Post Book Lists For Others Which I Have No Intention of Trying to Read Myself

“My list is not and was never intended to be a ‘Hundred Greatest,’ only a list of individual novels that would illuminate the whole concept of the novel. I knew I would be reading books I had read before, books I had always meant to read, and books I had not ever wanted to read but knew were important. I knew I would be omitting lots of books, and authors, that other readers would consider vital to any understanding of the novel — Hemingway, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, for example — but not only did I have to start somewhere (with The Tale of Genji) and go somewhere (to lots of different countries), I also had to stop somewhere … I didn’t conceive the list as being any sort of ‘best of’ list, because in order to understand the nature of the novel, sometimes the reader has to read novels that don’t work for her and think about why they don’t work — representative lists, unlike ‘my favorite’ lists have to include uncongenial works … As my list shaped up, it became a little arbitrary, and that came to seem like a necessary feature of any reading list that takes three years to complete, but not a fault in a list of novels because random variety is part of the nature of the novel.”

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Author unknown, The Saga of the People of Laxardal
Snorri Sturluson, Egil’s Saga
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron
Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron
Anonymous, Lazarillo de Tormes
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2
Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Roxana
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Voltaire, Candide
Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
The Marquis de Sade, Justine
Sir Walter Scott, The Tale of Old Mortality, The Bride of the Lammermoor
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Jane Austen, Persuasion
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Stendhal, The Red and the Black
Nicolai Gogol, Taras Bulba
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time
Honore de Balzac, Cousin Pons and Cousin Bette
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or the Whale
Nathaniel Hawthorne,The House of the Seven Gables
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, The Moonstone
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Emile Zola, Therese Raquin
Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset , The Eustace Diamonds
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady , The Awkward Age
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Max Beerbohm, The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford Love Story
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter, volume I, The Wreath
James Joyce, Ulysses
Italo Svevo, Zeno’s Conscience
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, volume 1
Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet flows the Don
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
P.G. Wodehouse, The Return of Jeeves, Bertie Wooster Sees it Through, Spring Fever, The Butler Did It
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and Don’t Tell Alfred
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine
Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
John Gardner, Grendel
Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
Naguib Mahfouz, The Harafish
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?
Muriel Spark, Loitering With Intent
Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
J.M. Coetzee, Foe
Toni Morrison, Beloved
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Nicholson Baker, Vox
Garrison Keillor, WLT: A Radio Romance
Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
Francine Prose, Guided Tours of Hell
Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life
Arnost Lustig, Lovely Green Eyes
Zadie Smith, White Teeth
John Updike, The Complete Henry Bech
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Jennifer Egan, Look at Me

(http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/smiley100/list.html)

“All listed books are works we live with in order understand the nation we live in…. Criteria for selection were: importance to contemporary understanding; literary, artistic, and intellectual influence; prolonged authorial excellence, and extreme popularity. Major authors were limited to one work.”
— Kenneth Funsten

Baby & Child Care by Benjamin Spock (1946)
The New Society: The Anatomy of the Industrial Order by Peter Drucker (1950)
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character by David Riesman et al. (1950)
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
The Mustangs by J. Frank Dobie (1952)
Indian Tales, written and illustrated by Jaime de Angulo (1953)
Henry James (5 vols.) by Leon Edel (1953-1972)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy (1955)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (1955)
The Family of Man: The Greatest Photographic Exhibition of All Time — 503 Pictures from 68 Countries, created by Edward Steichen
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin (1955)
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud by Herbert Marcuse (1955)
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren (1956)
Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsburg (1956)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith (1958)
The Living Society by Frank Lloyd Wright (1958)
The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1959)
Life Studies by Robert Lowell (1959)
Malcolm by James Purdy (1959)
A Pima Remembers by George E. Webb (1959)
Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System by Paul Goodman (1960)
The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (1960)
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged: The Great Library of the English Language, edited by Merriam Co. (1961)
The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White (1961)
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (1961)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The American Dream by Edward Albee (1961)
On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy by Carl R. Rogers (1961)
The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream by Daniel J. Boorstin (1962)
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War by Edmund Wilson (1962)
The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems by John Ashbery (1962)
Paterson: Book 1-5 by William Carlos Williams (1963)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1963)
Where the Wild Things Are story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (1963)
City of Night by John Rechy (1963)
Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger (1965)
In Cold Blood: A True Account of Multiple Murder and Its Consequence by Truman Capote (1965)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with the assistance of and epilogue by Alex Haley (1965)
The Diary of Anais Nin (1966-1980)
Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1966)
Love’s Body by Norman O. Brown (1966)
Human Sexual Response by William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson (1966)
Giles Goat-Boy, or the Revised New Syllabus by John Barth (1966)
Children of Crisis (5 vols.) by Robert Coles (1967-1978)
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (1968)
Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, [Europe] and Oceania, edited with commentaries by Jerome Rothenberg (1968)
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
The Lice: Poems by William S. Merwin (1968)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968)
The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover (1968)
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History by Norman Mailer (1968)
Couples by John Updike (1968)
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller (1969)
Portnoy’s Complaint by Phillip Roth (1969)
The Selling of the President, 1968 by Joe McGinniss (1969)
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (1970)
The New Centurions by Joseph Wambaugh (1970)
The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion by Weston La Barre (1970)
The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point by Philip E. Slater (1970)
The Genesis of the Frontier Thesis: A Study in Historical Creativity by Ray Allen Billington (1971)
The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War, as published by the New York Times, based on investigative reporting by Neil Sheehan, E. W. Kenworthy and others (1971)
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1971)
Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner (1971)
The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools edited by Stewart Brand (1971)
Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski (1972)
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash (revised edition, 1973)
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom (1973)
Pentimento: A Book of Portraits by Lillian Hellman (1973)
Fear and Loating: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson
Burr: A Novel by Gore Vidal (1973)
The Presidential Transcripts, the staff of the Washington Post, edited by [Carl] Bernstein, et al. (1974)
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie (1974)
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel (1974)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley (1974)
Creative Aggression: The Art of Assertive Living by George R. Bach and Herb Goldberg (1974)
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson (1975)
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (1975)
The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme (1975)
The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, edited by Robin Blaser (1975)
Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance by Vincent Scully (1975)
The Painted Bird, revised edition, with introduction, by Jerzy Kosinski (1976)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1977)
The Life of the Mind (2 vols.) by Hannah Arendt
The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978)
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (1978)
Endangered and Threatened Plants of the United States by Edward S. Ayensu and Robert A. DeFilipps (1978)
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations by Christopher Lasch (1979)
Tax Limitation, Inflation and the Role of Government by Milton Friedman (1979)
The Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman (1979)
The Real War by Richard Nixon (1980)

Source: Funsten, Kenneth. “100 books for the modern person.” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 20, 1981, Book section, p. 3.

(http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtlat.html)

EUROPEAN

From the Italian:

Levi, Carlo, Christ Stopped at Eboli

Levi, Primo, If Not Now, When?

Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities

Calvino, Italo, Italian Folktales

Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron

From the Portuguese:

de Camoes, Luiz, The Lusiads

From the French:

Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus

de Balzac, Honore, Droll Stories

de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America

de Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John, Letters From An American Farmer

de Montaigne, Michel, Essays

Sijie, Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

From the Czech:

Hasek, Jaroslav, The Good Soldier Svejk

From the Norwegian:

Seierstad, Asne, The Bookseller of Kabul

From the Russian:

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, August 1914

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, Gulag Archipelago

Voznesensky, Andre, Antiworlds and the Fifth Ace

Aksyonov, Vassily, The Burn

From the German:

Hesse, Herman, Steppenwolf

Hesse, Herman, Siddhartha

Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens

Boll, Heinrich, Adam and the Train

From the Finnish:

The Kalevala

ASIAN

From the Chinese:

Mo Yan, The Garlic Ballads

The Book of Songs

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Yu Hsin, The Lament for the South

Lao She, Teahouse

Zhao Zhen Kai, Waves

Wu Ch’eng-en, Monkey

Han Shan, Encounters with Cold Mountain

Xi Xi (pen name of Zhang Yan), My City: A Hong Kong Story

From the Vietnamese:

Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War

From the Japanese:

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

Kawabata, Yasunari, A Thousand Cranes

Kawabata, Yasunari, The Izu Dancer

Tanazaki, Junichiro, Some Prefer Nettles

From the Punjabi:

Pritam, Amrita, The Skeleton and other writings

From the Arabic:

Simsar, Muhammed A., Tales of a Parrot

(www.englishpen.org)

Aesop, The Complete Fables

Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

Allende, Isabel, The House of the Spirits

Anderson, Hans Christian, Fairy Tales

De Assis, Machado Joaquim Maria, Dom Casmurro

Saint Augustine, The Confessions

de Balzac, Honore, La Cousine Bette

de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex

The Bible

Borges, Jorge-Luis, Labyrinths

Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita

Calvino, Italo, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Camus, Albert, The Outsider

Camus, Albert, The Plague

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to the End of the Night

De Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote

Chekhov, Anton, The Lady with the Dog and other stories

Christensen, Lars Saabye, The Half-Brother

Cocteau, Jean, Les Enfants Terribles

Coehlo, Paulo, The Alchemist

Dante, The Inferno

Dostoyevski, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment

Dostoyevski, Fyodor, The Idiot

Dumas, Alexandre, The Count of Monte Cristo

Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers

Duras, Marguerite, The Lover

Eça de Queiros, Jose Maria, The Maias

Eco, Umberto, The Name of the Rose

Enquist, Per Olov, The Visit of the Royal Physician

Flaubert, Gustave, Bouvard and Pecuchet

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams

Frank, Anne, Diary of a Young Girl

Fuentes, Carlos, The Years with Laura Diaz

Gaarder, Jostein, Sophie’s World

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, Love in the Time of Cholera

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Grass, Gunter, The Tin Drum

von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust

Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls

Goytisolo, Juan, Count Julian

Grimm, Jacob and Grimm, Wilhelm, Fairy Tales

Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate

Hamsun, Knut, The Growth of the Soul

Hamsun, Knut, Hunger

Harrer, Heinrich, Seven Years in Tibet

Heyerdahl, Thor, The Kon Tiki Expedition

Høeg, Peter, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow

Homer, The Iliad

Homer, The Odyssey

Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables

Kadare, Ismael, The Three-Arched Bridge

Kafka, Franz, The Trial

Kazantzakis, Nikos, Zorba the Great

Kemal, Yasar, Mehmed My Hawk

Kertesz, Imre, Fateless

Khayyam, Omar, The Rubaiyat

Kis, Danilo, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

Klemperer, Victor, I Shall Bear Witness

The Koran

Kosztolanyi, Dezso, Anna Edes

Kundera, Milan, Identity

Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

de Laclos, Pierre Choderlos, Dangerous Liaisons

di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, The Leopard

Lao Tzu, Book of the Way (Tao Te Ching)

Laxness, Halldor, Independent People

Leopardi, Giacomo, The Canti

de Lorris, Guillame and de Meun, Jean, Le Roman de la Rose

Lu Xu, The Story of Ah Q

The Mahabarata

Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks

Mann, Thomas, Death in Venice

Mann, Thomas, Magic Mountain

Mao Tsetung, Little Red Book

Marai, Sandor, Embers

Marukami, Haruki, Norwegian Wood

Marukami, Haruki, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

Marx, Karl, The Communist Manifesto

Mishima, Yukio, Forbidden Colours

Musil, Robert, Young Torless

Nabokov, Vladimir, The Gift

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols

Oe, Kenzaburo, Somersault

Pamuk, Orhan, The Black Book

Pamuk, Orhan, My Name is Red

Pascal, Blais, Pensees

Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago

Perec, George, Life A User’s Guide

Platonov, Andrey, Happy Moscow

Platonov, Andrey, Soul

Platonov, Andrey, The Return

Pleijel, Agneta, The Dog Star

Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time

Queneau, Raymond, Zazie in the Metro

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Jealousy

Roth, Joseph, The Radetsky March

Sagan, Francoise, Bonjour Tristesse

de Saint-Exupery, Antoine, The Little Prince

Saramago, Jose, The Stone Raft

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Words

Schopenhauer, Arthur, Essays and Aphorisms

Sebald, W.G., Austerlitz

Sebald, W.G., Emigrants

Sebald, W.G., The Rings of Saturn

Schlink, Bernard, The Reader

Schoeman, Karel, Another Country

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Stendhal, Henri, The Charterhouse of Parma

Stendhal, Henri, Scarlet and Black

Suskind, Patrick, Perfume

Szerb, Antal, Journey by Moonlight

Tanizaki, Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters

Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina

Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace

Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo, The Saga Fuga de J B

Turgenev, Ivan, First Love

Xingjian, Gao, Soul Mountain

Vargos Llosa, Mario, The War at the End of the World

Virgil, The Aeneid

Wilhelm, Richard and Baynes, Cary F., trans. (original author unknown), Book of Changes (The I Ching)

(www.englishpen.org)

From jahsonic.wordpress.com/2006/09/23/playboys-25-sexiest-novels-ever-written-2006.

1. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland
2. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
3. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
4. The Story of O, by Pauline Reage
5. Crash, by J.G. Ballard
6. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
7. Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
8. The Magus, by John Fowles
9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
10. Endless Love, by Scott Spencer
11. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Carrie’s Story, by Molly Weatherfield aka Pam Rosenthal
13. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
14. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
15. Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
16. The End of Alice, by A.M. Homes
17. Vox, by Nicholson Baker
18. Rapture, by Susan Minot
19. Singular Pleaures, by Harry Mathews
20. In The Cut, by Susanna Moore
21. Brass, by Helen Walsh
22. Candy, by Terry Southern
23. Forever, by Judy Blume
24. An American Dream, by Norman Mailer
25. The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins

Larry McCaffery teaches American literature at San Diego State University and is co-editor of the journal Fiction International. From www.literarycritic.com/mccaffery.html.

1. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire (1962)
2. Joyce, James. Ulysses (1922)
3. Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
4. Coover, Robert. The Public Burning (1977)
5. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury (1929)
6. Beckett, Samuel. Trilogy (Molloy 1953, Malone Dies 1956, The Unnamable 1957)
7. Stein, Gertrude. The Making of Americans (1925)
8. Burroughs, William. Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine 1962, Nova Express 1964, The Ticket that Exploded 1967)
9. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita (1955)
10. Joyce, James. Finnegan’s Wake (1941)
11. Federman, Raymond. Take It or Leave It (1975)
12. Morrison, Toni. Beloved (1986)
13. Wright, Stephen. Going Native (1994)
14. Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano (1949)
15. Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse (1927)
16. Gass, William H. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)
17. Gaddis, William. JR (1975)
18. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952)
19. DeLillo, Don. Underworld (1997)
20. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
21. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
22. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925)
23. James, Henry. The Ambassadors (1903)
24. Lawrence, D.H. Women in Love (1921)
25. Barthelme, Donald. 60 Stories (1981)
26. Vollmann, William T. The Rifles (1993)
27. Gaddis, William. The Recognitions (1955)
28. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness (1902)
29. Heller, Joseph. Catch 22 (1961)
30. Orwell, George. 1984 (1949)
32. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
32. Faulkner, William. Absalom Absalom! (1936)
33. Delany, Samuel R. Dhalgren (1975)
34. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
35. Ducornet, Rikki. The Four Elements Tetrology (earth: The Stain 1984, fire: Entering Fire 1986, water: The Fountains of Neptune 1992, and air: The Jade Cabinet 1993)
36. Gibson, William. Cyberspace Trilogy (Neuromancer 1984, Count Zero 1986, Mona Lisa Overdrive 1988)
37. Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer (1934)
38. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (1957)
39. McElroy, Joseph. Lookout Cartridge (1974)
40. Ballard, J. G. Crash (1973)
41. Rushdie, Salmon. Midnight’s Children (1981)
42. Barth, John. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
43. Metcalf, Paul. Genoa (1965)
44. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (1932)
45. Forster, E. M.. A Passage to India (1924)
46. Federman, Raymond. Double or Nothing (1972)
47. O’Brien, Flann. at swim two birds (1951)
48. McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian (1965)
49. Hawkes, John. The Cannibal (1949)
50. Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940)
51 West, Nathaniel. The Day of the Locust (1939)
52. Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood (1937)
53. Robinson, Marilynn. Housekeeping (1981)
54. Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
55. DeLillo, Don. Libra (1986)
56. O’Conner, Flannery. Wise Blood (1952)
57. LeGuin, Ursula K. Always Coming Home (1985)
58. Dos Passos, John. USA Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel 1930, 1919 1932, and The Big Money 1936)
59. Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook (1962)
60. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
61. Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest (1929)
62. Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
63. Joyce, James. Dubliners (1915)
64. Toomer, Jean. Cane (1925)
65. Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth (1905)
66. Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker (1982)
67. William Eastlake. Checkerboard Trilogy (Go in Beauty 1955,The Bronc People 1958, Portrait of the Artist with 26 Horses 1962)
68. Elkin, Stanley. The Franchiser (1976)
69. Auster, Paul. New York Trilogy (City of Glass 1985, Ghosts 1986, The Locked Room 1986)
70. Robbins, Tom. Skinny Legs and All (1986)
71. Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest (1995)
72. Marcus, Ben. The Age of Wire and String (1996)
73. Mathews, Harry. Tlooth (1966)
74. Coover, Robert. Pricksongs and Descants (1969)
75. Dick, Phillip K. The Man in the High Castle (1962)
76. Ellis, Brett Easton. American Psycho (1988)
77. Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
78. Wolfe, Gene. The Book of the New Sun Tetrology (The Shadow of the Torturer 1980, The Claw of the Conciliator 1981, The Sword of Lictor 1982, The Citadel of the Autarch 1982)
79. Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange (1962)
80. Kennedy, William. Albany Trilogy (Legs 1976, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game 1978, Ironweed 1983
81. Gass, William H. The Tunnel (1995)
82. Gass, William H. Omensetter’s Luck
83. Bowles, Paul. The Sheltering Sky (1948)
84. Theroux, Alexander. Darcanonville’s Cat (1981)
85. Sukenick, Ronald. Up (1968)
86. Reed, Ishamel. Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (1969)
87. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesberg Ohio (1919)
88. Vollmann, William T. You Bright and Risen Angels (1987)
89. Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Dead (1948)
90. Coover, Robert. The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968)
91. Katz, Steve. Creamy and Delicious (1971)
92. Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
93. Sturgeon, Theodore. More than Human (1951)
94. Sorrentino, Gilbert. Mulligan Stew (1979)
95. Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel (1929)
96. Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy (1925)
97 Mooney, Ted. Easy Travels to Other Planets (1981)
98. Erickson, Steve. Tours of the Black Clock (1989)
99. Acker, Kathy. In Memoriam to Identity (1990)
100. Delany, Samuel R. Hogg (1996)

From www.ucm.es/info/isa/books/vt/bkv_000.htm. For all you budding sociologists out there.
1 Weber, Max. Economy and Society
2 Mills, Charles Wright. The Sociological Imagination
3 Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structure
4 Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
5 Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. The Social Construction of Reality
6 Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
7 Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process
8 Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action
9 Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action
10 Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
11 Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society
12 Parsons, Talcott. The Social System
13 Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
14 Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society
15 Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System
16 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison
17 Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
18 Simmel, Georg. Sociology
19 Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society
20 Braverman, Harry. Labour and Monopoly Capital
21 Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment
22 Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks
23 Coleman, James Samuel. Foundations of Social Theory
24 Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests
25 Moore, B. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
26 Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation
27 Blau, Peter Michael and Duncan, Otis Dudley. The American Occup
28 Gouldner, Alvin W. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology
29 Luhmann, Niklas. Social Systems
30 Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia
31 Becker, Howard S. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
32 Marx, Karl. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy
33 Olson, Mancur. The Logic Collective Action
34 Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society
35 Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of Sociological Method
36 Garfinkel, Harold. Studies in Ethnomethodology
37 Goffman, Erving. Asylums
38 Lipset, Seymour Martin. Political Man
39 Mills, Charles Wright. The Power Elite
40 Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice
41 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and, Faletto, Enzo. Dependency and Development in Latin America
42 Dahrendorf, R. Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society
43 Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity
44 Goffman, Erving. Stigma
45 Kanter, R.M. Men and Women of the Corporation
46 Schütz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World
47 Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology
48 Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture
49 Etzioni, Amitai. The Active Society
50 Glaser, Barney G. and Strauss, Anselm L. The Discovery of Grounded Theory
51 Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
52 Sorokin, Pitirim A. Social and Cultural Dynamics
53 Touraine, A. Production de la societe
54 Weber, Max. Sociology of Religion
55 Weber, Max. The Methodology of the Social Sciences
56 Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism
57 Boudon, Raymond. The Logic of Social Action
58 Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism
59 Durkheim, Emile. The Suicide
60 Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures
61 Giddens, Anthony. Sociology
62 Janowitz, Morris. The Professional Soldier
63 Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix and Rosenberg, Morris. The Language of Social Research
64 Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness
65 Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on World Scale
66 Nisbet, Robert A. The Sociological Tradition
67 Thompson, Eric Palmer. The Making of the English Working Class
68 Riesman, David The Lonely Crowd
69 Schütz, Alfred. Collected Papers
70 Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Money
71 Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society
72 Alexander, Jeffrey C. Theoretical Logic in Sociology
73 Althusser, L. Reading Capital
74 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities
75 Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition
76 Baumann, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics
77 Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex
78 Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture
79 Blumer, Herbert. Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and Method
80 Boudon, Raymond. The Unintended Consequences of Social Action
81 Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory Practice
82 Castells, Manuel. The Urban Question
83 Crozier, Michel J. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon
84 Crozier, Michel J. and Friedberg, Erhard Actors and Systems
85 Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth
86 Friedmann, G. Problemes humains du machinisme industriel
87 Gans, Herbert J. The Urban Villagers
88 Gerth, H.H. and Mills, Ch.W. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
89 Giddens, Anthony. New Rules of the Sociological Method
90 Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity
91 Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis
92 Hughes, Everett Charrington. The Sociological Eye
93 Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power
94 Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
95 Mauss, Marcel. The Gift
96 Popper, Karl R. The Logic of Scientific Discovery
97 Poulantzas, Nicos. Political Power and Social Class
98 Sorokin, Pitirim A. Social and Cultural Mobility
99 Thomas, William Isaac and Znaniecki, Florian. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
100 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations

Appeared in Portland Monthly magazine in Ocgober 2006. Courtesy of ggchickapee at www.listsofbests.com/list/23865/compare/ggchickapee.

1. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
2. The Lathe of Heaven: A Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Winter Count by Barry Lopez
4. The River Why by David Duncan
5. Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook’s Lowbrow Northwest by Stewart Hall Holbrook
6. The Country Boy by Homer Davenport
7. Ricochet River by Robin Cody
8. Stepping Westward: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest by Sallie Tisdale
9. Hole in the Sky: A Memoir by William Kittredge
10. True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff
11. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest by Alvin M. Josephy
12. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis
13. Oregon Geographic Names by Lewis A. McArthur
14. Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary
15. Fire at Eden’s Gate: Tom McCall & the Oregon Story by Brent Walth
16. The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss
17. Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War by William Stafford
18. Nehalem Tillamook Tales
19. To Build a Ship by Don Berry
20. In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History by Ellen Morris Bishop
mizoguchi suggests the following addition:
21. The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow by Opal Whiteley

From www.hcpl.net/booklists/latinofic.htm.

1. Julia Alvarez. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
2. Rudolfo Anaya. Bless Me Ultima
3. Oscar Casares. Brownsville
4. Ana Castillo. Peel My Love Like an Onion
5. Denise Chávez. The Last of the Menu Girls
6. Sandra Cisneros. The House on Mango Street
7. Tony Diaz. The Aztec Love God
8. Maria Amparo Escandón. Esperanza’s Box of Saints
9. Cristina García. The Aguero Sisters
10. Francisco Goldman. The Ordinary Seaman
11. Juan Felipe Herrera. CrashBoomLove
12. Arturo Islas. The Rain God: A Desert Tale
13. Manuel Luis Martinez. Drift
14. Nina Marie Martinez. Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card
15. Jovita Gonzalez Mireles. The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
16. Elías Miguel Muñoz. Brand New Memory
17. Michael Nava. Rag and Bone
18. Achy Obejas. Memory Mambo
19. Roberto Quesada. Never Through Miami
20. Ernesto Quiñonez. Bodega Dreams
21. Manuel Ramos. The Last Client of Luis Montez
22. Beatriz Rivera. Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express
23. Ito Roma. El Puente = The Bridge
24. Benjamin Alire Sáenz. In Perfect Light
25. Patricia Santana. Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility
26. Esmerelda Santiago. América’s Dream
27. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. The Dirty Girls Social Club
28. Ana Veciana-Suarez. Flight to Freedom
29. Marcos McPeek Villatoro. Home Killings: A Romilia Chacón Mystery
30. Helena María Viramontes. Under the Feet of Jesus
31. Jose Yglesias. A Wake in Ybor City

From www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-160-18835_18897-57682—,00.html.

1. Armour, David A. and Keith R.Widder. At the Crossroads: Michilimackinac During the American Revolution. Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1986.

2. Bogue, Margaret Beattie. Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History, 1783-1933. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

3. Brehm, Victoria, ed. The Women’s Great Lakes Reader. Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press, 1998.

4. Buley, R. Carlyle. The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950.

5. Carson, Gerald. Cornflake Crusade. New York: Rinehart, 1957.

6. Catton, Bruce. Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.

7. Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan’s Native Americans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

8. Clifton, James A., George L. Cornell, and James M. McClurken. People of the Three Fires: The Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibway of Michigan. Grand Rapids, MI: Grand Rapids Inter-Tribal Council, 1986.

9. Clive, Alan. State of War: Michigan in World War II. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979.

10. Darden, Joe T. Detroit, Race and Uneven Development. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

11. Dunbar, Willis F. All Aboard! A History of Railroads in Michigan. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1969.

12. Dunbar, Willis F. and George S. May. Michigan: A History of the Wolverine State. 3rd rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1995.

13. Dunnigan, Brian Leigh. Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701-1838. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.

14. Eckert, Kathryn Bishop. Buildings of Michigan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

15. Fine, Sidney. “Expanding The Frontiers of Civil Rights”: Michigan, 1948-1968. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.

16. Fine, Sidney. Frank Murphy. 3 vols.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975-1984.

17. Fine, Sidney. Sit-down: The General Motors Strike of 1936-1937. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.

18. Fine, Sidney. Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989.

19. Formisano, Ronald P. The Birth of Mass Political Parties in Michigan, 1827-1861. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.

20. Gilpin, Alec R. The Territory of Michigan, 1805-1837. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970.

21. Gilpin, Alec R. The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958.

22. Gray, Susan E. The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

23. Halsey, John, ed. and Michael Stafford, assoc. ed. Retrieving Michigan’s Buried Past: The Archeology of the Great Lakes State. Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1999.

24. Holli, Melvin G. Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

25. Hyde, Charles K. and colored photographs by Ann and John Mahan. The Northern Lights: Lighthouses of the Upper Great Lakes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

26. Jager, Ronald. Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

27. Karamanski, Theodore J. Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.

28. Katzman, David M. Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973.

29. Kestenbaum, Justin L., ed. The Making of Michigan, 1820-1860: A Pioneer Anthology. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

30. Kilar, Jeremy W. Michigan’s Lumbertowns: Lumbermen and Laborers in Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon, 1870- 1905. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

31. Klunder, Willard Carl. Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996.

32. Lankton, Larry D. Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

33. Lewis, David L. The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976.

34. Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

35. Mason, Philip P. Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties: Prohibition on the Michigan-Ontario Waterway. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

36. May, George S. A Most Unique Machine: The Michigan Origins of the American Automobile Industry. Grand Rapids, MI: W. E. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1974.

37. Nevins, Allan and Frank E. Hill. Ford. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 1954-1963.

38. Peckham, Howard H. Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

39. Romig, Walter. Michigan Place Names: The History of the Founding and the Naming of More Than Five Thousand Past and Present Michigan Communities. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

40. Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

41. Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.

42. Thomas, Richard W. Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

43. Thompson, Mark L. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.

44. Thurner, Arthur W. Strangers and Sojourners: A History of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

45. Vander Hill, C. Warren. Settling the Great Lakes Frontier: Immigration to Michigan, 1837-1924. Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1970.

46. Vinyard, JoEllen McNergney. For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

47. Weeks, George. Stewards of the State: The Governors of Michigan. 2nd rev. ed. Detroit: Detroit News; Ann Arbor: Historical Society of Michigan, 1991.

48. White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

49. Woodford, Arthur M. This Is Detroit, 1701-2001. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.

50. Zunz, Olivier. The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.