Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Shelly's List

Shelly's place is my main blog, but I also keep a regular blog column called Tai Shan at the online literary magazine Sloth Jockey. (I am also the book reviews editor at the magazine. If anyone would like to post reviews of your gap-fillers there, please do contact me and I will be happy to have a look. We take reviews of all books, old and new, a well as magazines and so forth.)

1. The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury — my response
2. The Kite Runner – Khalad Hosseini
3. The Lake of Dead Languages - Carol Goodman
4. The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedmanmy response
5. The Sayings of Jesus - Anna Wierzbicka
6. A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
7. Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
8. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
9. The Plague, Albert Camus
10. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallacemy response
11. Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman — responses here and here
12. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury - my response
13. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
14. Candide – Voltaire
15. Ben Hur – Lew Wallace
16. Toilers of the Sea – Victor Hugo
17. Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
18. Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
19. Brighton Rock - Graham Greenemy response
20. Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls - Yuri Rasovskymy response
21. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughsmy response
22. Night and Day - Virginia Woolfmy response
23. Relativity - Albert Einstein - my response
24. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult - Joseph Bedier
25. The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
26. Paul - Walter Wangerin, Jr.
27. Inkheart – Cornelia Funke - my response
28. A History of the Middle Ages - Crane Brinton, John Christopher, Robert Wolff
29. Catch Me if You Can - Frank Abagnale, Jr. - my response
30. The Castle - Franz Kafka
31. Le Morte D’Arthur – Sir Thomas Malory
32. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
33. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - my response
34. The Commentaries - Julius Caesar
35. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
36. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
37. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
38. The Twelve Caesars - Seutonius
39. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life - Walter Isaacson
40. Bush at War - Bob Woodwardmy response
41. The Truth About Jesus - M. M. Mangasarian - my response
42. The Mark of the Christian - Francis Shaeffer
43. Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope
44. Paradise – Toni Morrison
45. Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs - my response
46. Poemcrazy - Susan Woolridge
47. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
48. The Decameron - Boccaccio
49. Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
50. The 8th Habit - Stephen Covey
51. Velocity - Dean Koontzmy response
52. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
53. The Human Comedy - William Saroyan
54. Six Characters in Search of an Author - Luigi Pirandello
55. The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald
56. Startling Moon - Liu Hong
57. Woman to Woman and other poems - Agnes Lam
58. Scenes of a Clerical Life - George Eliot
59. Looking Backward - Edward Bellamy
60. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
61. Ragged Dick - Horatio Alger, Jr.
62. Streamers - David Rabe - my response
63. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman - my response
64. Marco Polo Sings a Solo - John Guare - my response
65. Nanjing 1937 - Ye Zhaoyan
66. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amismy response
67. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. Wings - Arthur Kopit
69. Bedknobs and Broomsticks - Mary Norton
70. The Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan
71. The Stolen White Elephant - Mark Twain
72. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You - C. Durang
73. Deltora Quest - Emily Rodda
74. Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irvingmy response
75. Crimes of the Heart - Beth Henley - my response
76. When the Gods are Silent - Jane Lindskold
77. The Thorn of Lion City - Lucy Lum - my response
78. The Dining Room - A. R. Gurney
79. The Pickwick Paper – Charles Dickens
80. Brazil - Annette Haddad, ed.
81. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
82. Painting Churches - Tina Howe
83. Daughter of the River - Hong Ying - my response
84. The Orthodox Way - Father Kallistos Ware
85. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
86. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
87. Tomorrow When the World Began - John Marsden - my response
88. Atlantis - Greg Doneganmy response
89. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - August Wilson
90. A Descent into the Maelstrom - Edgar Allan Poe
91. Holy Ghosts - Romulus Linney
92. The $30,000 Bequest - Mark Twain
93. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
94. An Ideal Husband - Oscar Wilde
95. Zhao the Orphan - Ji Junxiang
96. House of Many Ways - Diana Wynne Jonesmy response
97. The Waters of Babylon - John Arden
98. Ancient Skies - oino sakai - my response
99. Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster - Mark McLaughlin and Michael McCartymy response
100. Mortician’s Tea - G. O. Clark


If some of these titles look familiar, yes, I did take them from the lists of other bloggers over at the Filling in the Gaps site. I think the whole idea is a lot of fun, and enjoyed getting ideas from the lists there.

11 comments:

Keshalyi said...

Way to go, Bedknobs and Broomsticks! I read this book over again a few years ago, when I read it out loud to my boys - I had forgotten how charmingly lost she sounds the whole time :)

hifidel said...

I haven't read it before and am really looking forward to it. My sister and her kids have read it, and so I thought it would be lots of fun.

Keshalyi said...

If you can fake a bad English accent, I highly recommend reading it aloud :D

hifidel said...

I might just do that. Better yet, I might get my nephews to read it to me.

Jen A said...

You have totally BLOWN MY MIND that you are going to read Einstein's Relativity. Whoa. Are you really into physics or something? I just...can't imagine I'd understand two words together in that book. Color me impressed. And Neverwhere is my very favorite Gaiman book, so happiness for that!

Megan said...

Yay Neil Gaiman! He's not on this list, but I'm currently working through all of his books (minus graphic novels at this point). Anansi Boys is next for me. Hope you love him!

hifidel said...

Funny — I am not a physics person, but I do enjoy delving into science-type things here and there. Usually I read stuff more geared toward either biology or space exploration. Anyway, I write a lot of science fiction poetry, so it never hurts to read something new.

For Neil Gaiman, I've read several of his other things, but not the ones listed here yet. It was given to me for Christmas a year or two ago, and I haven't gotten to it, so I thought it would be a good fit here. Neverwhere is something I picked up at a Bookcrossing table recently, and The Graveyard Book was loaned to me by a friend. I didn't want to put so many works by the same writer here, but then... some are just worth making the exception for.

Merry Monteleone said...

Spectacular list, Shelly. Should be fun discussions around these parts as people start submitting book reviews and having group discussions on books we've read.

Now if we could just get Stacey, FF&F, and a few others to join, it'd be like old times :-)

Andromeda Romano-Lax said...

Greetings and great list, Shelly -- many books I forgot to put on my list, and many more I've never even heard about.

Emily Cross said...

Great list!! i love touching science books too thats why i included stephen hawkins. great variety, there are some titles here i'm not familiar with, can't wait to look them up

hifidel said...

Merry, I'll talk to Stacey and ff&f, and mention it to anyone else who I can get in touch with. I am looking forward to the discussions as we all get to work on our lists. I am reading Siddhartha now, and will probably finish sometime next week, if there are no major interruptions.

Andromeda, I've really enjoyed putting the list together. I started with Merry's list as a base, added some when browsing other people's list, and then finished off by going through my own library. It is kind of nice to set a goal to get some of these books read that I've had sitting on my shelves for a while already.

Emily, going through other people's lists and finding new treasures there has been lots of fun! That's probably what I am liking best about this site so far.