End of Summer Reading List

I know one is supposed to compile a books-to-

read list at the start of the summer (in anticipation for all the languid beach days to come) but I've just come up with one. It's just as well I create the list now, I suppose, we haven't had all that much beach weather this summer anyways. Although, I am hoping we'll have some sunny days this weekend when Rox & I go down to the beach in Narragansett.

But it was not my impending beach weekend that compelled me to whip up this list. Rather, all these titles are culled from 501 Must Read Books, which I own (courtesy of the Borders Bargain Books section) and was flipping through and thought, "Hmm, I wonder how many of these 501 I really am SERIOUSLY interested in reading??"

And so this list came to be. And since, I can't just be clear and black& white about things, I had to subclassify into "must reads" and "MUST must reads". Can't ever be simple, you know.

And why am I jotting them down here? Well, partly so I won't lose the list (after taking the trouble to pore over that whole book and compile this) but mostly so's I have a post to proffer. I have been very shabbily delinquent these days...

MUST READ BOOKS (*denotes a MUST MUST)

--CHILDREN'S BOOKS--
1.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz/ L Frank Baum

*2.The Last Unicorn/ Peter Beagle *

3. The Wind in the Willows / Kenneth Grahame

4.Emil & the Detectives /Erich Kastner

5.The Complete Nonsense Books /Edward Lear

*6.Nobody's Boy /Hector Malot*

*7.Five Children & It /E. Nesbit*

*8.The War of the Buttons /Louis Pergoud*

9.The Little Prince /Antoine De SaintExupery

10.Mary Poppins / PL Travers

--CLASSIC FICTION --

*11.Lady Audley's Secret /Mary Elizabeth Braddon*

*12.The Man Who Was Thursday /GK Chesterton*

13.The Moonstone /Wilkie Collins

14.Heart of Darkness /Joseph Conrad

15.Crime & Punishment /Dostoyevsky

16. Madame Bovary /Flaubert

17.Jude the Obscure /Thomas Hardy

*18.Three Men in a Boat /Jerome K. Jerome*

*19.Bliss (& other stories / Katherine Mansfield*

20. A Sicilian Romance /Anne Radcliffe

21. Dracula /Bram Stoker

22. Frankenstein / Mary Shelley

23. The Picture of Dorian Gray /Oscar Wilde

--HISTORY--

24.Flesh in the Age of Reason/ Roy Porter

--MEMOIRS--

25.Aubrey's Brief Lives / John Aubrey

*26.My Left Foot /Christy Brown*

*27.84 Charing Cross Rd /Helene Hanff*

*28.The Pursuit of Love /Nancy Mitford*

--MODERN FICTION--

*29.Take a Girl Like You/ Kingsley Amis*

30.If on a Winter's Night a Traveller /Italo Calvino

*31.The Sound and the Fury /William Faulkner*

*32.Ulysses/ James Joyce*

33.The Executioner's Song /Norman Mailer

*34. Embers/ Sandor Marai*

35.The Third Policeman /Flann O'Brien

36. Gormenghast /Mervyn Peake

37. The Human Stain /Philip Roth

*38.Bonjour Tristesse /Francoise Sagan*

39. Last Exit to Brooklyn /Hubert Selby

40.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie /Muriel Sparks

41. Sophie's Choice /William Styron

42. Felicia's Journey /William Trevor

43. The Accidental Tourist /Anne Tyler

*44. Couples /John Updike*

45.The Group /Mary McCarthy

--SCI-FI--

46.The Stepford Wives /Ira Levin

*47.1984 /George Orwell*

48. The Island of Dr Moreau /HG Wells

49. The Day of the Triffids /John Wyndham

--THRILLERS--

*50. Thus Adonis Was Murdered /Sarah Caudwell*

*51.The Moving Toyshop /Edmund Crispin*

52.Rose at Ten /Marco Denevi

*53.Death in the wrong Room /Anthony Gilbert*

54.Suicide Excepted /Cyril Hare

*55.Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow /Peter Hoeg*

*56. How Like an Angel /Margaret Millar*

57.The Man Who Killed Himself /Julian Symon

*58.The Bride Wore Black/ Cornell Woolrich*

--TRAVEL--

59. A Rose for Winter /Laurie Lee

*60. Cruise of the Snark /Jack London*

*61.Into the Heart of Borneo /Ray O'Hanlon*

*62. Travels with Charley: In Search of America /John Steinbeck*

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Anybody want to start a book club?? I've got about 700 more pages to go on Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True and then I'll commence on any book you say, eh??