded to make a list of books I have started but for one reason or another never finished, 20 in total

Perfume Patrick Süskind
Neuromancer William Gibson
Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima (I have read Spring Snow)
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
The Third Policeman Flann O’Brien
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Casino Royale Ian Fleming (actually I might even have finished this, not completely sure)
At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O’Brien
The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil
Lady Chatterley’s Lover D.H. Lawrence
Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë
The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
Justine Marquis de Sade
The 120 Days of Sodom Marquis de Sade (I have read the prologue, which was available as a separate book and according to many comments is the best part of the book)
The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu

For several of those I cannot really remember why I didn't finish them, must have been busy or something, and at least couple of them are definitely on to-be-read list.
Couple of books there I probably will never touch again.

I wonder what I should do with books I haven't read but i have seen the movie based on them. I'm not sure if I wish to read e.g. Professor Unrat even though I loved Blue Angel...

Next list: books I have read from 2006 list which were left out from the 2008 edition:

65. Never Let Me Go
66. The Ground Beneath Her Feet
67. Sputnik Sweetheart
68. The Violent Bear It Away
69. Ficciones
70. The Turn of the Screw
71. Northanger Abbey
72. Persuasion

...and since October when I started the list I have read that Sputnik Sweetheart,

73. No One Writes to the Colonel,

started but could not stomach to finish

The Devil and Miss Prym

and am currently reading and will finish today
74. The Summer Book

My reading has not particularly centered on 1001 list...

Couple more, both pleasant experiences:

75. Some Prefer Nettles was a fascinating book about a married couple who are preparing for a divorce but can't quite push it forward...and on the other hand views for Japanese and Western culture.
Having read from the same author The Key and Praise of Shadows, I noted familiar themes which were handled deftly.

76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a story of a group of girls (mainly one of them, Sandy) and their unconventional teacher Jean Brodie who is in her prime (the book has a thing for tautology, and Miss Brodie being in her prime is mentioned often). Weird and dark and funny book which stylistically reminded me of Ishiguro.
I should probably look for other Spark books too...

77...and from the last note, finished A Pale View of Hills, an odd and very subtle book about changing norms and generations...

78. They Shoot Horses, Don't They was a quick read, in one evening and had time to spare too :)
But quite chilling, a glimpse of hell on dancefloor...I can see existentialists loving this. As well as seeing the connection to Day of the Locust.

And while comparisons of marathon dances to gladiator arenas of antiquity have been mentioned, I was actually thinking how much this sounded like one of those reality TV shows, Survivor or Big Brother. I do wonder if anyone has yet written a serious novel like this about participants of those shows? I know Saari kaupungissa where couple of chapters take place in reality TV environment but a full novel...

79. Pippi Longstockings is a book I hadn't quite got around to actually read before this. Of course I knew it, who is Pippi and more or less what happens, and I have read several other Astrid Lindgren books...

Well. Reading the whole book in one sitting is doable as it is a short book, but perhaps a bit too much, it would probably be better to read one chapter per day or something...
Pippi of course has become instantly iconic, beside children adopted by radical feminists, and of course getting to know her is highly recommended, everyone of us needs a bit of Pippi in our lives. But like in many other Lindgren books, an adult reader can also notice some darker and slightly disturbing undertones...

Read this a while ago already, but let's mention it now...
80. Silence was interesting, a challenging book about faith, redemption and sacrifice...I should read more Endo I guess. As well as Graham Greene.

Some of my favorites are in your "started but didn't finish" list!

The Crying of Lot 49 is a short work... no reason not to finish it! I remember there being one section in the middle, at the theatre, that slowed me down considerably. Once that's over, though, it picks up again.

The Third Policeman is like Lot 49 in that its power is based on its building absurdities. Some of the things in The Third Policeman only become really hilarious after they appear for the third and fourth time and O'Brien has had time to beat that dead horse back to life.

Third Policeman is definitely on the "try again" list, cannot remember why I didn't finish it...and I probably will get around to giving Pynchon another go too.
Of the books I have started to but not finished I'd say Proust and de Sade books are the ones I have least interest in (Proust style does not work for me, and Sade feels like a one-trick pony...I have read enough from him to see and appreciate the trick but I think I am done with him).
O'Briens, Sea of Fertility and Midnight Children will definitely be tried again, Lot 49, War and Peace and Genji most likely, of others I have no opinion at the moment.

I loathed the first half of Lot 49. I was determined to finish it was glad I did because the second half was not as bad. Still not keen - I am currently having a (very) long Pynchon break.

Midnight's Children is on my started but didn't finish list too - it's also on my 'determined to finish in 2010' list so I guess I shuld pick it up again. :)

Couple more:

81. Barabbas, a story about the man pardoned on the day of Crucifixion, who comes to feel a strange connection to Christ...dark book but good, and the edition I read had also another Lägerkvist book, The Dwarf on which the same description applies...

82. The Life of Insects is quite surreal book about human existence in modern Russia, told with insects...things shift in and out of focus, some characters are practical and straightforward when others do a good deal of philosophizing...

Beside that Lägerkvist book I also dug up a bit more Muriel Spark and now I am interested in reading a bit more Pelevin...so I have been finding interesting writers via 1001 list.

I somehow missed this from the list:

83. Delta of Venus, collection of erotic short stories by Anais Nin...important work of course but...

Read this recently:
84. The Moon and the Bonfires by Pavese, a grim book. I have been exploring this post-war Italy this year, and a bit of wartime and pre-war too...I wonder if I should continue with Carlo Levi at some point.

85. But before that, currently I am reading The Enchanted Wanderer which is really charming book.

Edit: finished The Enchanted Wanderer which kept on being a charming book.

Since the last message, I have read...

86. Animal Farm, which of course is one of those books one has pretty good idea about even before reading, so referenced it is...but still it is as good as the hype claims. Essential.

87. The Pilgrim's Progress, which some other 1001 books people have not cared so much about, but I did enjoy it...I read the translation which was pretty straightforward so I probably missed the twists and turns of the olde language but kept it understandable, and I do enjoy allegories and mystery plays and polemic works even when I don't necessarily agree with them...

On the side, I read a book others have mentioned related to the 1001 list, which actually didn't make it...The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki who has Some Prefer Nettles on the list. It is hard comparing the two books, they are notably different, Makioka is closer to classic Russian novels while Nettles comes off as more modern (while both of course deal extensively with Japanese culture) so it is understandable there are people who like only one but not the other.
I did enjoy them both but if there were only one spot for Tanizaki in the 1001 list, I prefer Nettles. I wouldn't mind having two spots for him though...

Been reading all kinds of other things, but just finished...

88. Memento Mori. Liking Jean Brodie, I went to look for other Spark books and this one was conveniently also on 1001 list.
A network of old people start receiving anonymous phone calls saying "remember you must die". The phone calls are actually something of a McGuffin, they are not so important but how people react to those calls is. There's a good deal of dark humour and even elements of grotesqueness, when numerous infirmities and indignities coming with old age are handled in detail, and what passes as life is mostly scheming, plotting, greed, secrets, jealousy and obsession...but the most balanced and peaceful people are the ones who are capable to let small stuff go, in the principle of "memento mori" as a positive message.

89. Thousand Cranes. It's Kawabata, so it's a complex tale in simple style. Love, time and teacups play important roles.

90. Fear and Trembling (Nothomb, not Kierkegaard).
Going through these short books now...nice, simple book of conflicting cultures. As a cultural commentary it was pointedly satirical if a bit trivial but it was nice to get also another, contemplative layer in the book.

#17 Great review!

91. Quartet by Jean Rhys.
A dark tale of a penniless woman who gets involved with a married couple in 1920s Paris, based on the writer's own experiences. Nobody comes clean here, the main character Marya is frustratingly pathetic and weak-willed, the Heidlers are selfish and cruel and no side character come off as any better...
I do like these tales of polite cruelty and have read a fair amount of them already. This one can be a tad more smudgy and worn than books by, say, Tanizaki, Mishima and Kawabata but in Europe after all even the beautiful women sweat...but Rhys does have a similar clear and unflinching style.
Some of the passages come off as a bit clumsy, when we have several points of view both talking and thinking, some other writers might have managed those with a bit more grace.
Nevertheless, an interesting book (and one I might never had read if it hadn't been on 1001 list...yay for the inclusion).

I'm on a roll...

92. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. I have heard good things about the writer, but that quality seems to escape either me or this book. Meh.
Well, it was short.

#20 This one sounds rather good - I've read her Wide Sargasson Sea and liked it so I may toddler off and see if the library has this... Think I'll pass on the Welty for now though!

I should get that Wide Sargasso Sea at some point, but then again I haven't yet got around to reading Jane Eyre which I guess I should read first.
Welty...well, the book is a quick read and based on reviews here it does divide people, some people get into it and others don't.

93. Strait Is the Gate by André Gide.
Still doing these short ones, and this I actually picked because I rather liked La Symphonie Pastorale and then noticed this was 1001 book...
Starts as a love triangle between a man and two sisters but soon the other sister is shuffled away and what remains is a push-and-pull of the relationship between two characters, highly complicated of course.
I'm not quite sure if I buy this as realistic, but it is still reasonably interesting and tragic, of course...

Currently I am reading Manon Lescaut which is a non-1001 classic but after that I feel like taking a break from difficult French romances...

Actually you really don't need to read Jane Eyre before Wide Sargasso Sea, although the ending will definitely resonate more if you have.

94. Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass.
My first Grass, and I notice his two other Danzig books are on the list too...here they have been marked as trilogy with this as second book, but as far as I know they have the time, place and couple of shared details in common but otherwise are independent (this book mentions a boy with a tin drum in the passing).
Well. It was pretty good. A story of a boy during WWII, a strange gloryhound creature, told through the eyes of one of his friends who keeps himself as a cipher ("this book is about Mahlke, or Mahlke and me, but not about me").

To be honest, I am growing somewhat tired of Important Books about WWII. While this is not Grass's fault (being one of the post-war German writers it was pretty necessary for him, Böll and others to process it) to me it seems more and more like a cheap gimmick to fish recognition of Importance and Seriousness while covering your back with something almost everyone agrees on, ie. Nazies Were Mean. Then it is just a matter of choosing how much controversy you want to put in the book by saying how even normal people showed nazi sympathies, or jerking those tears by telling about the plight of poor suffering Jews...while the writer of course laughs all the way to the bank.

Well, I guess we are in the process of moving on to "Soviets were mean" genre of literature gaining more popularity. Yay. Well, not in the movies because everyone knows everything was ugly and drab in Eastern Europe, and it didn't affect the Americans like Holocaust did...
End of diatribe.

95. Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee.
Twee nostalgia trip into author's childhood in little English village, told in poetic language. Of course I hated it.
It was rather short book (about 200 pages) and had couple of redeeming passages, but reading this was still a chore. Though despite personal suffering, I guess there are other people who would enjoy this kind of thing very much.

96. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
Hmm. I liked it in the beginning, when there was buildup for something like a Greek tragedy, but that drama buildup ended up falling short when the book first derailed into describing various ceremonies of the locals and when we get back to the story of Okonkwo it somehow never quite got to make the impression it could have.
I enjoyed the clear writing style and characterization, and I'm sure the topic made a stronger impression back when it came out, but the overall story I found lacking. Still, worth a read.

97. Silk by Alessandro Baricco.
No doubt one of the shortest books of the 1001 list (my copy went just over 100 pages, and with chapter breaks the real length is about half that), but as it was written in fable style there's lots of content in every sentence, and plenty between the lines too.
What can I say? Lovely book, both in story and execution, reminded me of both those Calvinoesque Italian fables and Japanese prose, and for my taste that is extremely strong combination. Everyone, go and read it (well, everyone over 18, there's couple of scenes which are not for minors).

98. A Handful of Dust by Evely Waugh.
For some reason this has been described as comedy in the back cover. It is dark and gloomy and sad book, and sudden excursions to absurdity give it sort of formless quality, as if the writer couldn't quite decide what he is writing here.
I didn't particularly care for this.

99. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
It amused me to note that the backcover blurb talked about "an incident that every reader will recognize", for had I not noticed it mentioned in the net I wouldn't have drawn the connection to that Ted Kennedy accident (I only vaguely know that there is a senator named Ted Kennedy, and practically nothing of what he has done). US-centric, aren't we?
This I felt to be a generic problem of the book. The writing style is accomplished and characterisation is nice but there was little in this book which mattered to me. As a story from POV of a drowning woman it was somewhat pointless and the flashbacks assume me to know or care about things of which I neither know or care.
Well, it was short and nicely written.

#98 Like the review! Think I'll give this a miss for a while...

Yeah, I guess there are suitable times for reading that book, like just after one has broken up with one's girlfriend and is in mood for some "relationships and women=s**t" stories.
Me, I was bummed out. It was a good enough book to stir an emotional response though, so by no means it is worthless...

Out of interest, I borrowed from library the Swedish version of 1001 book, compiled by Göran Hägg. Quite an interesting list, as gloriously Swedish-centric as the 2006 version was Anglo-centric, so several interesting novels are missing, but Hägg has decided to include also several plays, poetry and non-fiction, and also gives much more space for children's books (and I was also amused to notice that Jackie Collins had got an entry).
And if one would be able to read Swedish more than I do, this would be a bit quicker list to get through since several big books have been split over several entries. In some cases it makes sense (like when picking individual books from Bible), in others it's a bit weird (Decamerone takes four entries, Man Without Qualities two...)

Anyway, out of curiosity I listed how many extra entries I would get from here, if I counted them in the 1001 goal...

Bible, 12 entries
Medea by Euripides
Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
Chanson de Roland
Edda
Inferno by Dante
Decamerone, 4 entries
Sindbad the Sailor (1001 Nights is also a separate entry)
Shakespeare, 7 entries
Le malade imaginaire by Moliere
Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
Baron Munchhausen by Gottfried Burger
Fairytales by Brothers Grimm
Fairytales by H.C.Andersen
Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot
20000 Miles Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Short stories by Guy de Maupassant, 2 entries
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Seagull by Anton Chekov
Tristan and Iseult by Joseph Bedier
Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg
Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige by Selma Lagerlöf
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Pygmalion by G.B.Shaw
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne, 2 entries
Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Mutter Courage by Bertolt Brecht
Famous Five by Enid Blyton, 2 entries
Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist
Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Sivar Ahlrud, 2 entries (not entirely sure if I had read exactly those two books but I have read couple of dozen of those, so I mark them)
Tove Jansson, 2 entries
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Astrid Lindgren, 4 entries
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie
Doctor Murke by Heinrich Böll
Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
A Venetian Reckoning by Donna Leon
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

83 books, and I probably missed a couple and there were couple of uncertain picks...
And a fair amount of books I should get around to reading at some point.

It was also funny to notice that some writers who had five or more entries in English edition might have barely scratched one here (McEwan and Coetzee to name a couple), while some others were still well represented (Graham Greene with 11 entries, Hemingway with 10...).

Oh, and to my amusement, To Kill a Mockingbird did not make the cut (I have been in "how can someone not know who is Atticus Finch?" conversation before...sorry, it's not an important book on this side of the world).

That's interesting! I'd get at least 31, just from your list.
Some of these are good & appropriate additions (The Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Gaudy Night) but others not. Watership Down? The Da Vinci Code? I could have died without reading them.
Isn't Kafka's Metamorphosis on the 1001 list? That seems like an odd omission.

Metamorphosis didn't make it, but The Trial and The Castle by Kafka are on the list.
The regular 1001 list treats short stories somewhat wonkily, sidestepping them even for some writers who definitely should be represented by those (Guy de Maupassant is another such writer, and the Swedish list rightly includes Boule de Suif).
The Swedish list seemed to put a bit more weight on "popular", so there were some rather curious choices like that Da Vinci Code and two Famous Five books (and e.g. that Jackie Collins book I haven't read). And as can be seen, quite a lot more children's books and detective novels...

There's total 9 Shakespeare plays (2 I haven't read) and in general for plays I'd say the picks were good, all the big ones were included from Greeks to Beckett.

To be fair, he does say that the Da Vinci code is God-awful, but that you probably have to read it to understand what everyone is (was) talking about. there are a few other awful books on the list which are included because they're important in some way, but the author is ususally upfront about this.

I'm just loving the fact that Harry Potter is on that list! Am I the only one who thinks it should be included in the English version as well? I mean, it's been such a huge change to the modern literary world, for one thing. For another, it's just plain awesome.

A few of the Harry Potter books are on the Children's 1001.

Hundred books, yay!

100. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. I have actually read most of her Lord Peter Wimsey books before this, this has been eluding me...

But yeah, it is fun like all Wimsey books, and as always Sayers goes to all kinds of weird tangents beside the main story...here one finds out a great deal about advertisement world, and towards the end there is a detailed description of a cricket match which I couldn't follow at all (but after reading Sayers before I had already learned to go with the flow). Loads of witty repartee, of course.

While reading this I started to wonder about the typical differences between the two famous British cozy writers, Sayers and Christie...Christie's economy and careful construction of the story where everything matters, compared to Sayers' baroque ramblings and stories including all kinds of technical descriptions and inconsequential tangents, or Christie's moral dramas, compared to Sayers' human comedies, or Christie's class-conscious society where everyone knows who everyone is, compared to Sayers' descriptions of not-class-bound societies of artists, universities and business (ironically even if Lord Peter is nobility and knowing it). I think I prefer slightly Christie, but it is nice to occasionally switch to Sayers.

Congratulations on reaching 100! And I'm glad it was a good one :-)

Congratulations on reaching 100! I have enjoyed reading your comments on each one.

101. The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith.
Hmm. A quick and light book to read, and a nice satire of respectable suburban middle-class life, but I didn't find it particularly engaging (and at least nowadays poking fun at respectable suburban middle-class life is hardly original, maybe in Grossmith's time it was different).
Not a bad book but...

102. Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau.
More quick and light books, soon I have only the huge bricks left :)
A simple, even pointless, tale of two scenes told in 99 different manners. This is one of those books where knowing that they exist and what they are like is probably more important than actually reading them...For I guess I was not the only one who, after reading some of the first stories more fully, started to skim through the later ones, only looking what kind of take was done on each version (though some of the later ones were actually pretty fun, while others were unreadable).

I keep thinking I'll only have bricks left too :/ Ah well! That's what retirements for, right?

I may have a while to wait...

"This is one of those books where knowing that they exist and what they are like is probably more important than actually reading them..."

That's the conclusion I came to when I tried to read A Void last summer.

Re 43
or travelling. I managed to read some tomes last year because of being away from home or travelling. This meant that I could get stuck into books on long journeys, and also couldn't be swayed by those smaller ones on my shelf.

I have been cheating recently, reading quite a few shorties, like A Christmas Carol and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

43,45> When traveling I have been carrying cheap paperbacks I can dump on the way, so maybe I should get some of those Dickens Penguin paperbacks :)
And retiring is a bit too far away...
Oh well, I'll try to sneak in something more hefty. Though I should mention that picking shorter books is also an aesthetic choice, I tend to prefer sparse writing over florid...

44> Yeah, A Void sounds like a book I'm quite interested in starting to read but it is very likely I wouldn't be finishing it...but with these books which emphasize form over content I don't think it is not always important to read them conventionally either.
And Jorge Luis Borges took this one step forward, instead of writing a book he just wrote an essay describing that book...

46> I love Borges for that and I would have loved A Void if it Perec had pulled a Borges a written about it rather than actually writing it. The funny thing is I've said many times I'm glad Borges didn't write novels. That sort of high concept stuff seems to work best in short, relatively unembellished forms. Otherwise the concept tends to get buried in bulk.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is actually my favorite Borges story. I keep my pens and pencils in a cup labeled "hrön" since they have a way of disappearing and duplicating themselves and I am a nerd.

Couple more, neither a best book ever but both enjoyable:

103. The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
While I find the topic of growing-up-and-experiencing-first-love-during-wartime usually overdone, Radiguet manages to have an interesting spin to it. That young love is portrayed here unsentimentally without being base; it is acute, and carnal, and even destructive (and probably this portrayal was quite a shock when it came out, and is still unsettling).

104. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Hammett sure knows how to turn the phrase, starting from wonderfully evocative name for the book. And truthful: the body count here is notably high when the archetypal Man With No Name, Continental Op starts egging the organized crime of a corrupt town to a full gang war.
I read this book as a translation which is kind of "win some, lose some" situation: a big reason to read Hammett is his wonderfully laconic writing style and dialogue, but with other books I have had trouble following the story since the style is so laconic and I'm not really hip to American underworld slang of the 20s and 30s. Now when I know what happens I might give this a go in English at some point...

More, two 19th century French books with a good deal of asceticism and corruption, even if dealt in wildly different manners:

105. The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert.
Fascinating book which plays out like some really strange mystery play with loads of CGI, about, well, hermit monk Saint Anthony and the temptating hallucinations he experiences in the desert.
I've been reading (and liking) so far the more marginal Flaubert books, this, Three Tales and Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, maybe I should crack at some point those more famous books like Madame Bovary or Bouvard and Pecuchet...

106. Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac.
I read some book by Balzac long time ago but didn't like it much, so I've been avoiding him...but this one ended up being quite nice, straightforward without being trivial.

Couple of major classics:

107. The Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I'm not that fond of sprawling family epics but this one was still pleasant. Despite it being often quite messy and weird, the solid structure of the book kept the reader going where some lesser writers would have had things falling apart...
For me not quite worth the buzz but to be honest I enjoyed it more than I expected.
And it was a bit weird to read shortly after this Popular Music from Vittula where the location, Pajala, comes off as somewhere between Macondo and Jante...

108. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
On a post some time before I mentioned that I had started but could not stomach to finish a Paolo Coelho book, on account of him coming across as too much of a smug bastard. Well, Little Prince I managed to finish on account of it being a short book with lots of illustrations but this was worse. Yech.

HD--I'll stand beside you with the group that doesn't like The Little Prince or Paolo Coelho. Serious "yech"!

Add me to this group. I found it hard to finish The Little Prince though I read it at the 'right age', i.e. in my teens, when everyone else found it all so meaningful and deep. And I'm so glad the list only has two Coelhos and they are both short. I read them and certainly won't touch another one.

Never understood the appeal of The Little Prince. We did a play of it at my French camp when I was eleven. Hated it then. Hate it now.

Have to agree on Little Prince - def don't quite get the appeal either. Coelho I'm on the fence about though. I've read the two list books and actually rather liked them - I do think I read them in a very specific mood though. I probably will try some more... at some point (don't feel a pressing need to do so though and that may say something!).

I guess Little Prince is a strongly dividing book, if one doesn't connect with it, it comes off as offensively bad...
I've been considering trying Veronika Decides to Die at some point, it has got somewhat positive comments also from people who generally don't care for Coelho (and it is conveniently a 1001 book, which gives some reason to at least give it a try).

hd, I finished Veronica Decided to Die a couple of months ago and I really enjoyed it. Trying to be careful not to spoil it for you, I think that although it starts our with a pretty morose tone, you will find the end of it enjoyable.

109. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger
More big classics here...I guess this would have been better if I had read this in 50s or as a teenager or preferably both.

The Catcher in the Rye I guess I read it at the wrong age and since I wasnt alive in the 50's...but anyways I had this big urge to yell at this moron "Just Shut Up and deal with it". I still dont understand why this is a big classic?

#58, 59 - I read it in my early 20s and felt the same way. My 16 year old niece just read it for school and couldn't relate either.

I read Catcher in high school and completely identified with it. I have not read it again and I'm a little afraid to, honestly. I don't want to ruin my love of the book! I think of it as the same type of book as The Great Gatsby- you really love it, or you don't like it at all.

I think of it as the same type of book as The Great Gatsby- you really love it, or you don't like it at all.

I agree!

I give it credit that it was a pageturner, I didn't get the urge to quit the book at any pointand there were no overly slogging chapters...
But yeah, I guess a lot depends how well one identifies with Holden. I didn't, but I might have a bit more when I was a teenager (and I know people who were quite like him...).

110. The Ogre by Michel Tournier.

I've been reading non-1001 books lately, but after some suggestions decided to pick this book up, not really expecting anything, but after couple of pages I was hooked. Really a great, strange, enthralling and disturbing book about a French prisoner-of-war who ends up working in a nazi school...and constantly reads symbols behind the concrete reality (the American name of the book Ogre is not that good, but I guess more recognizable than a reference to a poem by Goethe...in UK it's Erl-King and the Finnish name translates to Faerie King...)

This book was included only in 2006 edition, cannot see why it was dropped, considering that there is nothing else by Tournier on the 1001 list either...despite this, I think I will be reading more of his books in future.

111. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Yay, so now I have read a Dickens book. And to be honest had this not been a 1001 book I had very much decided to read, I doubt I'd have finished it...
As I mentioned in another thread, if books were food this one would be baloney, I didn't particularly care about anyone or anything in the book but there wasn't really anything that offputting either so I just kept on turning page after page after page.
What possible interesting parts could be found were buried deep into the whole stream of text so they could have least possible impact (some other author might have drawn the night scene in the graveyard or the gothic house of Miss Havisham to actually matter, but such a thing could not be had here) and I guess it wrapped up nicely but...edit, people!

I'll probably give A Christmas Carol a go at some point because it is 1001, and maybe try Tale of Two Cities, but generally I am not particularly looking forward to read more of him.

Hdcclassic, I have just read through your reviews and thoroughly enjoyed them. I will certainly keep an eye out for your thread in the future!

112. War with the Newts by Karel Capek
One of the speculative fiction entries of the 1001 list, and like several of those other entries, rather dystopic even if that part becomes increasingly evident only towards the end of the book. Also, what separates Capek from the others is that he is first and foremost a humorist. If a comparison is allowed, imagine 1984 as written by Mark Twain.
The story is in many ways quite straightforward: a captain finds from a remote island a small population of sentient newts and decides to teach them to dive pearls. It is soon noted that there are loads of other things they can do too, and the population starts to grow immensely...and it is not hard to guess how things end up going. While the book is pretty clearly a commentary on developments in European politics in 30s, Capek, while perhaps lacking the intense unified vision of those Orwells and Huxleys, manages to cover so many bases that ultimately this book is about humanity, no less.
Oh, and he also manages to pull off the almost-impossible feat, ending the book with "the moral of this story is..." chapter and making it work (the only other time I have seen this done was the end of the Animal Man run of Grant Morrison)
It starts a bit slow, and to be honest I did skim through some of the extensive mock-newspaper articles in the footnotes (even though they were funny), but it grows. A great book, and highly recommended.

@ 67 Nice review. This book has been on my radar for a few years. Maybe I'll get to it in 2012.

Three books!
113. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Hmm. To be honest I was not that impressed, but it must be said that these zeitgeist novels have never been my cup of tea; books described as such tend to be about nothing but young people in high society drinking and talking piffle. I don't particularly care about Paris Hiltons of today nor do I care about Paris Hiltons of yesteryear.
Anyway...it's a kind of book which I can objectively appreciate as a good work but I just can't come to really care about it.

114. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
Well, this was weird. But surprisingly it both was a relatively easy to read and managed to make bizarre sense of sorts.

115. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Another of those books where I guess everyone knows what happens already before reading the book. And in a way for a modern reader I think it benefits from that, the mystery aspect probably wouldn't play out so well nowadays but that the book is laid out as a mystery still gives the story an interesting twist which would be missing from the events being laid out in a direct manner...and as a fable it is of course still a powerful work. Nice little book.

116. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
Yes, the first Bronte I have read (I did start Wuthering Heights at some point but never got around to continue with it for some reason, cannot remember what). While well known, these books are still only among the hundreds of classics here outside the Anglophone world...
But such a great book it turned out to be. Some aspects of Victorian novel were not that enjoyable, I don't like the whole three-part novel thing and this too could have cut a number of pages, The Coincidence is a bit too pat (as are some of the lesser coincidences) and the whole "uplifting morals" thing is sort of on the brink of getting annoying (though I did like Pilgrim's Progress, and Little Women, and C.S.Lewis so I'm not averse on a preachy tone...and generally I would have thought less of this book if it had been just a romance without also the philosophical and societal issues...or just philosophizing without those gothic romance bits). Oh, and Charlotte is only kind of so-so writing male characters...
But I read this in two days, and I practically never read 500+ page books in two days.

Oh, and Charlotte is only kind of so-so writing male characters...

As someone who loved Jane Eyre and liked Villette, I think this is an understatement. Charlotte Bronte is terrible at writing male characters! None of them are capable of having a conversation--all they do is preach and lecture in great long monologues. Sister Emily also has some problems with writing about men. Only sister Anne has any ability in this area, and from what I hear, she's the only one who actually met a selection of men in her life. It really shows.

I did gather there is truth in this one:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202
Of course one could discuss to what extent the male characters are portrayed through the eyes of the character and thus their unrealness could be justified...in a way this book does demand other views to the whole thing, like Wide Sargasso Sea apparently is.

And it is kind of funny how easy it is to point out faults in the book yet somehow they become part of the charm...another one: it mixes several genres but not in a smooth manner and plot points are introduced only to be ignored later. Feels like it's been written in bursts and Charlotte has not always paid attention to what was going on in the previous passages as long as the story moves on...

Feels like it's been written in bursts and Charlotte has not always paid attention to what was going on in the previous passages as long as the story moves on..

Yes! The second time I read Jane Eyre was for a uni class, and my prof was really into pulling things out of the text that Bronte was not conscious of--it was great fun and made the novel so much more complex and interesting.

I also agree with your comment about the Coincidence. Really makes me roll my eyes. Along with how she was at death's door almost the second she found herself lost on the moors. Still, a great book.

From last week... Glad you enjoyed The Third Policeman. Friends of mine about 15 years ago were Flann O'Brien cultists of sorts, talked about him all the time, so I read them all and thought that was the best, really quite wonderful.

Third Policeman was a bit mixed experience, for quite a while I enjoyed the ride but considered it weirdness-for its-own-sake...but it managed to pull coherence too :)

117. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.
The truth.

I have been reading mostly non-1001 stuff now (some of which would deserve the position though), but...
118. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Another of these witty-with-undertones comedies of manners, a genre I definitely enjoy.
After finishing this I started to wonder if I have ever read a book with a main character quite as faultless as Mildred, kind, compassionate, considerate, capable, smart, all around excellent. Or if there ever was a climax quite as understated as here.
That is, if I have ever before read a good book like that.
This is my second Pym, I foresee more in the future.

Looking at the list, I spotted couple of books I had read but hadn't noticed they were 1001 books...

119. If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
Autobiographical account of the author's experiences in Auschwitz. I had read couple of other books by him before which already told bits and pieces of the same story, but still, a full document is a good thing. A strange combination of full clarity and "do not try to understand". Highly recommended.
(In LT the 1001 books tag has been put on the issue combining this and The Truce, is the latter included also in Boxall's?)

120. Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
Well, by now I am a fan of Spark, so of course I enjoyed this too.

And couple of recent readings:
121. The Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
Another novella written in a clear manner, so a story quickly read but one which left me wondering for quite a while what was being said here...

122. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Another book which was relatively short in length but filling in thought. A prequel of sorts for Jane Eyre, giving an apologia for the mad woman in attic (and a bit more characterisation for Mr Rochester too). Some things are said, more things only hinted at and some left compeletely without explanation, so Rhys does not give any clear answers but does give a new side to the story.

I agree--If This is a Man (or, as my North American edition was called, Survival at Auschwitz) is an amazing book. A must-read for everyone. And it's short.

I was interested to see that a lot of your items read match my own, more than most of the threads I follow. Also picked up that you'd read a few unusual works that I'd also picked off (it was Chess Story that really made me notice, then saw you'd also read Exercises in Style. Then read through properly and found your strategy to avoid bricks and realised it was that which we have in common - nice to find someone else who often unashamedly seeks out short books from the list(s). It's good that there are so many, although I fear you'll run out of them long before I do.

So glad to also see you like Muriel Spark - I hope to find other authors with at least a vaguely similar style on the list.

Heh, yeah, I generally prefer compact writing and novellas and short stories, so they do dominate my 1001 reading too...
And I guess there aren't that many novellas left in the list anymore but a fair amount of 200-pagers still (I have a couple waiting on my shelf already)...and maybe it's again time to pick one of those heftier tomes to read. But I guess almost all the books I have read from the list which are not overly famous are short books :)

Muriel Spark I actually found through the 1001 list, I wonder if I had tried her books if there hadn't been interesting comments going about Miss Jean Brodie, who divided readers...
And she's not the only good new (for me) writer I have found here, so even though I don't take 1001 books goal that seriously, paying some attention to the list does get me good stuff I might have not tried otherwise.

Steven did a breakout of the original languages of the books on 1001 list and the number and percentage of books he has read, and while my total numbers are notable more meager I checked it out too, and if I have got the original languages right,

776 English (97=12.5%)
114 French (20=17.5%)
91 German (8=8.8%)
70 Spanish (9=12.9%)
37 Italian (18=49%)
33 Russian (8=24%)
21 Dutch
19 Japanese (8=42%)
17 Portuguese (1=5.9%)
12 Greek (1=8.3%)
11 Swedish (3=27%)
10 Serbo-Croatian (1=10%)
9 Czech (2=22%)
9 Polish (2=22%)
7 Chinese
6 Hungarian (1=17%)
6 Norwegian (1=17%)
5 Arabic (1=20%)
5 Yiddish
3 Albanian (1=33%)
3 Finnish (2=67%)
3 Hebrew
2 Afrikaans
2 Bulgarian
2 Korean
2 Latin
2 Romanian
2 Slovenian
2 Ukrainian
1 Armenian
1 Basque
1 Bengali
1 Catalan
1 Danish
1 Estonian
1 Ethiopic
1 Gaelic
1 Galician
1 Icelandic
1 Kikuyu
1 Persian
1 Sesotho
1 Turkish
1 Vietnamese
1 Welsh

1294 (184=14.2%)

So, of the bigger languages I am only slightly behind on English books and a good deal more on German (not to mention Dutch, Portuguese, Greek...) but doing fairly well on French and Russian and especially on Italian and Japanese (elsewhere I have observed that I have a preference for both of these countries when it comes to literature)
High scores on Finnish and Swedish are of course explained by my native country, though I don't have complete 100% yet on any of the languages...

Edit: Updated, and will be updated as I make progress.

123. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.
Religion, brandy, socialists.

124. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani.
Unrequited love, tennis, nazies.

The former was of mixed emotions, the latter mainly melancholic, but I guess I need something a bit more cheery next.

125. I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti
Well, this was not the cheery book referred to above. Can't tell too much about this in order to not give plot points away, but it is about a young boy in a poor Italian village coming across something that movies him from childhood scares to more adult horrors.

126. A Hero of Our Time by Mihail Lermontov.
"Our time" of course being equally 1840s and 2010s.

Both good books and worth reading even if neither became an actual favorite.

A couple more, both about women taking a strange journey:

127. The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark.
I think this was the last Spark in the list, and as was expected, I enjoyed it, though not among her best.

128. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.
There were bits and pieces which were decent but also long passages of "spot the literary technique" or meandering for its own sake. I can objectively appreciate some of the things done here but I did not particularly care for the book.

And I guess this is my last 1001 book this year:

129: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
Somewhat similar to Remains of the Day, a person dealing with his pre-war activities in post-war world, in this case a Japanese painter involved in nationalist propaganda. Very good.

New year, new book:

130: The Knot of Vipers by Francois Mauriac
The beginning of the book is not that good, boring whiner whining boringly, but it picks up a bit as it goes along. Worthy I guess but I was not that enthusiastic about it.

Been mostly reading non-1001 books but these were short ones...

131: The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati. Rather dark book, a bit like Kafka but more coherent, the main character waits and watches the steppe and waits and watches his life slipping away...still goo though.

132: Embers by Sandor Marai. A friendship of long ago and remembrance of what happened over 40 years ago...quiet book but surprisingly engaging; I started the book quite uninterested but got drawn in and read it halfway, then the next day continued again initially bored but again got caught in the story.

133: Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous. Not that great a story but interesting insights on the society of the time.

Long pause in this, I have been reading a good deal but mainly non-1001 books.

134: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Nice. I had movie in mind when reading this, bunch of differences but I'd argue the changes made did work for the most part. But I liked the book too, both the title story and other two stories.

135: The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. Fast read, kind of silly with all the coincidences but entertaining romp. I guess the reason for inclusion is more historical than literary though...

...and since the last time:

136: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I guess I have to put this in "probably important when it came out" category, I couldn't muster any kind of interest in the story or characters and "colonialism is bad, mmkay" is hardly a revelation nowadays.

137: Eugene Onegin by Alexandr Puskin. Well, this was fun, if one has tolerance for epic poetry and opera-like story. I've read couple of his short stories before which were also good, and I enjoyed the mixture of drama and lightness here.
Generally i have been happy about the less famous Russian classics I have come across on the 1001 list (Puskin, Lermontov, Leskov).

HD, couldn't agree with you more on both of these.

More:

138: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Not being an American high school student, I have never got around to reading any Steinbeck and frankly didn't expect much. But it turned out to be rather enjoyable, the narrative worked well even if the content was that sort of realist poverty descriptions I don't particularly care for.

139: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. Something of a mess, at some points it was rather hard to keep up on detail level what exactly was happening here, where the characters were and who was talking to who, and the bits with Scottish dialect didn't help, but the overall story was interesting and character of Gil-Martin was indeed impressive. But the amount of theological debate probably will put some readers off this...

140: Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. Well, this was good. Having read before couple of books by Flaubert (including that short story with parrot), I had bit of background and already facts of his life were interesting, but as an added bonus we get bunch of questionable speculation and plenty of exploration on the topic of biography writing. A good one.

141: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Another book apparently popular in American high schools, and one that felt like it, something suited for picking apart and discussing the theme and how it was handled etc. I identified mostly with sharks, and had this been a classroom, I'd suspect the teacher was the woman on the last page.

Long time, no update. I have been reading mostly other books than 1001 ones, but still have managed to scrounge some...

142: Platero and I by Juan Ramon Jimenez
143: The Immoralist by Andre Gide
144: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
145: Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
146: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
147: Neuromancer by William Gibson

I am currently reading another 1001 book but the rest of my current TBR pile is not of the list, so I doubt I will get to 150 books this year.

And that one more in this year:

148: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson.

Charming and entertaining little book drawing from Cinderella.

Been reading mostly outside the list so only couple of entries so far this year...

149: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Oh, for heaven's sake, I'd have liked to slap young Werther until he got over himself.

150: House Mother Normal by B.S.Johnson
Amusing little novel, I like that the experimenting is done more in form (while still managing to be very readable) instead of, say, inventing a new language.

And some more

151: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Fascinating warm comedy of manners which mixed in admirable amounts of serious stuff and thus never became twee.

152: The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Somewhat similar to the previous one, comedy of manners (though considerably colder than Cranford) with darker undercurrents.

153: Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
A bit of a shaggy dog story, but several anecdotes were quite funny.

154: The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
I must say I don't really know what to make of this. Bleak story of a girl nobody cares about told in metafictive manner.

155: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Epic of a Sicilian noble family, reminded me a bit of The Last September I read a while ago since there is a similar theme of watching the change from the point of view of someone who will be in the past.
The main character was great, but some of the chapters felt unnecessary...

I noticed only now that this book I've read years ago was in the list...

156: Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino
Probably because I have marked it as three separate books. They do have in common a historical theme, treated in the style of Calvino so expect to go a bit meta and a bit philosophical, and are called a trilogy but anyway...

Many people seem to prefer The Baron in the Trees, the most "realistic" (well, a young Italian noble decides to live in trees for the rest of his life, that counts as realistic here) with the most relatable main character, but personally I am more fond of the other two, more fable-like stories (a viscount who accidentally gets split into two in an explosion, one side bad, the other good, and a virtuous paladin of Charlemagne's army who is actually an empty suit of arms).

157: King Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev
A novella about a wealthy landowner who decides to divide his ownings to his two daughters, nastiness ensues. The story follows King Lear quite closely, with added Russian characteristics and a bit more realism (not that it lacks on sturm und drang department).

158: A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen
Another very subtle comedy of manners where much of the action seems to take place outside focus or between the lines. While the story and the theme of memory were central, I also had to wonder how the book was put together, in several points she didn't take the easiest ways out.

I've read now two of Bowen's books and she doesn't feel to be particularly easy (while not wilfully obscure peddler of avantgarde either) but she is fascinating. And made me wonder what kind of Harlequin romances Anton Chekov would have written.

159: The Safety Net by Heinrich Böll
The weakest Böll on the list, bit of a pointless mess with too many characters, while it does drive home the idea of inhumanity of life completely controlled by security in the face of terrorism.

Ooh, better put this now, I read this still in December.

160: Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini
Odd small book, full of conversations ranging from banal to strange, about a man who decides after many years to go visit his mother in Sicily.
Apparently there are some antifascist symbolism here of which I got only glimpses but there was something strangely compelling here anyway...

A solid start to this year:

161: Life & Times of Michael K by J.M.Coetzee
My first Coetzee, I had low expectations but this did pull me in. Some have compared this to Kafka but for me Michael K was a much more positive, non-conformist character and the book felt more like The Year of the Hare (with more prison camps and starvation but anyway)

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

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

164: Les enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau
Two teenage siblings remove themselves from society to play mind games with each other. A bit weird, a bit surreal, didn't really work that well for me though.

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

Couple more, one I read couple of months ago, other recently:

166: The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
Another Bowen, another vagueish book not-quite-about-anything but one that still kept the attention...this time the emphasis felt to be even more on stasis and heaviness. I liked A World of Love more though.

167: Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
A dark book, reminding me a bit on Lord of the Flies but ending up reversing some parts...and oh so grotesque and earthily violent. I didn't like reading this book but I liked having read it.

>106 hdcclassic: I just finished Nip the buds, shoot the kids too! I understand exactly what you mean.

168: Death and the Dervish by Mesa Selimovic
A historical epic of a small town in 18th century Bosnia (then part of Ottoman empire), and dervish Ahmed Nurudin who at first tries to deal with powers that be and when the tables are turned finds himself in a position of power...all the while writing down his thoughts, doubts, conscience etc (Hamlet meets Kafka).
Ahmed is the narrator and his way of segueing navelgazing ponderings with actual events was not the easiest to follow (reading this book while tired was quickly noticed to be impossible) but there was still a constant momentum to keep on reading and it was overall an interesting experience (it might benefit from a second reading too, there was a good amount of intrigue going on...)

169: The Last World by Christoph Ransmayr
A historical novel about exiled Ovid and his book Metamorphoses (which I haven't read in full but know well enough to know the references). But it's not a real historical novel, the book is full of anachronisms, photographs, microphones, lightbulbs, canned corn...
I must say I didn't really get this, it possibly says something about the relationship of myths and reality or somesuch but...writing is good though so it wasn't a chore to read even if it didn't really give much.

170: The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
A gambler gets involved with corrupt politicians standing on the brink of gang war. At first I wasn't so convinced about this, but it did pull me in well enough, a fine Hammett it is.

171: The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky
On "write what you know" style, this is a book about a Czech author and literature professor living in Canada, covering both his current life (in mid-70s, cold war and samizdat very much a reality) as well as his past from early 40s onward, as well as several of his friends and acquaintances.
It is a big, sprawling novel, jumping back and forth in time and place, filled with literary references (book is divided in seven chapters titled Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Crane, Fitzgerald, Conrad and Lovecraft and there's plenty more...), cultural references, large chunks of the political history of 20th century in all shades and absurdities, and lots of stories of people struggling between all that, told with ironic wit.
Big, heavy and good.

I read this in 24-hour readathon, managing 6/7 of the book in that time and finishing the last part of the book later the same day (this foolish human flesh needed sleep in between). A buzzing experience.

Out of curiosity, since we've read the same number of books (you just hit 171, and I will post my 171st tomorrow), I just went through your list and tallied up how many we have in common. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but the 43 we've both read seems low. But looked at another way, I can also see how it would seem high! Ah, fun with statistics.

Hmm, I guess it is a reasonable number for two not quite random selections, there are plenty of books on the list that "everyone" has read, at least "everyone" who reads enough to cover 171 books from the list (even though I know I am still missing some of those "everyone" books and I guess you are too).

But it's low enough number to suggest that we are not following each other closely, that if I praise some more obscure work you don't make it your priority to read it soon or vice versa :)

Yeah, that's basically what my husband was saying - that it would be a large intersection if every book on the list were equal in likelihood of finding or reading it. But of course since there are some books that people are much more likely to have read, it becomes a little less significant.

I'm missing plenty of the ones "everyone" has read - I've only read 2 Dickens books, for example. I think we are definitely going our own paths!

172: As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo
In a way I get why this book was included in the list even if I didn't care for it that much, it is a clear forerunner of modern literature, showing elements becoming popular in 20th century literature. A foolish man and a threacherous woman are also of course mix & bake of human drama but, well, outside historical interest I couldn't get into it.

173: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
I am tempted to call this utopia, because it seems this is the direction our world wants to go. Which in some ways makes it scarier that Orwells and all.

174: The Bells of Basel by Louis Aragon
Ok, I took my time to read this, about two months despite it only being 350 pages. And considering the number of characters, it might have benefitted from a bit brisker space, I couldn't keep track of everyone...but anyway since it is so firmly rooted in the politics of pre-WWI France (of which I know basically nothing) trying to keep up with all the stuff happening was probably hopeless anyway.

Anyway, it's a book about the glory of socialism, studying two different bourgeois women and their oppression and finally rejecting them in favour of a true socialist woman, a modern and emancipated woman. So the enjoyment is strongly affected by the acceptance of tendencious literature (personally I sometimes have a morbid curiosity upon such things).
Admittedly the second woman, Catherine Simonidze, was quite interesting character and there were some rather good parts in the book (couple of scenes I'd even call great) but still, just picking up the book felt like a serious physical effort.

But admittedly I have read worse books in 1001 list.

175: Time of Silence by Luis Martín-Santos
Apparently brought a selection of techniques employed by James Joyce et al. to Spanish literature and at first I was gagging a bit because I tend to dislike stream-of-consciousness and all that, but Martìn-Santos does not sacrifice readability for exercises in form.
It's a story of an aspiring scientist studying hereditary cancer in mice, but the mice keep dying and there's all kinds of other problems too...and during the novel the aspirations, hopes and dreams are crushed, so it is rather gloomy book, but not without dark humour.

Even though I had read them years ago, for some reason I have so far neglected to mention these two. I do mention them now since I decided to reread them.

176: The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
177: The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe

178: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Bringing in the noir characteristics, of course, but it felt a bit like adventure pulp too and the whole falcon statue thing was a tad cheesy: Christie might have made it work but here it felt out of place.
Worth reading of course but I think other Hammetts on the list are better.

179: To the North by Elizabeth Bowen
My fourth Bowen, and possibly the most straightforward of them (no flashbacks or otherwise weird structures, no wonky syntax).
It is interesting to see how she seems to play with different concepts, this time it's mostly about the mood: the book starts as rather light society comedy but builds up darker overtones with smallest nuances...but while good, and definitely building up for a climax, it felt slightly lesser works than others I have read from her.
But I should get to the last two 1001 Bowens soonish, and there are couple of other books by her that seemed pretty interesting too...

Have you read The Wall by John Heresy, this book changed my life

180: Chaereas and Callirhoe by Khariton
An ancient hellenic romp with plot twists, sex and violence aplenty. Not particularly deep but definitely not boring either.

181: The Passion of the New Eve by Angela Carter
I was eager to try out some Carter, but, well, wasn't so wowed with this. A strange romp through gender, mythology and quasiapocalyptic America that was so busy being lurid that I didn't really get if there was anything deeper underneath.

182: The Path to the Spiders' Nests by Italo Calvino
Now, I love Calvino but this was not what he is famous for, but neo-realist short novel about partisans in WWII he write when he was 23 (the version commonly available is a revised by the author as he felt that the original is not that representative of his work, the revised version is not really either but possibly closer). Not bad but not that special either.

183: The Successor by Ismail Kadare
I picked this out of curiosity and only after reading noticed it was a 1001 book. 'Tis nice when that happens.
The Successor of The Leader of the country has died, but is it a suicide or murder? Not that it ultimately matters that much, the book concentrates mostly on rampant paranoia and the network of hints and rumours it takes to survive on a closed dictatorship. Partly based on actual historical events in Albania.
Not my new favourite book or anything but it was pretty interesting.

184: Fuglane by Tarjei Vesaas
Two adult siblings living in rural Norway, Mattis is rather non compos mentis and his sister Hege is looking after him. But what happens when the simple little life is disturbed...
Naah. It was rather straightforward book to read but I really didn't care for it.

185: Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis
A holocaust novel that barely mentions holocaust. I had read before Early Sorrows and liked it, it also is rather fragmentary novel telling about everyday life of little Andi Scham with ongoing war only in hints and shadows, so I picked this second novel about Andi (that was written first, actually) and noticed it was in 1001 list...
And this is even more fragmentary and jumbled book, no doubt showcasing the vague nature of a child's memory and understanding, mixing everyday occurrences, dreams, legends etc while being mostly (but not completely) unaware what is happening in the world.
In retrospect this was realised well but it is definitely not an easy read, and had I not read that Early Sorrows before or had it not been a list book, there's a chance I would have dropped it without finishing...
So, proceed with caution (and I liked the other book better).

186: Hemsöborna by August Strindberg
Ok, reason for inclusion of this one eludes me. Strindberg is good enough writer but this is rather trivial book.

187: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Major gap in my reading of Russian classics or literature in general, I had never read any Dostoevsky. Well, now I have. Boy, does he yammer on and on and on and on.
There were some okay sections, mainly some of the parts involving Raskolnikov, but as a book this was a chore for patience and sitting muscles.

188: Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen
How refreshing this was after the previous one. Of the Bowen books I have read this one is the most vague and unyielding in information (and that's no mean feat) but it was unyielding in a good way, at least she doesn't yammer. Not my favorite of hers nor is this a good book to introduce yourself to Bowen, but definitely a good book.

Oh, I'm so sad you didn't like Crime and Punishment more... it's definitely my favorite Russian novel (so far.) It probably helped that I read it in college in conjunction with Russian history classes... it probably made the yammering on more interesting. :)

It seems to be a dividing book, I know well-read people who consider it one of the best books ever written (and similarly other well-read people who agree that it should be edited to half...)
But, well, my favourite Russians are more on the line of Pushkin, Leskov and Chekov (and I've been meaning to read more Turgenev), who obviously are quite different from Dostoevsky...

>125 hdcanis: I often wonder if the books by Strindberg & Pirandello are a consolation prize -- included solely because they wrote revolutionary plays (Miss Julie, Six Characters in Search of an Author) that can't be included in a history of novel.

There might be a bit of that, I wondered the same about e.g. Maupassant, a writer most famous for his short stories (I haven't read Bel Ami so don't know how it holds but in discussions about the author it seems to be a bit "also there" book...)

Pirandello's innovative novels are excellent examples of modernism and no less deserving than his plays. Strindberg's prose is very varied, and the People of Hemso isn't particularly representative of it, it was just an early and persistent best-seller of his. It's probably considered more "approachable" and likeable than his other works tinged with mythomania and occultism, to say nothing of pathological misogyny.

I gathered so that People of Hemsö is considered a "nice" and popular book by Strindberg, though I don't know if it's a good reason for inclusion...
Though of course personally there was also the issue that being Finnish, the content of the book was culturally familiar enough that it didn't distinguish itself enough from numerous other agrorealist books I already knew...

I would have included The red room or Schwarze Fahnen, much livelier discussions of those. :)

The Red Room actually is on the list, should get to it later...

189: In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
I actually liked this quite a lot, a weird hippie utopia or parody thereof in which I found relevance also for today...it was a kind of book where I felt all the time that I almost understand what it is about but it keeps on slipping away, but I like that in a book.

>134 hdcanis: I found that one a pleasant little surprise as well.

190: Life of a Good-for-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff
A young man sets out to seek fortune (or job that allows him to laze around) armed with violin and naive optimism: he meets friendly people, beautiful women and has a bit of adventure too (nothing too serious of course).
It feels like a script of comedic opera and I wouldn't be surprised if it has also been used as such. Maybe a bit trivial fluff but not without charm either, and as far as German Romanticism goes it feels like an amusing counterpoint to Young Werther (even though I wouldn't recommend emulating this character either).

I was going through the list and spotted couple of books I had inexplicably not remembered to mention here, despite having read them within the time of this thread...

191. Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi
Pretty good from what I remember; I have since read some other books by him and left underwhelmed.

192. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Not having read most of the books it parodies, some of the references were lost, but it's not like it's not applicable to a good deal of other countryside realists...amusing.

And I think for consistency's sake I'll include

193. Aesop's Fables by Aesop
I haven't obviously read all of them but since the editions are so various and I'm pretty sure I know enough of them to get the hang of his artistry, I'll mark this as read.

194. Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
If this had been my first book by the author, I'd probably have dismissed it as sordidly exploitative and meandering piece seeing decadence as end in itself, something that probably had made an impression when it was published but hasn't aged so well.
However this is my fourth book by him so I already had an idea (and appreciation) of what to expect, and this fits well within the context of his other works, especially Sixty-Nine (a book that moves around the same period and subject but reverses almost everything else...)

195. The Young Man by Botho Strauss
One of the more obscure entries of the list, came to my attention via Read ALL challenge.
It seems to be a bunch of fragments that have slapped together and called a novel: at least I couldn't keep up with any kind of structure here. Some of the fragments were fairly interesting in themselves so reading was not a complete slog (and thus there have been worse books on the list) but especially in the middle when a bunch of people I couldn't really keep track of were giving long monologues, I was often just turning the pages and hoping for something to catch my attention to come up.

Oh, too bad, I thought his Devotion a perfect little book, I wonder if it might not have left you with a different impression of his talent. (I just bought some stories of his too...) I understand he has more of a reputation as a playwright.

I heard also another Strauss fan elsewhere recommending that same book. And indeed I wouldn't rule out reading a novella, short stories or plays by him, his likely talents probably show better there: the main problem here was that the long-form novel structure was a mess.

196: Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
I don't know if the intended entry is the seven-page short story or some specific volume, but as I have now read a couple of his collections, one of them containing said short story, I think I have this covered.
Often historical themes combined with often modernist writing, some of his works lose me but plenty of good stories too (just be prepared that a lot of his better stuff is quite dark).

>142 hdcanis: The entry in the 2008 edition states "Rashomon and Other Stories comprises contains six stories written...between 1915 & 1921". The blurb specifically mentions (aside from the title story):
"Dragon"
"Yam Gruel"
"Kesa and Morito"
"In a Grove"

Ah, Dragon and In a Grove were in this Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories collection I read now, the other one I read before was The Beautiful and the Grotesque, but looks like neither contains Yam Gruel or Kesa and Morito. Oh well, I still think I have Akutagawa for the purpose of 1001 list (though I might be tempted to read something of him later, should it come across).

197: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
I can recognize this as technically one of the best-written books of the 1001 list (yes, tall order) and thus worthy of the renown, and I enjoyed reading it without it becoming my favourite. Which makes me yet another man in Emma's life.

198: Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedict Erofeev
A train trip turning into a hazy odyssey full of people, stories, philosophy and lots and lots of booze. A social commentary in black comedy.
Benefits from having read at least some of the Russian classics (and some others too, despite being roaring drunk these people know their literature).

Loved your comment on Madame Bovary! And you also make me want to read the Erofeev, which has barely crossed my radar before.

>146 hdcanis:

despite being roaring drunk these people know their literature

lol! Ain't that the truth!

Erofeev is definitely worth checking out if you come across it. I have read some other samizdat literature too and there's some wonderful black comedy there...

199: Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann
Der Blaue Engel being one my favourite films, I wondered how the book would do...and while the situation at first is similar, the characters are different and the story goes to quite different direction. The original title being much more fitting for the book, it is even more his story and he really is Unrat.
The film remains more satisfying but the book has its own point.

200. Alamut by Vladimir Bartol
Historical novel about a man who's a cruel manipulator or a visionary or probably both. A fine adventure with plenty of cynical philosophy, I'd imagine people who like Umberto Eco's novels also to enjoy this.

Happy two hundred!

Congratulations on 200!

>151 hdcanis: I've only read Foucault's Pendulum, which I enjoyed very much, but you're right that I also loved Alamut. :)

The Name of the Rose is quite similar too, historical novels that have a clear plot structure but are more about ideas. I was also thinking of a Finnish author Mika Waltari who puts some more attention to the world and main characters' psychology but who has a bit similar mood in his books...
And Foucault's Pendulum even mentions assassins and The Old Man of the Mountain :)