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).

1. Homo Sacer — Giorgio Agambin
2. Commedia — Dante Alighieri *
3. Life of Samuel Johnson — James Boswell
4. The Sleepwalkers — Hermann Broch
5. Cecilia — Fanny Burney
6. The Wanderer — Fanny Burney
7. The Anatomy of Melancholy — Robert Burton
8. The Adolescent – Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. Demons — Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. Kingsbridge Series — Ken Follett
11. The Century Trilogy — Ken Follett
12. Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
13. The Good Soldier Svejk — Jaroslav Hasek
14. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas R. Hofstadter
15. Les Misérables — Victor Hugo
16. Roderick Hudson— Henry James
17. The Princess Cassamassima— Henry James
18. The Bostonians— Henry James
19. Finnegans Wake — James Joyce *
20. The Far Pavilions — M. M. Kaye
21. My Struggle — Karl One Knaursgârd [In Progress]
22. The Last Days of Mankind —Karl Kraus
23. The Adventures of Amir hamza — Ghalib Lakhnavi
24. The Kindly Ones: A Novel — Jonathan Littel
25. Harlot’s Ghost — Norman Mailer
26. The Executioner’s Song — Norman Mailer
27. Oswald’s Tale — Norman Mailer
28. Le Morte d’Arthur — Thomas Malory
29. Joseph and His Brothers — Thomas Mann
30. Your Face Tomorrow — Javier Marías
31. Shadow Country — Peter Matthiessen
32. Women and Men — Joseph McElroy
33. From the Terrace — John O’Hara
34. A Rage To Live — John O’Hara
35. Metamorphoses — Ovid
36. Gormenghast Trilogy — Mervyn Peake
37. Cantos — Ezra Pound [In Progress]
38. Weymouth Sands — John Cowper Powys
39. A Glastonbury Romance — John Cowper Powys
40. Owen Glendower — John Cowper Powys
41. Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages — John Cowper Powys
42. À la recherche du temps perdu — Marcel Proust [In Progress]
43. Gargantua and Pantagruel — Francois Rabelais *
44. Clarissa Harlowe; or The History of a Young Lady — Samuel Richardson *
45. Shantaram: A Novel — Gregory David Roberts
46. Mercy of a Rude Stream — Henry Roth [In Progress]
47. The Raj Quartet — Paul Scott
48. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
49. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia – Sir Philip Sidney
50. The Making of Americans — Gertrude Stein
51. The Wandering Jew — Eugene Sue
52. The Mystery of Paris — Eugene Sue
53. History of the Peloponnesian War — Thucydides
54. The Big Green Tent — Ludmila Ulitskaya
55. The Web and the Rock — Thomas Wolfe
56. You Can’t Go Home Again — Thomas Wolfe