Paul

Hello all, I finally figured out how I wanted to read through the decades. Just too many unread books had immediately come to mind, so here is a master list of possibilities I have selected. It has "difficult" books for me - books that I have always wanted to read, but never got around to through the decades. Some books I have started to read, and still want to read, but got stalled; some books are simply challenges to read in themselves; a few plays that I have enjoyed and want to read; and one non-fiction. This list will probably remain stable in spite of other reading I do, and I will slowly get one book read for each decade, noting them as I go. This list may be the only way to get them read, but read them I will! And of course other books may get added PS It was impossible not to add extra decades on each end, but don't mind me! Reading the Decades - Master List 1800 Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust (1800), tr Yuan Shi. Completed. 1810 Walter Scott - Waverly (1814) 1820 Wolfgang von Goethe - Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (1821) 1830 Stendahl - The Red and the Black (1830) 1840 Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time (1840) - In progress. 1850 Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary (1857) - Completed 1860 George Eliot - Silas Marner (1861) - Completed. 1870 Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) - in progress Lewis Carroll - The Hunting of the Snark (1876) - Completed George Eliot - Daniel Deronda (1876) - Completed. 1880 Henry James - Washington Square (1881) - Completed Anthony Trollope - Kept in the Dark (1882) 1890 Henry James - The Turn of the Screw (1898) Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness (1899) - Completed. 1900 Henry James - The Wings of the Dove (1902) Samuel Butler - The Way of All Flesh (1903) Louis Tracy - The Wings of the Morning (1903) - Completed. A reread of one of the first books I ever read. Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent (1907) - Started. 1910 Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome (1911) Thomas Mann - Death in Venice (1912) - Completed. Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier (1915) - Completed. 1920 Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence - (1919) D. H. Lawrence - Women in Love - (1920) F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise - (1920) - Started F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1925) - Completed Theodore Dreiser - An American Tragedy (1925) 1930 F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934) Robert Graves - I, Claudius (1934) Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind (1936) William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom - (1936) - Completed 1940 Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon (1940) - Completed. Herman Hesse - Magister Ludi (1943) - Started Eugene O'Neill - The Iceman Cometh (1946) Tennessee Williams - Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman (1949) 1950 Ian Fleming - Casino Royale (1953) William Gaddis - The Recognitions (1955) - Started Robert Heinlein - Tunnel in the Sky (1955) Tennessee Williams - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) - Completed 1960 Perre Boulle - Planet of the Apes (1963) Samuel Beckett - How It Is (1964) - Completed Arthur Miller - After the Fall (1964) - Completed Saul Bellow - Herzog (1964) - In progress Taylor Caldwell - A Pillar of Iron (1965) Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon (1966) - Completed 1970 Rosamunde Pilcher - The End of the Summer (1971) - Completed William Styron - Sophie's Choice (1979) Cormac McCarthy - Suttree (1979) 1980 Marilynne Robinson - House Keeping (1980) John Crowley - Little, Big (1981) Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children (1981) Clarice Lispector - The Stream of Life (1989) - Completed 1990 John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany (1990) - In progress. Philip Roth - American Pastoral (1997) - Completed 2000 Scott Turow - Burden of Proof (2000) Rosamunde Pilcher - Winter Solstice (2001) Margaret McMillan - Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2002) Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow v1 Fever and Spear (2002) - Completed J. M. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello (2003) - Completed Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow v2 Dance and Dream (2004) - Completed Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow v3 Poison, Shadow and Farewell (2007) - Completed Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture (2008) Roberto Bolano - 2666 (2008) - Completed 2010 David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010) Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge (2013) - Completed.

Cozzens certainly did put together a story with many layers of interlocking sub-plots, didn't he? They frequently started out only as seemingly background fill-in and eventually grew to unexpected major issues to be resolved. It was indeed fantastic story telling! Shelbel, Thank you for your kind comment! I truly hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I have -- twice now -- and as much as I enjoyed writing that review as a tribute to it. I read it when it first came out, and now more recently after 50 years (gasp!), and it was an absorbing and breath-taking experience both times.

By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens. So begins By Love Possessed, written in the long sentences, large vocabulary and involved syntax of Cozzen's elaborate and noticeable style. The story is indeed about love and, especially from this distance, also about time. And not least about Arthur Winner, the prosperous rising young lawyer who is well regarded by all. Written in the 50's the setting is an upscale neighborhood in a small New England town with many of the picture-perfect features of respectability that might come to mind from that time: white clapboard colonial houses on trimmed lawns; a town square dominated by a church on one side, with a slender steeple spearing itself straight up into a blue sky; and a stately courthouse with a painted-white Greek-columned facade facing it across the square -- the very monuments of religion and justice combined in an orderly suburb. The action takes place over a summery weekend, in the forty-nine hours begun by that clock strking three on that Friday afternoon, as life relaxes for its usual outdoor enjoyments of picnicking, and swimming, and relaxing with one's friends, colleagues and neighbors. But scrapes of people with the law know no weekends, and Arthur Winner is a lawyer, so his weekend is also interlaced with legal complexities and obligations that reach out of the neighborhood, spread across town lines into different social, ethnic and religious strata, and embroil some of his acquaintances and colleagues. Throughout, Cozzens shows life and events unfolding, not altogether orderly, in response to a complicated and conflicting mesh of a myriad of personal allegiances and affections ranging from professional respect, through amorous dalliances, to familial and married devotion. For that realism, the book drew some criticism, according to the Introduction, because "his objective revelations of the vanity of human wishes upset readers accustomed to reassuring messages about the nobility of human nature." The passage of time brings us to the present day, fifty years after the novel's publication in 1957, when we can look back, through the pages of this novel, to a considerably calmer and more placid time in our history and notice how times have changed, or not. This was the future that this reviewer and others once aspired to, as we were starting out in life, and it is a picture perfect representation of one part of the American story, as well as an absorbing drama as Arthur Winner is forced to grow in maturity in ways he never could have expected. Not necessarily an easy read, it is a long book with an enlarged vocabulary that might drive one to a dictionary from time to time, but as the author of the Introduction claims "sixty odd words in a 570 page novel is not an outrageous proportion," before he then presents a list of definitions for the convenience of readers. It is however a brightly lit story of life as it once was, and definitely worth reading before it escapes from our memories completely.

OK Janet, Actually I didn't much care for the synopsis on the back cover. It's amateurish and makes it sound like a pot-boiler, so I put together a full review which I'm going to put in the Book Review section here. If you'd still like a shorter synopsis, I can do that too. Your call on how you want to handle it.

OK, I'll do that. Give me a bit to scratch my head, or perhaps look up my copy which is around here someplace after just re-reading it recently.

This definitely sounds like a challenge I will join. It meshes well with my goal to read one-each of every noted American author and I see good books on the list, plus many decades I already have covered, heh heh. If one should be reading previously unread books in the decades I'll gladly sign up for that also. Might I suggest two good reads: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1958) By Love Posessed by James Gould Cozzens (1957)

Right! I regard even the short list as no more than suggestions for books I might want to read sometime. There seem to be so many other books off the list that attract me and that I read.

I revisited the list recently and 1001 books was just too many, especially with so many authors and titles that I have never heard of. So I went through it and cut it back to only authors I had ever heard of, and only one title per author. That got it down to 'only' 300 books, but let me tell ya, 300 titles in one list is still a huge looking list! Bottom line, I've read 123 through all my years of reading, which is 41% against my short list. And still reading -- Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer most recently, and not on the list.

Ah, you all are into the good ones, where somehow I feel that his imagination is roaming looser and wilder! Harlequins is just wonderful as each woman comes and goes and he teases us to wonder whether this is the one, or else just who she is anyway. Until finally just one more comes along. Transparent Things takes up again his long fascination with the after life in a very cleverly constructed slender story. It is the perfect example that he, the magician, can work his sleight-of-hand close-up in a very small room and still dazzle the audience. I've enjoyed all of his novels, missing only two so far, but these are among the gems, in my opinion.

Pnin is definitely one of Nabokov's most accessible and enjoyable books. In addition it reflects Nabokov at his impish best in the puzzles that he embedded for discovery on second reading: sorting out who the different narrators might be, and figuring out "Toms" confusion about Pnin's confusion after the party. All in good clean fun.

Well, If it is deliberate difficulty you are looking for, then there is always the opening sentence of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (120 words I think I remember) and then keep on reading for sheer enjoyment -- and more long sentences. Good luck with your project! Added in Edit: As an after thought. it occurs to me that the US national documents, namely the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, make reading that probably requires focus and attention. For just plain excellent writing there are Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and, even better, his almost unknown Second Inaugural Address. ("With malice toward none and charity for all")

James Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of highly readable short stories also, despite his reputation for difficulty from writing Ulysses.

Why don't Churches do more of the good things? I think churches can go only so far as people themselves are willing to go. Do active non-believers want more action? Let them put their shoulder to the wheel (any wheel) and push forward, instead of against. Are the minds of children worth fighting for? You bet your bippy! Even Dawkins knows that.

Somehow this strikes me as a year for anti-religious works and pronouncements, more than other recent years. Anyone else with that feeling?

I gave up. Was the word really necessary? That's exactly where he lost me. The blinking lights immediately went on saying "Contrived. Contrived. Contrived."

I am reading Blood Meridian and I think there is only one word to describe McCarthy: brilliant! He has gone right to the head of the list with the best I have ever read.

One every other month is a great idea! I'll be able to squeeze in some other reading too, to work down my TBR pile. Plus I think Northanger Abbey is beginning to work its charms on me already, from the few pages I have just read. YAY!

I'm gettting better at resisting, now that I have catalogued my books online and realize how truly many unread books I have. They currently outnumber the books that I have actually read by just about three-to-one and that fact is sobering me up, especially since we are not talking small numbers here on either hand. But I still see books . . . .

I like happy endings, especially sentimental ones, so this book is high on my happy list.

You bet! But then again I have only read HP7. Now that I am going back and reading HP1 for the first time, I am finding that numerous details stand out that I would have glossed over and missed completely if I had not read HP7 first. She really started crafting the books carefully right from the beginning! I am obviously not recommending reading them backwards, but I certainly believe that re-reading the earlier volumes will provide far more in the way of enjoying and understanding HP7 than one might imagine. PS I too am puzzled by the baby.

The further I get into HP1 the more I appreciate it (now p180/309). I think it has the qualities that all great children's books have (IMO): they appeal to both the parent as well as the child, and both enjoy the reading of them. And it seems to me I read someplace -- although I can no longer find it -- that the books were each written to an age level that tracked the growing ages of their readership (Harry and crew certainly age) so it is no wonder that you both have kept up and not lost interest. That all sounds good to me from the viewpoint of a parent, albeit an older one.

Louise, I am half-way into Sorceror's Stone and I am pleased with the way it is going. I've certainly heard all the complaints about writing and hype but Volume 1 surprises me pleasantly, and I think large parts of it definitely have a read-out-loud style, which is just right for a read-out-loud story, but pales in comparison with 'high-literary' style like say Nabokov whom I admire greatly. More and more I think it depends on the standard one brings to the book, and I prefer to judge based on overall effect and whether the book works as a whole. So far HP7 did, and it looks like HP1 will also. Hype there certainly was, but so what?

I have only heard that there are portents or trial runs of some aspects of Cloud Atlas in earlier books, but nothing at all to suggest that they were necessary background for reading Cloud Atlas.

I'm not sure I'm allowed in here, because HP7 is the only volume I have read, and, out in the real world, my friends are aghast when I say that! Nevertheless, I simply have to add my reaction that, even standing alone and on its own, it was a good read and will stand the test of time. For me, the long scenes of filling in answers from previous parts of the story were a real drag, of course, and I didn't think they were especially well-written either. But the few good scenes were so well written and overwhelming for me as to redeem completely the entire book and make me glad I read it. If I now read the previous books, as I am now starting to do, perhaps I can be forgiven the intrusion.