Evidently there is a book out called 1001 books you must read before you die. I found out about it from Jessa over at Bookslut, and had to check it out. I'm fairly interested in ideas of canonicity and what constitutes a 'classic'. So, knowing that I would be lucky to have read more than 5 of these books, I went through the list to find out.

Lessons learned:

Authors that I have heard a lot about (from my more literary minded friends) were well-represented

Paul : Don DeLillo
Libby : Barbara Kingsolver, Haruki Murakami and Ishiguro
Spike : TC Boyle
Ayesha : Toni Morrison

Some books that I own -- don't ask me to put my hands on them -- but haven't read

# The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
# A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
# Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
# The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima (In Japanese)
# One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
# To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

My final total was 30. I guess I need to read about 30 a year to come close to finishing. Too bad the Xanth series wasn't represented. I've got some scrapping to do to catch up with Jessa.

One more thing. How could The Tale of Genji not make the list?

# Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Saturday – Ian McEwan
# On Beauty – Zadie Smith
# Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
# Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
# The Sea – John Banville
# The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
# The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
# The Master – Colm Tóibín
# Vanishing Point – David Markson
# The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
# Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
# Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
# Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# The Colour – Rose Tremain
# Thursbitch – Alan Garner
# The Light of Day – Graham Swift
# What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
# The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
# Islands – Dan Sleigh
# Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
# London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
# Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
# Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
# The Double – José Saramago
# Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
# Unless – Carol Shields
# Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
# The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
# That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
# In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
# Shroud – John Banville
# Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
# Youth – J.M. Coetzee
# Dead Air – Iain Banks
# Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
# The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
# Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
# Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
# Platform – Michael Houellebecq
# Schooling – Heather McGowan
# Atonement – Ian McEwan
# The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
# Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
# The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
# Fury – Salman Rushdie
# At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
# Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
# Life of Pi – Yann Martel
# The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
# An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
# The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
# Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
# White Teeth – Zadie Smith
# The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
# Under the Skin – Michel Faber
# Ignorance – Milan Kundera
# Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
# Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
# City of God – E.L. Doctorow
# How the Dead Live – Will Self
# The Human Stain – Philip Roth
# The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
# After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
# Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
# Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
# House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
# Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
# Pastoralia – George Saunders
#
# 1900s
# Timbuktu – Paul Auster
# The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
# Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
# As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
# Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
# Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
# The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
# Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
# Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
# Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
# Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
# Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
# Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
# All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
# The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
# Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
# The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
# Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
# Another World – Pat Barker
# The Hours – Michael Cunningham
# Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
# Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
# The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
# Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
# Great Apes – Will Self
# Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
# Underworld – Don DeLillo
# Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
# The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
# American Pastoral – Philip Roth
# The Untouchable – John Banville
# Silk – Alessandro Baricco
# Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
# Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
# Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
# The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
# Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
# Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
# The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
# Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
# The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
# The Information – Martin Amis
# The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
# Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
# The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
# The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
# A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
# Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
# The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
# Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
# The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
# Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
# Land – Park Kyong-ni
# The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
# The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
# Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
# City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
# How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
# Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
# Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
# Disappearance – David Dabydeen
# The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
# The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
# Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
# Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
# Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
# Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
# Complicity – Iain Banks
# On Love – Alain de Botton
# What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
# A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
# The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
# The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
# The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
# The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
# The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
# The Secret History – Donna Tartt
# Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
# The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
# A Heart So White – Javier Marias
# Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
# Indigo – Marina Warner
# The Crow Road – Iain Banks
# Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
# Jazz – Toni Morrison
# The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
# Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
# The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
# Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
# The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
# Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
# Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
# Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
# Arcadia – Jim Crace
# Wild Swans – Jung Chang
# American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
# Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
# Mao II – Don DeLillo
# Typical – Padgett Powell
# Regeneration – Pat Barker
# Downriver – Iain Sinclair
# Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
# Wise Children – Angela Carter
# Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
# Amongst Women – John McGahern
# Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
# Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
# Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
# The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
# The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
# A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
# Like Life – Lorrie Moore
# Possession – A.S. Byatt
# The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
# The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
# A Disaffection – James Kelman
# Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
# Moon Palace – Paul Auster
# Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
# Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
# The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
# The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
# The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
# The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
# Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
# A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
# London Fields – Martin Amis
# The Book of Evidence – John Banville
# Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
# Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
# The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
# Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
# The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
# The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
# Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
# Libra – Don DeLillo
# The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
# Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
# The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
# Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
# The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
# The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
# The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
# The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
# The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
# The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
# Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
# The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
# The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
# World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
# The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
# Beloved – Toni Morrison
# Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
# Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
# The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
# Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
# An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
# Foe – J.M. Coetzee
# The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
# Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
# The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
# Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
# Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
# The Cider House Rules – John Irving
# A Maggot – John Fowles
# Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
# Contact – Carl Sagan
# The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
# Perfume – Patrick Süskind
# Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
# White Noise – Don DeLillo
# Queer – William Burroughs
# Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
# Legend – David Gemmell
# Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
# The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
# The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
# The Lover – Marguerite Duras
# Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
# The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
# Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
# The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
# Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
# Neuromancer – William Gibson
# Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
# Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
# Shame – Salman Rushdie
# Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
# Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
# La Brava – Elmore Leonard
# Waterland – Graham Swift
# The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
# The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
# The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
# The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
# If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
# A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
# The Color Purple – Alice Walker
# Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
# A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
# The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
# The Newton Letter – John Banville
# On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
# Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
# The Names – Don DeLillo
# Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
# Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
# The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
# July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
# Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
# Broken April – Ismail Kadare
# Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
# Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
# Rites of Passage – William Golding
# Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
# Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
# City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
# The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
# The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
# Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
# Shikasta – Doris Lessing
# A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
# Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
# The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
# If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
# The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
# The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
# The World According to Garp – John Irving
# Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
# The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
# The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
# Yes – Thomas Bernhard
# The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
# In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
# The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
# Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
# The Shining – Stephen King
# Dispatches – Michael Herr
# Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
# The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
# The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
# Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
# The Public Burning – Robert Coover
# Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
# Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
# Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
# Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
# Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
# W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
# A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
# Grimus – Salman Rushdie
# The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
# Fateless – Imre Kertész
# Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
# High Rise – J.G. Ballard
# Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
# Dead Babies – Martin Amis
# Correction – Thomas Bernhard
# Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
# The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
# Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
# The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
# Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
# Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
# A Question of Power – Bessie Head
# The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
# The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
# Crash – J.G. Ballard
# The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
# Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
# The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
# Sula – Toni Morrison
# Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
# The Breast – Philip Roth
# The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
# G – John Berger
# Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
# House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
# In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
# The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
# Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
# Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
# The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
# Rabbit Redux – John Updike
# The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
# The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
# The Ogre – Michael Tournier
# The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
# Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
# I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
# Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
# Troubles – J.G. Farrell
# Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
# The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
# Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
# Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
# Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
# Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
# The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
# Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
# The Godfather – Mario Puzo
# Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
# Them – Joyce Carol Oates
# A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
# Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
# Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
# The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
# Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
# Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
# Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
# Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
# The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
# In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
# A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
# The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
# Chocky – John Wyndham
# The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
# The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
# One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
# The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
# Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
# The Joke – Milan Kundera
# No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
# The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
# A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
# The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
# Trawl – B.S. Johnson
# In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
# The Magus – John Fowles
# The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
# Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
# Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
# The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
# Things – Georges Perec
# The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
# August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
# God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
# Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
# The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
# Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
# Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
# Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
# Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
# The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
# Herzog – Saul Bellow
# V. – Thomas Pynchon
# Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
# The Graduate – Charles Webb
# Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
# The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
# The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
# Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
# The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
# One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The Collector – John Fowles
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
# A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
# Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
# The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
# The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
# Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
# Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
# The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
# Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
# Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
# A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
# Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
# Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
# Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
# The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
# Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
# The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
# How It Is – Samuel Beckett
# Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
# The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
# To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
# Rabbit, Run – John Updike
# Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
# Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
# Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
# Naked Lunch – William Burroughs (Thank God for Gen Eds)
# The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
# Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
# Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
# Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
# Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
# Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
# The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
# Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
# A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
# The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
# Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
# Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
# Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
# Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
# The End of the Road – John Barth
# The Once and Future King – T.H. White
# The Bell – Iris Murdoch
# Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
# Voss – Patrick White
# The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
# Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
# Homo Faber – Max Frisch
# On the Road – Jack Kerouac
# Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
# Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
# The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
# Justine – Lawrence Durrell
# Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
# The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
# The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
# Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
# The Floating Opera – John Barth
# The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
# Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
# A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
# The Quiet American – Graham Greene
# The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
# The Recognitions – William Gaddis
# The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
# Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
# I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
# Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
# The Story of O – Pauline Réage
# A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
# Lord of the Flies – William Golding
# Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
# The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
# The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
# The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
# Watt – Samuel Beckett
# Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
# Junkie – William Burroughs
# The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
# Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin (Gen Ed once again)
# Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
# The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
# Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
# The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
# Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
# The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
# Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
# Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
# Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
# Foundation – Isaac Asimov
# The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
# The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
# The Rebel – Albert Camus
# Molloy – Samuel Beckett
# The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
# The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
# The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
# The Third Man – Graham Greene
# The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
# Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
# The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
# I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
# The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
# The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
# Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
# The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
# The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
# Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
# The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
# Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
# All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
# Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
# Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
# The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
# Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
# Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
# The Victim – Saul Bellow
# Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
# If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
# Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
# The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
# The Plague – Albert Camus
# Back – Henry Green
# Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
# The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
# Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
# Animal Farm – George Orwell
# Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
# The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
# Loving – Henry Green
# Arcanum 17 – André Breton
# Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
# The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
# Transit – Anna Seghers
# Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
# Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
# The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
# Caught – Henry Green
# The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
# Embers – Sandor Marai
# Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
# The Outsider – Albert Camus
# In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
# The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
# The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
# Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
# Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
# The Hamlet – William Faulkner
# Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
# For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
# Native Son – Richard Wright
# The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
# The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
# Party Going – Henry Green
# The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
# Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
# At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
# Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
# Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
# Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
# Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
# The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
# After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
# Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
# Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
# Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
# Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
# Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
# U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
# Murphy – Samuel Beckett
# Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
# Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
# The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Years – Virginia Woolf
# In Parenthesis – David Jones
# The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
# Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
# To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
# Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
# Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
# The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
# Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
# Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
# Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
# Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
# At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
# Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
# Independent People – Halldór Laxness
# Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
# The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
# They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
# The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
# England Made Me – Graham Greene
# Burmese Days – George Orwell
# The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
# Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
# Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
# The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
# Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
# A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
# Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
# Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
# Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
# Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
# The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
# Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
# A Day Off – Storm Jameson
# The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
# A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
# Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
# Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
# Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
# To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
# The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
# The Waves – Virginia Woolf
# The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
# Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
# The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
# Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
# Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
# The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
# Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
# Passing – Nella Larsen
# A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
# Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
# Living – Henry Green
# The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
# All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
# Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
# The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
# Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
# The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
# Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
# Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
# Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
# Orlando – Virginia Woolf
# Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
# The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
# The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
# Quartet – Jean Rhys
# Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
# Quicksand – Nella Larsen
# Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
# Nadja – André Breton
# Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
# Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
# To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
# Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
# Amerika – Franz Kafka
# The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
# Blindness – Henry Green
# The Castle – Franz Kafka
# The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
# The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
# One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
# The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
# The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
# Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
# Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
# The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# The Counterfeiters – André Gide
# The Trial – Franz Kafka
# The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
# The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
# Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
# The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
# The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
# We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
# A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
# The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
# Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
# Cane – Jean Toomer
# Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
# Amok – Stefan Zweig
# The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
# The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
# Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
# Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
# The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
# Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
# The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
# Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
# Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
# Ulysses – James Joyce
# The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
# Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
# The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
# Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
# Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
# Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
# Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
# The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
# The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
# Summer – Edith Wharton
# Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
# Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
# A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
# Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
# Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
# The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
# The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
# Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
# The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
# The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
# Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
# Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
# Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
# Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
# The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
# Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
# Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
# The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
# Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
# Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
# Howards End – E.M. Forster
# Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
# Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
# Martin Eden – Jack London
# Strait is the Gate – André Gide
# Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
# The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
# A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
# The Iron Heel – Jack London
# The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
# The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
# Mother – Maxim Gorky
# The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
# The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
# Young Törless – Robert Musil
# The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
# The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
# Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
# Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
# Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
# Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
# The Golden Bowl – Henry James
# The Ambassadors – Henry James
# The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
# The Immoralist – André Gide
# The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
# Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
# The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
# Kim – Rudyard Kipling
# Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
# Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
#
# 1800s
# Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
# The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
# The Awakening – Kate Chopin
# The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
# The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
# The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
# What Maisie Knew – Henry James
# Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
# Dracula – Bram Stoker
# Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
# The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
# The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
# Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
# Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
# The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
# The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
# Born in Exile – George Gissing
# Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
# The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# News from Nowhere – William Morris
# New Grub Street – George Gissing
# Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
# The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
# The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
# La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
# By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
# Hunger – Knut Hamsun
# The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
# Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
# Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
# The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
# The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
# She – H. Rider Haggard
# The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
# Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
# King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
# Germinal – Émile Zola
# The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
# Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
# Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
# Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
# The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
# A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
# Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
# The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
# Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
# Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
# Nana – Émile Zola
# The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Red Room – August Strindberg
# Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
# Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
# Drunkard – Émile Zola
# Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
# Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
# The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
# The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
# Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
# The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
# Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
# In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
# The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Erewhon – Samuel Butler
# Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
# Middlemarch – George Eliot
# Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
# King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
# He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
# War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
# Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
# Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
# Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
# The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
# Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
# Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
# The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
# Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
# Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
# Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
# Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
# Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
# Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
# Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
# Silas Marner – George Eliot
# Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
# On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
# Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
# The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
# The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
# The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Max Havelaar – Multatuli
# A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
# Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
# Adam Bede – George Eliot
# Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
# North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Hard Times – Charles Dickens
# Walden – Henry David Thoreau
# Bleak House – Charles Dickens
# Villette – Charlotte Brontë
# Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
# The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
# The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
# Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
# Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
# The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
# Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
# Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
# Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
# Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
# The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
# La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
# The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
# The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
# Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
# The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
# Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
# A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
# Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
# The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
# The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
# The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
# Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
# The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
# Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
# Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
# The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
# The Red and the Black – Stendhal
# The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
# Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
# The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
# The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
# Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
# The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
# Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
# Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
# Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
# Persuasion – Jane Austen
# Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
# Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
# Emma – Jane Austen
# Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
# Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
# The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
# Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
# Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
#
# 1700s
# Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
# The Nun – Denis Diderot
# Camilla – Fanny Burney
# The Monk – M.G. Lewis
# Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
# The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
# The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
# Justine – Marquis de Sade
# Vathek – William Beckford
# The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
# Cecilia – Fanny Burney
# Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
# Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Evelina – Fanny Burney
# The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
# The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
# A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
# Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
# The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
# The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
# Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
# Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
# Candide – Voltaire
# The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
# Amelia – Henry Fielding
# Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
# Fanny Hill – John Cleland
# Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
# Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
# Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
# Pamela – Samuel Richardson
# Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
# Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
# Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
# A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
# Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
# Roxana – Daniel Defoe
# Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
# Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
# Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
# A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
#
# Pre-1700
# Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
# The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
# The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
# Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
# The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
# Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
# Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
# The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
# The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
# Aithiopika – Heliodorus
# Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
# Metamorphoses – Ovid
# Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus