Traditionally I would to sit around the café at Barnes & Noble making my Christmas list of books I considered reading during the upcoming year. Then I bought a fancy espresso machine and nowadays I tend to stay home. But I still make that annual list of the next year’s potential reading.

The list is probably one of the most flexible lists I make and the number of titles considered is always far greater than the number of books I actually read during the year. You might notice that a large part of the list contains reading from the previous year that I didn’t get to but still want to read. I start off with about 150 books and by the end of the coming year this list will expand to about 250 books (I’ll read about 100 of them).

I love lists so here is this year’s Reading Pool. Note also the reading lists under the menu item “Lists.”

Read=Blue (40) | if unread in a current monthly pool=italics

1. The Poet X — Elizabeth Acevedo
2. The Monkey-Wrench Gang — Edward Albee
3. Lionel Asbo: State of England — Martin Amis
4. Act of the Damned – António Lobo Antunes
5. God: A Human History — Resa Aslan
6. The Automobile Club of Egypt — Alaa Al Aswany
7. Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn — Ace Atkins
8. Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies — Ace Atkins
9. The Testaments — Margaret Atwood
10. Shamanspace — Steve Aylett
11. They Were Counted — Miklós Banffy
12. They Were Divided — Miklós Banffy
13. They Were Found Wanting — Miklós Banffy
14. Humbolt’s Gift — Saul Bellow
15. Monsieur Ouine – Georges Bernanos
16. The Lime Works – Thomas Bernhard
17. The Monkey Link: A Pilgrimage Novel — Andrei Bitov
18. Religion For Atheists — Alain de Botton
19. Armadillo — William Boyd
20. Brazzaville Beach— William Boyd
21. A Good Man In Africa — William Boyd
22. Killoyle, An Irish Farce – Roger Boylan
23. When the Killing’s Done — T. C. Boyle
24. The Terranauts – T. C. Boyle
25. Drop City – T. C. Boyle
26. The Women – T. C. Boyle
27. Riven Rock – T. C. Boyle
28. Lady Audley’s Secret – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
29. Anonymous Celebrity — Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
30. The Sleepwalkers – Hermann Broch
31. The Unknown Quantity – Hermann Broch
32. Thru — Christine Brooke-Rose
33. Between –  Christine Brooke-Rose
34. Father and Son – Larry Brown
35. Hard Case Crime: Slide — Ken Bruen
36. Babel Tower – A. S. Byatt
37. Three Trapped Tigers — G. Cabrera Infante
38. The Hive – Camilo José Cela
39. Tribesmen: A Novella of Supernatural Cannibal Horror — Adam Cesare
40. Moonglow — Michael Chabon
41. The Water Dancer — Ta-Nehisi Coates
42. Lucky Pierre – Robert Coover
43. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
44. The Winners – Julio Cortázar
45. The Enormous Room — E. E. Cummings
46. The Lost Scrapbook – Evan Dara
47. Varieties of Disturbance: Stories – Lydia Davis
48. The End of the Story — Lydia Davis
49. Americana— Don DeLillo
50. Frog — Stephen Dixon
51. Bright Magic: Stories — Alfred Döblin
52. Bucking the Sun — Ivan Doig
53. Schultz — J. P. Donleavy
54. The Adolescent – Fyodor Dostoevsky
55. Island People – Coleman Dowell
56. The Forty-Five – Alexander Dumas
57. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana – Umberto Eco
58. Castle Rackrent — Maria Edgeworth
59. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius — Dave Eggers
60. Zeitoun — Dave Eggers
61. The Librarian — Mikhail Elizarov
62. Glamorama – Brett Easton Ellis
63. Lunar Park – Brett Easton Ellis
64. Boswell – Stanley Elkin
65. The Samurai – Shusaku Endo
66. House of Beauty — Melba Escobar
67. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
68. The Mansion — William Faulkner
69. Pylon – William Faulkner
70. Independence Day— Richard Ford
71. Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder
72. Promise At Dawn — Roman Gary
73. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
74. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
75. Middle C — William H. Gass
76. The Mare — Mary Gaitskill
77. The Glass Palace – Amitav Ghosh
78. The Hungry Tide – Amitav Ghosh
79. Carter Beats the Devil – Glen David Gold
80. She Drove without Stopping – Jaimy Gordon
81. Château d’Argol — Julien Gracq
82. Too Far Afield – Günter Grass
83. Party Going — Henry Green
84. The Heart of the Matter– Graham Greene
85. The Book of Intimate Grammar: A Novel – David Grossman
86. Snow Falling On Cedars — David Guterson
87. The Big Sky — A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
88. The Beirut Hellfire Society — Rawi Hagers
89. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Alex Haley
90. Warlock – Oakley Hall
91. Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
92. Moravian Night — Peter Handke
93. A Pair of Blue Eyes — Thomas Hardy
94. Whistlejacket – John Hawkes
95. God Is Not Great — Christopher Hitchens
96. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages — Tom Holt
97. Serotonin — Michel Houellebecq
98. Là-Bas – J. K. Huysmans
99. Princess Bari — Sok-yong Hwang
100. Three Trapped Tigers – G. Cabrera Infante
101. The Unconsoled – Katsuo Ishiguro
102. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
103. The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden — Jonas Jonasson
104. Second Person Singular — Sayed Kashua
105. The Flaming Corsage — William Kennedy
106. Sometimes a Great Notion — Ken Kesey
107. The Man Who Spoke Snakish — Andrus Kivirähk
108. The Exile — William Kotzwinkle
109. The Melancholy of Resistance — Lásló Krasznahorkai
110. God’s Without Men — Hari Kunzru
111. Independent People – Halldor Laxness
112. The Topeka School — Ben Lerner
113. Elmer Gantry — Sinclair Lewis
114. Complete Stories — Clarice Lispector
115. Martin Eden — Jack London
116. Stories In the Worst Way — Gary Lutz
117. Goth Girl Rising — Barry Lyga
118. The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer
119. The Loved Ones – Alia Mamdouh
120. The Dogs of Riga —Henning Mankell
121. Severance — Ling Ma
122. Adam Buenosayres: A Novel — Leopoldo Marechal
123. The Infatuations — Javier Marías
124. Mother and Child — Carol Maso
125. Lookout Cartridge – Joseph McElroy
126. The Children Act — Ian McEwan
127. Razor Wire Pubic Hair — Carlton Mellick III
128. Mardi — Herman Melville
129. The Ordeal of Richard Feveral — George Meredith
130. Forbidden Colors — Yukio Mishima
131. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
132. The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell
133. Pow! — Mo Yan
134. Big Breasts and Wide Hips — Mo Yan
135. The Revisionists — Thomas Mullen
136. The Green Knight — Iris Murdoch
137. A Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
138. Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle – Vladimir Nabokov
139. House of Incest — Anais Nin
140. Parallel Stories — Péter Nádas
141. The Octopus – Frank Norris
142. A Widow’s Story — Joyce Carol Oates
143. Mudwoman — Joyce Carol Oates
144. The Gravedigger’s Daughter — Joyce Carol Oates
145. A Book of American Martyrs — Joyce Carol Oates
146. Broke Heart Blues — Joyce Carol Oates
147. The Fishermen: A Novel — Chigozie Obioma
148. The Memory Police — Yoko Ogawa
149. The Ginza Ghost and Other Stories — Keikichi Osaka
150. A Tale of Love and Darkness – Amos Oz
151. The Black Book – Orhan Pamuk
152. Towns Without Rivers – Michael Parker
153. An Instance of the Fingerpost – Iain Pears
154. The Thanatos Syndrome — Walker Percy
155. Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl
156. The Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa
157. Monsieur Songe – Robert Pinget
158. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert M. Pirsig
159. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
160. Pamela — Samuel Richardson
161. Larva: A Midsummer Night’s Babel – Julían Ríos
162. Chinatown Angel — A. E. Roman
163. Letting Go – Philip Roth
164. The Humbling — Philip Roth
165. When She Was Good — Philip Roth
166. A Very Stable Genius — Philip Rucker and Carol Leonig
167. Quichotte — Salman Rushdie
168. The Moor’s Last Siggh — Salman Rushdie
169. Memoirs of an Invisible Man — H. F. Saint
170. It Came From Below the Belt — Bradley Sands
171. Baltasar and Blimunda – José Saramago
172. The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump — Robert Sears
173. The Designated Mourner — Wallace Shawn
174. Absurdistan — Gary Shteyngart
175. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook — Gary Shteyngart
176. Quo Vadis — Henryk Sienkiewicz
177. Maigret’s Holiday — Georges Simenon
178. Shosha — Isaac Bashevis Singer
179. The Engineer of Human Souls – Josef Skvoresky
180. In the First Circle – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
181. In America – Susan Sontag
182. Imaginative Quantities of Actual Things – Gilbert Sorrentino
183. Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner
184. The League of Frightened Men — Rex Stout
185. A Memoir of Misfortune — Su Xiaokang
186. The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington
187. The Ogre — Michel Tournier
188. Palm Beach, Finland — Antti Tuomainen
189. Diary of a Blood Donor – Mati Unt
190. Terrorist — John Updike
191. Mac’s Problem — Enrique Vila-Matas
192. Rainbow Stories – William T. Vollmann
193. The Ice-Shirt – William T. Vollmann
194. An Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World – William T. Vollmann
195. Glue — Irvine Welsh
196. The Once and Future King — T. H. White
197. This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It — David Wong
198. I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
199. Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist – Sunil Yapa
200. The Time Invariance of Snow — E. Lily Yu
201. The Debacle— Émile Zola
202. Au Bonheur des Dames — Émile Zola
203. The Miller’s Daughter — Émile Zola

(Next year’s reading pool : subject to change)