Here is an updated version in no particular order of my TBR list (as of January 2024). See my Fiction and Non-Fiction Review Indexes for lists of what I’ve read so far since I started writing this blog.
Books which are currently sitting on my shelves/Kindle: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Scoop by Evelyn Waugh Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt Day by A. L. Kennedy The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai Hard Boiled Wonderland and the Rest of the World by Haruki Murakami The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy The Sportswriter by Richard Ford The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence The Kills by Richard House The Son by Philipp Meyer What is the What by Dave Eggers Cover Her Face by P. D. James Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood Travelling with Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking Appointment with Yesterday by Celia Fremlin David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht Parliament: The Biography Volume 1 and 2 by Chris Bryant Sweet Caress by William Boyd The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee Unspeakable by Dilys Rose The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry Between the Regions of Kindness by Alice Jolly The Dutch House by Ann Patchett Motherwell by Deborah Orr Doing Justice by Preet Bharara The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer Dear Life by Rachel Clarke Legacy by Thomas Harding A Tomb With a View by Peter Ross Other books I want to read (but do not have copies of… yet) Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón The Cyber Effect by Mary Aiken Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver The Written World: How Literature Shaped History by Martin Puchner The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures by Roma Agrawal The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli Nuclear Folly by Serhii Plokhy Haven by Emma Donoghue The Believer by Sarah Krasnostein Animals at Night by Naomi Booth Muppets in Moscow by Natasha Lance Rogoff You Are Here by David Nicholls The Wide World by Pierre Lemaitre My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss Ghost Mountain by Ronan Hession Impossible City: Paris in the 21st Century by Simon Kuper A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet
I stupidly got out Anna Karenina & War and Peace at the same time. Freaked myself out & didn’t read either. I purchased Anna Karenina on audible.com so I’m looking forward to getting a long classic off my list!
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I’ve read most of these myself: The Kite Runner and Birdsong are both incredibly special books, beautifully written. Enjoy another year of incredible literature, judging on this list!!
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This is definitely not a “stupidly” long list. I’ve read most of them and they’re all really great! If I may add one to your list, The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson. It is a fantastic piece of historic fiction.
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An impressive and bold list! Some of them are true masterpieces, and some of them are tantalizing. I wish we had 26 hours instead of 24:-)
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Yes, I also haven’t read too many ‘classics’, but you’re correct those always seem to be on lists of books that need to be read. I may read Anna Karenina this year. Nice list you have.
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Thanks for stopping by my blog and liking my post on Anna Karenina. I’m sure you’ll be amazed, too!! 😉
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Great list. Lots of these are either on my list to get to soon or are favorites. Looking forward to the reviews. All my fellow Brown U alums have read and really liked The Marriage Plot, and I have it somewhere (Kindle? Audio on my phone?) but it does’t fit any of my insane reading challenge goals at the moment, so it will probably wait til next year when I will not only be reading my way around the world, but also around the 50 US states. Am subscribing to your blog, so I will be back. Are you on Goodreads? You’d love some of the groups I am in there.
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The God Of Small Things is beautifully written but rather bleak. There’s a review on my blog.
I was rather disappointed by Fahrenheit 451 – it just didn’t live up to the hype.
BTW this list is so much shorter than mine would be so don’t sweat it!
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I love your blog, crisp and clean. Reading list looks like some of my favorites, too.
Carol Colitti Levine
thesidetrek
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Enjoyed your Reading List – you’re going to be busy! ‘Cold Comfor Farm’ one of my best reads ever; ‘Marriage Plot’ – recently read and didn’t enjoy; ‘Brick Lane’ – have tried 3 times to read this & failed. Have now crossed it off my list. You can’t win ’em all! So many books to rad, and so little time ….
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Anna Kerenina may be a monster of a novel but it is by far one of the greatest master pieces of literature. Another book I would highly recommend reading is Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind’.
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I’d recommend The God of Small Things. It’s my most recent read of those on this list, and very moving.
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Birdsong and The Picture of Dorian Grey. Faulks really just throws you into the middle of everything and it really discombobulates you to reflect the war scenes. Then the switching back and forth from future to past adds to the connection between the past and present to potray his moral message. It’s rather good.
Whilst The Picture of Dorian Grey is certainly a gothic classic that has a really sinister edge. I found it entertaining to read and Lord Harry was definitely a character with some cracking quotes!
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The Picture of Dorian Grey – you have to read this very soon! One of my favourites 🙂
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Hello,
I couldn’t help playing a little game with the bookshelf photo at the top of your blog – counting how many of the books I have read. I make it 4 out of 14 (though Adrian Mole’s diary was a very long time ago…).
About your booklist, Midnight’s Children is my own favourite. Strangely, I decided to stop reading American Psycho after only a few pages (I normally finish every book I start); I realised it was going to be too nasty.
Jasper
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Suggestion: Don’t even consider War and Peace in the near future (at least not until you’re really, really, really into Russian and Classics) and read Anna Karenina after you read The Picture of Dorian Gray. Both are incredible, but since Oscar Wilde’s is shorter it might not be as intimidating to start with. Though I’ve read a good share of classics, Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books of all time.
Brave New World and Farenheit 451 are also definitely worth reading.
Good luck! If you tackle one every one or two weeks you’ll be done next year. =)
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I want to read the WIlkie Collins & Salman Rushdie book too 🙂 Thanks for checking out my blog. PS, audreyzworld… I have Farenheit 451 on my to read list 🙂
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Great book blog! will definitely follow 🙂
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Thanks for checking out my post! Hard-boiled Wonderland and the end of the world is one of my favorites of Haruki Murakami’s! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
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I really like your list. I have some of those on my TBR list too. I wonder why I end up reading other books instead of the ones I said I’d read? Sometimes I resist what I’m supposed to do. Thanks for stopping by my blog.
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A great reading list. I’m reading Sweet Tooth and am really enjoying it.
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Great to see some Murakami on your list – I’m obsessed with his novels.
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Im reading Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children now…truly an intriguing read..U must absolutely read God of Small Things. A really beautiful read. I myself am planning to get back to it one of these days 🙂
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” Life: A User’s Manuel ” Interesting name. I guess something like Siddharta or The Alchemist, Self-discovery stuff. Ain’t it?
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Wow! You are way off base but the original title might make it more clear: La vie mode d’emploi (although Bello’s revised translation [the original translation with a few corrections] is superb). Perec was a member of OULIPO and La vie mode d’emploi is a huge verbal puzzle that should not be missed and is a serious contender for the best novel of the 20th Century. It is not a self-discovery book.
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I’ve read many of these books, although I have my own to read pile which is huge, and continually growing, and I’d say stop what you are doing right now to read “The God of Small Things” Possibly one of the most poetic books I’ve ever read. The prose alone is enough. BIrdsong haunts me too. Looking forward to reading your reviews!
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Of your TBR list, these are the ones I’ve read that I highly recommend:
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: Ken Kesey
On The Road: Jack Kerouac
The Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath
The Elegance of the Hedgehog: Muriel Barbery
And these are the ones also on my TBR list that I never seem to get to:
Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky
England, England: Julian Barnes
The rest of your list are books I’m not familiar with (there are many) and some that I’ve read but didn’t care for. It’s a great list. I’ll put several of them on my own TBR list.
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‘American Psycho’ is one of my favourite books of all time – so cleverly written. It messes with your head…
Enjoy!
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I absolutely agree. American Psycho is mostly rejected for all the things that it is not (how many readers put the book down because it was too violent?). It’s strengths, unfortunately, are generally missed by the surface reader who doesn’t stop to reflect on the fiction. There are those that “get it” and those that “don’t get it.” It is a great book and a triumph for its author.
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Thanks for stopping by my blog, I love your ambition – inspiring! Any suggestions for my own summer reading list?
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I read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson recently which I think is a good holiday book 🙂 Happy reading!
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thank you! I will have to check it out 🙂
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Thanks for liking my post! Tea and books are my favourite things so it’s great to follow someone with similar tastes 🙂 x
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I’ve just read a bunch of books also on your to-read-not-yet-acquired list. Loved Gone Girl and Where’d You Go, Bernadette.
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Long and nice list! I read a few of them. I’ll wait for your reviews on them! 🙂
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Wilkie Collins and Edith Wharton are great. Also highly recommend “The Moonstone” (Collins) and “The Buccaneers” (Wharton). Like you don’t have enough to get through… 🙂
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Cracking list of books and I’ll definitely be adding some of those to my wishlist! I can definitely recommend Blood and Beauty. Took a while to get going but worth the wait!
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These are all very good! Especially Master and Margarita which is one of my all-time favorite novels and the Tolstoys and Dostoevskys (which are somewhat my thing). Also love Arundhati Roy. I’m not so sure if Jung Chang’s Wild Swans can provide a real understanding of Mao’s China though. Pao Yu-Ching’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution, William Hinton’s Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, Dongping Han’s The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village, and Mobo Gao’s The Battle for China’s Past, among others, should do a better job.
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NICE! I love to see others whose aspirations for the year include polishing up their knowledge of books! wow! I’ll be interested to see some of your book reviews on some of these books.
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thank you for liking my first post! your reading list is inspiring, many of them are on my list too, looking forward to hearing your reviews 🙂
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Oh, some great looking books on this list… Of those that I have read, I particularly loved Anna Karenina, On The Road, and The Bell Jar.
If you are ever looking for other books to add to this noble list (such as suggestions for when people ask you what you want for Christmas!) you might be interested in taking a look at the books that I have most enjoyed, on my blog: http://novelreading.wordpress.com
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The Bell Jar is probably one of my favourite books ever. On The Road was also a good read. I can’t find time to read Master and Margarita and I’ve heard it’s also worth reading.
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The Light Between Oceans is almost top of TBR plus The Bell Jar, great list!
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Are you going to read all those in a year?
That’s so impressive!
I’ve started reading one book a week for a few months but how can you read so many books?
Any tips please?
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I think it’s going to take me at least 2 years to read all of these – and I keep adding books to it! I do most of my reading while travelling to work by train which takes about an hour each way. It definitely helps if you set time aside regularly!
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awesome list!
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Impressive list! In May, my book club is going to be reading Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance. I’ve already put a hold on the audio version in OverDrive because there are already 50 people ahead of me for 4 copies! The description reminds me of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, which I highly recommend reading as well.
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Thanks, I will look out for it!
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This looks like a great list! If you like Margaret Atwood then you’ll definitely enjoy The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter, I’ve had to read it twice for studies and really enjoyed it for the fantasy elements as well as feminist ones.
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