100 Favorite Books, 2018 edition
100 Books, 2018 edition
(authors listed in alphabetical order)
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Without Feathers, Woody Allen
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden
Persuasion, Jane Austen
SPQR, Mary Beard
Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
HHhH, Laurent Binet
The Decameron, Boccacio
Any Human Heart, William Boyd
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
The Outsider, Albert Camus
Burning Your Boats, The Collected Short Stories, Angela Carter
Love in a Fallen City, Eileen Chang
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
The Stories of John Cheever
The Stories of Anton Chekhov
Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin
100 Selected Poems, e.e. cummings
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
The Angel Esmeralda, Don DeLillo
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Anecdotes of Destiny, Isak Dinesen
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don’t Look Now, Daphne Du Maurier
The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy
Complete Poems of T.S. Eliot
A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
Night Soldiers, Alan Furst
Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant
Amphigorey (series), Edward Gorey
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Philip Gourevitch
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley
Dune, Frank Herbert
Ripley’s Game, Patricia Highsmith
Rubicon, Tom Holland
The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer
Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household
The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson
Jesus’s Son, Denis Johnson
For Keeps, 30 Years at the Movies, Pauline Kael
The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The Smiley novels, John LeCarre
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
Complete Stories, Clarice Lispector
The Balkan Trilogy, Olivia Manning
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, David Markson
The Ashenden Stories, W. Somerset Maugham
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Love In A Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
So You Don’t Get Lost In The Neighborhood, Patrick Modiano
Isabelo’s Archive, Resil Mojares
From Hell, Alan Moore
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris
Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki, H.H. Munro
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
The Collected Stories, Grace Paley
Playing With Water, James Hamilton Paterson
Cubao: Pagkagat ng Dilim, Tony Perez
The Separation, Christopher Priest
Utos ng Hari at Iba Pang Kuwento, Jun Cruz Reyes
Noli me tangere, Jose Rizal
The Book of J, David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
A Sport and A Pastime, James Salter
Light Years, James Salter
Collected Works, William Shakespeare
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, Georges Simenon
How to be both, Ali Smith
Longitude, Dava Sobel
The Patrick Melrose novels, Edward St. Aubyn
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
Zeno’s Conscience, Italo Svevo
The Door, Magda Szabo
Oliver VII, Antal Szerb
Minotaur, Benjamin Tammuz
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Ogre, Michel Tournier
Miss Garnet’s Angel, Salley Vickers
The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund De Waal
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Jeeves stories, P.G. Wodehouse
Our Story Begins, New and Selected Stories, Tobias Wolff
The list changes every year. When I first wrote a list some years ago, I noticed that most of the authors were men, so I made a conscious effort to read more work by women. I need a more diverse reading list. Also, I am aware that some of the authors here did terrible things or held beliefs that are unacceptable today, but I love their books so I have put off dealing with their personal histories.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 2nd, 2018 at 10:58
I will be reading more gay fiction this year. I bought James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and will be rereading Tales Of The City.
January 2nd, 2018 at 18:00
Did you get to finish Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels? I did and it was the best reading experience I’ve had in a long time. The characters, places, events are so vividly described in the book that they felt real, maybe because some parts of it reminded me so much of my childhood during the 80’s-90’s, spending summers in San Mateo, Rizal at my grandma’s. I’m going to read it again.
January 4th, 2018 at 15:55
Your review of Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of my favorites. I’ve always put off reading this Hardy classic but I suppose that’s a reason for me to keep rereading that review.
My version of this list is saturated with books I read when I was younger. I wonder if this is the same with you or if the books are spread evenly across the years.
January 4th, 2018 at 17:06
Angus: Bwiset talaga yang Angel Clare na yan. Wimp! Wuss!
Eddie Redmayne plays him in the BBC adaptation starring Gemma Arterton. He looks so fragile, she could beat him up.
January 13th, 2018 at 23:41
I’m glad to find Georges Simenon in your list. Very few Filipinos are acquainted with his work. I discovered him in Kinokuniya, Bangkok in 2015 and have resolved to read one work of his every year. I understand that he published more than 70 books, so it is safe to say that I will live to be at least a hundred years old. I have 7 Simenons in my stack now, including The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, which I got for myself just this Christmas. Seeing this title in the list has made me excited. If only I could read books as fast as Clark Kent.
That said, have a great reading and publishing year this 2018 to you!
January 14th, 2018 at 08:20
caltrask16: Simenon wrote about 500 novels so good luck to you! The Inspector Maigret series is terrific, but I prefer his standalone romans durs like The Engagement. They’re not happy reads, but they’re very satisfying.