Sleuthing Out Books with My Private Eye -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

I was having lunch with my private eye the other day . . .

That really has nothing to do with anything, but saying it always makes me laugh. And I really do have a private eye. She's amazing! She helps me and my law partner with our sex abuse cases because they usually involve child abuse that happened decades ago. Most often, our clients were molested in the 1980s or 1990s, but we have cases involving abuse as far back as the 1960s. Our private eye finds witnesses and documents to help us prove our cases. 

But what does that have to do with this stack of books? That is a mystery! The solution is that we met for lunch in a suburb of Portland that has a Friends of the Library store I had never explored. It was a really good one. I came home with an overflowing tote bag of books.

See anything here you’d like to investigate?

• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I read this as an audiobook years ago, loved it, and wanted a book book on my shelves.

• Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather, which I want to read because I love Cather.

• The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two plays by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, on which the operas by Rossini and Mozart are based. 

• The Spoils of Poynton is a Henry James book I've never heard of.

• The Major Plays of Chekhov is a Signet Classic edition of a book I already have but haven't read. I'm enchanted by Signet Classic covers these days. 

• The Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad is another Signet Classics edition. I got this one because I haven't read The Secret Sharer.

• The Egoist is a tragicomical novel by George Meredith published in 1879. I've never heard of it, but might read it for Victober.

• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. This is another one I read years ago but wanted to add a Modern Library edition to my collection.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson is a book I know nothing about, But I've never found a Persephone edition at library store so nabbed it. 

• Jane Austen's "juvenilia," because I haven't read any of these and liked the Penguin Classics edition. 

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Again, I read it a long time ago and have a fancy edition. But I wanted a paperback if I want to reread it. 

• The Long Day Waned is Anthony Burgess's "Malayan Trilogy" and all three novels sound really good. 

• Tales of Old Inns by Richard Keverne is a vintage travel guide to England's historic inns and hotels. Pure charm!

• Faith Fox by Jane Gardam I got because I read her Old Filth trilogy last year and now want to read everything she wrote. 

The last books are five Soho Crime books. I realized about a month ago that I had a nice little collection started of Soho Crime mystery books published by Soho Press. Since then, I've looked for more at library stores and found another dozen or so. I like the collection because the color block spines look so cool together. But I like the books because Soho Crime's theme is publishing mystery series set all around the world. For example, Qiu Xiaolong's series is set in China and Eliot Pattison's is set in Tibet.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women -- LIST

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women

At the turn of the Millennium, there was a flurry of "Top 100" book lists. The Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, started the craze (and led to this blog). Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation criticizing the Modern Library’s list for including relatively few books by women.

She titled her article "I've Got a Little List" and included her own list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women. Jong explained that she had compiled the list from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” whom she solicited directly, as well as participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The list is in order of the number of votes received. 

Jong's method for creating the list was not scientific. But the results provide excellent reading. 

Here is Jong's list. I've noted if I've read a book, if it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

See any favorites?

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice ON OVERDRIVE

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

The Waves by Virginia Woolf TBR SHELF

Orlando by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes TBR SHELF

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton FINISHED

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall ON OVERDRIVE

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer TBR SHELF

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

My Ántonia by Willa Cather FINISHED

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here) FINISHED

Fanny by Erica Jong 

Obasan by Joy Kogawa FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy ON OVERDRIVE

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

Her First American by Lore Segal FINISHED

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley FINISHED

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer TBR SHELF

Trust by Cynthia Ozick TBR SHELF

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan FINISHED

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan FINISHED

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion TBR SHELF

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Group by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley TBR SHELF

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED
 
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson TBR SHELF

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here) FINISHED

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner TBR SHELF

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter FINISHED

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner) FINISHED

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald FINISHED

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker TBR SHELF

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown ON OVERDRIVE

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner FINISHED

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter TBR SHELF

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here) FINISHED

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn DNF

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here) FINISHED

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym FINISHED

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler FINISHED

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler FINISHED

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here) FINISHED

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson FINISHED

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz TBR SHELF

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown TBR SHELF

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr TBR SHELF

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford TBR SHELF

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein 

The Children of Men by P.D. James FINISHED

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi FINISHED

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon FINISHED

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield TBR SHELF

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis TBR SHELF

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich TBR SHELF

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin DNF 

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien TBR SHELF

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble TBR SHELF

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble FINISHED

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty FINISHED

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid TBR SHELF

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen TBR SHELF

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein FINISHED

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai TBR SHELF

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman FINISHED

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend ON OVERDRIVE

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer TBR SHELF


NOTE

Updated July 3, 2025.

This is a repost of a list I first posted in 2009. So far, I've read 57 of the 100 and gave up on two others, so I have 41 to go. Of those that I read because they were on this list, my favorites are Play It as It Lays, Things Invisible to See, and The Children of Men. 

The College Board's List of 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers -- BOOK LIST

THE COLLEGE BOARD'S LIST OF 101 GREAT BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR COLLEGE-BOUND READERS

Back around the turn of the Millennium, when Top 100 book lists were all the rage, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century List, the College Board came up with a list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers." 

Leave it to the creator of the PSAT, the SAT, etc. to come up with a list of books guaranteed to make  every reader feel humble. I'm a fan of classics and do not have a problem with the idea of a "canon" to provide a solid grounding in Western literature. But to suggest that students should read all "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" while they are still in high school is setting some pretty high standards! Maybe that's why the list has completely disappeared from the College Board's website. 

I can now, in my 50s, look at this list and say that I've read most of them, 86 of the 101. But I read 66 of those when I was in college -- as an English Lit major -- or after college. I only read 20 of these when I was in high school, and I was a complete nerd. The idea that I would have read all of them in high school is enough to trigger that nightmare where I am back in school as an adult, trying to take an exam for a class I never attended!

Here is the list, with notes about whether I have read the book and when, if it is still on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

Beowulf  FINISHED (college and adult)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED (adult)

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED (adult)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED (college)

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED (adult)

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett FINISHED (college)

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte FINISHED (high school)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte FINISHED (high school)

The Stranger by Albert Camus FINISHED (adult)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED (adult)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes TBR SHELF

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED (college)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Awakening by Kate Chopin FINISHED (college)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED (high school)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ON OVERDRIVE

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED (adult)

Inferno by Dante FINISHED (college)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe FINISHED (adult)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED (high school and adult)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky FINISHED (adult)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass FINISHED (college)

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED (adult)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas FINISHED (adult)

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot FINISHED (adult)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED (adult)

Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson FINISHED (high school)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner FINISHED (college)

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding FINISHED (adult)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED (high school and adult)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED (adult)

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford FINISHED (adult)

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED (college)

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED (adult)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED (college)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED (high school)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED (adult)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED (adult)

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED (college and adult)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED (high school)

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka FINISHED (high school)

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee FINISHED (adult)

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED (adult)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London FINISHED (adult)

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann TBR SHELF

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez FINISHED (adult)

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville FINISHED (high school)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller FINISHED (high school)

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED (college)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED (adult)

Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill TBR SHELF

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED (adult)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED (adult)

Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe FINISHED (high school)

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust TBR SHELF

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED (college)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque FINISHED (adult)

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED (high school)

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED (college)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn TBR SHELF

Antigone by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED (high school)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED (adult)

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift FINISHED (college)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray FINISHED (adult)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED (adult)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED (adult)

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED (high school)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain FINISHED (high school and adult)

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED (adult)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED (college)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED (adult)

Collected Stories by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED (high school)

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams FINISHED (high school)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED (college)

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED (adult)

NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a reposting of a list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing, particularly the link to the College Board because the book list itself is no longer available on the College Board's website. 

The wonderful book blogger and book reviewer, Rebecca Reid at Rebecca Reads, is also working on this list. 

If anyone else adopts this list, please let me know in a comment and I will add your link.

All-TIME Best 100 English-Language Novels -- BOOK LIST

ALL-TIME BEST 100 ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS

In 2005, TIME Magazine critics Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman picked the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923, the year TIME began publishing. Lacayo offers a thorough explanation of their process on the magazine's website, along with descriptions of each book.

As Lacayo said in his article, "Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage." Everyone can argue about books they think should have made this list and others that should have been left off. 

Personally, I'd prefer seeing Mary McCarthy, Barbara Pym, and Penelope Lively on this list and jettison Pynchon, Kosinski, and DeLillo. I've read 88 of the 100 books on this list so far, but I may never finish all 100. I know I'm never going to read Infinite Jest, for example. And I will probably never read Gravity's Rainbow. 

How about you? What are your thoughts?

Here is the complete list in alphabetical order, with notes if I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (reviewed here) FINISHED

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here) FINISHED

American Pastoral by Philip Roth FINISHED

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara FINISHED

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume FINISHED

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (reviewed here) FINISHED

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien TBR SHELF

Atonement by Ian McEwan FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood TBR SHELF

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler FINISHED

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy FINISHED

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder FINISHED

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess FINISHED

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron FINISHED

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen FINISHED

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (discussed here) FINISHED

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West FINISHED

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Deliverance by James Dickey FINISHED

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone FINISHED

Falconer by John Cheever TBR SHELF

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon ON OVERDRIVE

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene FINISHED

Herzog by Saul Bellow FINISHED

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson FINISHED

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul FINISHED

I, Claudius by Robert Graves FINISHED

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ON OVERDRIVE (but 56 hours!)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED

Light in August by William Faulkner FINISHED

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis FINISHED

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien FINISHED

Loving by Henry Green FINISHED

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead ON OVERDRIVE

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here) FINISHED

Money by Martin Amis (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs FINISHED

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED

Neuromancer by William Gibson ON OVERDRIVE

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro FINISHED

1984 by George Orwell FINISHED

On the Road by Jack Kerouac FINISHED

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey FINISHED

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (I finished as much as I could stand) FINISHED

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster FINISHED

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Rabbit, Run by John Updike FINISHED

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow FINISHED

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett FINISHED

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates FINISHED

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles FINISHED

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here) FINISHED

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson TBR SHELF

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth TBR SHELF

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford FINISHED

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre FINISHED

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller FINISHED

Ubik by Philip K. Dick ON OVERDRIVE

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry FINISHED

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

White Teeth by Zadie Smith FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

NOTES

Updated October 26, 2023. This is a repost of the list I first posted back in 2009. The links needed refreshing. 

List: Campus Novels

CAMPUS NOVELS

Actually being a college professor holds no interest for me. I wasn't even particularly fond of being a college student. I don't want to live in the Ivory Tower, just visit. I love novels featuring college professors, set on college campuses, with an academic theme or plot. The Campus Novel is my favorite sub-genre.

That's why I keep a running list of Campus Novels. These are books I have read or want to read. If you have suggestions for additions to this list, please send them my way!

I'm not so keen on novels featuring students on campus. I read a distinction once (I think made by David Lodge) between "Campus Novels" that focus on college professors and other faculty, and "Varsity Novels" that focus on student life. The later don't appeal to me much. There may be a few on my list that could cross over, but most fall on the professor side of the line.

Here's my list, in alphabetical order by author's name. I made notes about whether I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.  Any favorites? If you have ideas for additions, please leave a comment.

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber 

Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis FINISHED TWICE

One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis (reviewed here) FINISHED

Death of an Old Goat by Robert Barnard

End of the Road by John Barth

The Dean's December by Saul Bellow FINISHED

More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow TBR SHELF

Herzog by Saul Bellow FINISHED

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow FINISHED

The Morning After Death by Nicholas Blake

Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury FINISHED

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury TBR SHELF

Possession by A. S. Byatt FINISHED

The Professor's House by Willa Cather FINISHED
 
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon TBR SHELF

Falconer by John Cheever TBR SHELF

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee FINISHED

The Archivist by Martha Cooley

Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin (and the rest of his Gervase Fen series) SOME ON TBR SHELF

Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie

In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross (and the rest of her Kate Fansler series) PARTLY FINISHED

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies (reviewed here) FINISHED

What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies FINISHED

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies FINISHED

White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The English School of Murder by Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Trick of It by Michael Frayn

Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes FINISHED

The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here) FINISHED

Redback by Howard Jacobson

Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova FINISHED

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman (reviewed here) FINISHED

The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge FINISHED

Thinks by David Lodge TBR SHELF

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (reviewed here) FINISHED

Changing Places by David Lodge (reviewed here) FINISHED

Small World by David Lodge FINISHED

Nice Work by David Lodge FINISHED

The War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie

A New Life by Bernard Malamud

All Souls by Javier Marias

An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman FINISHED

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy (reviewed here) FINISHED

Irish Tenure by Ralph McInerny (and the rest of his Notre Dame mystery series)

The Search Committee by Ralph McInerny

Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain by Jeffrey Moore

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath by Kimberly Knutsen TBR SHELF

Blue Angel by Francine Prose FINISHED

Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed

Letting Go by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Breast by Philip Roth

The Dying Animal by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here) FINISHED

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo FINISHED

Straight Man by Richard Russo ON OVERDRIVE

The Small Room by May Sarton FINISHED

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers FINISHED

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher FINISHED

The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher ON OVERDRIVE

Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe

Grantchester Grind by Tom Sharpe  

Moo by Jane Smiley FINISHED

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Masters by C.P. Snow FINISHED

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner FINISHED

The Secret History by Donna Tartt FINISHED

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey TBR SHELF

Memories of the Ford Administration by John Updike TBR SHELF

Stoner by John Williams FINISHED

The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams (reviewed here) FINISHED

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson FINISHED


NOTES

Updated December 28, 2022. If you have suggestions for additions to this list, please leave a comment!

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winners -- BOOK LIST

THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (formerly called the Prize for the Novel) has been awarded since 1918 for distinguished works of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.

The prize is named after its founder, legendary American publisher Joseph Pulitzer. No prize was awarded in several years, most recently in 2012. The prize is currently $15,000.

This is one of my favorite books lists, but I am not going to update the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

So far, I've read 68 of the winners. The list of the winners through 2021 is below, with notes about whether I've read it, it is currently on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.

The Prize winners since 1918 are:

2021: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich ON OVERDRIVE

2020: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead FINISHED

 
2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers FINISHED

2018: Less by Andrew Sean Greer FINISHED

2017: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead FINISHED

2016: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen FINISHED

2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer FINISHED

2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt FINISHED

2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson FINISHED

2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan FINISHED

2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding (reviewed here) FINISHED

2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (reviewed here) FINISHED

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz FINISHED

2007: The Road by Cormack McCarthy

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks (reviewed here) FINISHED

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed here) FINISHED

2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones FINISHED

2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides  FINISHED

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon FINISHED

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri FINISHED

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham FINISHED

1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth FINISHED

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (reviewed here) FINISHED

1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford FINISHED

1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler TBR SHELF

1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike FINISHED

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos FINISHED

1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (reviewed here) FINISHED

1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (short review here) FINISHED

1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry FINISHED

1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie FINISHED

1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy FINISHED

1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED

1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike FINISHED

1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole FINISHED

1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer ON OVERDRIVE

1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (reviewed here) FINISHED

1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson TBR SHELF

1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (reviewed here) FINISHED

1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara ON OVERDRIVE

1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner FINISHED

1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday FINISHED

1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron FINISHED

1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (reviewed here) FINISHED

1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau FINISHED

1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner TBR SHELF

1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor

1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (reviewed here) FINISHED

1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor FINISHED

1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED

1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1955: A Fable by William Faulkner

1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk ON OVERDRIVE

1951: The Town by Conrad Richter 

1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens FINISHED

1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener FINISHED

1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here) FINISHED

1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (reviewed here) FINISHED

1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin TBR SHELF

1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair FINISHED

1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand FINISHED

1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis TBR SHELF

1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson FINISHED

1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling TBR SHELF

1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck FINISHED

1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes TBR SHELF

1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge TBR SHELF

1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder FINISHED

1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield FINISHED

1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED

1925: So Big by Edna Ferber FINISHED

1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather FINISHED

1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (reviewed here) FINISHED

1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton FINISHED

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington FINISHED

1918: His Family by Ernest Poole


NOTE

Updated July 3, 2025. 

OTHERS READING THE PULITZER WINNERS

If you are working on reading all the Pulitzer fiction winners and want to list your blog or related link here, please leave a comment with the link and I will add it.