Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Jason's List

Hi all! You guys are way cooler than me, I haven't even heard of half of these authors. I feel like I'm sitting in a punk party in a cardigan and horn-rims. It'll be fun to see who some of those authors are - contemp lit, particularly, I'm horrible in.

Well, I'm not good at making time, so hopefully I won't be the fail-whale of the blog... but I'm hoping that having a goal will make me more likely to do what I intend. My list is kind of kludgy - some of the books are reference, I guess, and on some it's a bit vague, but I just felt funny, for instance, putting a specific play by somebody... but here goes:


Guevara, Che - Motorcycle Diaries
Goldman, Emma - Living My Life
Farr, Judith - Gardens of Emily Dickinson
Toole, Betty - Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers
Jacobs, Harriet - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Shakespeare, William - Plays
Goethe, J - Faust
Aeschylus - Plays
Sophocoles - Plays
Euripides - Plays
Schiller - Plays
Shelley, Percy Bryce - Prometheus Unbound (Review)
Virgil - Aeneid, The (Review)
Anonymous - Beowulf (Review)
Anonymous - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Review)
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
Eliot, T.S. - The Waste Land (Review)
Milton, John - Paradise Lost
Spenser, Edmund - The Faerie Queene
Pushkin, Aleksandr - Eugene Onegin (Review)
Anonymous - Poetic Edda
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Blok, Aleksandr - The Twelve(Review)
Homer - The Odyssey (Review)
Marx, Karl - Capital (Review)
Gaskell, Elizabeth - Biography of Charlotte Bronte (Review)
Spengler, Oswald - The Decline of the West
Mill, John Stuart - On Liberty
Nightingale, Florence - Cassandra
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Works
Fuller, Margaret - Papers on Literature and Art
Riis, Jacob - How the Other Half Lives
Bly, Nellie - Ten Days in a Mad-HouseReview
De Pizan, Christina - Book of the City of Ladys
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Plath, Sylvia - Collected Poems
Rossetti, Christina - Collected Poems
Hughes, Langston - Selected Poems
Blake, William - Songs of Innocence and Experience (Review)
Shakespeare, William - Poetry
Bronte, Emily - Poems (Review)
Akhmatova, Anna - Selected Poems
Tsvetaeva, Marina - Selected Poems (Review)
Coleridge, Samuel - Poetry
Yeats, WB - Collected Poems and Prose
Sappho - If Not, Winter Review
Hunt, Tristram - Building Jerusalem Review
Williams, Rosalind - Notes on the Underground (Review)
Gelbart, Nina - The King’s Midwife
Campbell, Joseph - Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake (Review)
Joyce, James - Ulysses Review
Joyce, James - Finnegan’s Wake(Review)
Steinbeck, John - East of Eden
Hugo, Victor - Toilers of the Sea
Eliot, George - Daniel Deronda
Gaskell, Elizabeth - Cranford (Review)
Bronte, Anne - Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Review)
Zimmer Bradley, Marion - Mists of Avalon
Cather, Willa - My Antonia (Review)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Brothers Karamozov
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbit
Zola, Emile - Germinal
Renault, Mary - The Alexander Trilogy
Montgomery, L.M. - Anne of Green Gables Series
Bronte, Anne - Agnes Grey (Review)
Scott, Walter - Rob Roy
Gogol, Nikolai - Dead Souls
Bronte, Charlotte - VilletteReview
Barrie, J. M. - The Little White Bird
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko(REview)
Woolf, Virginia - Orlando
Gaskell, Elizabeth - Wives and Daughters (Review)
Stendahl - The Red and the Black
Doctorow, EL - Ragtime (Review)
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times review
Greene, Graham - The Comedians (Review)
Burney, Frances - Evelina (Review)
Stephenson, Neal - Snow Crash
Gibson, William - The Difference Engine
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Review)
Davis, Rebecca Harding - Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories
Atwood, Margaret - Handmaid’s Tale
Colette - Cheri, The End of Cheri
Colette - The Cat
Gorky, Maxim - Mother
Kerouac, Jack - Dharma Bums
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Salinger, JD - Frankie and Zooey
Salinger, JD - Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Le Fanu, Sheridan - Uncle Silas
Sinclair,Upton - King Coal
Sinclair,Upton - The Jungle (Review)
Anonymous - Buddhist Scriptures
Teresa of Avila - Autobiography
Graves, Robert - The White Goddess
D’Aulnoy, Madame - Fairy Tales
Frazier, James - The Golden Bough Review
Briggs, Katherine - The Fairies in Tradition and Folklore Review
Campbell, Joseph - The Masks of God


Number-wise, I think that's 5 biographies, 7 drama, 12 epic poetry, 9 Literary Nonfiction, 12 Lyric Poetry, 4 general nonfiction, 42 novels, and 8 religion/folklore books (though some could have been in more than one category, like Teresa of Avila). I have 37 books by women, and 4 anonymous (a dissapointingly low number, but, for instance, I don't know any epic poems by women except Aurora Leigh, which I'm already friends with :D), 29 by non-English diaspora writers (thoguh James Joyce is BARELY English, I'm told...), and 5 books by people named William.

8 comments:

hifidel said...

That's a great list, Jason. Funny, I am reading The Aeneid now, and just finished The Canterbury Tales again. You've got some great titles on your list — the next 5 years are going to be fun!

Denise said...

Oh, what a terrific list - your cardigan is right at home, I think!
I love Uncle Silas SO INEXPRESSIBLY MUCH - it's a constant on my 'to be re-read list'.

Keshalyi said...

I've never read it, but I read Carmilla, and still get gushy-slushy sometimes. Dracula can't hold a candle, in terms of real human emotion... (though, I'm ill-disposed to Mr. Stoker, ever since having suffered through Lair of the White Worm...)

Jen A said...

So...are you planning to read ALL of Shakespeare's plays, or just some select ones, whatever you feel like? 'Cuz all of 'em is a LOT of reading - my Riverside Shakespeare is bigger than most dictionaries, with that kind of really thin onion-skin paper that Bibles often use, and very small text...

Megan said...

Yikes, The Faerie Queene! I had to read that for a British Lit class almost six years ago and I still feel sick thinking about it. Epic poetry hurts my head. Not to say you won't enjoy it. :)

Andromeda Romano-Lax said...

Now THIS is a different list. You make our "classics" look contemporary -- you've got the really good, old stuff here. My son is currently enrolled in a Great Books course and he has been reading a lot of the Greek titles on your list. I am impressed with him and I am impressed with you -- I don't think my own brain could manage.

You also mentioned J. M. Barrie. I'd completely forgotten how much I loved reading the real Peter Pan a few years back. Never heard of "The Little White Bird." Thanks for mentioning it.

moonrat said...

wish i could read RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAMS, CARPENTER again for the first time.

awesome list.

Emily Cross said...

OMG i love Christina Rosseti - 'song' is one of my favourites (their are numnerous songs - this begines with 'remember me when i am gone away'

i love your list, its so diverse and you have poetry too!! i should have thought of that!! Definitly will be touching on your list