We who work in the European district of Brussels have observed over the last few days a series of respectably-sized demonstrations outside the Council Secretariat building by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, protesting at their inclusion on the EU’s list of terrorist organisations.
While I know next to nothing of the specifics of this issue, it does occur to me that the PMOI might help their own cause by rebranding themselves to a name that doesn’t include the word “Mojahedin”…
Three more of the standard Big Finish releases, two of which are in the 3:1 format, and the latest Companion Chronicle
So, I liked the two three-parters, Exotron and The Wishing Beast, much more than their accompanying single-episode stories; and Home Truths is a worthy addition to the Daleks’ Master Plan narrative.
As before, I thank didn’t like. There are, however, a number that I didn’t think were particularly funny.
I’m working up a small project on William Shakespeare’s appearances in the Doctor Who universe. I think I now have a comprehensive list of them, which I will list below the cut, listed in three different orders. Still thinking about how I might put this together more creatively.
1572: Shakespeare is kidnapped by Daleks as a boy, and meets Troilus and Cressida on his journey home with the Doctor (Time of the Daleks; Apocrypha Bipedium)
1592: The alien Shadeys attempt to use Greene’s hatred of Shakespeare to invade Earth (A Groatsworth of Wit)
1593: Marlowe avoids death and disguises himself as Shakespeare (All Done with Mirrors)
1597: The Doctor puts Shakespeare right about Richard III, with unexpected consequences (The Kingmaker)
c. 1598: Queen Elizabeth gives Shakespeare the idea for The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Francis Bacon gives him the idea for Hamlet (The Chase)
1599: The alien Carrionites attempt to invade Earth using the text of Love’s Labour’s Won (The Shakespeare Code)
c. 1600: Sarah Jane Smith complains to Shakespeare about the sexism of The Taming of the Shrew, and suggests the character of Lady Macbeth to him (The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor)
c. 1601: The Doctor writes Hamlet for Shakespeare, who has sprained his hand writing sonnets (City of Death)
c. later in 1601: Shakespeare is transported back briefly to 1505 where after an argument in Leonardo’s studio K9 destroys the original Hamlet manuscript
1609: Shakespeare visits Venice as a secret agent of James I and meets Marlowe again (Empire of Glass).
(There are a couple more vignettes from the beginning of Managra, in 1613, and the end of Empire of Glass, in 1616, but I’ll leave them for now.)
2) The Doctor’s personal timeline
First Doctor: Queen Elizabeth gives Shakespeare the idea for The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Francis Bacon gives him the idea for Hamlet; the Doctor meets Shakespeare and Marlowe in Venice
Fourth Doctor: writes Hamlet for Shakespeare, who has sprained his hand writing sonnets; Marlowe avoids death and disguises himself as Shakespeare; Sarah Jane Smith complains to Shakespeare about the sexism of The Taming of the Shrew, and suggests the character of Lady Macbeth to him; Shakespeare is transported back briefly to 1505 where after an argument in Leonardo’s studio K9 destroys the original Hamlet manuscript
Fifth Doctor: puts Shakespeare right about Richard III, with unexpected consequences
Sixth Doctor: says he must see Shakespeare again
Eighth Doctor: rescues the boy Shakespeare from kidnapping by Daleks, and meets Troilus and Cressida on their journey home
Ninth Doctor: prevents the alien Shadeys’ attempt to use Greene’s hatred of Shakespeare to invade Earth
Tenth Doctor: prevents the alien Carrionites’ attempt to invade Earth using the text of Love’s Labour’s Won.
3) order of broadcast/publication/release
1965: The Chase (TV, by Terry Nation): The First Doctor, Ian, Susan and Vicki watch as Queen Elizabeth gives Shakespeare the idea for The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Francis Bacon gives him the idea for Hamlet
1975: Planet of Evil (TV, by Louis Marks): The Fourth Doctor comments to Sarah Jane Smith that Shakespeare was a dreadful actor
1979: City of Death (TV, by "David Agnew", ie David Fisher, Douglas Adams and Graham Williams): reportedly, the (Fourth, presumably) Doctor wrote Hamlet for Shakespeare, who had sprained his hand writing sonnets
1985: Mark of the Rani (TV, by Pip and Jane Baker): The Sixth Doctor tells Peri that he must see Shakespeare again some time
1992: Doctor Who – City of Death (unofficial novelisation, by David Lawrence): Shakespeare is transported back briefly to 1505 by the Fourth Doctor, where after an argument in Leonardo’s studio K9 destroys the original Hamlet manuscript
1993: The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor (short story published in Doctor Who Monthly’s Brief Encounters series, by Graham Cox): reportedly, Sarah Jane Smith complained to Shakespeare about the sexism of The Taming of the Shrew, and suggested the character of Lady Macbeth to him
1995: The Empire of Glass (Virgin Missing Adventures novel, by Andy Lane): The First Doctor, Vicki and Stephen meet Shakespeare and Marlowe in Venice
2002: Time of the Daleks (Big Finish audio play, by Justin Richards): The Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard rescue the boy Shakespeare from kidnapping by Daleks.
2003: Apocrypha Bipedium (short story in Short Trips: Companions, by Ian Potter): The Eighth Doctor, Charley Pollard and the boy Shakespeare meet Vicki/Cressida and her husband Troilus
2004: All Done With Mirrors (short story in Short Trips: Past Tense, by Christopher Bav): Marlowe avoids death and disguises himself as Shakespeare, with help from the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith
2005-06: A Groatsworth of Wit (comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine, by Gareth Roberts): The Ninth Doctor and Rose prevent the alien Shadeys’ attempt to use Greene’s hatred of Shakespeare to invade Earth
2006: The Kingmaker (Big Finish audio play, by Nev Fountain): Peri and Erimem get caught up in the unexpected consequences of the Fifth Doctor’s attempt to put Shakespeare right about Richard III
2007: The Shakespeare Code (TV, by Gareth Roberts): The Tenth Doctor and Martha prevent the alien Carrionites’ attempt to invade Earth using the text of Love’s Labour’s Won.
For my money, the best are The Shakespeare Code, which is also the most recent; The Kingmaker, which of course I have described here without spoilers as it violates Shakespeare’s own continuity so badly; and the short story Apocrypha Bipedium. On the other hand, I would not especially recommend that you bother seeking out either Time of the Daleks or All Done with Mirrors.
I’d been pointed to Tomine’s work here and here, and seeing that Optic Nerve #8 was one of the recommended titles, decided to buy this, since its subtitle is “The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics”.
Alas, this is “complete” as in “complete from #1 to #7”, so my curiosity about #8 remains unabated. Once I’d got over my disappointment, however, I did enjoy these 32 short vignettes of life, mainly in San Francisco, mainly with first-person narrative from Tomine himself or Amy, his fictional proxy character, published before he made his breakthrough commercially with #8.
In his introduction, Tomine admits disarmingly that he had originally planned to weed out the pieces which he is now embarrassed about, but that would have left very little, so instead he has aimed for completeness. He was right: they are none of them actually bad, and they point to someone who is capable of better. I’ll look out for more of Tomine’s work.
Picked this up yesterday in the bargain bin at Sterling for a euro, and it was money very well spent. Apparently this is part of a series of “How to Read” books; other topics addressed include Foucault, Derrida, Hitler and the Bible. This must demand a certain variety of approach from the authors.
Royle takes seven short dialogues from seven Shakespeare plays (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra) and hangs a short essay on each of them explaining what Shakespeare is doing in the dialogue, in the play, and more broadly in his work, in particular concentrating on the words that are used. It’s a very good illumination of that particulat aspect of encountering Shakespeare, and I was particularly pleased that his take on Hamlet coincided pretty closely with my own (so he must be a very sensible chap).
However, he doesn’t really make enough of the important consideration that these plays were not intended as texts to be read – indeed, the title of the book asks the wrong question. It’s also rather striking that none of the English history plays are among the chosen seven. I would have been happier with the book if Royle had acknowledged these gaps.
Thanks to didn’t like. Today’s score is 33 out of 147, compared with yesterday’s 25 out of 145. I confess I’m not tiotally sure I’ve read those particular Cornwell and Hiaasen novels, but I know I’ve read most of them especially the early ones.
I posted a few months back about reports of the inquest on my great-uncle, John Nicholas Whyte, in 1906 and the remarks of the judge following the failure of the jury to agree at the trial of Dr Adcock for his manslaughter. I have now found that the complete record of the trial is online in the Old Bailey archives.
There is an impressive roll-call of participants. Ludwig Freyberger, the first doctor called to give evidence, pops up here as a practitioner of newfangled autopsy techniques; he also had a family connection with Friedrich Engels. Sir Victor Horsley, who had performed the original spinal operation, ended up dying in Iraq during the first world war. Another testifying doctor, Henry Huxley, was the son of Darwin’s bulldog and therefore uncle of Aldous Huxley and father-in-law of Elspeth Huxley. Captain Fisher, who seems to have brought Major Whyte into contact with Christian Science in the first place, was the incompetent general secretary of the League of Nations Union after the first world war.
Despite the fact that the establishment medics clearly felt Adcock was guilty, the jury was unable to agree (and press reports suggested that only one of them really felt strongly in favour of a conviction). He seems to have been a convincing witness, denying totally that he enjoyed a normal doctor/patient relationship with Whyte, asserting that Whyte was dying in any case and there was nothing that normal medical science (as opposed to Christian Science) could have done, and admitting to his own cocaine habit in a way which seems to have got the sympathy of the jurors.
It’s all a long time ago – Major Whyte was my grandfather’s oldest brother (born on Christmas Eve, 1864; my grandfather was born in 1880, my father in 1928 and I was born in 1967). It is an odd coincidence that he was the same age when he died as I am now (41).
Last night we sampled the delights of ‘t Zuiderhuis, a rather swanky new restaurant which is, crucially, within walking distance of our house.
We had the special – started with a salad with wee bits of pheasant, and the main course being delicious flash-fried chunks of tuna with baked endive. We accepted their recommendation of an Argentinian red wine, enjoyed the food and drink, and tripped merrily home.
But we both woke at about 5 am this morning having had weird dreams. In my case I was setting up a branch office in Geneva with various improbable problems afflicting me in the process, and it was All My Fault. (Anne told me her dream too, but neither of us can remember it now except that it was weird.) One suspects that something was up with the food (probably the tuna).
Well, there you go. I suspect we will try them again, but probably not soon.
There have been a number of interesting posts floating around lately about Irishness, and I hope this will be another one of them. Chasing quite a different track of research, inspired by
Wellington’s reputation has of course been enhanced. He never said “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”. His real line was, “As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, ‘I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.'” Likewise, the full Waterloo quote is “It has been a damned serious business… Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice [i.e. delicately balanced] thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” In both cases, his admirers (who were and remain many) have made his actual words a bit crunchier for the consumption of posterity. (It should also be noted that the original version in both cases is a bit more modest – in the former, he is actually quoting someone else; in the latter, he concentrates on the massive number of casualties.)
But the line about the stable is rather different – it doesn’t reflect terribly well on the Duke, unlike the other two. And interestingly its origin is not with the Duke himself at all, but with another famous orator of the nineteenth century: Daniel O’Connell. Here we have a court hearing in which O’Connell is reported as saying (on 1 October 1843, at a dinner speech after the Monster Meeting earlier that day), “The poor old Duke! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.”
Wellington was of course born in Ireland (probably in Dublin) and brought up at Dangan Castle near Trim, Co. Meath (see local debate). By 1843 he was 71 and getting on a bit, but nonetheless was still Commander-in-Chief of the British army and minister without portfolio in the cabinet. O’Connell’s ally, William Smith O’Brien, speaking on the State of Ireland at the House of Commons on 4 July 1843, had also mocked the Duke’s pretensions to Irishness as part of the general failure of British state institutions to represent Ireland: “Again, let us see how facts actually stand: there are Cabinet Ministers, Englishmen 10, Scotchmen 3, Irish O. The Duke of Wellington is so much denationalized, that I believe he scarcely considers himself an Irishman, and certainly cannot be called a representative of Irish interests in the Cabinet.” Wellington responded in a somewhat verbose speech a few days later in the House of Lords, attacking O’Connell directly for wasting time on political agitation rather than the real interests of the Irish people.
So in fact, the origin of the quote was not the Duke dismissing his own Irish origins (and in a rather cursory search, I haven’t found any strong statement from him on his own Irishness one way or the other) but in fact the radical Irish politicians denying him any right to speak as an Irishman just because he was born there.
The quote has had a long afterlife. Here, for instance, Jim Tully (incorrectly) corrects his former party colleague Patrick Norton (who had just resigned from the Labour Party and was about to join Fianna Fáil) as to its origin in an 1968 Dáil debate on abolishing proportional representation.
Mr. Norton: Deputy Treacy mentioned nationality when speaking of the system of election. I cannot see it is in any way relevant whether the system of election is a British or an Irish system. Like the Minister, I think that, in fact, both the PR system and the straight vote system are British systems. I think it was Daniel O’Connell who said that the fact you were born in a stable does not make you a horse.
Mr. James Tully: Just to get the facts right, it was the Duke of Wellington.
[908] Mr. Norton: I am not aware who said it, but I certainly know the wisdom of it. I do not think it is important whether the person who conceived the system was English or Irish or what his nationality was. Surely it is the merits of the system we should be concerned about?
Most gloriously, there is an allusion to the quote in Finnegan’s Wake. At the end of Part 1, Episode 1, there is a long meditation on “Willingdone” (who combines aspects of both Finnegan and the Duke as commemorated in a (fictional) museum/museyroom under the Phoenix Park monument) which concludes as follows:
This is the Willingdone, bornstable ghentleman, tinders his maxbotch to the cursigan Shimar Shin. Basucker youstead! This is the dooforhim seeboy blow the whole of the half of the hat of lipoleums off of the top of the tail on the back of his big wide harse. Tip (Bullseye! Game!) How Copenhagen ended. This way the museyroom. Mind your boots goan out.
Phew!
Phew!, indeed!
…which of the first 145 of the Guardian’s 1000 must-read novels have you read?
The Guardian’s 1000 books list, first instalment: Love. As usual, bold means I’ve read it, italic means I’ve started it, struck through means I hated it.
Layla al-Juhani, Jahiliyya (2006)
Latifa al-Zayyat, al-Bab al-Maftouh (1960)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (1899)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817)
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
Jane Austen, Emma (1815)
Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1957)
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936)
Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962)
HE Bates, Love for Lydia (1952)
Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)
Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak (1987)
RD Blackmore, Lorna Doone (1869)
Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (1938)
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1948)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Anita Brookner, Look at Me (1983)
AS Byatt, Possession (1990)
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
JL Carr, A Month in the Country (1980)
Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918)
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady (1923)
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Claudine à l’école (1900)
Sidone-Gabrille Colette, Chéri (1920)
Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale (1915)
Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Clèves (1678)
Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites (1949)
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
Marguerite Duras, The Lover (1984)
George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876)
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Enayat el-Zayyat, Al-Hubb w’al-Samt (1967)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (1993)
F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
F Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934)
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (1995)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)
EM Forster, A Room With a View (1908)
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
Paul Gallico, The Snow Goose (1941)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth (1853)
André Gide, Strait Is the Gate (1909)
Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (1932)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Henry Green, Living (1929)
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928)
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders (1887)
LP Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus (1980)
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Georgette Heyer, The Infamous Army (1937)
Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck (1935)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)
WH Hudson, Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow (1921)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady (1881)
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)
Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (1983)
Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness (1964)
MM Kaye, The Far Pavilions (1978)
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (1946)
Pamela Kent, Moon over Africa (1955)
Colette Khoury, Ayyam Ma’ah (1959)
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1978)
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1982)
Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)
DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1960)
DH Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)
DH Lawrence, Women in Love (1920)
Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove (1953)
Rosamond Lehmann, The Weather in the Streets (1936)
Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)
Audre Lorde, Zami (1982)
Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs (1984)
Amin Maalouf, Samarkand (1989)
Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo trilogy (1956-57)
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1912)
Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess (1990)
Javier Marías, A Heart So White (1992)
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915)
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)
Ian McEwan, The Child in Time (1987)
George Meredith, The Egoist (1879)
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Isabel Miller, Patience and Sarah (1969)
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (1945)
Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
Elsa Morante, Arturo’s Island: A Novel (1957)
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
RK Narayan, The Painter of Signs (1976)
Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus (1978)
Cees Nooteboom, All Souls Day (1999)
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (1992)
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (1957)
Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut (1731)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Henry Handel Richardson, Maurice Guest (1908)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1748)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (1954)
Kurban Said, Ali and Nino (1928)
James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime (1967)
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader (1995)
Aara Seale, The Reluctant Orphan (1947)
Erich Segal, Love Story (1970)
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, a Love Story (1972)
Elizabeth Smart, At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love (1999)
Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls (1966)
Graham Swift, Waterland (1983)
Junichiro Tanizaki, Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961)
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877)
Rose Tremain, Music and Silence (1999)
Ivan Turgenev, First Love (1860)
Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons (1988)
Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist (1985)
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (2006)
Charles Webb, The Graduate (1963)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)
Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (1987)
Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne (1861)
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road (1961)
My total: 25 out of 145, and another two started but not finished.
I’ve linked to my reviews where I have written them. The great book on the list that none of you has read is Ali and Nino by Kurban Said, the amazing (and mercifully succinct) love story of the southern Caucasus during the first world war.
I see that the Guardian has launched a new 1000 great novels series. Irritatingly, the full list isn’t yet on-line, but I take this opportunity to go through the list of 1001 books you must read before you die, at least according to Peter Boxall. As usual, bold means I’ve read it (with link to review if there is on), italic means started but didn’t finish, struck through means I hated it. The canonical version of this list does the books in chronological order of publication, but I have listed them here alphabetically by author. (As far as I can; got a bit confused with some of the compound surnames.)
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
The Thousand and One Nights
Arrow of God, by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
Blood and Guts in High School, by Kathy Acker
Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In The Heart of the Seas, by Shmuel Yosef Agnon
The Regent’s Wife, by Leopoldo Alas
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Broad and Alien is the World, by Ciro Alegria
The Man With the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren
Fantômas, by Marcel Allain
Of Love and Shadows, by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, by Jorge Amado
Tent of Miracles, by Jorge Amado
Cause for Alarm, by Eric Ambler
Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
The Old Devils, by Kingsley Amis
London Fields, by Martin Amis
Money: A Suicide Note, by Martin Amis
I’m Not Scared, by Niccolo Ammaniti
Untouchable, by Mulk Raj Anand
The Commandant, by Jessica Anderson
Bosnian Chronicle, by Ivo Andrić
The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andrić
Ashes and Diamonds, by Jerzy Andrzejewski
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Fado Alexandrino, by Antonio Lobo Antunes
The Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius
The Bells of Basel, by Louis Aragon
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, by John Arbuthnot
Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas
Deep Rivers, by Jose Maria Arguedas
The Twilight Years, by Sawako Ariyoshi
The Green Hat, by Michael Arlen
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Obabakoak, by Bernardo Atxaga
Emma, by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Moon Palace, by Paul Auster
The Music of Chance, by Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster
The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela
So Long a Letter, by Mariama Ba
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
Crash, by J.G. Ballard
Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard
The Crow Road, by Iain Banks
The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks
The Sea, by John Banville
The Inferno, by Henri Barbusse
Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse
Silk, by Alessandro Baricco
Regeneration, by Pat Barker
The Ghost Road, by Pat Barker
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes
Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes
Giles Goat-Boy, by John Barth
The Floating Opera, by John Barth
The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme
Alamut, by Vladimir Bartol
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani
Blue of Noon, by Georges Bataille
Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
The Abbot C, by Georges Bataille
The Manors of Ulloa, by Emilia Pardo Bazan
Jacob the Liar, by Jurek Becker
Malone Dies, by Samuel Beckett
Molloy, by Samuel Beckett
Murphy, by Samuel Beckett
Vathek, by William Thomas Beckford
Borstal Boy, by Brendan Behan
Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn
Dangling Man, by Saul Bellow
Herzog, by Saul Bellow
Humboldt’s Gift, by Saul Bellow
The Old Wives’ Tale, by Arnold Bennett
G, by John Berger
Under Satan’s Sun, by Georges Bernanos
Correction, by Thomas Bernhard
Extinction, by Thomas Bernhard
Wittgenstein’s Nephew, by Thomas Bernhard
Death Sentence, by Maurice Blanchot
2666, by Roberto Bolano
Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano
Billiards at Half-Past Nine, by Heinrich Böll
Group Portrait With Lady, by Heinrich Böll
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, by Heinrich Böll
Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski
Eva Trout, by Elizabeth Bowen
The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen
To the North, by Elizabeth Bowen
World’s End, by T. Coraghessan Boyle
In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan
Willard and His Bowling Trophies, by Richard Brautigan
Arcanum 17, by André Breton
Nadja, by André Breton
A Dry White Season, by Andre Brink
Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain
The Death of Virgil, by Hermann Broch
The Guiltless, by Hermann Broch
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
Inside Mr. Enderby, by Anthony Burgess
Camilla, by Fanny Burney
Evelina, by Fanny Burney
Junkie, by William Burroughs
Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs
Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler
The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati
The Virgin in the Garden, by A.S. Byatt
The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain
House in the Uplands, by Erskine Caldwell
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Italo Calvino
The Path to the Nest of Spiders, by Italo Calvino
The Outsider, by Albert Camus
The Plague, by Albert Camus
The Rebel, by Albert Camus
Auto-da-Fé, by Elias Canetti
War with the Newts, by Karel Capek
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Jack Maggs, by Peter Carey
Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey
Them, by Joyce Carol Oates
Kingdom of This World, by Alejo Carpentier
The Lost Steps, by Alejo Carpentier
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter
Bebo’s Girl, by Carlo Cassola
Solitude, by Victor Catala
The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather
Journey to the Alcarria, by Camilo Jose Cela
The Hive, by Camilo Jose Cela
Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
Wild Swans, by Jung Chang
On the Black Hill, by Bruce Chatwin
Monkey: Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng’en
The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers
The Taebaek Mountains, by Jung Rae Cho
Dangerous Liaisons, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
On the Heights of Despair, by Emil Cioran
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Sorrow of Belgium, by Hugo Claus
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
Les Enfants Terribles, by Jean Cocteau
What a Carve Up!, by Jonathan Coe
The Devil and Miss Prym, by Paulo Coelho
Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
Dusklands, by J.M. Coetzee
In the Heart of the Country, by J.M. Coetzee
The Life and Times of Michael K, by J.M. Coetzee
Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
Belle du Seigneur, by Albert Cohen
Claudine’s House, by Colette
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad
The Lion of Flanders, by Hendrik Conscience
Pricksongs and Descants, by Robert Coover
Eline Vere, by Louis Couperus
Arcadia, by Jim Crace
The Enormous Room, by E.E. Cummings
The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
Disappearance, by David Dabydeen
Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D’Annunzio
Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies
The End of the Story, by Lydia Davis
Dom Casmurro, by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac
Le Père Goriot, by Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac
The Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres
On Love, by Alain de Botton
The Princess of Clèves, by Madame de La Fayette
Maldoror, by Comte de Lautréaumont
The Twins, by Tessa de Loo
A Woman’s Life, by Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami, by Guy de Maupassant
Pierre and Jean, by Guy de Maupassant
Amadis of Gaul, by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo
The Crime of Father Amaro, by Jose Maria Eca de Queiros
The Viceroys, by Federico De Roberto
La Celestina, by Fernando de Rojas
Justine, by Marquis de Sade
The 120 Days of Sodom, by Marquis de Sade
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
The Heretic, by Miguel Delibes
Falling Man, by Don DeLillo
Mao II, by Don DeLillo
Underworld, by Don DeLillo
White Noise, by Don DeLillo
Thomas of Reading, by Thomas Deloney
Clear Light of Day, by Anita Desai
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
All About H. Hatterr, by G.V. Desani
Small Remedies, by Shashi Deshpande
The Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
Jacques the Fatalist, by Denis Diderot
The Nun, by Denis Diderot
Rameau’s Nephew, by Denis Diderot
Democracy, by Joan Didion
Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion
The Bitter Glass, by Eilís Dillon
Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin
Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow
The Book of Daniel, by E.L. Doctorow
Stone Junction, by Jim Dodge
Asphodel, by Hilda Doolittle
U.S.A., by John Dos Passos
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Devils, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fool’s Gold, by Maro Douka
Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture, by Apostolos Doxiadis
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Radiant Way, by Margaret Drabble
As If I Am Not There, by Slavenka Drakulic
Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
The Count of Monte-Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Hallucinating Foucault, by Patricia Duncker
The Lover, by Marguerite Duras
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein, by Marguerite Duras
The Vice-Consul, by Marguerite Duras
Justine, by Lawrence Durrell
The Judge and His Hangman, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
A World for Julius, by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Castle Rackrent, by Maria Edgeworth
Woman at Point Zero, by Nawal El Saadawi
Adam Bede, by George Eliot
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Silas Marner, by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss, by George EliotAmerican Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy
Cheese, by Willem Elsschot
Deep River, by Shusaku Endo
Silence, by Shusaku Endo
The Book about Blanche and Marie, by Per Olov Enquist
The Interesting Narrative, by Olaudah Equiano
Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich
Moscow Stations, by Venedikt Erofeyev
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Under the Skin, by Michel Faber
Astradeni, by Eugenia Fakinou
The Siege of Krishnapur, by J.G. Farrell
The Singapore Grip, by J.G. Farrell
Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks
Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore CooperTroubling Love, by Elena Ferrante
Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
The Wars, by Timothy Findley
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bouvard and Pécuchet, by Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Effi Briest, by Theodor Fontane
The Stechlin, by Theodor Fontane
Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford
The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster – seen the film!
A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster – seen the film!
Howards End, by E.M. Forster – seen the film!
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
The Magus, by John Fowles
Faces in the Water, by Janet Frame
Thais, by Anatole France
The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
Simon and the Oaks, by Marianne Fredriksson
Hideous Kinky, by Esther Freud
Homo Faber, by Max Frisch
I’m Not Stiller, by Max Frisch
The Death of Artemio Cruz, by Carlos Fuentes
The Recognitions, by William Gaddis
The Back Room, by Carmen Martin Gaite
Memory of Fire, by Eduardo Galeano
The Trick is to Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway
The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy
Autumn of the Patriarch, by Gabriel García Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez
No One Writes to the Colonel, by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Eclipse of the Crescent Moon, by Geza Gardonyi
Promise at Dawn, by Romain Gary
The Roots of Heaven, by Romain Gary
Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell
Legend, by David Gemmell
The Triple Mirror of the Self, by Zulfikar Ghose
The Shadow Lines, by Amitav Ghosh
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Fruits of the Earth, by André Gide
Strait is the Gate, by André Gide
The Counterfeiters, by André Gide
The Immoralist, by André Gide
New Grub Street, by George Gissing
The Adventures of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
Elective Affinities, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dead Souls, by Nikolay Gogol
The Nose, by Nikolay Gogol
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith
Ferdydurke, by Witold Gombrowicz
Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov
Burger’s Daughter, by Nadine Gordimer
July’s People, by Nadine Gordimer
Mother, by Maxim Gorky
The Artamonov Business, by Maxim Gorky
Marks of Identity, by Juan Goytisolo
The Opposing Shore, by Julien Gracq
Dog Years, by Gunter Grass
Cat and Mouse, by Günter Grass
The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
Lanark: A Life in Four Books, by Alasdair Gray
Back, by Henry Green
Blindness, by Henry Green
Living, by Henry Green
Loving, by Henry Green
Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene
The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene
The Honorary Consul, by Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
Diary of a Nobody, by George Grossmith
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong
Memoirs of Rain, by Sunetra Gupta
Dirty Havana Trilogy, by Pedro Juan Gutierrez
Forever a Stranger, by Hella Haasse
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, by Mark Haddon
The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
Growth of the Soil, by Knut Hamsun
Hunger, by Knut Hamsun
The Afternoon of a Writer, by Peter Handke
The Left-Handed Woman, by Peter Handke
Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
The Go-Between, by L.P. Hartley
The Good Soldier Švejk, by Jaroslav Hašek
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Love in Excess, by Eliza Haywood
A Question of Power, by Bessie Head
The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Margot and the Angels, by Kristien Hemmerechts
Nowhere Man, by Aleksandar Hemon
Reasons to Live, by Amy Hempel
The First Garden, by Anne Herbert
Martin Fierro, by Jose Hernandez
Dispatches, by Michael Herr
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse
The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse
The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith
Camera Obscura, by Hildebrand
Blind Man With a Pistol, by Chester Himes
A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Høeg
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, by E.T.A. Hoffman
The Parable of the Blind, by Gert Hofmann
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg
Hyperion, by Friedrich Hölderlin
The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst
The Swimming Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst
The Cathedral, by Oles Honchar
Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq
Platform, by Michel Houellebecq
Whatever, by Michel Houellebecq
Closely Watched Trains, by Bohumil Hrabal
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
Paradise of the Blind, by Duong Thu Huong
What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley
Eyeless in Gaza, by Aldous Huxley
Against the Grain, by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Down There, by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Carry Me Down, by M.J. Hyland
Three Trapped Tigers, by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
The Cider House Rules, by John Irving
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
The Last of Mr. Norris, by Christopher Isherwood
A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Ambassadors, by Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James
What Maisie Knew, by Henry James
A Day Off, by Storm Jameson
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek
Leaden Wings, by Zhang Jie
Platero and I, by Juan Ramon Jimenez
House Mother Normal, by B.S. Johnson
Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson
Jahrestage, by Uwe Johnson
In Parenthesis, by David Jones
Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
Ulysses, by James Joyce
The Glass Bees, by Ernst Junger
The Storm of Steel, by Ernst Junger
Broken April, by Ismail Kadare
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, by Ismail Kadare
The Successor, by Ismail Kadare
Amerika, by Franz Kafka
The Castle, by Franz Kafka
The Trial, by Franz Kafka
A Thousand Cranes, by Yasunari Kawabata
The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzákis
Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzákis
Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann
Green Henry, by Gottfried Keller
How Late It Was, How Late, by James Kelman
The Busconductor Hines, by James Kelman
Schindler’s Ark, by Thomas Keneally
Looking for the Possible Dance, by A.L. Kennedy
Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Fateless, by Imre Kertész
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey
Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid
The Shining, by Stephen King
The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
Garden, Ashes, by Danilo Kis
Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, by Ivan Klima
Death in Rome, by Wolfgang Koeppen
The Hothouse, by Wolfgang Koeppen
The Case Worker, by Gyorgy Konrad
A Day in Spring, by Ciril Kosmac
Smell of Sadness, by Alfred Kossmann
The Fan Man, by William Kotzwinkle
The Midnight Examiner, by William Kotzwinkle
The Melancholy of Resistance, by László Krasznahorkai
On the Edge of Reason, by Miroslav Krleza
The Return of Philip Latinowicz, by Miroslav Krleza
Professor Martens’ Departure, by Jaan Kross
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanif Kureishi
Land, by Park Kyung-ni
Andrea, by Carmen Laforet
Barabbas, by Par Lagerkvist
Gösta Berling’s Saga, by Selma Lagerlöf
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Passing, by Nella Larsen
Quicksand, by Nella Larsen
The Diviners, by Margaret Laurence
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
The Rainbow, by D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
Independent People, by Halldór Laxness
The Dark Child, by Camara Laye
Smiley’s People, by John Le Carré
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carré
In a Glass Darkly, by Sheridan Le Fanu
Uncle Silas, by Sheridan Le Fanu
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Lost Language of Cranes, by David Leavitt
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Cider With Rosie, by Laurie Lee
Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem
The Female Quixote, by Charlotte Lennox
The German Lesson, by Siegfried Lenz
Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard
La Brava, by Elmore Leonard
A Hero of Our Times, by Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov
The Enchanted Wanderer, by Nikolai Leskov
The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing
Christ Stopped at Eboli, by Carlo Levi
If Not Now, When?, by Primo Levi
If This Is a Man, by Primo Levi
The Drowned and the Saved, by Primo Levi
Small Island, by Andrea Levy
The Monk, by M.G. Lewis
Monica, by Saunders Lewis
Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis
Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis
Tarr, by Wyndham Lewis
The Apes of God, by Wyndham Lewis
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, by Marina Lewycka
Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
The Unknown Soldier, by Vaino Linna
The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector
The Passion According to G.H., by Clarice Lispector
The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell
The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Time of the Hero, by Mario Vargas Llosa
The War of the End of the World, by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes
The Man of Feeling, by Henry Mackenzie
Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz
Miramar, by Naguib Mahfouz
Remembering Babylon, by David Malouf
Man’s Fate, by André Malraux
Faceless Killers, by Henning Mankell
Professor Unrat, by Heinrich Mann
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann
Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann
Joseph and His Brothers, by Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann
Her Privates We, by Frederic Manning
The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni
Embers, by Sandor Marai
All Souls , by Javier Marias
Your Face Tomorrow, by Javier Marias
The Late-Night News, by Petros Markaris
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, by David Markson
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Time of Silence, by Luis Martin Santos
Santa Evita, by Tomas Eloy Martinez
Tirant lo Blanc, by Joanot Martorell
The Daughter, by Pavlos Matesis
Cigarettes, by Harry Mathews
Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin
Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham
The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
Vipers’ Tangle, by Francois Mauriac
The Butcher Boy, by Patrick McCabe
All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, by Horace McCoy
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan
The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan
Amongst Women, by John McGahern
The Heart of Redness, by Zakes Mda
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
A Light Comedy, by Eduardo Mendoza
The Manila Rope, by Veijo Meri
Day of the Dolphin, by Robert Merle
Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
The Sea of Fertility, by Yukio Mishima
The Sound of Waves, by Yukio Mishima
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford
Crossfire, by Miyuki Miyabe
Chaka the Zulu, by Thomas Mofolo
Southern Seas, by Manuel Vazquez Montalban
Watchmen, by Alan Moore
Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore
Like Life, by Lorrie Moore
A Ghost at Noon, by Alberto Moravia
Disobedience, by Alberto Moravia
The Time of Indifference, by Alberto Moravia
Anton Reiser, by Karl Philipp Moritz
Pavel’s Letters, by Monika Moron
News from Nowhere, by William Morris
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Down Second Avenue, by Es’kia Mphahlele
The Holder of the World, by Bharati Mukherjee
The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch
Max Havelaar, by Multatuli
Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro
The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
Almost Transparent Blue, by Ryu Murakami
A Severed Head, by Iris Murdoch
The Bell, by Iris Murdoch
The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch
Under the Net, by Iris Murdoch
Inland, by Gerald Murnane
The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil
Young Törless, by Robert Musil
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
Ada, by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Water Margin, by Shi Nai’an
A Bend in the River, by V.S. Naipaul
Enigma of Arrival, by V.S. Naipaul
In A Free State, by V.S. Naipaul
The Guide, by R.K. Narayan
The Unfortunate Traveller, by Thomas Nashe
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin
All Souls Day, by Cees Nooteboom
Rituals, by Cees Nooteboom
Fear and Trembling, by Amélie Nothomb
Henry of Ofterdingen, by Novalis
Girl With Green Eyes, by Edna O’Brien
The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O’Brien
The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
Everything That Rises Must Converge, by Flannery O’Connor
Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor
The Talk of the Town, by Ardal O’Hanlon
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring, by Kenzaburo Oe
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje
The Shipyard, by Juan Carlos Onetti
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
Cataract, by Mykhailo Osadchyi
A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz
Black Box, by Amos Oz
Life is a Caravanserai, by Emine Özdamar
The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna
Manon des Sources, by Marcel Pagnol
The Laws, by Connie Palmen
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk
Life of Christ, by Giovanni Papini
Ballad for Georg Henig, by Viktor Paskov
The Ragazzi, by Pier Paulo Pasolini
Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
Marius the Epicurean, by Walter Pater
Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton
The Harvesters, by Cesare Pavese
The Moon and the Bonfires, by Cesare Pavese
Dictionary of the Khazars, by Milorad Pavic
The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
The Clay Machine-Gun, by Victor Pelevin
The Life of Insects, by Victor Pelevin
A Void, by Georges Perec
Life: A User’s Manual, by Georges Perec
Things: A Story of the Sixties, by Georges Perec
W, or the Memory of Childhood, by Georges Perec
Compassion, by Benito Perez Galdos
The Dumas Club, by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa
Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre
Money to Burn, by Ricardo Piglia
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, by Luigi Pirandello
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
The Trusting and the Maimed, by James Plunkett
The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe
The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allan Poe
Here’s to You, Jesusa, by Elena Poniatowska
A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell
Typical, by Padgett Powell
The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx
Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Pharoah, by Boleslaw Prus
Heartbreak Tango, by Manuel Puig
Kiss of the Spider Woman, by Manuel Puig
Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin
The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
Quartet in Autumn, by Barbara Pym
Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
V., by Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon
Exercises in Style, by Raymond Queneau
Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Françoise Rabelais
The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe
The Devil in the Flesh, by Raymond Radiguet
The Last World, by Christoph Ransmayr
The Story of O, by Pauline Réage
The Forest of the Hanged, by Liviu Rebreanu
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
Interview With the Vampire, by Anne RiceTarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson
Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson
King Solomon’s Mines, by H. Rider Haggard
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, by Rainer Maria Rilke
Larva: Midsummer Night’s Babel, by Julian Rios
Jealousy, by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Hadrian the Seventh, by Frederick Rolfe
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Love’s Work, by Gillian Rose
Call it Sleep, by Henry Roth
The Radetzky March, by Joseph Roth
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Émile; or, On Education, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Julie; or, the New Eloise, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reveries of a Solitary Walker, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Impressions of Africa, by Raymond Roussel
Locus Solus, by Raymond Roussel
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy
The Burning Plain, by Juan Rulfo
Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
Shame, by Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
The Deadbeats, by Ward Ruyslinck
Rashomon, by Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Witness, by Juan Jose Saer
Contact, by Carl Sagan
Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan
Sandokan: The Tigers of Mompracem, by Emilio Salgari
Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih
Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. SalingerThe Devil’s Pool, by George Sand
Alberta and Jacob, by Cora Sandel
The History of the Siege of Lisbon, by José Saramago
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, by José Saramago
Baltasar and Blimunda, by Jose Saramago
Facundo, by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre
Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Swarm, by Frank Schatzing
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
None but the Brave, by Arthur Schnitzler
Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, by Daniel Paul Schreber
The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz
To Each His Own, by Leonardo Sciascia
Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter ScottRob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott
Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald
Vertigo, by W.G. Sebald
Transit, by Anna Seghers
Requiem for a Dream, by Hubert Selby Jr.
Death and the Dervish, by Mesa Selimovic
The Lonely Londoners, by Sam Selvon
God’s Bits of Wood, by Ousmane Sembene
The Case of Comrade Tulayev, by Victor Serge
A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth
Retreat Without Song, by Shahan Shahnur
Rickshaw Boy, by Lao She
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute
Quo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, by Alan Sillitoe
Life and Death of Harriett Frean, by May Sinclair
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
The Magician of Lublin, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Manor, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha
The Engineer of Human Souls, by Josef Skvorecky
The Forbidden Realm, by J. Slauerhoff
Islands, by Dan Sleigh
The Accidental, by Ali Smith
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
Humphry Clinker, by Tobias George Smollett
Peregrine Pickle, by Tobias George Smollett
The Port, by Antun Šoljan
Cancer Ward, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., by Somerville and Ross
Lady Number Thirteen, by Jose Carlos Somoza
Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki
The Girls of Slender Means, by Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark
Mother’s Milk, by Edward St Aubyn
The Man Who Loved Children, by Christina Stead
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
The Making of Americans, by Gertrude Stein
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
The Red and the Black, by Stendhal
The Charwoman’s Daughter, by James Stephens
A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Indian Summer, by Adalbert Stifter
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Couples, Passerby, by Botho Strauss
The Young Man, by Botho Strauss
By the Open Sea, by August Strindberg
The People of Hemsö, by August Strindberg
The Red Room, by August Strindberg
Perfume, by Patrick Süskind
The Pigeon, by Patrick Süskind
As a Man Grows Older, by Italo Svevo
Zeno’s Conscience, by Italo Svevo
Waterland, by Graham Swift
A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift
The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman, by Andrzej Szczypiorski
Pereira Declares: A Testimony, by Antonio Tabucchi
The Home and the World, by Rabindranath Tagore
The Third Wedding, by Costas Taktsis
Some Prefer Nettles, by Junichiro Tanizaki
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
Blaming, by Elizabeth Taylor
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Great Indian Novel, by Shashi Tharoor
Matigari, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
The River Between, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
Cutter and Bone, by Newton Thornburg
The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber
The Invention of Curried Sausage, by Uwe Timm
Pallieter, by Felix Timmermans
The Master, by Colm Tóibín
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata, by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
City Sister Silver, by Jáchym Topol
Summer Will Show, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Tressell
Felicia’s Journey, by William Trevor
Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope
The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Anthony Trollope
Summer in Baden-Baden, by Leonid Tsypkin
The Christmas Oratorio, by Goran Tunstrom
Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev
King Lear of the Steppes, by Ivan Turgenev
Spring Torrents, by Ivan Turgenev
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, by Dubravka Ugresic
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
Rabbit is Rich, by John Updike
Rabbit Redux, by John Updike
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
Pepita Jimenez, by Juan Valera
Our Lady of Assassins, by Fernando Vallejo
The Quest, by Frederik van Eeden
Ancestral Voices, by Etienne van Heerden
Z, by Vassilis Vassilikos
The Lusiad, by Luis Vaz de Camoes
Under the Yoke, by Ivan Vazov
The House by the Medlar Tree, by Giovanni Verga
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne
The Birds, by Tarjei Vesaas
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played, by Simon Vestdijk
Froth on the Daydream, by Boris Vian
Myra Breckinridge, by Gore Vidal
Bartleby and Co., by Enrique Vila-Matas
Memoirs of a Peasant Boy, by Xose Neira Vilas
Conversations In Sicily, by Elio Vittorini
In Search of Klingsor, by Jorge Volpi
Candide, by Voltaire
The Life of a Good-for-Nothing, by Joseph von Eichendorff
The Adventurous Simplicissimus, by Hans von Grimmelshausen
Michael Kohlhaas, by Heinrich von Kleist
Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
The New World, by Henry Walda-Sellasse
Possessing the Secret of Joy, by Alice Walker
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
Ben-Hur, by Lew Wallace
The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole
Halftime, by Martin Walser
Morvern Callar, by Alan Warner
Indigo, by Marina Warner
The House with the Blind Glass Windows, by Herbjorg Wassmo
Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh
The Graduate, by Charles Webb
The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty
Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West
The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West
The Thinking Reed, by Rebecca West
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
A Boy’s Own Story, by Edmund White
The Living and the Dead, by Patrick White
The Tree of Man, by Patrick White
Voss, by Patrick White
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Tarka the Otter, by Henry Williamson
No Laughing Matter, by Angus Wilson
I Thought of Daisy, by Edmund Wilson
Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson
Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson
Insatiability, by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz
Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
Patterns of Childhood, by Christa Wolf
The Quest for Christa T., by Christa Wolf
Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
Back to Oegstgeest, by Jan Wolkers
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
The Waves, by Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
Native Son, by Richard Wright
Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham
Half of Man is Woman, by Zhang Xianliang
A Dream of Red Mansions, by Cao Xueqin
Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto
Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Drunkard, by Émile Zola
Germinal, by Émile Zola
La Bête Humaine, by Émile Zola
Nana, by Émile Zola
Thérèse Raquin, by Émile Zola
Gimmick!, by Joost Zwagerman
The Case of Sergeant Grischa, by Arnold Zweig
Amok, by Stefan Zweig
Chess Story, by Stefan Zweig
So that’s 165 out of 1001 that I have read, with another four that I have started but not finished (two of which I disliked so much I doubt that I will ever finish them).
This is pretty much the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s literary powers, and has been regarded as such for centuries. A lot of this is because of the fascination of the central character, advised of his father’s murder by his father’s ghost, and then taking a troubled but compelling path to vengeance, which ends up not only with his own death but also those of his father’s murderer, his mother, Polonius and both his children, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Also, of course, the language is amazing. This play surely has more famous quotes per page than any other, most of them short phrases that neatly bracket some concept – “a consummation devoutly to be wished”, or “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. It’s occasionally rather startling to hear the original context of some commonplace line, though it doesn’t really jar the play.
Apart from the main plot, I found two interesting themes in the play. One, not surprisingly, is death. Everyone is talking about it, from the king to the gravedigger. Depending on how you count Julius Caesar, this is the first non-historical play with a ghost. We end up with the stage littered with corpses, and I think there are more on-stage killings than in Titus Andronicus – and unlike Titus Andronicus it isn’t over the top. (It’s also difficult to deny that there must have been some connection in the author’s mind between the title character and his own son Hamnet, who had died a few years earlier aged eleven.)
The other theme I picked up was the theatre. It’s not just the play-within-a-play (though that is more interesting here than the comedy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, let alone the peculiar unfinished framing narrative of The Taming of the Shrew); it’s the conversation of the players with Hamlet before the show, and the final discussion between Fortinbras and Horatio about telling the story and displaying the bodies. Shakespeare isn’t overdoing it, but he does seem to want to make us think about what the theatre is and what is happening when we are watching (or in this case listening). This must have been one of Arkangel’s earlier productions, as Bob Peck, who fluffs some of his lines as Claudius, died in 1999. The other key parts are excellent – Imogen Stubbs as Ophelia, Norman Rodway as Polonius, Jane Lapotaire as Gertrude, and of course Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet. It all hangs together neatly.
Henry VI, Part I | Henry VI, Part II | Henry VI, Part III | Richard III / Richard III | Comedy of Errors | Titus Andronicus | Taming of the Shrew | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Love’s Labour’s Lost | Romeo and Juliet | Richard II / Richard II | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | King John | The Merchant of Venice | Henry IV, Part 1 / Henry IV, Part I | Henry IV, Part II | Henry V | Julius Caesar | Much Ado About Nothing | As You Like It | Merry Wives of Windsor | Hamlet / Hamlet | Twelfth Night | Troilus and Cressida | All’s Well That Ends Well | Measure for Measure | Othello | King Lear | Macbeth | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus / Coriolanus | Timon of Athens | Pericles | Cymbeline | The Winter’s Tale / The Winter’s Tale | The Tempest | Henry VIII | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Edward III | Sir Thomas More (fragment) | Double Falshood/Cardenio
If you are passing by the EU Council Secretariat building, it is well worth popping inside to have a look at the controversial sculpture of David Černý which has been causing such controversy. Indeed, as Michelin would put it, it is worth a detour – and possibly worth making that detour sooner rather than later in case it gets removed!
For those of you who haven’t followed the story, my good friend Simon Taylor has a summary of it in today’s European voice, The Prague Monitor interviewed Černý, and The Guardian has pictures.
The rules for the Nebula Awards have been reformed (taking effect from next year’s awards, which will be for works published this year; this year’s awards still cover both last year and the year before).
I think this is excellent news. Indeed, I think I may have been the only person to raise this issue in an online public forum with Russell Davis when he was running for SFWA president; though in fairness
See here for links to further discussion.
Welcome to me old friend
Andrew Rilstone on the media on Archbishop Williams on the Three Kings.
Cory Doctorow on writing in the age of online distractions.
Has anyone else noticed the subtle differences with Lexulous? Like the board is a different shape and you get eight letters in your tray instead of seven?
…I have set up the following reading lists on Librarything. First five books in each category under the cuts. (There are some overlaps.)
a: books I have already read and haven’t reviewed on-line, ranked by LT popularity.
(I’ll probably have another look at Prisoner of Azkaban too, since it was my favourite first time round.)
b: books tagged “unread”, acquired in the last year, ranked by LT popularity.
c: books tagged “unread”, acquired more than a year ago, ranked by LT popularity.
d: books tagged “unread” ranked by the number of times tagged unread by other LT users.
e: books tagged “unread”, in the order that they were added to my LT catalogue.
f: books in order of reading popularity in this poll.
g: books tagged as “unread” and “sf”, acquired in the last year, ranked by LT popularity.
h: books tagged as “unread” and “sf”, acquired more than a year ago, ranked by LT popularity.
i: Hugo winning novels which I haven’t already reviewed on-line, in order of winning the award.
j: books tagged “history” and “unread”, ranked by LT popularity.
k: Big Finish Doctor Who audios, in order of release.
l: unread Doctor Who books, in order of internal continuity.
m: unread New Series Doctor Who books, in order of LT popularity.
n: Shakespeare’s plays, in supposed chronological order
o: books owned only by me on LT, in order of entry into my catalogue.
So that’s what you can expect to see in my 2009 bookblog.
Continuing my read of the Hugo winners – I thought I’d be doing Leibowitz, but this arrived via Bookmooch and is next in sequence.
Well, it’s a classic but very much of its time. It is a Bildungsroman about Juan Rico, who volunteers for the spaceborne infantry and grows up fighting for humanity against the alien Bugs. The writing is pacy and entertaining; the twist in the tail is that Rico, having learnt about life and been tested repeatedly in combat, ends up as his own father’s commanding officer.
There are two major problems with the book for today’s reader. The first and simpler one is sex: there basically isn’t any. Rico and his colleagues are all men except for the pilots who are all women. It is possible (and I think probably intended) to read all Rico’s encounters with the opposite sex as purely platonic, though in a gentlemanly desirous sort of way. The only lasting relationships are between comrades. One can read all sorts of possibilities into that, but I will spare you.
The other, this being Heinlein, is more complex: it is the politics. In this future world, only veterans of the armed forces are full citizens with the right to vote, and this is an additional motivation for enlisting. Heinlein certainly mainstreams his political culture throughout the novel more convincingly than some of his imitators, complete with jibes at today’s bleeding-heart liberals, but are we really meant to believe that this is his preferred alternative? One can read the evidence in various ways, but I think we can exclude the possibility that Heinlein actively thinks it is a bad idea, particularly given the uncritical admiration of the military way of life which permeates the narrative. Though perhaps it is at least in part a challenge to the reader to work it out for yourself.
My renewed enthusiasm for exercising in the mornings (plus my hatred of the jaunty Wii Fit music), combined with the awful commuting experiences due to the cold weather, helped me get through a fair few Big finish audios in the course of the week.
Of all of these, Circular Time is most strongly recommended, especially the third segment.
I enjoyed this much more than I had expected to, and indeed I enjoyed the end more than the rather slow start. It must be the closest Shakespeare gets to slapstick humour, with Falstaff getting covered in dirty laundry, dumped in the Thames, forced to disguise himself as an old woman, beaten up by the husband of one of the women he is pursuing, and then humiliated by a flock of fake fairies. I would love to see it on stage: the audio can’t really catch it – though Dinsdale Landen as Falstaff in the Arkangel production grew on me, and Clive Swift as Shallow was as excellent as ever. Also Shakespeare’s word play and Welsh/French accent humour really needs some stage business to illuminate it for today’s audience.
The striking thing about it is (particularly after the overt and unredeemed misogyny of The Taming of the Shrew) that the women win. Mrs Page and Mrs Ford (the eponymous wives) comprehensively outflank Falstaff; Mrs Ford is a step ahead of her own husband; and while Mrs Page does suffer a defeat, it is at the hands of another woman, her own daughter.
Having just read Germaine Greer, I noted with interest that the young Anne at the centre of one of the plot lines manages to outwit two older suitors to marry the younger man whom she actually loves. There is also a young lad called William who studiously does his Latin lessons despite the older generation not really understanding him. One should of course always be careful about reading autobiography into the plays, but in this case it is impossible to avoid the temptation.
Henry VI, Part I | Henry VI, Part II | Henry VI, Part III | Richard III / Richard III | Comedy of Errors | Titus Andronicus | Taming of the Shrew | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Love’s Labour’s Lost | Romeo and Juliet | Richard II / Richard II | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | King John | The Merchant of Venice | Henry IV, Part 1 / Henry IV, Part I | Henry IV, Part II | Henry V | Julius Caesar | Much Ado About Nothing | As You Like It | Merry Wives of Windsor | Hamlet / Hamlet | Twelfth Night | Troilus and Cressida | All’s Well That Ends Well | Measure for Measure | Othello | King Lear | Macbeth | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus / Coriolanus | Timon of Athens | Pericles | Cymbeline | The Winter’s Tale / The Winter’s Tale | The Tempest | Henry VIII | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Edward III | Sir Thomas More (fragment) | Double Falshood/Cardenio
A tale of Nemedian settlers arriving to settle a beautiful green island in ancient times, and their encounters with both natural and supernatural allies and enemies (names like Dagda, Balor, Lir, Diancecht, etc are all thrown around with great energy). The emphasis on the good settlers and bad indigenous population made it feel more like a Western (or pulp sf) than a fantasy novel, though that is less true of the fact that the means and motivation of the supernatural characters, both good and bad, was not at all clear. A curious lack of geography – we really have no idea how big this island is meant to be. I don’t think I’ll bother with the sequel.
Ann Shakespeare, née Hathaway, died in 1623, seven years after her husband, and was probably born in 1556, eight years before him. As Germaine Greer rightly points out, she tends to get short shrift from her husband’s admirers, most of whom see her as an inconvenient detail of the Bard’s early life, operating in a different universe to the London theatre world. Greer pulls apart this casual sexism, using the documentary evidence combined with her own instincts, and tells rather a good story firmly moored in the social history of Stratford-upon-Avon – the decaying Shakespeares and the more prosperous Hathaway clan; the struggles between the local council and the psychopathic landlord; the destruction of most of the town several times over by accidental fire. She points out that the oddest thing about the Shakespeares’ marriage is the fact that William was so young (not Ann’s pregnancy, which was par for the course), and then goes on to point out several romantic heroes in Shakespeare’s works who are explicitly younger than the women they love. She makes a good case that several of the sonnets (beyond 145, which is fairly obvious) are addressed to Ann – and asks, why should that be such an outrageous idea?
Of course, there isn’t a lot of documentary evidence to go on, but on the whole Greer resists the temptation of straying too far into fantasy, apart from one chapter on Ann’s totally fictional career making clothes, and a half chapter on her husband’s equally unproven slow lingering death from syphilis. She also casts, to my mind, unnecessary doubts on the authenticity of the most concrete single object relating to Shakespeare which survives, namely his monument. But the whole thing is done with Greer’s characteristic verve – her academic background, after all, is as a Shakespeare scholar, and in this book she combines passion and profundity.
I mistakenly started on this well-known novel under the false impression that it was a classic sf text; it isn’t – it is a novel of didactic philosophy, but entirely about architects in New York in the 1920s and 1930s, with no sfnal elements at all.
Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, as epitomised by her heroic architect Howard Roark, is frankly repulsive. Her viewpoint characters utter tedious tirades against the very concept of altruism; the two-dimensional bad guys use evil concepts like equality and collective action to repress the creativity of her heroes, which is their sole motivation. There is also a Mary Sue heroine whose determination to marry the wrong man several times over is rather creepy (as are her rather odd sexual preferences). On the whole I found this an unpleasant book, and one which I would not recommend to other readers. (Thanks for the warnings,
There are two mildly redeeming factors. The first (and lesser) is that, when she is concentrating on story-telling rather than polemic, Rand does have some good moments of characterisation that linger in the mind. The second, and more important, is that New York in the 1920s and 1930s seems to have been a particularly interesting and exciting time and place to be around. The Fountainhead is set in much the same time and place as, say, West Side Story, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Dorothy Parker, the Futurians, the early years of the New Yorker, at a slight remove The Great Gatsby. It’s a fascinating period which I should read more about, and apart from her peculiar political notions, Rand depicts it compellingly.
Anne picked up De Morgen this morning, and we have been discussing a peculiar article by one Luc Van Doorslaer about how evil the Francophone Belgians are. Van Doorslaer has two pieces of evidence for his thesis, one being an academic survey of Belgian media that demonstrates that Flemish journalists read more English-language sources than Francophone journalists do, the other being – get this, folks – Wikipedia.
| …Wikipedia, zoals bekend veruit de meest gebruikte bron van informatie onder jongeren. Onder het trefwood ‘Belgique’ lees ik in verband met de talensituatie de volgende: | …Wikipedia, well known as the source of information most often used by younger people. If I look at the article on ‘Belgique’ I find the following commentary on the language situation: |
| D’un point de vue territorial, le français est en progression, en Flandre (près de Bruxelles, ou dans les environs de la frontière française à côté de Lille), mais également en zone germanophone. Cette tendance est une tendance naturelle constatée depuis des siècles avec l’augmentation des communications et de la facilité de voyager, qui exige de plus en plus une homogénéisation des langues, les langues importantes gagnant toujours progressivement sur les langues locales ou les patois. | Considered territorially, the French language is making progress, in Flanders (near Brussels, or around the French border near Lille) and also in the German-speaking area. This is a natural tendency, as demonstrated by centuries of improving communications and easier travel, in which important languages have consistently won out over local languages or patois (dialects). |
| Ik wrijf mij ogen uit en lees dit opnieuw: ‘le français est en progression‘, ‘une tendance naturelle‘, ‘les langues importantes gagnant toujours‘, ‘les patois‘. Dit is het discours dat ik in de 19de-eeuwse teksten vaker ben tegengekomen, maar het staat vandaag de dag in de meest gebruikte bron van informatie. | I rub my eyes and read it again: ‘the French language is making progress‘, ‘a natural tendency‘, ‘important languages consistently win out‘, ‘patois‘. This is the discourse I have often encountered in 19th-century textbooks, but it is to be found today in the most used source of information. |
I fear that Van Doorslaer’s commentary reveals more about the intellectual weakness of the Flemish nationalists than the Walloons. He hasn’t really demonstrated that French-speakers in general take the French version of Wikipedia particularly seriously; and he hasn’t demonstrated at all that the offending article was even written by a Belgian, rather than, say, a Parisian or Quebecker to whom all dialects of Dutch are a mere patois. It would be more impressive if Flemish commentators like Van Doorslaer started reading the francophone press in Belgium directly, rather than relying on academic studies and Wikipedia articles, in order to get a better understanding of what their fellow citizens think – and in particular, to explain to the Flemings what the Walloons say about themselves and vice versa. Otherwise it is mere polemicism masquerading as analysis.
The trains are haywire again this evening; I waited for my connection in sub-zero temperatures for an hour and a half in the Brussels North station before I finally escaped. But I used my chilly wait profitably. Jeff Dudgeon has, once again, done me the favour of drawing my attention to the Dublin Review of Books, and I’ve been reading several of the essays in the latest issue.
My eye was immediately drawn to Martin McGarry’s piece on the future of Belgium, written before last month’s crisis which brought down Yves Leterme’s government, but very insightful as to how we got to where we are – in particular, he describes the infamous BHV problem perfectly adequately in a single sentence, and he enlightened me as to the peculiar dynamic between the N-VA and the CD&V. (A lot of Belgian politics revolves around acronyms.) McGarry is much more readable than Witte, Craeybeckx and Meynen, the authors of the only one of the books he is ostensibly reviewing which I have myself attempted. He’s pessimistic about the long term future of Belgium, but doesn’t quite explain why.
A little-remembered historical linkage between Belgium and Ireland is that Daniel O’Connell was given a vote in the choice of the first King of the Belgians (who, if his first wife had lived, would have been Prince Consort of the UK instead). Paul Bew and Patrick Maume review Patrick Geoghegan’s new biography of O’Connell, and achieve the task of both disagreeing with it and making you want to read it (though I may wait until the second volume comes out – the first takes us only to 1829). I had in fact read MacDonagh’s biography when it came out almost 20 years ago; it sounds like Geoghegan has found more humanity than sainthood in the man, with a more realistic assessment of his religious beliefs, his sex life, and his tendency to go over the top in his oratory. Bew and Maume ask, but don’t answer, the question of whether Parnell or O’Connell was the more significant figure. There’s no doubt in my own mind that it was O’Connell, and frankly I find his large-hearted liberal nationalism much more attractive than Parnell’s somewhat neurotic and narrow ideology.
Leaping forward a hundred years or so, the essay that is closest to my own work and experience is Eunan O’Halpin’s review of Paul McMahon’s book on British espionage in Ireland between 1916 and 1945. From the narrow Irish perspective, this books sounds like a useful corrective (and even in part an explanation) for the Sinn Féin obsession with “securocrats”. But it is also a good set of case studies of how intelligence services operate successfully (eg the collaboration between the RUC and the Garda Síochána on keeping a lid on Republican dissidents in the late 1930s and early 1940s, despite the fact that their respective governments were not on speaking terms) and unsuccessfully (the “German Plot” allegations of 1917-18, uncritically accepted by key British ministers despite the lack of actual evidence).
There’s a wider lesson as well: if, as a government, you keep open the official channels of communication with your neighbours and potential rivals, you are less dependent on the particular idiosyncracies of a small number of intelligence agents, at least when it comes to dealing with actual governments. It is rather extraordinary that there was no British diplomatic presence in Dublin until 1939! And I can think of a good dozen contemporary examples of this sort of short-sightedness. I will stop here.