List: The Observer's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

In December 2003, the BBC presented its "Big Read" list of the Top 100 favorite books in Britain. Going for a scoop, The Observer published its own list of 100 Greatest Novels of All Time – more precisely defined as "essential fiction from the past 300 years" – in October 2003.

Unlike the Big Read, which was compiled through a months-long people's choice process, The Observer list was put together in-house, after much wrangling over the nature of enduring literature as well as the merits of individual works. The process is analyzed and explained in the companion piece to the list itself.

Those I have read are in red. Those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue. The comments following the titles are the original notes included in The Observer's publication.

1. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.

2. Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The first English novel.

4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.

6. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.

7. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr. Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.

8. Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.

9. Emma by Jane Austen
Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.

10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.

11. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel.

12. The Black Sheep by Honore De Balzac
Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked.

13. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.

14. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.

15. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius.

16. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best.

17. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore.

18. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Obsessive emotional grip and haunting narrative.

19. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The improving tale of Becky Sharp.

20. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A classic investigation of the American mind.

21. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (reviewed here)
"Call me Ishmael" is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.

22. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
You could summarize this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.

23. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.

24. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.

25. Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott
Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls.

26. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England.

27. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man.

28. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling.

29. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment.

30. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.

31. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Twain was a humorist, but this picture of Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still incredibly influential.

32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
A brilliantly suggestive, resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller.

33. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
One of the funniest English books ever written.

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.

35. The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.

36. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first twentieth-century novels.

37. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising.

38. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves after his master's death.

39. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics.

40. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (reviewed here)
This children's classic was inspired by bedtime stories for Grahame's son.

41. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the belle epoque. Probably the longest novel on this list.

42. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
Novels seized by the police, like this one, have a special afterlife.

43. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
This account of the adulterous lives of two Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable narration.

44. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, violence and suspense.

45. Ulysses by James Joyce
Also pursued by the British police, this is a novel more discussed than read.

46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English novelists.

47. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
The great novel of the British Raj, it remains a brilliant study of empire.

48. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The quintessential Jazz Age novel.

49. The Trial by Franz Kafka
The enigmatic story of Joseph K.

50. Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
He is remembered for his novels, but it was the short stories that first attracted notice.

51. Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
The experiences of an unattractive slum doctor during the Great War: a masterpiece of linguistic innovation.

52. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A strange black comedy by an American master.

53. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Dystopian fantasy about the world of the seventh century AF (after Ford).

54. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The supreme Fleet Street novel.

55. USA by John Dos Passos
An extraordinary trilogy that uses a variety of narrative devices to express the story of America.

56. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Introducing Philip Marlowe: cool, sharp, handsome - and bitterly alone.

57. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
An exquisite comedy of manners with countless fans.

58. The Plague by Albert Camus
A mysterious plague sweeps through the Algerian town of Oran.

59. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
This tale of one man's struggle against totalitarianism has been appropriated the world over.

60. Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the black comic voice of the author of Waiting for Godot.

61. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel that still mesmerizes.

62. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
A disturbing novel of religious extremism set in the Deep South.

63. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
How Wilbur the pig was saved by the literary genius of a friendly spider.

64. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Enough said!

65. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English novel of the Fifties.

66. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Schoolboys become savages: a bleak vision of human nature.

67. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Prophetic novel set in 1950s Vietnam.

68. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Beat Generation bible.

69. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert's obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative.

70. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler's Germany.

71. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of African literature.

72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A writer who made her debut in The Observer- and her prose is like cut glass.

73. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates an enthralling story of racial prejudice in the Deep South.

74. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
"[He] would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

75. Herzog by Saul Bellow
Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A postmodern masterpiece.

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
A haunting, understated study of old age.

78. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
A thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. (reviewed here)

79. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The definitive novelist of the African-American experience.

80. The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
Macabre comedy of provincial life.

81. The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
This quasi-documentary account of the life and death of Gary Gilmore is possibly his masterpiece.

82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
A strange, compelling story about the pleasures of reading.

83. A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
The finest living writer of English prose. This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart of Darkness.

84. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Bleak but haunting allegory of apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner.

85. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women.

86. Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic.

87. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the Manhattan of the 1970s.

88. The BFG by Roald Dahl
A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for children of all ages.

89. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
A prose poem about the delights of chemistry.

90. Money by Martin Amis (reviewed here)
The novel that bags Amis's place on any list.

91. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
A collaborator from prewar Japan reluctantly discloses his betrayal of friends and family.

92. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey  (reviewed here) 
A great contemporary love story set in nineteenth-century Australia by double Booker prizewinner.

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Inspired by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is a magical fusion of history, autobiography and ideas.

94. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
In this entrancing story Rushdie plays with the idea of narrative itself.

95. LA Confidential by James Ellroy
Three LAPD detectives are brought face to face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent careers.

96. Wise Children by Angela Carter
A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant exponent of magic realism.

97. Atonement by Ian McEwan
Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerizing narrative conviction.

98. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass in America)
Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the play of ideas into a truly great contemporary children's book.

99. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
For years, Roth was famous for Portnoy's Complaint. Recently, he has enjoyed an extraordinary revival.

100. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Posthumously published volume in a sequence of dream-like fictions spun from memory, photographs and the German past.


NOTE
Updated last on December 28, 2022.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS
(If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with your links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.)

My First Carnival!

. Teddy Rose at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time is hosting the Bookworms' Carnival this month. The theme is "Historical Fiction" and Teddy has compiled a terrific list of essays, interviews, and book reviews. She organized the reviews by country, which I think was a great idea. This is the first time that I got my act together to contribute, and I am excited that three of my reviews are included. I plan to spend a lot of time at the carnival this weekend. There are so many reviews and other posts that I want to read. Thanks Teddy! .

Size Matters

This week's Booking Through Thursday questions asks:

What’s the biggest book you’ve read recently? (Feel free to think “big” as size, or as popularity, or in any other way you care to interpret.)

I have a couple of "big" books I can think of that I read recently: Big Book: Underworld by Don DeLillo (At 850+ pages, this one is a doorstop; reviewed here.) Big Deal: The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (This book is not only a chunkster, it was hugely popular when I was in high school. I missed it back then, which is too bad, because I don't think it packs the same wallop as an adult.) Big Ideas: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (Not an easy book, but one I will think about for a long time; reviewed here.) Big Favorite: Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (An Oregon classic and new personal best.) .

Challenge Update: The Spice of Life Challenge

. I love the Spice of Life challenge. This is one that will be easy to finish by the end of the year, because I had already planned to read these books. So far, I finished my non-fiction book: Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger. My review is posted in the current edition of the Internet Review of Books. I am halfway through with my cookbook choice: The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (which overlaps with my "silver" choice for the Colorful Reading Challenge). It is tremendously fun to read this book, although it makes me almost maudlin with nostalgia. I started my fiction choice this week: The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. I really enjoyed her novel, Lost in Translation, and sinking deep into this one already. And, finally, I am going to get to my "memoir/essays" pick soon: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. I must read this before I see the movie. This is one challenge that is going by too fast. I think I should have signed up for the eight course "feast" version. Hopefully, Rebecca will host this again next year and I will be a glutton! .

Book Trailers

. New technologies and marketing tools pop up fast enough to make me feel like even more of a curmudgeon than I thought I was. It seems like just yesterday I was waiving my cane and yelling at Twitter to get off my lawn, and now here come "book trailers." Like with all trends, it took a while for me to notice. In fact, maybe book trailers have been around for years and I never realized it. I know that Caitlin from Unbridled Books sent me this trailer to The Evolution of Shadows several weeks ago and I ignored it, like I do with all things I don't understand. It took this comment from Sarah Stonich, author of The Ice Chorus, for me to finally clue in:

Hi Rose City Reader, I'm hoping to get the opinions of bloggers on book trailers - the one linked here, as well as trailers in general. Are they effective? What makes a good one? A bad one? Please watch my mercifully brief book trailer, which I think conveys a sense and mood of The Ice Chorus, now out in paperback by Alma Books of London: [link to trailer] Any feedback would be appreciated. Cheers, Sarah Stonich

Because I react instantaneously to comments, so thrilled am I to get any, I watched Sarah's trailer right away. It is the first book trailer I ever watched. I think I like the idea. It is just a short little video clip with still photos of Ireland (where the book is set) and other images that capture elements and themes of the book. There is a voice-over -- presumably the author -- giving a back-of-the-book type description. In the interest of research for this post, I went back through my email and found the link to the trailer for The Evolution of Shadows. It is a little different because there is no narration, just stark, black and white photos of war torn Bosnia, interspersed with written descriptions and snippets of praise from other authors. I have to say that these trailers makes me want to read the books. Both The Ice Chorus and The Evolution of Shadows have been sitting on my TBR shelf for several months. But so have 900 other books. Something has to make a book stand out over the others to make me turn to it sooner rather than later. Maybe trailers are the answer. What do you all think? Do you watch trailers? Are they effective? Are some better than others? RELATED POSTS ON OTHER BLOGS 5 Tips for Making a Good Book Trailer on Abel Keogh's Blog (If you have posted on this topic, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it here.) .

Teaser Tuesday: The Last Chinese Chef

. . "Every meal here had been a breakthrough into the unexpected, but the food she had eaten in his company had been something more. With him, this world of cuisine seemed not only intricate but coherently beautiful." -- The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones Magazine columnist and recent widow, Maggie McElroy, travels to China to handle a matter involving her husband's estate. She combines the trip with a story assignment to write about an up and coming Chinese American chef competing for a spot on the "culinary Olympics" team. It was not easy finding two sentences that capture the mood and appeal of this book, because there are several layers to the story. Like the classic Chinese cuisine Mones writes about, the book combines "flavors" and "textures" in ways that are satisfying, complex, and often surprising. I am reading this as my fiction choice for the Spice of Life challenge. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. .

Mailbox Monday

. I was expecting to get Plainsong by Kent Haruf in the mail last week, which would have been the highlight of my Mailbox Monday post. But it did not get here yet. It is my book club's September choice, so I have to get cracking on it. A few other books came into my house last week: The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien (on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 novels by women), Regeneration by Pat Barker (the first book in her "Regeneration Trilogy" that ends with the Booker-winning The Ghost Road), The Murder Room by P. D. James (#12 in her Adam Dalgliesh series that I haven't even started yet, but that recently caught my attention), and Trust Me by John Updike (a collection of short stories), The Falconer by John Cheever (on the All-TIME 100 best list). .

Opening Sentence of the Day: American Rust

. "Isaac's mother was dead five years but he hadn't stopped thinking about her." American Rust by Philipp Meyer. Interesting enough, if not a real grabber. In fact, this is my second try at starting this one. It has been sitting on my LibraryThing Early Reviewer list since January. I am going to buckle down and finish it. PS: I started two new books this week -- this one and The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. I usually have three books going at one time: one at home (Chinese Chef), one to carry around (Rust), and one audio book on my iPod (Shalimar the Clown this week). The carry around book is either a hardback without the dustjacket, or a paperback that I don't care it it gets beat up or that I put a protective cover on. I've followed this three-book system for so long, I hardly even recognize it as the fussy idiosyncrasy it is. Do other people have particular book habits? .

Challenge Update: Colorful Reading

. We are soon to enter the fourth quarter of 2009. Time to get organized if I am to accomplish a couple of reading goals by the end of the year. One of these goals is to complete the Colorful Reading Challenge. So far, I have read five of the nine books I picked for the challenge. Those books are listed here, with links to my reviews: RED: Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith (review) BLACK: Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke (mini-review) GOLD: Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California by Dinkelspiel, Frances (review) GREEN: Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? by Vaclav Klaus (review) YELLOW: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris (review) I have four left, but I am halfway through my SILVER book, The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso. I originally picked the following books for the remaining three colors: BLUE: My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan by Liane de Pougy WHITE: White Teeth by Zadie Smith BROWN: Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosely But I am going to make a couple of changes. For one thing, I am going to read American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham for my "WHITE" book, because that one is languishing on my guilt list. If I read it by the end of the year, I can accomplish two goals at once. Also, I am switching one of my extra colors. Instead of "BROWN" I am going to read a "RUST" book. So, "bye bye" to Bad Boy Brawly Brown, and "hello" to American Rust, which has been on my LibraryThing list even longer than the Andrew Jackson book. Another two-fer. Thanks, again, to Rebecca at Lost in Books for hosting this challenge. .

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Last Chinese Chef

. "Maggie McElroy felt her soul spiral away from her in the year following her husband's death; she felt strange wherever she was." -- The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones According to the back cover, this is a novel about "the hidden world of elite cuisine in modern China." I am reading this as my fiction choice for the Spice of Life challenge. I am particularly looking forward to it because I have been jonesing for good Chinese food lately -- one of the things I miss the most now that I don't live in San Francisco any more. .

My Life According to Literature

. I do not know who started this, but it sucked me in when I read it on We Be Reading. It will probably pop up on facebook soon enough. "Using only books you have read this year (2009), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. It’s a lot harder than you think!" Here is my life, according to literature (links to reviews): Describe Yourself: The Innocent How do you feel: Great Expectations Describe where you currently live: The Amateur Marriage If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Atget’s Paris Your favorite form of transportation: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water Your best friend is: The Fixer You and your friends are: Kiss Kiss What’s the weather like: All Quiet on the Western Front Favorite time of day: The Mating Season If your life was a: Crime and Punishment What is life to you: The Floating Opera Your fear: Underworld What is the best advice you have to give: Water the Bamboo Thought for the Day: Sometimes a Great Notion How I would like to die: Au Revoir to All That My soul’s present condition: Mere Christianity OTHER LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES The Noisy Daisy (Please leave a comment with a link and I will add it here.) .

Fluffy

. This week''s Booking Through Thursday question asks what "fluffy" books we have read recently. Looking at my list of books over on the right column, I see a lot of serious books, and not many books I would characterize as fluffy. Doctor Sally by P.G. Wodehouse probably counts. It is shorter than other Wodehouse novels I have read. It is funny and clever, but there are far fewer characters than most of them and the plot is pretty linear and simple. But still a lot of fun to read! PS: Thanks to J.G. at Hotch Pot Cafe for reminding me that this post is a definite KITTEN opportunity! .

Challenge Update: Battle of the Prizes

. Congratulations go to Caitlin at Chaotic Compendiums for finishing the Sunshine Smackdown: Battle of the Prizes. Caitlin's three challenge books, with links to her reviews, were: Sophie's Choice (National winner) Empire Falls (Pulitzer winner) The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (double-dipper) Thanks, Caitlin! Also, if you do a wrap-up post, please let us know and I will add the link. Book Psmith has also finished her National Book Award winner, The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud. Psmith's review is here. Challenge details and links to all the reviews submitted so far are on the main challenge page. There are still a few weeks to go before the challenge ends on Labor Day. And Labor Day is only the deadline for reading books -- reviews are welcome after that date. Please leave links to reviews on this post or the main challenge post. Thanks, again, to everyone who is participating!

Review: Underworld

Don DiLillo’s Underworld is an atmospheric pastiche of nuclear age anxiety. After an interminable Prologue in which the Giants beat the Dodgers for the 1952 National League pennant, the book generally traces two stories – the story of the winning homerun baseball and the story of Nick Shay. The ball passes from the kid who nabbed it at the game to a series of collectors. Shay grows from a Bronx hooligan to an executive for a large waste management company in Phoenix.

What could be an engaging story – how a juvenile crime changed the trajectory of Shay’s life – is attenuated and addled by laying out the narrative backwards. The story starts in 1992, then moves back in time in chunks until 1952. This means that events in the beginning of the book only make sense later, and characters met early on fall into place later. This is a needlessly confusing and self conscious format. It is like looking at a scrapbook backwards, figuring out how the people and events fit together.

And, of course, a backwards timeline cannot really work if there is to be any resolution of the story, because “how the story ends” would have to come at the very beginning. That would make for a boring book. So the first section raises dramatic issues that hang there through the entire book, until they are wrapped up in a lengthy Epilogue set in 1992 again.

Also confusing are the myriad characters who are all linked, but some only tangentially. Many of the connections are artificial, mere excuses for elaborate digressions. The unifying theme of waste – particularly nuclear waste and destruction – further ties these side stories together, but not in any way enjoyable. DiLillo lingers over descriptions and rumors of disfigurement and deformity caused by nuclear testing, as well as other descriptions of wasted lives.

This book is too long, too self-righteous, too slow, too dark, too garbled, and simply too trying. DiLillo has his fans, but I am not one of them.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other DiLillo book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will list it here.

Teaser Tuesday: Paul Newman

. "But they were easily put off by the parochial aspects of living in Hollywood -- the continuous obsession with money, celebrity, and the next deal. They preferred to keep a quiet space to themselves, and if that made them seem aloof to people, that was their problem." -- Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy, discussing why Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward chose to live in a renovated barn in Westport, Connecticut. This is a terrific book. It is packed with details, but written with such easy grace that it never gets bogged down. Levy's years as a film critic bring depth to the story by really analyzing Newman's movies instead of just providing the celebrity gossip personal side of the story. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. .

Mailbox Monday

. Were it not for the Book Blogger Retreat here in Portland this weekend, no books would have come into my house last week. As it is, my Mailbox Monday list is very short. It includes only the two books that I picked up from fellow bloggers at the book swap they organized: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie Resistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnes Humbert I don't even know who brought the two books I nabbed, so I have to thank the whole group. .

Book Blogger Retreat

. This was the weekend of the Book Blogger Retreat here in Portland. It was terrific to meet some of my fellow bloggers and do some very fun bookish things. Huge thanks go to Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? for organizing the event. PARTICIPANTS Wendy from Caribousmom Bethany from Dreadlock Girl Trish from Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? Gabe from Reading Local Teddy from So Many precious Books, So Little Time Juli from Whimpulsive Kristen from We Be Reading Ali from Worducopia ACTIVITIES We met Friday evening for dinner at Ringler's, the McMenamin's in the Crystal Ballroom building. It was a great, casual way to all meet each other and get acquainted. Saturday morning was the tour of Powell's, which was entertaining and interesting, even for the Portlanders among us who think we "know" Powell's. For instance, I did not know that 1) there are a million books on the shelves at any time; 2) there is a huge tank under the store that catches the rainwater and regulates the flow into the sewers so as to help the city deal with the never-solved problem of its "combined sewer/overflow system"; 3) they have one of the original editions of the Lewis and Clark Journals, for $35,000; and 4) someone is buried in the book column outside the 11th Avenue entrance. Thanks go to Bethany for arranging the tour! We started off Saturday afternoon with a presentation in the Rare Book Room of the Multnomah County Library. Jim Carmin showed us some amazing books and ephemera from the collection, including a couple of contemporary "art books," a letter from Charles Dickens, a book of hours woven in silk, a manuscript about a safari that is bound in lion skin, and one book from the four-volume The Birds of America set by John James Audubon. This was the highlight of the weekend for me. I was blown away. Thanks go to Ali for setting this up. After the rare books, we had a great "round table" discussion (minus the actual table) with Portland author Molly Gloss. Molly was gracious and engaging, willing to talk with us about writing, blogging, the state of the publishing industry, her experiences as an author, and her books. Her latest novel, The Hearts of Horses, is getting rave reviews and is going on my TBR shelf right away. Thanks go to Gabe for making arrangements with Molly! This was a really wonderful event and I am so glad I was here to participate. Trish took copious notes and lots of pictures -- as did several others -- so they will have very good wrap-up posts. Please visit their blogs to read more about the Book Blogger Retreat. .

Challenge Update: Battle of the Prizes

. DONE! I am all finished with the Sunshine Smackdown: Battle of the Prizes Challenge. This is the first challenge that I have ever completed, as well as the first challenge I ever hosted. The challenge was to read three books between May 1 and Labor Day: one book that won the Pulitzer Prize, one that won the National Book Award, and one that won both. My three reviews are: 1) Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (my Pulitzer pick); 2) Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (my National pick); and 3) The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (my double dipper). How do these compare? My choices were all mid-century winners, but different in significant ways. The Fixer is a historical novel, set in Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s. The Drury and Roth books are both "middle class realism," but A&C is a doorstop of WASP politics and G.C. is a breakout collection of short stories reveling in Jewish family life. I cannot make any big generalizations about Pulitzer winners versus National winners based on my selection of three. But they all fell within my preconceived notions of these prizes, which are that the Pulitzer tends to go to books that have popular appeal, and the National goes to books because they have some significant beyond the story. In this case, Roth's shift to a Jewish perspective on American middle-class life was revolutionary. Even if it does not seem so now, the book had an edge to it back in 1960. So, why did The Fixer win both? It certainly has an edge -- it is downright grim. But I guess it could have had some popular appeal as well because it is an incredibly moving, fast-paced story. I definitely deserved to win both prized. It is an excellent book. There is still time to finish the challenge before Labor Day. J.G. at Hotch Pot Cafe is already finished. Book Psmith recently finished and reviewed her Pulitzer pick, Olive Kitteridge. Feel free to submit your reviews with a comment here on on the main challenge page. .

Review of the Day: Blue Planet in Green Shackles

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Václav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic, a former Prime Minister of the country, and an economist by training and profession. Given his position and background, he brings an informed and interesting perspective to the issue of global warming, which he sees as a conflict between statism and freedom.

Klaus witnessed firsthand the devastation – human, economic, and environmental – caused by communism. Based on these observations, he believes that the best hope for dealing with climate change is to allow technology and innovation to thrive so that future generations can adapt to whatever changes may come. Klaus is not talking through his hat. He has researched and written about climate change and other catastrophic scenarios from an economic standpoint since at least the early 1990s. He is also well versed in the hard science aspects of the debate.

His recent book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles is a culmination of decades of analysis. In Blue Planet, Klaus argues that global warming is an issue deserving a full and honest debate. He wants to see debate on questions such as: What is the real level of global warming likely to be? Is there evidence for or against significant human contribution to current global warming? Would a warmer climate be better or worse than the present one? Can we do something about climate? He shares his own answers to these questions, solidly supported by scientific and economic evidence.

Klaus makes clear that he is not “anti-environment”; just anti-environmentalism, which he sees as the newest form of megalomaniacal central planning at the expense of human freedom. He supports scientific study of the environment, which he calls “scientific ecology,” but explains, “Even though environmentalism boasts about its scientific basis, it is, in fact, essentially a metaphysical ideology . . .”

While a few passages on economic theory get a little dry, most of this short book is pitched at an introductory level to appeal to a broad range of readers who have probably not given Klaus’s take on the subject much consideration. He is direct, concise, and pulls no punches. It is worth reading, even if just to view the issues from a different perspective.  

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NOTES

This was my "green" pick for the Colorful Reading Challenge. .

Best Book

. This week, Booking Through Thursday asks another short questions: What is the "best" book you have read recently? I have two answers. The first is based on an objective standard; the second on a subjective standard. Objectively, the best book I've read lately is The Fixer by Bernard Malamud. Applying the "reasonable person standard" we lawyers are so fond of -- or, in this case, a "reasonable reader standard" -- Malamud's Pulitzer/National winner is a good book. Everyone should read it, and everyone who reads it will be a better person for it. Subjectively, the book that I think is the best I've read lately is Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth. Pure enjoyment. It also made me think, but it was pure enjoyment. I read both of these for my Battle of the Prizes Challenge. My review of The Fixer is here. My review of Goodbye, Columbus is here. .

Opening Sentence of the Day: Paul Newman

. "America doesn't have a national epic, but Our Town might do in a pinch." -- Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy. I've read two celebrity biographies in my life. Both autobiographies, actually: Evenings with Cary Grant and Lauren Bacall: By Myself. I've got Katharine Hepburn's Me sitting on my TBR shelf, and I really thought that would fill my lifetime quota. But then Shawn Levy came out with this: Who am I to resist a Hud-era shot of Paul Newman without a shirt? Wow. I got this one from the Internet Review of Books to do a review for the September issue. Since Levy is a Portland author, I'm hoping to post the review on Reading Local as well, as soon as IRB is finished with it. .

Opening Sentence of the Day: Blue Planet in Green Shackles

. "We are living in strange times." -- from the author's Introduction, Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Václav Klaus. "For quite some time, I have been speaking and writing about the environment in a rather unsystematic way." --Chapter 1, Blue Planet. Václav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic, a former Prime Minister of the country, and an economist by training and profession. His perspective on climate issues is fascinating. This is my "green" pick for the Colorful Reading Challenge. .

Teaser Tuesday: Underworld

. "Maybe they used to have jazz but stopped. The had a jazz policy that became a policy of no jazz, which is much the same thing if you examine it closely." -- Underworld by Don DiLillo. Huh? Just what does that mean? Most of this book is full of that kind of grandiose, meaningless, blather. It has a zillion characters, but almost no plot. It moves generally backwards in time, so what plot there is is a puzzle to put together as information about earlier events comes around later in the book. I find it needlessly confusing and pompous. Another problem I have with this book is that it is, literally, full of sh*t. It is scatological enough to make it to my sh*t list. Not only do the characters think about the subject, they philosophize about it, saying things like, "All waste defers to sh*t. All waste aspires to the condition of sh*t." I am definitely not cut out to be a DeLillo fan. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. .

Mailbox Monday

. Three books showed up in my mailbox last week, so this is a legitimate Mailbox Monday post. In addition, I used some of my Reading Local contest winnings at Annie Bloom's Books for three other great finds. IN THE MAIL: Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy (from the Internet Review of Books) Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow (from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program) Good for the Jews by Debra Spark (from my friends at the University of Michigan Press) FROM ANNIE BLOOM'S BOOKS: The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants by Anna Pavord Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (recommended by my buddy Laura at Artscatter) Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love, edited by Anne Fadiman .

Announcement: The IRB is Here!

. The August edition of the Internet Review of Books is up now and jam-packed with great reading. There are 13 non-fiction reviews, five fiction reviews, an essay by Eric Petersen on "The Pros and Cons of Net Books," and a good selection of brief reviews. I am very pleased that my review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger is included in this month's edition. When the September edition of the IRB comes out, I will post my review here on Rose City Reader. Until then, please visit the Internet Review of Books and read it there.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Underworld

. "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful." -- Underworld by Don DiLillo. And we are off on an 850+ page meandering, at least a third of which I don't understand, a third I don't care about, and a third I enjoy. I just don't think I'm cut out to be a DiLillo fan. .

Review of the Day: Goodbye, Columbus

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Philip Roth won the 1960 National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a collection of five short stories and the title novella. He went on to create an incredible body of work – building on many themes introduced in Goodbye, Columbus – publishing 30 books to date with another on the way.

In the main novella, hero Neil Klugman is home in Newark after two years in the army. He has finished college, is working in the library, and lives with his Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max in the old neighborhood. When Neil falls in love with Brenda Patimkin, the prototypical Jewish American Princess whose family has moved to the suburbs up the hill, Roth begins the examination of American Jewish life that continues through many of his books.

The title is a reference to Ohio State University Seniors saying goodbye to college, goodbye to Columbus, Ohio, but it also signifies growing up and leaving youth behind. Neil and Brenda’s relationship demonstrates the intensity of first love, as well as the disillusionment and emotional tempering that result.

The five short stories that follow vary in force and effect. “The Conversion of the Jews” is a clever piece in which a young student starts a theological argument with his teacher along the lines of, “If God is omnipotent, can he make a rock too big for him to move?” It is fast and crisp and more than a little audacious.

How Jews, particularly secular Jews, assimilated into mid-century American culture is a common Roth theme. In “Defender of the Faith,” he looks at Jews in the military, drawing in part on his own experience in the army. This story leaves questions unanswered for later pondering: Just who defended the faith? Was it the hero, Sergeant Nathan Marx, who fought the Germans in WWII? Or the new recruit, Sheldon Grossman, who demands to follow his religious practices in boot camp? Is Grossman really looking out for the Jews in the unit, or just trying to gain preferential treatment? What about Marx? This would be an excellent pick for a lit class or book club.

“Epstein” is a morality tale about adultery on the brink of the sexual revolution. Louis Epstein learns the hard way that his generation does not get to share in the sexual frolics of the post-war, folk-singing, “socially conscious” next one.

In “You Can’t Tell a Man by the Song He Sings,” Roth touches on themes he comes back to over and over, including growing up in Newark, baseball, interactions among ethnic groups, and political ideology. The idea of a high school teacher falling into the net of anti-communist committee hearing is one that Roth later developed fully in I Married a Communist, one of his Zuckerman novels.

The last story, “Eli the Fanatic,” is the most powerful of the bunch. When a group of religious Jews sets up a Yeshiva for Holocaust orphans, the secular Jews in the “modern community” of Woodenton, New Jersey want the school closed down, fearing that it will upset the delicate balance they have achieved with their secular Protestant neighbors. Poor Eli Peck gets caught in the middle, trying to negotiate between his fellow townsfolk and the school. Peck’s eventual comprehension of the past suffering of the Yeshiva Jews and the shameful position of his cohorts leads to his emotional undoing. This is a story to mull over.

Roth won several more awards after this one, including another National for Sabbath Theater, the Pulitzer for American Pastoral, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Counterlife, among others. He is a true man of letters and a real American treasure.


This was my National Book Award pick for the Battle of the Prizes Challenge.

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Review: To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming

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Julia Spencer-Fleming’s To Darkness and to Death is the fourth novel in her top-rate mystery series featuring priest-sleuth Clare Fergusson. As with the prior three installments, Clare’s vocation as the priest at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Millers Kill, New York shapes her character but not the plot.

Here, Clare gets involved in the disappearance of a young woman, not because Clare is a priest, but because she is called in as one of the volunteers on the search and rescue team. Unlike the earlier books, Fleming experiments in this one with a 24-hour format. The action starts with a pre-dawn phone call summoning the search team to look for the missing Millie van der Hoeven, local heiress and co-owner of a 250,000 acre parcel of Adirondack forest. Things take off from there, with lots of moving pieces, including multiple kidnappings, assault, cover-ups, blackmail, shady dealings, murder and mayhem.

Throughout, the romantic current between Clare and the married Chief of Police, Russ van Alstyne, still hums. Probably because of the 24-hour format, the two do not spend a lot of time together on the pages, but they are always aware of each other and their relationship makes a significant step forward before the story wraps up.

This is more thriller than who-dun-it, with the pieces ultimately falling into place – or at least coming to rest – in a pretty exciting finale. For those who prefer analysis to action, clues to chaos, this lack of actual mystery solving will be a let down after the prior books. But it is still an engaging story and Spencer-Fleming is a gifted writer.

She has a good thing going with this series, which she describes as “novels of faith and murder for readers of literary suspense.” "Faith and murder" -- you've got to love that combination!

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Author of the Day: Philip Roth

Philip Roth was born in 1933 in New Jersey, the setting of many of his books. His personal life was often fodder for his fiction, particularly his books chronicling the lives of 20th-Century American Jews. He created an alter-ego in Nathan Zucherman, the protagonist in nine novels. Another trilogy features college professor David Kepesh as the main character. Roth passed away in May 2018 at the age of 85.

Roth is a personal favorite. I intend to read all of his books. Those I have read so far are in red. Those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Other Short Stories (1959) (National Book Award winner; reviewed here)

Letting Go (1962)

When She Was Good (1967)

Portnoy's Complaint (1969) (Modern Library’s Top 100 list)

Our Gang (1971)

The Breast (1972) (Kepesh)

The Great American Novel (1973)

My Life As a Man (1974) (proto-Zuckerman)

Reading Myself and Others (1976)

The Professor of Desire (1977) (Kepesh)

The Ghost Writer (1979) (Zuckerman)

Zuckerman Unbound (1981) (Zuckerman)

The Anatomy Lesson (1983) (Zuckerman)

The Prague Orgy (1985) (Zuckerman)

The Counterlife (1986) (Zuckerman) (National Book Critics Circle Award winner)

The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988) (nonfiction)

Deception (1990)

Patrimony: A True Story (1991) (nonfiction)

Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993)

Sabbath's Theater (1995) (National Book Award winner)

American Pastoral (1997) (Zuckerman) (Pulitzer Prize winner)

I Married a Communist (1998) (Zuckerman)

The Human Stain (2000) (Zuckerman) (reviewed here)

Shop Talk (2001) (nonfiction)

The Dying Animal (2001) (Kepesh)

The Plot Against America (2004) (reviewed here)

Everyman (2006)

Exit Ghost (2007) (Zuckerman)

Indignation (2008)

The Humbling (2009)

Nemesis (2010)

NOTES

Last updated May 23, 2018.