Long Overdue Progress Report

Since I posted my world lit list in April, I have been doing all kinds of things--falling in love, moving continents away from the love, you know, stuff that really makes you want to sit down with a good challenging read.

Well, not really.

I've been putting off posting until I had actually read more than a couple of books, but it just keeps not happening! So here's my feeble progress so far.


Mudrooroo - Wild Cat Falling (Oceania category)

I picked this up in a bookstore a few months before the Project. I was casually browsing for Australian Indigenous writing, and it was one of the few novels in the (big, mainstream) bookstore where I happened to be. I enjoyed it. It's a coming-of-age type story. The narrator is really detatched, kind of L'etrangere-y. The setting is outlaw youth culture in 1950s and 60s Australia (it was published in 1965) and that was really interesting.


Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck (Oceania category)

I no longer remember who recommended Elizabeth Knox to me or why. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked this up, but what I WASN'T expecting was a (rather hot in parts!) gay love story between an angel and a vintner in France. Really recommended if you are into angels. I am not, but I got the impression Knox did some cool innovative things with the concept. And it was a good book.

Yoshimoto Banana - Kitchen (Asia)

Someone once suggested I read Yoshimoto Banana in Japanese--I found a translation instead, and totally confirmed my impression that the Japanese would be way beyond me. But I really enjoyed these stories, and I definitely intend to read more of her work.


Haruki Murakami - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Asia)

This was my second Murakami novel (the first being Wind Up Bird Chronicle). This one was definitely a bit more out there. I found it was a bit of work to get into it far enough to figure out the whole alternating chapters thing, but somewhere around the half point I started to have at least SOME idea what was going on, and it became a bit easier going. Very cool book, but I can't think of how to explain the cool part without giving it away!

That's it! During this time I've also read 15 novels not on the list, though. I need to focus just a bit more, or I will be doing this in ten years instead of five!

Alyssa's World Lit List

I recently made a goal to read more books by people of colour, and one of my esteemed mother's remarks about it was to ask whether I was going to read such books in translation? And the answer was no, I was talking about books written in English, in North America and Britain where most of the books I read tend to have been written. And this is still the case. But it did make me think about how little world literature I have read. So when Project Fill In the Gaps waltzed along, I thought my world literature gaps could use some filling. The only problem is I don't really know much about world literature.

This list has been compiled somewhat haphazardly by large geographical area, using things like Wikipedia articles and online reading lists, as well as some items from my usual to-read list. In some cases I've taken into account local book awards, and in some cases I've just picked books because the summary on Amazon made me want to read them. I've unwisely tackled canon, contemporary literary fiction, and genre fiction all at the same time. I've also included a few literary theory must-haves that uni made me curious to read, and some feminist and anti-racist theory, because my reading in that area is... argh, I haven't read anything! My list is pretty arbitrary, and I know there are big big gaps. But if you are reading this and you spot something big I've missed, I'd be ever-so-grateful if you would take a moment to point out any glaring flaws, as I'm open to amendment!

I'm giving myself 25 books of leeway, because I know I've probably put some things on this list I won't actually be able to find. Also posted to my blog.

Africa
1. Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (Nigeria)
2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (Nigeria)
3. Yvonne Vera - Butterfly Burning (Zimbabwe)
4. Margaret Ogola - The River and the Source (Kenya)
5. Sarah Ladipo Manyika - In Dependence (Nigeria)
6. Bessie Head - When Rain Clouds Gather (Botswana)
7. Ben Okri - The Famished Road (Nigeria)
8. J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace (South Africa)
9. M. G. Vassanji - The Book of Secrets (Kenya)
10. Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying (South Africa)

East Asia
11. Hwang Sok-Yong - The Guest (Korea)
12. Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji (Japan)
13. Murakami Haruki - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Japan)
14. Yoshimoto Banana - Kitchen (Japan)
15. Louis Cha – The Deer and the Cauldron (China)
16. Eileen Chang – Love in a Fallen City (China)
17. Luo Guanzhong - Romance of the Three Kingdoms (China)
18. Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine (China)
19. Jose Rizal - Touch Me Not (Philippines)
20. Wilfrido D. Nolledo - But for the Lovers (Philippines)

South Asia
21. Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss (India)
22. Arvind Adiga - The White Tiger (India)
23. Amitav Ghosh – The Calcutta Chromosome (India)
24. Anuja Chauhan – The Zoya Factor (India)
25. Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things (India)
26. Mohsin Hamid – Moth Smoke (Pakistan)
27. Altaf Fatima - The One Who Did Not Ask (Pakistan)
28. Jean Arasanayagam - All is Burning (Sri Lanka)
29. Carl Muller - The Jam Fruit Tree (Sri Lanka)
30. Rajiva Wijesinha - Acts of Faith (Sri Lanka)

Middle East
31. Salim Matar - The Woman of the Flask (Iraq)
32. Orhan Pamuk – My Name is Red (Turkey)
33. Alaa Al Aswany - The Yacoubian Building (Egypt)
34. Bahaa Taher - Love in Exile (Egypt)
35. Emile Habiby - The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (Palestine)
36. Hanan al-Shaykh - Women of Sand and Myrrh (Lebanon)
37. Meir Shalev - The Blue Mountain (Israel)
38. Iraj Pezeshkzad - My Uncle Napoleon (Iran)
39. Simin Daneshvar - Savushun (Iran)
40. Hoda Barakat - The Stone of Laughter (Lebanon)

Europe
41. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita (Russia)
42. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czechoslovakia)
43. Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Angel's Game (Spain)
44. James Joyce - Ulysses (Ireland)
45. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (Spain)
46. Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Britain)
47. Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre (Britain)
48. Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time (France)
49. Julia Kristeva - The Old Man and the Wolves (France)
50. Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose (Italy)

Oceania
51. Kate Grenville - The Secret River (Australia)
52. Mudrooroo - Wild Cat Falling (Australia)
53. Thomas Keneally - Schindler's List (Australia)
54. Pramoedya Ananta Toer - This Earth of Mankind (Indonesia)
55. Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck (New Zealand)

Carribean
56. V S Naipul – A House for Mr Biswas (Trinidad and Tobago)
57. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Dominica)
58. Shani Mootoo - Cereus Blooms at Night (Trinidad)
59. Geoffrey Philp - Benjamin, My Son (Jamaica)
60. Marcia Douglas - Madam Fate (Jamaica)

North America
61. David Foster Wallace - Infine Jest (USA)
62. Leonard Cohen - Beautiful Losers (Canada)
63. Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth (USA)
64. Shyam Selvadurai - Funny Boy (Canada)
65. Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (USA)
66. Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye (USA)
67. Alice Walker - The Colour Purple (USA)
68. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (USA)
69. William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (USA)
70. Eden Robinson - Blood Sports (Canada)

South America
71. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia)
72. Laura Esquivel - Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico)
73. Isabel Allende - House of Spirits (Chile)
74. Paul Coelho - The Alchemist (Brazil)
75. Luisa Valenzuela - He Who Searches (Argentina)
76. Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra (Mexico)
77. Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Stories (Argentina)
78. Roberto Bolaño - 2666 (Chile)
79. Reinaldo Arenas - The Palace of the White Skunks (Cuba)
80. Juan José Saer - The Event (Argentina)

Literary, Feminist, and Antiracist Theory
81. bell hooks - Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre
82. Simone DeBeauvoir - The Second Sex
83. Luce Irigaray – This Sex Which Is Not One
84. Helene Cixous – The Laugh of the Medusa
85. Homi Bhabha – The Location of Culture
86. Michel Foucault – History of Sexulity
87. Sherene Razack - Looking White People in the Eye
88. Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum - Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
89. Anne Bishop – Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression
90. Paul Kivel - Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice

And also...
91. Hsien-Yung Pai - Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream: Tales of Taipei Characters (Taipei)
92. Ye Zhaoyan - Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (China)
93. Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children (Britain)
94. Michael Winter - This All Happened (Canada)
95. Nalo Hopkinson - Brown Girl in the Ring (Canada)
96. Hiromi Goto - Chorus of Mushrooms (Canada)
97. Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling (USA)
98. Romesh Gunesekera - Reef (Sri Lanka)
99. ed. Makeda Silvera - Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology
100. Thomas Bernhard - The Loser (Germany)