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 (11) | if unread in a current monthly pool=italics

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

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