I think DG brought this up at the main site and, well, I will try to accomplish it.

So far:
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
Alice's Adventures Through Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Impressions of Africa by Raymond Roussel
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York by Stephen Crane
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Conversions by Harry Mathews
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
Indian Summer by William Dean Howell
The Unknown Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
Mr. Dooley in Peace and War by Finley Peter Dunne
Pudd'nhead Wilso by Mark Twain
Somebody in Boots by Nelson Algren
Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren
Shadows in the Fields by Ludovic Masse
A Man of Fifty by Goethe
The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
Heaven's My Destination by Thornton Wilder
Peter Ibbetson by George du Maurier
A Life by Guy de Maupassant
In the Midst of Life by Ambrose Bierce
Strictly Business by O. Henry

Started (and probably should continue reading):
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Mosquitoes by William Faulkner

Currently Reading:
Back Home by Irvin S. Cobb


Books that I am going to read soon but will probably hurt my chances of finishing 50:
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

Recommendations are welcome. So are encouragements.

awesome! My pace has been slowing since I started working 5 days a week but I'm almost finished #9 of the year.

hey gaston, sorry i havent gotten yer msg til just now its been a buys coupla weeks for me w/ work and the tlc 1000

Life... might be a good place to start, but i'd also recommend starting with A Void which is where i started and is still my favorite, plus it's shorter which might need to be a factor since you've got an extensive to-read list going

i havent heard of Little Girls Breathe... or Great Fire, i'll have to check those out - i have Conversions coming up soon as well, but i am (or was) mostly digging nonfiction stuff right now (Wm James, bought some Kant ive always meant to get to, researching some other philosophy-ish dudes i should check out, etc)

keep me posted how it goes!

Yeah, same here. I thought I would never say this, but I am very glad that I get to ride the train. If it wasn't for my commute, I wouldn't have finished any books this year.

What's your job?


No big deal, I can see you are very busy.


Thanks for the suggestions! Perhaps A Void would be a better place to start as far as Perec goes. If I am not mistaking, didn't DG start off there as well? I might as well make it a tradition.


I know very little of Little Girls Breathe -- the copy I have is very old and without a synopsis, but I have been interested in the author and this is the only book of his I have found that is in English.
The Great Fire of London is apparently a masterpiece or something. That's what everybody says.


Now that you've asked.
Since last update:
-The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
-The Conversions by Harry Mathews: This was a lot of fun to read. From the first chapter Mathews clarified that he was a direct disciple of Raymond Roussel -- perhaps a little too much. But there is still a very tender treatment of the characters with some of the most clever wordplay I've read.

Questions/discussions are also encouraged.

I work in a bookstore.

Train rides are great for reading. I took the train to Montreal about a month ago (~6 hours) and got a lot of reading done, finished most of Dubliners and about half of that ridiculous Bukowski book...

...why am I online? This is free time I'm wasting! Time to read.

No way! I also read all of Dubliners on a train, in approximately three round-trips.


I need to get the internet out of my system.

Nevermind Faulkner, Don Quixote please.

For you? For me? I've been meaning to read it. My next "classic".

trains/buses/subways are a reader's secret weapon, now that im back to driving i never find enough time

good to hear abt Conversions, i was thinking about some strategery for when i finish the one im on, i think i have 3 quicker reads first (Body Artist by DeLillo, The Eye by Nabakov, Leaves... by Niebuhr) but then im gettin to that one

The Conversions is probably a lot more brilliant than I made it out to be. The first chapter is so awesome and everything I expected to read from an Oulipo book --- though, this is my first book by anyone in that group. But the ending was something of a bummer, I don't know why, really.

I try to organize my reading schedule, but I fail miserably. My obsessions with literature fluctuate constantly. Well, this is true with my obsessions in everything. Last week all I wanted to do was read master criminal novels, and now that I am reading Don Quixote, all I want to do is read chivalry books. Organization is impossible.


FYI: It is
I feel like I have read 3 novels already, but in reality I've only read 1/10 of the book. Which is exciting in its own way.

I've finished Don Quixote! Uh, two months later.

Now, time to knock down an even bigger book:

That sounds amazing, look forward to reports... hint hint...

I've only read 200 or so pages but it is pretty much the coolest writing I've ever read in my life. Burton's style is so robust and obsessive, though dry and semi-self-depreciating, his personality is present through every sentence despite the fact that this is practically a medical journal. Plus there are chapters on Demons and Witches & Magicians and how they cause melancholy. It's full of life changing self realizations.

Also, according to Burton himself, he wrote a book on melancholy just so he wouldn't get melancholy from idleness.

Finished Anatomy of Melancholy This book is probably my gateway to ancient Greek and Renaissance poetry and philosophy. I have an overabundance of references to catch up to, which will probably take me years to indulge through. The book itself was excellent, fascinating insight into human intellect and habit, and not mention the exemplary prose.

Now reading: Indian Summer by William Dean Howells

Finished Indian Summer by William Dean Howells, charming.

Also started and finished The Unknown Masterpiece with Gambara by Honore de Balzac, exhilerating!

Now reading: On The Nature of Things by Lucretius.

Actually, I'm reading The Stories of JF Powers.

What I mean by this is that I am reading The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I also have a couple of side projects going on, which I won't attribute to my numerical goal for the year:

-Essays, Michel de Montaigne to be specific though I might dally onwards to others.
-Poetry, classics especially.

Updates promised.

A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man =

... going to start Ulysses in about 20 minutes.

Also, for anyone interested: Roussel is the subject of Jacques Rivette's new feature, apparently.

Eek! From the way things are looking, my count is going to be way off my goal