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). [Note: 400 + in times of CoVid]

I love lists so here is this year’s Reading Pool. Note also the reading lists under the menu item “Lists.”
Read=Blue (4) To Read=Red
- The Monkey-Wrench Gang — Edward Albee
- Act of the Damned – António Lobo Antunes
- God: A Human History — Resa Aslan
- Monsieur Ouine – Georges Bernanos
- The Lime Works – Thomas Bernhard
- Religion For Atheists — Alain de Botton
- Killoyle, An Irish Farce – Roger Boylan
- Anonymous Celebrity — Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
- The Unknown Quantity – Hermann Broch
- Thru — Christine Brooke-Rose
- Between – Christine Brooke-Rose
- Father and Son – Larry Brown
- Cecilia — Franny Burney
- The Wanderer — Franny Burney
- Moonglow — Michael Chabon
- The Winners – Julio Cortázar
- The Origin of the Species — Charles Darwin
- Guns, Germs, Steel — Jared Diamond
- Bright Magic: Stories — Alfred Döblin
- Bucking the Sun — Ivan Doig
- Island People – Coleman Dowell
- The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana – Umberto Eco
- Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
- The Samurai – Shusaku Endo
- The Crack-up — F. Scott Fitzgeral
- The Mare — Mary Gaitskill
- Promise At Dawn — Roman Gary
- Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story — Elizabeth Gaskell
- She Drove without Stopping – Jaimy Gordon
- Château d’Argol — Julien Gracq
- Too Far Afield – Günter Grass
- Party Going — Henry Green
- The Book of Intimate Grammar: A Novel – David Grossman
- The Magician’s Trilogy — Lev Grossman
- Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Alex Haley
- The Good Soldier Svejk — Jaroslav Hasek
- Whistlejacket – John Hawkes
- I — Wolfgang Hilbig
- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages — Tom Holt
- Là-Bas – J. K. Huysmans
- Captain Saturday — Robert Inman
- The Princess Cassamassima— Henry James
- Some Came Running — James Jones
- The Exile — William Kotzwinkle
- The Last Days of Mankind — Karl Kraus
- God’s Without Men — Hari Kunzru
- Complete Stories — Clarice Lispector
- A Man of Parts — David Lodge
- The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer
- Harlot’s Ghost – Norman Mailer
- The Loved Ones – Alia Mamdouh
- Adam Buenosayres: A Novel — Leopoldo Marechal
- Shadow Country — Peter Matthiesse
- Women and Men — Joseph McElroy
- Forbidden Colors — Yukio Mishima
- The Redbreast — Jo Nesbø
- Nemesis — Jo Nesbø
- A Widow’s Story — Joyce Carol Oates
- My Heart Laid Bare — Joyce Carol Oates
- A Tale of Love and Darkness – Amos Oz
- Towns Without Rivers – Michael Parker
- Time and Chance — Sharon Kay Penman
- Devil’s Brood — Sharon Kay Penman
- Lionheart — Sharon Kay Penman
- The Sunne In Splendour — Sharon Kay Penman
- Monsieur Songe – Robert Pinget
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert M. Pirsig
- A Glastonbury Romance — John Cowper Powys
- Porius — John Cowper Powys
- Owen Glendower — John Cowper Powys
- Maiden Castle — John Cowper Powys
- The Extremes — Christopher Priest
- eXistenZ — Christopher Priest
- Satiristas! — Paul Provenza
- Time Regained — Marcel Proust
- Gargantua & Pantagruel — François Rabelais
- Larva: A Midsummer Night’s Babel – Julían Ríos
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man — H. F. Saint
- The Engineer of Human Souls – Josef Skvoresky
- Imaginative Quantities of Actual Things – Gilbert Sorrentino
- S. — John Updike
- Villages — John Updike
- Rainbow Stories – William T. Vollmann
- The Ice-Shirt – William T. Vollmann
- The Rifles – William T. Vollmann
- An Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World – William T. Vollmann
- Glue — Irvine Welsh
- Skagboys — Irvine Welsh
- This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It — David Wong
- Trash — Amy Yamada
- I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita