Bucket List

These are the books that I really want to read before I die but might represent a challenge, usually due to the size of the book. I often have to wait for the right time which in the past had involved a week or two on vacation when I could concentrate on my reading, usually at the Jersey Shore but also on a lazy Caribbean cruise. What with the ability to read more and more brought to me by CoVid-19, I have added a technique of reading an eclectic collection of books and if there’s still time in the month, reading one of the really big or difficult titles, usually from this Bucket List.

Note that I have read some of these but with some impediment, like an abridged edition or a bewildered understanding, and more than one title is on this list because I abandoned finishing it, either because of literary exhaustion or scheduling urgency (especially when I was at university).

Homo Sacer — Giorgio Agambin
Commedia — Dante Alighieri *
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present — Jacques Barzun
Life of Samuel Johnson — James Boswell
Cecilia — Fanny Burney
The Wanderer — Fanny Burney
The Anatomy of Melancholy — Robert Burton
Kingsbridge Series — Ken Follett
The Century Trilogy — Ken Follett
The Magician’s Trilogy — Lev Grossman
Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
The Good Soldier Svejk — Jaroslav Hasek
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas R. Hofstadter
Les Misérables — Victor Hugo
Some Came Running — James Jones
Finnegans Wake — James Joyce *
The Far Pavilions — M. M. Kaye
The Last Days of Mankind —Karl Kraus
The Adventures of Amir hamza — Ghalib Lakhnavi
Three Kingdoms — Luo Guanzhong
Harlot’s Ghost — Norman Mailer
The Executioner’s Song — Norman Mailer
Oswald’s Tale — Norman Mailer
Le Morte d’Arthur — Thomas Malory
Joseph and His Brothers — Thomas Mann
Your Face Tomorrow — Javier Marías
Shadow Country — Peter Matthiessen
Women and Men — Joseph McElroy
From the Terrace — John O’Hara
Gormenghast Trilogy — Mervyn Peake
Cantos — Ezra Pound [In Progress]
A Glastonbury Romance — John Cowper Powys
Owen Glendower — John Cowper Powys
Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages — John Cowper Powys
À la recherche du temps perdu — Marcel Proust [In Progress]
Gargantua and Pantagruel — Francois Rabelais *
Clarissa Harlowe; or The History of a Young Lady — Samuel Richardson *
Juliet — Le Marquise de Sade
Being and Nothingness – Jean-Paul Sartre
The Raj Quartet — Paul Scott
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia – Sir Philip Sidney
The Making of Americans — Gertrude Stein
The Wandering Jew — Eugene Sue
The Mystery of Paris — Eugene Sue
History of the Peloponnesian War — Thucydides
Rising Up & Rising Down — William T. Vollmann
Imperial — William T. Vollmann
The Big Green Tent — Ludmila Ulitskaya
Kristin Lavransdatter — Sigrid Undset
Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton — Richard S. Westfall