Saturday, July 5, 2014

Books to Read - in Toronto

With the move -- and new start -- it is time to restock the To-Be-Read Pile and clean it up. It's also the start of a new Canadian challenge, so I shall try to front-load this list with some Can. lit.

Hugh MacLennan Two Solitudes
Gabrielle Roy The Tin Flute
Gunther Grass The Tin Drum
Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
John A. Williams The Man Who Cried I Am
Gregor Von Rezzori An Ermine in Czernopol
Dostovesky Demons
Molly Keane Devoted Ladies
Machado De Assis The Alienist
Elizabeth Taylor A Game of Hide and Seek
Elizabeth Bowen The House in Paris
Munro Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You 
Faulkner As I Lay Dying
Elizabeth Berg Open House (gave up after a few pages)
Michael Chabon A Model World
Patrick Somerville The Universe in Miniature in Miniature
Julian Barnes A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Djuna Barnes Nightwood
Richardson The End of the Alphabet
Dinesen Winter's Tales
Roth Weights and Measures
Dos Passos U.S.A. Trilogy:
             The 42nd Parallel
             1919   
             The Big Money
Pullman His Dark Materials Trilogy? (I'll just start with The Golden Compass)
Grossmith Diary of a Nobody
John A. Williams !Click Song
Vassily Aksyonov The Burn
Geoff Nicholson Bleeding London
Maugham Of Human Bondage
Ivan Vladislavic The Restless Supermarket
Tom McCarthy Satin Island
Gabrielle Roy The Cashier
Heather O'Neill The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
Albert Cossery Proud Beggars
Molly Keane Good Behaviour
Shyam Selvadurai Funny Boy
Lethem Lucky Alan
Tomaso Matricide
Bove My Friends
Ivan Vladislavic The Exploded View
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles
Gabrielle Roy Street of Riches
Bruno Schulz Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Joseph Roth Rebellion
Elizabeth Taylor -A View from the Harbour - UT
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat
Ben Lerner 10:04
Machado De Assis Epitaph of a Small Winner
Barbara Comyns The Juniper Tree - TPL
Machado De Assis Philosopher or Dog?
Munro Who Do You Think You Are?
Michael Ondaatje The Cat's Table
Narayan Mr Sampath
Joyce Johnson In the Night Cafe
Gloria Naylor Bailey's Cafe
Elizabeth Bowen The Hotel
Joseph Roth -Legend of the Holy Drinker
Kafka The Trial
Molly Keane Time After Time
Nabokov The Gift
P. Marshall Praisesong for the Widow
Mahfouz Thief and the Dogs
Nancy Lee The Age - TPL
Narayan The Financial Expert
Munro The Moons of Jupiter 
Nabokov Invitation to a Beheading

Faulkner Go Down, Moses
Zachary Mason Lost Books of the Odyssey
Narayan Waiting for Mahatma
Murakami After the Quake
Wideman Philadelphia Fire
Mahfouz Autumn Quail

Nabokov The Enchanter
B. Mukherjee Miss New India
Lem Solaris
Ama Ata Aidoo Our Sister Killjoy
Charles Johnson Oxherding Tale
Abdourahman Waberi In the United States of Africa
Brian Moore The Luck of Ginger Coffey
Alain Mabanckou Broken Glass
Smollett Roderick Random
Albert Cossery The Jokers
Machado De Assis Dom Casmurro 
Dany Laferrière How to Make Love to A Negro (without Getting Tired)
Achebe No Longer at Ease 
Molly Keane Queen Lear

George Eliot Middlemarch
Naipaul The Enigma of Arrival
Dany Laferrière Heading South
Smollett Peregrine Pickle 
Stoppard Travesties
Adiga Last Man in Tower
Bowering Burning Water
Eileen Chang Love in a Fallen City
Lethem Chronic City
Bell Waiting for the End of the World
Butler The Way of All Flesh
Smollett Humprey Clinker
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird
Faulkner Intruder in the Dust
Fontane On Tangled Paths
Gregor von Rezzori Memoirs of An Anti-Semite
David Foster Wallace The Pale King
Kafka The Castle
Yamashita I Hotel
Murakami 1Q84
(should I really jump so far out of sequence?)
Lahiri The Unaccustomed Earth
Mavis Gallant The Moslem Wife
Thackeray Vanity Fair
Fontane No Way Back/
Irretrievable (pick one translation!)
Kingley Amis Lucky Jim
Nosaka The Pornographers

Shashi Tharoor The Great Indian Novel
Trollope The Way We Live Now
Malcolm Bradbury The History Man
Gaskell North and South
Elizabeth Bowen To the North
Fanny Howe The Deep North
Steve Zipp Yellowknife
(can be read on-line here)
Nina Berberova The Tattered Cloak - TPL
Bennett The Old Wives' Tale
Nancy Mitford Love in a Cold Climate

Elizabeth Taylor Palladian
Munro The Progress of Love
Faulkner The Unvanquished
P. Roth  - The Breast, The Professor of Desire, The Dying Animal
Hogg Memoirs of a Justified Sinner
Gaskell Wives and Daughters
Walser Jakob Von Gunten
Melville The Confidence Man
Kafka Amerika
(the new translation)
Max Apple The Propheteers
Pablo Vierci The Imposters
Katherine Porter Ship of Fools

Khushwant Singh Train To Pakistan
Tayeb Salih Season of Migration to the North
Faulkner Flags in the Dust
Paul Auster Moon Palace
Gregor von Rezzori Death of My Brother Abel
DeLillo White Noise
(I shouldn't jump so far out of order, but I think I shall anyway)
Krzhizhanovsky The Letter Killers Club
Bissoondath The Soul of All Great Desire
Kafka Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Ovid Metamorphoses
Virgil The Aeneid
Montaigne (Shakespeare's Montaigne - NYRB)
Achebe Arrow of God 
Powers Morte d'Urban

Green Blindness
William Maxwell LOA novels
Elizabeth Smart By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Thisby The Good People of New York
DeLillo Cosmopolis (also out of order)
Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart
Dawn Powell LOA novels
T.C. Boyle Drop City
Sinclair Lewis (Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and perhaps Dodsworth) 
Maritta Wolff -- Whistle Stop, Night Shift and Sudden Rain (and perhaps Buttonwood)
(intersperse Lewis with Wolff)
Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities
George Eliot Daniel Deronda
Aeschylus The Oresteia
Faulkner The Snopes Family (Hamlet, Town, Mansion)
Powers Wheat That Springeth Green
Walser A Schoolboy's Diary
Mistry Family Matters
Mavis Gallant Home Truths
Melville Pierre (and some Kierkegaard)
Dick The Man in the High Tower
P. Roth - Zuckerman Bound, Exit Ghost
Fontane Effi Briest
Beckett Krapp's Last Tape & Three Novels
Victor Serge Conquered City
Fuentes Where the Air is Clear
Vargas Llosa The Time of the Hero
Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day
Fontane Before the Storm
Tolstoy War and Peace
Vasily Grossman Life and Fate
Victor Serge  Midnight in the Century
Don DeLillo End Zone
Pym Some Tame Gazelle
Bissoondath Digging Up the Mountains
Herzen My Life and Thoughts

Berlin Russian Thinkers
Stoppard The Coast of Utopia
Skvorecky Miss Silver's Past
Modiano Honeymoon
A. Barrett Ship Fever
Lowry Under the Volcano
Dickens Pictures from Italy & American Notes
Herzen Letters from France and Italy
Gogol Dead Souls
Conrad The Secret Agent
Bley Petersburg
Victor Serge Unforgiving Years
Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49 (and V???)
Stone A Hall of Mirrors
Meera Syal Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Murakami The Strange Library 
Manu Joseph The Illicit Happiness of Other People
Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned
Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Dos Passos Adventures of a Young Man
Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night 
Hemingway A Moveable Feast
Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon
Willa Cather My Antonia
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Fuentes A Change of Skin
Naipaul Miguel Street
Bissoondath A Casual Brutality
Modiano Suspended Sentences
Bove Quicksand
(after this more Pym and Doris Lessing* and a return to Mahfouz and Narayan)
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Bellow Adventures of Augie March

Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Conrad Under Western Eyes
Chekhov 7 Short Novels
Turgenev Smoke
Platonov The Foundation Pit
Turgenev Virgin Soil
Neruda Isla Negra
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Steinbeck To a God Unknown
Cesare Pavese Selected Works
P. Roth Sabbath's Theatre
I.B. Singer Enemies
J. Roth Radetzky March
Walser The Tanners 
Pym Excellent Women 
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
McKay Home to Harlem
Don DeLillo Great Jones Street
Fisher The Conjure Man Dies
Fante The Bandini Quartet
Jacobson The Finkler Question
Koestler Darkness at Noon 
Danilo Kis A Tomb for Boris Davidovitch 
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev
DeLillo Ratner's Star
P. Roth Nemeses (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis)
M. Thomas Man Gone Down
Green Living
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
Pym Jane and Prudence
Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer
Tess Slesinger The Unpossessed (probably for the second time)
Oria New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (TPL)
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America - indefinitely suspended for cowardice
de Tocqueville Democracy in America 
Achebe  A Man of the People
Musil The Man Without Qualities
Cela The Hive 
Achebe Anthills of the Savannah
Steinbeck Tortilla Flat
Álvaro Mutis Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll 
Pynchon Against the Day 
DeLillo Players/Running Dog
Murakami Norwegian Wood
Jane Urquhart The Stone Carvers
Findley Dinner Along the Amazon
DeLillo Amazons



(I'll have to intersperse a bit more Canadian fiction (I've already added a bit more Alice Munro), and probably some of the early DeLillo novels, a few more from Narayan and Mahfouz and perhaps Nabokov from their respective lists, maybe tackle Austen, maybe work in a bit more Doris Lessing, reread Barbara Pym and then perhaps tackle Dickens and Trollope.  Still, this is a decent 2-3 year plan (or 4-5 if I throw in a lot of Trollope and Musil's The Man Without Qualities and maybe cycle back through Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa), so we'll just see how it goes.  I'm sure unpacking and rearranging the books will cause me to promote others on the list higher.  I think after I make it through this extended list, I will more or less work my way through the rest of the books on the shelves to make sure I have had a chance to read them all.  I believe I have read roughly 35% of the fiction & poetry books on the shelves, which is actually not that shabby.  That will obviously change radically if I add another bookcase of fiction, but I think I probably will have to break down and get more shelves.)

* If I really do start in on Lessing's Children of Violence series, I will probably follow it up with Eric Kraft's tres amusant books about Peter Leroy.  I got through 6 or so of the early short novellas but not the later, longer novels.

I think I will get to these relatively soon after I get through Musil, but this is probably 3 years out.  While this is a pretty tremendous list (in my view), it is also more than a little odd to have committed myself to reading specific books that far in advance.  Anyway, I think before the Lessing/Kraft combo, I should revisit Jose Saramago, even though some of this will be rereading.  I'm thinking something sort of like this:

Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Saramago Blindness
DeLillo The Names
Saramago All the Names
Cunningham The Hours
Saramago The Cave
Muriel Spark Symposium
Saramago Seeing
Norfolk The Pope's Rhinoceros
Saramago The Elephant's Journey
Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Pynchon Inherent Vice

If I really do make it through this and have not gotten completely sick of this list, it will be time to really tackle Dickens and Trollope -- and for some variety the longer novels of Murakami -- and probably the Edmund White trilogy and Joyce Cary's First Trilogy.


Undetermined position
(books that I purged (unread) but available in Toronto libraries)
Terry Darlington Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
Mulisch The Discovery of Heaven
Samuel Delany Dhalgren   (I even bought a new edition of this, but think I purged it in a move)

Transferred from VPL lists

Husain Basti
Albert Cossery A Splendid Conspiracy (UT)
Albert Cossery The Colors of Infamy
Albert Cossery Laziness in the Fertile Valley (UT)
Laura Lush Fault Line
Andrew Crumey Sputnik Caledonia
Amy Waldman The Submission
4 poets : Daniela Elza, Peter Morin, Al Rempel, Onjana Yawnghwe
Tash Aw Five Star Billionaire
NoViolet Bulawayo We Need New Names
Machado de Assis Quincas Borba
Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats: Stories
Machado de Assis The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Machado de Assis The Devil's Church and Other Stories (UT)
Machado de Assis Esau and Jacob (UT)
Joseph Roth Right and Left  (UT)
Gregor von Rezzori Memoirs of An Anti-Semite
Fernando Pessoa The book of disquiet (look for Zenith translation from 2002/3)
Cesare Pavese The Political Prisoner (UT)
Trichter Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Stewart O'Nan Last Night at the Lobster
Ben Winters The Last Policeman
Dangerous Calm: Selected Stories of Elizabeth Taylor (UT)
Frederick Busch The Mutual Friend (UT)
Frederick Busch Closing Arguments
Ken Kalfus The Commissariat of Enlightenment
Ken Kalfus A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Teju Cole Open City
Chloe Aridjis Book of Clouds
Téa Obreht The Tiger's Wife
Sunjeev Sahota Ours Are the Streets (UT)
Lawrence Hill The Book of Negroes
Rebecca Lee City Is A Rising Tide
Jane Urquhart The Stone Carvers
Alex Shakar The Savage Girl
David Bezmozgis Natasha and Other Stories
Jansson The True Deceiver
Guillermo Arriaga Jordan The Night Buffalo
M. John Harrison Nova Swing
Richard Ford The Sportswriter
Orwell in Tribune "As I Please"; and Other Writings, 1943-7 (UT) - maybe I should order this
John Connolly The Book of Lost Things
Rowan Somerville The End of Sleep
Kenny Fries The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (UT)
Hisham Matar Anatomy of A Disappearance
Sergio de la Pava A Naked Singularity
Samuel Delany Babel-17
Samuel Delany Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Samuel Delany Nova ?
David Deutsch The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch The Beginning of Infinity Explanations That Transform the World
Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege The New Military Urbanism
Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot
Michael J. Meyer The Last Days of Old Beijing
Jennifer Egan The Invisible Circus
Joe LeSueur Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara
Will Clarke Lord Vishnu's Love Handles A Spy Novel
Clark Blaise The Meagre Tarmac Stories
Marie-Claire Blais Mad Shadows
Oria New York 1, Tel Aviv 0
Jorie Graham Swarm
Lionel Trilling The Liberal Imagination Essays on Literature and Society (NYRB edition)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Edmund Wilson Memoirs of Hecate County
The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs By Bierce, Ambrose (UT)
Roald Nasgaard The Mystic North
Michael North Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (UT)

Recent movies that I will try to check out or rent from remaining video stores (sadly Film Buff East just closed down) -- oddly Toronto Library takes forever to let you put new movies on hold
x The Great Beauty
x American Hustle
The Grand Budapest Hotel
x Il Sorpasso
x Like Someone in Love
x Nebraska (on hold - #570 in queue!)
x Dallas Buyers Club (on hold - #900 in queue!)
Ministry of Fear
x Love Streams (on hold)
Maps of the Stars
Boyhood
Birdman
x The Skeleton Twins
x The Double
Inherent Vice

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