John Cowper Powys' top 100 books

John Cowper Powys by Gertrude Mary Powys

http://www.fullbooks.com/One-Hundred-Best-Books.html

99 Novels

Anthony Burgess's book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice covers a 44-year span between 1939 and 1983. Burgess was a prolific reader, in his early career reviewing more than 350 novels in just over two years for the Yorkshire Post. In the course of his career he wrote over thirty novels.


The list represents his personal choices

The Librivium

I am working on the "Librivium Macumbana", an alternative literary canon, designed on a multi dimensional reading strategy.
I am now in the early stage of collecting authors and titles and organizing the rational framework behind it.

Salad awards of the earlier Bookers

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawen Jhabvala. Try to grab the movie as well !
A bend in the river by Naipaul
Earthly Powers by Burgess
Rites of Passage by Golding
Timothy Mo’s “Sour Sweet”
“Empire of the Sun” by Ballard, See the movie too
“Last letters from Hav” by Jan Morris
Bone people by Hulme
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
An Insular Possession by Timothy Mo

TBR 2010 list

These are the books to be read in 2010. I aim for +/- 35 because this seems the number I can reasonably tackle in a year:

a) Still unread from 2009

- “Wolf Hall” by Hillary Mantel ( half-read )
- “My Name Is Red” by Orhan Pamuk ( finished )
- “ Schindler’s Ark” by Thomas Keneally
- “ The sea, the sea” by Iris Murdoch

b) Compulsive

- Booker prize winner 2010
- Herta Muller

c) Advised by friends

- Julien Gracq : Au château d'Argol
- Sketches from a Hunters' Album by Turgenev
- Dead souls by Nicolas Gogol ( finished )
- A hero of our time by M. Lermontov ( finished )
- Eugene Onegin by Pouchkine ( finished )
- “Myra” by Gore Vidal
- “The Sot-weed factor” by John Barth
- “Giles Goat Boy” by
- “Invisible Man” by Ralph Elisson
- “Les Miserables” by Hugo
- “The Age of Innocence” by Edith Warton
- “The Heart is a lonely hunter” by Carson Mc Cullers
- “As I lay dying” or “Absolom, Absolom” by Faulkner
- "Kaputt" by Malaparte
- "Raymond Roussel"
- "A passage to India" by Foster
- "Journal" by Jules Renard
- "All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity" by Marshall Berman
- Short stories by Saki
- The Inspector General by Gogol ( finished )
- The Sea by John Banville
- Speak memory By Nabokov ( finished )
- Derek Wallcot : TRhe Star apple kingdom
- Oblomov
-Mary Renault for Bull from the Sea.

d) Rereads

- Proust
- “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
- The Illiad translated by Faggles
- The Magic Mountain

e) Just an idea

- Danton” by Buchner
- Le Mariage de Loti" par Pierre Loti
- Xenophon
- A Month in the Country by JL Carr
- Rites of Passage by William Golding ( finished )
- Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
- Josef Skvorecky : The Cowards
- A fine balance by Rohinton Mistry

Listmania : The Perfect Russian top ten

The Master and Margarita by Boulgakov
Sketches from a Hunters' Album by Turgenev
The Idiot by Fiodor Dostoievski
Dead souls by Nicolas Gogol
A hero of our time by M. Lermontov
Doctor Jivago by Boris Pasternak
Eugene Onegin by Pouchkine
Oblomov.
Anna Karennina by Leon Tolstoi
Cancer Ward by Alexander Soljenitsyne

runners up : Kolyma Tales by Varlam Chalamov, The steppe by Tchekov, Fathers and Sons by Turgenev,
'Salt' or the whole 'Red Cavalry' collection by Isaac Babel.,'Queen of Spades' Pushkin,'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' Tolstoy, We by Zamyatin.

Scandinavian Words

Some years ago I was an intensive traveller on North European routes. The many flights I took were mainly booked on SAS or related airlines. One very much appreciated incentive besides the" bonuspoints" was that they distributed a small book collection through their VIP lounges.
I collected a total of 18 books. I don't know if this is the full collection but SAS stopped distributing them after some time...



01 August Strindberg : Alone
02 Herman Bang : The Four Devils
03 Sigbjorn Obstfelder : Two short stories
04 Victoria Benedictsson : From the darkness
05 Georg Brandes : Thoughts on the Turn of the century
06 Hendrik Ibsen : When we dead awaken
07 Ola Hansson : Sensitiva Amorosa
08 Gustave Wied : Two Satirical Dramas
09Christian Krohg : Four Portraits
10Anne Charlotte Leffler : Woimanhood and eroticism
11 Hendrik Pontoppidan : Burgomaster Hoeck and His Wife
12 Arne Dybfest : One Alone
13 Oscar Levertin : Reviews
14 Holger Drachmann : The Slippery Slope
15 Knut Hamsun : Hunger
16 Selma Lagerlof : Letters from Jerusalem
17 Johannes V. Jensen : Nordic Myths
18 Edvard Munch : Notes of a Genius

Listmania

Here are the best adventure and travel books listed by the National Geographic Society :

http://www.ronwatters.com/BkNGAList.htm