National Book Award

Of the many lists of prize winners and recommended books I have going, I’ve been working for the past several years on reading the winners of the National Book Award. I recently found and joined the National Book Award Project – a group blog focusing on the winners and finalists of the NBA. I’ll be posting about my progress there as well as here. According to Lists of Bests, I am 38% finished with this list. Those I’ve finished are in red; those I own but haven’t read yet are in blue. 2007 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 2006 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers 2005 Europe Central by William T. Vollmann 2004 The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck 2003 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard 2002 Three Junes by Julia Glass 2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 2000 In America by Susan Sontag 1999 Waiting by Ha Jin 1998 Charming Billy by Alice McDermott 1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett 1995 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth 1994 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 1991 Mating by Norman Rush 1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson 1989 Spartina by John Casey 1988 Paris Trout by Pete Dexter 1987 Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann 1986 World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow 1985 White Noise by Don Delillo 1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist 1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker 1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike 1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris 1980 Sophie's Choice by William Styron 1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien 1978 Blood Ties by Mary Lee Settle 1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner 1976 JR by William Gaddis 1975 The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams 1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone 1974 Gravity's Ranbow by Thomas Pynchon 1974 A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer 1973 Augustus by John Williams 1973 Chimera by John Barth 1972 The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 1971 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow 1970 Them by Joyce Carol Oates 1969 Steps by Jerzy Kosinski 1968 The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder 1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 1966 The Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter 1965 Herzog by Saul Bellow 1964 The Centaur by John Updike 1963 Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers 1962 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 1961 The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter 1960 Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth 1959 The Magic Barrell by Bernard Malamud 1958 Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever 1957 The Field of Vision by Wright Morris 1956 Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara 1955 A Fable by William Faulkner 1954 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow 1953 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 1952 From Here to Eternity by James Jones 1951 The Collected Stories by William Faulkner 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

Review of the Day: The Assistant

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud is the moving story of an Italian-American stranger who works his way into the lives of an immigrant Jewish shopkeeper and his family. Malamud perfectly portrays the grinding worries of running a mom-and-pop grocery, but also brings out bigger themes such as the importance of education and an individual’s ability to overcome bigotry. Focusing on the value of loyalty, repentance, and personal responsibility, it is a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness. Four stars.

List: Anthony Burgess

In 1984, Anthony Burgess (best known for A Clockwork Orange) published 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (reviewed here).



His book included mini-reviews of the 99 novels (some are sets or series), which he chose on the basis of personal preference. I read the book, but now I don't remember why he started his list in 1939 and limited it to 99 books instead of an even 100.

This is my go-to book list when I'm looking for something good. There is some crossover with other Must Read lists, but a lot of originality. There are many books I've read only because they were on this list and I they now have permanent spots on my list of all-time favorites.

So far, I've read 39 of the 99 books on this list. The ones I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, in the same chronological order by publication date that Burgess lists them in his book:

Party Going, Henry Green

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (discussed here)

At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Strangers and Brothers, C. P. Snow (an 11-novel series; A Time of Hope, reviewed here; George Passant, reviewed here)

The Aerodrome, Rex Warner

The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary

The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham (reviewed here)

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake (reviewed here)

The Victim, Saul Bellow

Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley

The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

No Highway, Nevil Shute

The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

The Body, William Sansom

Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper

The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg

A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell (a 12-novel series; discussed here)

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, Henry Williamson

The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy (reviewed here)

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor

Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

Room at the Top, John Braine

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

The London Novels, Colin MacInnes (a trilogy)

The Assistant, Bernard Malamud (reviewed here)

The Bell, Iris Murdoch

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

The Mansion, William Faulkner

Goldfinger, Ian Fleming

Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley

The Balkans Trilogy, Olivia Manning

The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White

The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson

Another Country, James Baldwin

An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson

Island, Aldous Huxley

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

The Spire, William Golding

Heartland, Wilson Harris

A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here)

The Defense, Vladimir Nabokov

Late Call, Angus Wilson

The Lockwood Concern, John O'Hara

The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark (reviewed here)

A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe

The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis (reviewed here)

Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth

The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer

The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy

The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan

The Image Men, J. B. Priestley

Cocksure, Mordecai Richler

Pavane, Keith Roberts

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

Bomber, Len Deighton

Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow

The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury

The Doctor's Wife, Brian Moore

Falstaff, Robert Nye

How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Farewell Companions, James Plunkett

Staying On, Paul Scott

The Coup, John Updike

The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard

Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud

A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul

Sophie's Choice, William Stryon (reviewed here)

Life in the West, Brian Aldiss

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge (reviewed here)

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Lanark, Alasdair Gray

Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux

The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux

Creation, Gore Vidal

The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies (reviewed here)

Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

NOTES

Updated March 19, 2018.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

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Review of the Day: Havoc, in Its Third Year

Havoc, in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett is a mystery and a morality play and a historical novel all rolled into one. In 1630, John Brigge is the coroner and one of the Governors in an unnamed Northern England town. When he is called into town from his family and farm on the other side of the desolate moor, he finds not only a woman accused of murdering her newborn son, but political upheaval as law-and-order extremists use fiery oratory and public torture to consolidate their power. There are times when the implicit comparison to modern times is a little heavy handed, but, in general, the author avoids preaching by focusing on human ambiguity rather than human hypocrisy. Whether the final ending is heard-heartedly cynical or comfortingly realistic is up for debate.

Review of the Day: Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes

Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes: How Grassroots Activism Led to the Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews by Howard M. Lenhoff is a mildly tedious book about a fascinating subject. Lenhoff missed an opportunity to reach a broad audience when he intentionally focused on the poisonously dull “development of the infrastructure” of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews.

Telling the story of the Ethiopian Jews from the perspective of the American volunteer organization that did much to rescue them is an interesting take on the subject. Using the history of the AAEJ as a framework for the story of the Ethiopian Jews would have been fine, and perhaps this is what Lenhoff intended. But the narrative gets bogged down in administrative minutia at the expense of the bigger story.

Apparently intended to suggest that the AAEJ could be used as a model, several dozen references to the AAEJ as a “grassroots” organization undertaking “grassroots” efforts are salted throughout the early part of the book. These references feel like they were added later, perhaps at an editor’s request to try to appeal to a broader audience. They peter out as the story gets going, which only leaves another thematic loose end.

The major problem with Black Jews is that it presupposes a level of familiarity with the subject that is well beyond that of a general audience. Only reading the book from cover to cover, including the appendixes, allows the reader to piece together a general history of the Ethiopian Jews, or “Falasha.” There have been black African Jews in Ethiopia since biblical times. When the modern state of Israel was formed and welcomed all Jews to return and claim citizenship, a controversy arose over whether the Falasha were “real” Jews entitled to Israeli citizenship. The issue concerned whether the Jews in Ethiopia were descendants of Abraham, and therefore entitled to citizenship, or descendants of converts.

In the 1970s, religious and government leaders in Israel determined that the Jews in Ethiopia were real Jews. Then began the lengthy process of bringing the Ethiopian Jews to Israel. At first, only several hundred of the Falasha came to Israel each year, mostly through Sudan where they were refugees from government and social persecution. In the early 1980s, efforts to rescue the Falasha intensified, culminating in the spectacular “Operation Moses” airlift of over 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudan. Efforts to rescue Jews remaining in Ethiopia continued through the 1980s, until the 1991 “Operation Solomon” brought over 14,000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel in less than 36 hours. The AAEJ was active in efforts to raise awareness of the plight of Ethiopian Jews, organize volunteers, raise money, pressure the Israeli and American governments, and even organize rescues.  

Black Jews would have been substantially improved by providing such a thumbnail sketch early on. Instead, it launches directly into details about Lenhoff’s experiences in Israel that brought the Ethiopian Jews to his attention. Distracted by basic questions such as “Who are these Ethiopian Jews?” and “Why do they want to come to Israel?” it is difficult to track the narrative thread of these loosely organized anecdotes. The story develops substantially in later sections of the book, when Lenhoff switches to a more straightforwardly chronological presentation.

In the absence of a general history about Ethiopian Jews and their immigration to Israel, Lenhoff’s book is worth wading through. Hopefully someone will undertake a comprehensive treatment of this worthwhile subject.

My (Current) Top 10 Favorite Novels

These are my ten favorite novels, in roughly the order I would put them if I absolutely had to (which I don't, because it's my list). It is subject to change at whim, which it did for the first time in a long time in 2010.

1. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (discussed here);

2. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov;

3. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (reviewed here);

4. The Road Home by Jim Harrison;

5. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco;

6. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here);

7. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here);

8. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald;

9. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell; and

10. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan.


NOTE
Updated June 19, 2010 (Cold Comfort Farm displaced The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All)

OTHER REVIEWS OF THE BOOKS ON THIS LIST
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Review of the Day: Thérèse Raquin

Published in 1867, Thérèse Raquin is Emile Zola's first novel and a magnificent proto-noir thriller. All the necessary elements are here -- a hot-to-trot young wife, an invalid husband, a greedy lover – all simmered together in a Parisian stew of lust, murder, deception, debauchery, and guilt. With the macabre ghoulishness of Poe and the diabolical desperation of Cain, Thérèse Raquin should be on any noir-lover's bookshelf.

Review of the Day: Gifted

Appropriately enough for a book about math, Gifted by Nikita Lalwani is more than the sum of its parts. It is the story of a math prodigy, a coming-of-age novel, and a look at immigrant life. But it all comes together in a way that is so interesting, so satisfying, that it is a truly great novel of general appeal. The heroine, Rumi Vasi, is the “gifted” young daughter of Indian parents living in Wales. Driven by her parents to excel in mathematics, Rumi achieves their highest hope for her – acceptance at Oxford University when she is 15. Lalwani masterfully captures the awkwardness and inner turmoil of this out-of-place adolescent. Lawani’s writing is remarkably polished for a first novel. Her language does not get in the way of the story, either by being distractingly beautiful or stumblingly clunky. The words flow so naturally you do not notice them, allowing the story to unfold with natural grace, right up to the suitably dramatic ending with its hope of positive resolution.

Review: Real Cooking, by George!

Real Cooking, by George! by George Jacobs is a goofy old book I found on Dollar Day at the San Francisco Library's used book sale at Ft. Mason.

It is mostly commentary on food, cooking, foreign living, and entertaining, with a few recipes in the back -- sort of like an MFK Fisher book, but without the caché. I do not know anything about the author, George Jacobs, or why he wrote a book about cooking. He was not a chef. I gather that he was some kind of bon vivant, artist, occasional ex-pat who enjoys food.

His musings are mildly interesting, but nothing memorable. Maybe I could write a book?

The Orange Prize

The Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 longlist came out last week. The Orange Prize is awarded each year for the best novel in English written by a woman. It bugs me. I think that setting up a separate prize for women is saying that women cannot compete with men and need their own remedial competition. Plenty of people disagree -- and they are free to put the Orange Prize winners on their TBR list. But a book won't make my list just for winning the Orange Prize or for being written by a woman.

Review of the Day: Lost in Translation

No, not the Scarlett Johansson movie. This Lost in Translation is an imaginative and satisfying novel by Nicole Mones. The protagonist, Alice Mannegan, is an American living in China, working as an interpreter, and striving to be accepted in the culture she has adopted. When hired by a second-rate American anthropologist, the two hook up with his Chinese counterparts and head to Inner Mongolia looking for the lost remains of Peking Man.

Mones does a great job of weaving the histories of the characters into the main story. While the team follows the trail of homo erectus, Alice struggles to understand her relationship with her powerful father; her boss worries about losing his son’s affection and respect; and their Chinese cohort searches on the sly for the wife he cannot abandon although she disappeared to a work camp during the Cultural Revolution. Mones uses the historic relationship between French priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his platonic lover, Lucile Swan, to bring thematic unity to the varied storylines.

Equal parts historical mystery, foreign adventure, and cross-cultural romance, Lost in Translation has a lot to offer.

Review of the Day: Dreamers of the Day

It is hard to say why Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell is so unsatisfying. It has definite moments of entertainment, a few evocative passages, and a couple of really interesting story ideas.

The idea of a novel spun out of the Cairo Peace Conference is a great one. In 1921, luminaries like Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met in Cairo to create the modern Middle East. Narrator Agnes Shanklin gets caught up in history and lives, or dies, to tell us about it.

But after the initial premise, the book falters. For one thing, the story of the historic events in Cairo are flanked by lengthy sections that have nothing to do with Britain’s “Great Game” in the Middle East: the great influenza that leaves Agnes an heiress on the front end and the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression on the back end. These events and eras, worthy of novels of their own, are given short shrift and merely distract from the main events that get lost in the middle.

For another, the book does not explore its main theme in any detail. It is well researched in peripheral details, such as what Lawrence of Arabia wore, or what it is like to ride a camel, but the intricate workings of the Peace Conference and the complex facets of Britain’s foreign policy following World War I are glossed over. Other than to make the facile point that what happened in Cairo in 1921 greatly affects the Middle East we face today, the book does not delve into particulars. Russell spends more time on the heroine’s wardrobe and the bathroom habits of her dog than on the supposedly central international maneuverings.

Finally, the narrative gimmick is annoying. From the get go, the narrator tells us that she is dead, but writing in present time. The explanation for this, when it finally comes, is either too silly to tolerate or worthy of yet another novel, depending on your point of view. All in all, Dreamers of the Day tries to accomplish much more than it can deliver.

NOTES

I got my copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

OTHER REVIEWS

Tip of the Iceberg

Review: Scavenger Reef

Scavenger Reef by Laurence Shames is more than a typical "Florida noir" mystery. In addition to a clever "whodunit?" plot, the requisite host of quirky characters, and plenty of colorful descriptions of hot weather and tropical vegetation, it explores bigger issues like the nature of friendship and the meaning of art. It gets you thinking about more than the next umbrella drink.

Cookbook Library: The Cafe Brenda Cookbook

While not really a list, one of my book-related goals is to make one new recipe from each of the cookbooks on my shelves. Since it has been freezing cold in Portland (snow at the end of March!), I made soup.

Friends from Minneapolis gave me this cookbook from their favorite restaurant, Cafe Brenda -- a "seafood and vegetarian cuisine" restaurant. I made the White Bean and Squash soup, which was not bad, but a little bland. It benefited from doubling the herbs and adding a healthy dose of hot sauce and a little butter melted on top (what wouldn't?). Then it was pretty yummy.

The paraphrased version of the recipe is:

Soak 1 cup of dried navy beans eight hours or overnight. To make the soup, bring beans to boil in 5 cups water. Reduce heat, simmer for about an hour or until tender. Drain.

Sauté in olive oil for about 5 minutes: 4 garlic cloves, chopped; one large shallot, chopped; one medium onion, chopped. Add 3 ½ cups peeled, cubed (1”) winter squash (butternut).

Combine squash/onion mix with cooked beans, 4 cups vegetable stock, ½ teaspoon dried basil, ½ teaspoon dried oregano, and ¼ teaspoon dried thyme. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered until squash is tender (about 20 minutes).

Puree soup in batches in blender or food processor. Return to pot and add ¾ cup half and half; salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 6.

Review: How to Find Morels

Milan Pelouch is a 78 year old mushroom hunter who, in his charming guide, How to Find Morels (subtitled Even as Others are Coming Back Empty Handed) teaches how to identify and locate his favorite morels.

This slim volume is packed with practical information such as photographs identifying “true” and “false” morels, when to expect morels in different regions, and how to locate elusive morels by finding specific types of trees on which the mushrooms thrive. It is also full of folksy advice like the best way to carry morels while hunting (in a cloth bag) and the best way to store them (sauté in butter and freeze in plastic bags). He even includes several of his wife’s best morel recipes.

The book is a refreshing exhortation to enjoy the healthy, educational, and tasty pastime of mushroom hunting. Even for an armchair forager, How to Find Morels is a delight. As Pelouch says, “In less than an hour you can gain the needed know-how and will be flashing a big smile on the way home from a successful hunt instead of stewing in frustration after being skunked once again.” You can’t beat that!

Review: The Bone People

The latest of the Booker Prize winners that I've read is The Bone People by Keri Hulme. It is a difficult book about identity, love, and belonging. Hume tells the story of three tough-as-nails characters: Kerewin, an isolated artist who can no longer paint; Joe, a Maori workman struggling to raise his adopted son alone; and Simon, the mute little boy Joe found washed up on the seashore.

The style is difficult because the point of view switches around among the three main characters without warning; Hulme uses Joycean made-up words as well as Maori words; and it is hard to tell when the adults are speaking their own words or thinking out loud what they think the mute little Simon is trying to communicate.

The story is difficult because of the child abuse at the center of the plot. The ambivalence with which Hulme treats the topic makes the story incredibly interesting, but absolutely distressing.

The characters are difficult because none of them are likable. Simon is sympathetic, for sure. But even he has his moments of maliciousness, although these are less convincing than Hulme may have intended. Joe, on the other hand, does not deserve the sympathy Hulme seems to want the reader to give him. Yes, he gets his comeuppance in the end, but it does not seem sufficient punishment. His role is key to the story because he is the hinge between Simon and Kerewin, but the ultimate resolution seems a little unrealistic, given the prior conflict.

Kerwin is particularly prickly and seething with anger. She is quick to lash out verbally, and if angry enough or drunk enough, physically. She has cut herself off from her family and her community, preferring to live in an isolated tower by the ocean. She has even isolated herself from her own sex, considering herself to be a third gender – a “neuter.” But Kerwin’s story makes the book worth reading. She is one of the most complex and intriguing characters in contemporary literature.


OTHER REVIEWS

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List: The Man Booker Prize

The Booker Prize is awarded each year for a "full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland . . . . The novel must be an original work in English (not a translation) and must not be self-published."

If anyone else working on this list would like me to post a link to your progress report(s), please leave a comment with a link and I will add it below.

Here is the list, with those I have finished reading in red; those on my TBR shelf in blue:

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State

1972: John Berger, G (reviewed here)

1973: James Gordon Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

1976: David Storey, Saville

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (reviewed here)

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (reviewed here)

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List

1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K(reviewed here)

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People(reviewed here)

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession

1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late

1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders

1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin


2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang

2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi

2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little

2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty

2005: John Banville, The Sea (reviewed here)

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering

2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (reviewed here)


2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (reviewed here)

2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

NOTE

Last updated on June 24, 2012.

OTHERS READING BOOKER WINNERS

Farm Lane Books
Fresh Ink Books
Hotch Pot Cafe

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Wonderful Toy: Follow Up

The What’s Next? is even more fun than I thought. I emailed them yesterday when I couldn't find a list of Sir Arther Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books. The gal emailed me back this morning to say she had added the list herself and if there were any other series missing, to let them know and they would try to add them. Interactive fun!

Modern Library's Top 100 List: Dislikes

The Magus by John Fowles was my least favorite book on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels list. I could not stand The Magus! It may be the only book that I actually hate. Those pompous nitwits running around that stupid island playing games with each other! And all the time spouting humanistic gobblygook about the death of God, or whatever they were prattling on about. It has a cult following, but I thought it was overwrought nonsense.

Wonderful Toy for List Readers

The Kent District Library in Kent County, Michigan has a super on-line tool called What's Next? that provides lists of all the books in various series. For example, you can search for author Lee Child, and pull up the entire list of his Jack Reacher novels. Best for popular fiction, like mysteries.

Review of the Day: Foreigners

Foreigners by Caryl Phillips presents three profiles of black men in England: Francis Barber, the servant and companion of dictionary creator Dr. Johnson; boxer Randy Turpin, who beat Sugar Ray Robinson for the world middleweight title in 1951; and David Oluwale, who’s 1968 racially-motivated killing by police scandalized Britain.

Although technically novellas, the main characters were real people and the profiles combine fiction with biography and journalism. The three pieces are united by the theme of “foreignness,” examining how each of the three men were outsiders in their worlds, but vary in their style and impact.

“Dr. Johnson’s Watch,” about Barber, is a formal, first person account. “Made in Wales,” about Turpin, is straightforwardly biographical. The final piece, “Northern Lights,” about Oluwale, entwines multiple narrative voices with excerpts from public records.

The lack of stylistic continuity – especially the radically different style of the last story – is distracting and weakens the thematic coherence of the book. I preferred the second piece. Turpin's rags-to-riches-to-rags story really dragged me in. On the other hand, the final story about Oluwale was too disjointed and abstract for my taste.

None of the profiles is fully sympathetic. The main characters are shown with all their faults and weaknesses, and from a historic perspective that distances the reader. While this adds to the idea that the three men are foreign from those around them, it lessens the reader’s ability to fully engage with the book.

Review: The Stories of John Cheever

The Stories of John Cheever, which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1978 and the Pulitzer in 1979, is a chronological collection that spans Cheever’s short story career, from pre-WWII up to 1973. To read this collection – just shy of 700 pages – is to live in Cheever’s head, tracking his artistic and personal development in a way that a single novel or volume of stories doesn’t allow.

These are not happy stories. The earlier pieces are particularly bleak and raw. While the later stories are deeper and more nuanced, they are still pretty dark. Precious few have cheerful resolutions. The best Cheever’s characters seem to achieve is contentment despite imperfect circumstances.

Cheever’s is a world of commuter trains and cocktail parties, where everyone wears hats, has a cook, drinks martinis at lunch, summers, sails, and commits adultery. Not everyone is rich; in fact, money problems are a continuing theme. But the trappings, however tarnished, of a mid-century, Northeast corridor, upper crust way of life hang on all the stories. And that is Cheever at his best. He can bring us so deep into that world that it feels like living it.

Review: The Shack

It's Easter Sunday, so a review of a religious book seems in order. The Shack by William P. Young is a novel about a father who, devastated by the death of his daughter, spends a weekend with God (literally) and re-learns about God's love. The theology didn't strike me as radical, but the presentation really shakes things up and gets you thinking.

Interestingly enough, this book was No. 9 on Powell's Book's local best sellers shelf when I was poking around there on Friday. That may have more to do with Young being an Oregonian than the subject matter. 

OTHER REVIEWS

Troutbirder II

(If you would like your review listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

Radcliffe's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

At the request of the Modern Library editorial board, the students in Radcliffe's Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century’s top 100 novels to counter the Modern Library’s Top 100 novels list. Like the Modern Library judges, the Radcliffe students chose from among 400 pre-selected titles.

There is a lot of overlap between the two lists, but this one seems weighted a little more towards American authors, works by women, and books assigned in high school.

I have only two books to go. I should really make a push! Although the two I have left are going to be difficult because one, Look Homeward, Angel, is a slow chunkster, and the other, White Noise, does not appeal to me. But I would like to finish this list!

Those I have read are in red.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

3. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

6. Ulysses by James Joyce

7. Beloved by Toni Morrison

8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

9. 1984 by George Orwell

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

11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reivewed here)

15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

17. Animal Farm by George Orwell

18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

27. Native Son by Richard Wright

28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here)

30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

35. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

37. The World According to Garp by John Irving

38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

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

41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (discussed here)

45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

51. My Antonia by Willa Cather

52. Howards End by E.M. Forster

53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (reviewed here)

55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

56. Jazz by Toni Morrison

57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (reviewed here)

58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

68. Light in August by William Faulkner

69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (reviewed here)

72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (reviewed here)

73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (reviewed here)

78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

82. White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (reviewed here)

86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

87. The Bostonians by Henry James

88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (reviewed here)

91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster (reviewed here)

99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here)

NOTE

Last updated on December 28, 2022.

OTHER PEOPLE READING THESE BOOKS

(If you are reading the books on this list and would like to be included here, please leave a comment with a list to your progress report and I will post it.)

Review: On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan is a perfectly crafted tragedy that describes the way a life can go so easily astray. Through the eyes of the omniscient narrator, we watch the excruciating, awkward wedding night of Florence and Edward who, in 1962, are too freighted with history to breach the cusp of the sexual revolution. The consequences are heartbreaking.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Modern Library's Top 100 List: Favorites

Hands down, my favorite "book" on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list was A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.  Although commonly listed as one work, Dance is actually 12 novels, originally published separately but commonly published in four volumes of three novels each, called "The 1st Movement," "The 2nd Movement," etc.

Dance follows a group of characters in England from 1914 through WWII and up to 1971. The plots of the individual novels are less important than the entwining of these characters as they move in and out of each others lives over the years.

It is definitely on my Desert Island list (10 books I'd want with me if stranded on a desert island) -- especially if I can count it as one book, like the Modern Library did.

Here is a list of the 12 books of Dance to the Music of Time, in publication order.

Favorite Author: Jim Harrison

 

There was a time in my late 20s when I gobbled up Jim Harrison's novels like his characters go through brook trout and whiskey. The Road Home is in my permanent Top 10 Favorite Novels list and Harrison will always be high on my list of favorite authors -- probably at the top of a list of Favorite Under-appreciated Authors if I ever made one.

A few of his later books, such as True North and Returning to Earth, didn't "rattle my brainpan" (to use a Harrison expression) like the earlier books did. They were repetitive and a little tired. Still, I enjoyed them the way I enjoy music from a favorite band even if some of the songs sound the same. Variations on a theme can still sound sweet. And his two recent "faux mysteries," The Great Leader and The Big Seven, were much more lively.

Here is the list of Harrison's prose books, from most recent to oldest. I have read them all and am now making my way through a very big book of his collected poetry.

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life
The Ancient Minstrel
The Big Seven
The River Swimmer 
The Great Leader
The Farmer's Daughter (reviewed here)
The English Major (reviewed here)
Returning to Earth
The Summer He Didn't Die
True North
Off to the Side: A Memoir
The Beast God Forgot to Invent
The Road Home
Julip
The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand
Just Before Dark
The Woman Lit By Fireflies
Dalva
Sundog
Warlock
Legends of the Fall
Farmer
A Good Day to Die
Wolf


NOTE

Last updated February 2016.