Charlotte Sophie

Thought I would mark this moment in blog prosperity...had a beautiful baby girl this morning. Very tired (me and abby) and very sweet and gorgeous (her).

Because I Can't Post This Photo Enough

Make that THESE photos:




No further comment.

Getting Off The Island

This week's odd "first part of a three part finale" episode of Lost was great. I know some people are giving up on the show, but I can't figure out why...it's been a great, great season.

Here's a screenshot of one scene, when Sun, Jin and others are getting on the small watercraft to head out to the tanker:



And our dialogue:

Abby: Um, who are those other people who are getting on the boat with Sun, Jin and Aaron?

Me: Those are the people who are definitely going to die.

....

Abby: Right.

Meet Your Douche Nozzle: Kevin James

It's been awhile since I featured a Douche Nozzle of the Week, but Kevin James (not the King of Queens, some Republican radio talk show host pictured here in Official Republican Wear) takes the cake here.

On Chris Matthews show to presumably defend President Bush's loathsome words today to the Israeli Knesset suggesting that some unnamed Democrats were appeasers like Neville Chamberlain, James starts screaming immediately about how justified it was. (Somehow, I doubt he defended the Dixie Chicks so stridently.)

What's hilarious is that seemingly out of nowhere, Matthews asks him what Chamberlain actually DID that was so wrong. James essentially stutters and stammers saying, "He was an appeaser! He appeased!" Finally, he admits he doesn't know.

Think about that for a second. That's 10th grade Social Studies stuff right there. Chamberlain gave away half of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in a failed effort to save England and France itself from being invaded. (Yeah...that didn't work.) THAT is appeasement, the giving away the store in a pathetic effort to not get hurt yourself. Appeasement is giving the bully your lunch money every week so he doesn't beat you up. Diplomacy is talking to him and trying to talk him out of it. It might not work, but those are clearly two different things.

Yet, I digress. KEVIN JAMES DIDN'T KNOW WHAT NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN DID. It's not entirely clear he actually even knows WHO Chamberlain was. Bush said it, James just read the talking points and regurgitated them. That's fucking hysterical.

This is really just a priceless video. Watch it if you have the time.

1001 Books

Courtesy of "1 more chapter," this is a list of the 1001 books you should read before you die. Lists like this are made to be argued over (and I have one chief one below), but in general I was very happy to see lots of Auster and Murakami on this list, even if the specific titles by them are a bit questionable. (Timbuktu? Really? Or Sputnik Sweetheart instead of Norwegian Wood?)

Books marked in bold I've already read, books in italics I own but have yet to read.

By my estimate, I've read about 10%, or 100 of these. And I own maybe another 10% that are sitting unread on the shelves. Of the titles I haven't marked one way or the other, I know of a great deal of them but either haven't bought them yet or simply don't plan to.

And then...there are a LOT of other titles I've never even heard of.

Just a few quibbles...where the hell is The Road by Cormac McCarthy? How does Glamorama make this list and that doesn't? And where the hell is Wallace Stegner or Nick Hornby? I can understand Hornby (though there's plenty of fun, light-hearted stuff on this list - but Stegner's omission is actually pretty embarassing. Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety should be here without question.

It's a very long list - um, 1,001 books long specifically - so you'll have to drop below the fold to read it all in its deliciousness.



2000s
1.Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
6. The Sea – John Banville
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
25. The Double – José Saramago
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
27. Unless – Carol Shields
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
32. Shroud – John Banville
33. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia – George Saunders

1900s
70. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
71. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
72. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
73. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
74. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
75. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
77. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
78. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
79. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
80. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
83. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
84. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
85. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
86. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
88. Another World – Pat Barker
89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
91. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
93. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
94. Great Apes – Will Self
95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
96. Underworld – Don DeLillo
97. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
98. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
99. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
100. The Untouchable – John Banville
101. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
102. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
103. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
104. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
105. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
106. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
107. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
108. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
110. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
112. The Information – Martin Amis
113. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
114. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
115. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
116. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
118. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
119. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
120. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
121. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
122. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
123. Land – Park Kyong-ni
124. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
127. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
130. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
131. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
132. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
136. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
137. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
138. Complicity – Iain Banks
139. On Love – Alain de Botton
140. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
141. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
142. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
144. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
146. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
147. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
148. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
149. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
150. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
151. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
152. Indigo – Marina Warner
153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
154. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
155. Jazz – Toni Morrison
156. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
157. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
158. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
159. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
160. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
161. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
162. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
163. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
164. Arcadia – Jim Crace
165. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
167. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
168. Mao II – Don DeLillo
169. Typical – Padgett Powell
170. Regeneration – Pat Barker
171. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
173. Wise Children – Angela Carter
174. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
175. Amongst Women – John McGahern
176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
177. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
178. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
179. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
180. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
181. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
182. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
183. Possession – A.S. Byatt
184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
185. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
186. A Disaffection – James Kelman
187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
188. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
189. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
190. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
191. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
192. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
193. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
194. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
197. London Fields – Martin Amis
198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
201. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
202. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
204. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
205. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
206. Libra – Don DeLillo
207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
210. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
211. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
212. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
213. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
214. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
217. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
218. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
219. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
220. World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
221. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
222. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
223. Beloved – Toni Morrison
224. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
228. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
229. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
230. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
231. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
232. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
233. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
234. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
235. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
238. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
239. A Maggot – John Fowles
240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
241. Contact – Carl Sagan
242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
244. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
245. White Noise – Don DeLillo
246. Queer – William Burroughs
247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
248. Legend – David Gemmell
249. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
250. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
251. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
252. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
257. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
258. Neuromancer – William Gibson
259. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
261. Shame – Salman Rushdie
262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
263. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
264. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
265. Waterland – Graham Swift
266. The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
267. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
268. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
269. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
270. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
271. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
273. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
277. The Newton Letter – John Banville
278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
279. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
280. The Names – Don DeLillo
281. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
284. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
285. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
286. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
287. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
288. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
289. Rites of Passage – William Golding
290. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
292. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
294. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
295. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
297. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
298. Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
299. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
300. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
303. The World According to Garp – John Irving
304. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
306. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
307. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
308. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
309. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
311. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
312. The Shining – Stephen King
313. Dispatches – Michael Herr
314. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
315. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
316. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
317. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
318. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
319. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
321. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
322. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
323. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
324. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
325. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
326. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
328. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
329. Fateless – Imre Kertész
330. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
331. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
332. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
333. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
334. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
335. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
336. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
338. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
341. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
342. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
343. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
344. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
345. Crash – J.G. Ballard
346. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
347. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
348. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
349. Sula – Toni Morrison
350. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
351. The Breast – Philip Roth
352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
353. G – John Berger
354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
355. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
356. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
357. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
359. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
360. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
361. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
362. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
363. The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
364. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
366. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
369. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
371. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
372. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
374. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
376. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
377. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
378. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
379. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
380. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
381. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
382. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
383. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
384. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
385. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
386. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
387. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
388. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
389. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
392. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
393. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
394. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
395. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
396. Chocky – John Wyndham
397. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
398. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
400. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
401. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
402. The Joke – Milan Kundera
403. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
404. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
405. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
406. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
407. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
409. The Magus – John Fowles
410. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
411. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
412. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
414. Things – Georges Perec
415. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
416. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
418. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
419. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
420. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
422. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
423. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
424. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
425. Herzog – Saul Bellow
426. V. – Thomas Pynchon
427. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
428. The Graduate – Charles Webb
429. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
430. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
432. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
435. The Collector – John Fowles
436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
438. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
439. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
441. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
442. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
443. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
447. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
448. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
449. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
452. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
453. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
454. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
455. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
458. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
460. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
461. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
462. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
463. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
464. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
466. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
468. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
469. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
471. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
472. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
475. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
476. The End of the Road – John Barth
477. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
479. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
480. Voss – Patrick White
481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
482. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
483. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
485. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
486. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
487. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
488. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
489. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
491. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
493. The Floating Opera – John Barth
494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
496. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
497. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
498. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
500. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
501. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
502. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
503. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
504. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
505. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
506. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
507. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
509. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
510. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
511. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
513. Watt – Samuel Beckett
514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
515. Junkie – William Burroughs
516. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
517. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
518. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
519. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
520. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
521. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
522. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
523. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
524. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
528. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
530. The Rebel – Albert Camus
531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
532. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
533. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
534. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
535. The Third Man – Graham Greene
536. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
540. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
541. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
543. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
544. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
545. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
546. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
548. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
549. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
550. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
551. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
552. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
553. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
554. The Victim – Saul Bellow
555. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
556. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
557. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
558. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
559. The Plague – Albert Camus
560. Back – Henry Green
561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
562. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
565. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
567. Loving – Henry Green
568. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
569. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
570. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
571. Transit – Anna Seghers
572. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
573. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
575. Caught – Henry Green
576. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
577. Embers – Sandor Marai
578. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
579. The Outsider – Albert Camus
580. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
581. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
582. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
583. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
585. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
586. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
588. Native Son – Richard Wright
589. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
590. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
591. Party Going – Henry Green
592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
594. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
595. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
596. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
597. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
598. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
599. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
600. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
602. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
604. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
606. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
609. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
611. The Years – Virginia Woolf
612. In Parenthesis – David Jones
613. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
614. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
615. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
616. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
617. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
618. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
620. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
621. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
624. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
625. Independent People – Halldór Laxness
626. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
627. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
628. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
629. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
630. England Made Me – Graham Greene
631. Burmese Days – George Orwell
632. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
633. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
634. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
635. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
637. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
638. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
640. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
641. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
642. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
644. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
645. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
646. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
648. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
650. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
651. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
652. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
653. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
654. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
655. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
657. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
658. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
659. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
661. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
662. Passing – Nella Larsen
663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
664. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
665. Living – Henry Green
666. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
667. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
668. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
669. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
670. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
672. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
673. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
674. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
676. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
677. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
678. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
679. Quartet – Jean Rhys
680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
681. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
682. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
683. Nadja – André Breton
684. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
685. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
688. Amerika – Franz Kafka
689. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
690. Blindness – Henry Green
691. The Castle – Franz Kafka
692. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
693. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
694. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
696. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
697. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
700. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
701. The Trial – Franz Kafka
702. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
703. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
704. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
705. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
706. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
707. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
708. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
709. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
710. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
711. Cane – Jean Toomer
712. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
713. Amok – Stefan Zweig
714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
715. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
716. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
718. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
719. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
720. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
721. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
722. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
723. Ulysses – James Joyce
724. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
725. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
727. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
729. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
730. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
732. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
733. Summer – Edith Wharton
734. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
735. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
737. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
738. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
739. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
740. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
742. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
744. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
745. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
746. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
749. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
750. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
751. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
754. Howards End – E.M. Forster
755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
757. Martin Eden – Jack London
758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
762. The Iron Heel – Jack London
763. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
765. Mother – Maxim Gorky
766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
768. Young Törless – Robert Musil
769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
776. The Ambassadors – Henry James
777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
778. The Immoralist – André Gide
779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
785. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s
786. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
787. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
792. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
793. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
794. Dracula – Bram Stoker
795. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
796. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
798. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
800. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
801. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
802. Born in Exile – George Gissing
803. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
805. News from Nowhere – William Morris
806. New Grub Street – George Gissing
807. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
808. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
810. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
811. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
812. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
813. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
814. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
815. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
816. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
817. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
818. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
819. She – H. Rider Haggard
820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
822. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
823. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
824. Germinal – Émile Zola
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
826. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
827. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
828. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
829. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
830. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
832. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
833. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
834. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
835. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
836. Nana – Émile Zola
837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
838. The Red Room – August Strindberg
839. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
841. Drunkard – Émile Zola
842. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
843. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
844. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
847. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
849. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
850. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
851. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
852. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
853. Middlemarch – George Eliot
854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
855. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
856. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
857. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
858. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
860. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
861. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
862. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
864. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
867. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
870. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
874. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
875. Silas Marner – George Eliot
876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
877. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
878. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
879. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
880. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
881. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
882. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
884. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
885. Adam Bede – George Eliot
886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
889. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
890. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
892. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
893. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
894. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
899. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
903. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
905. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
907. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
912. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
914. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
915. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
921. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
923. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
924. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
926. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
927. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
928. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
929. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
930. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
932. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
933. Persuasion – Jane Austen
934. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
935. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
936. Emma – Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
939. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
941. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
942. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s
943. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
944. The Nun – Denis Diderot
945. Camilla – Fanny Burney
946. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
947. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
948. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
949. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
950. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
951. Justine – Marquis de Sade
952. Vathek – William Beckford
953. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
954. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
955. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
956. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
957. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
958. Evelina – Fanny Burney
959. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
960. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
961. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
962. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
963. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
964. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
965. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
966. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
967. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
968. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
969. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
970. Candide – Voltaire
971. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
972. Amelia – Henry Fielding
973. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
974. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
975. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
976. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
977. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
978. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
979. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
980. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
981. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
982. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
984. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
985. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
986. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
988. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700
989. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
990. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
991. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
993. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
995. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
996. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
998. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
1000. Metamorphoses – Ovid
1001. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

How To Politely Call Brian Sabean An Idiot

I love this article so much I want to buy it flowers and chocolates:

Like most baseball folk, general manager Brian Sabean likes to assess his team once it completes one quarter of its schedule. The Giants did so with a 6-3 loss to Houston on Wednesday night, and strange as it might sound, Sabean sees a San Francisco team that can contend.

Not in two seasons, not next season, but in 2008.

"As long as we've got a chance to stay in and around third place, why not?" Sabean said as he stood along the dugout rail and watched his players take batting practice. "Why wouldn't you want to think that way? These guys think that way.

Um...huh? That's what writer Henry Schulman thinks too:

The thought of the Giants competing in 2008 is startling. Some would call it delusional. After all, as Sabean spoke before Tuesday night's victory against Houston, the Giants were 16-23 and on pace to lose 95 games. They are so unsettled, manager Bruce Bochy has used 40 lineups in 41 games.

The Giants are 6-13 on the road. They are second to last in the league in runs scored. A pitcher, Matt Cain, is three homers away from the team lead. They are relying heavily on untested players.

The worst part of this delusion? THIS:

With that in mind, Sabean said he does not contemplate moving his most marketable experienced players before the trade deadline, as many rebuilding teams do. Catcher Bengie Molina and outfielder Randy Winn, both signed through 2009, might yield the most in return. But as of now, Sabean plans to keep them.

Good ol' Sabes MIGHT be trying to ramp up their meager trade value, but I doubt it. He's just not smart enough.

Now, excuse me while I go drive a nail into my temple.

Byrnes and the Red Bats

If you've been wondering why Arizona outfielder Eric Byrnes (who, yes, looks like a moron here in what I hope is a tongue-in-cheek photo) essentially sucks this year -- and if, like me, you have him on your fantasy team, you are probably wondering just that -- then this MIGHT seem like a reason. But it's really just an excuse.

Eric Byrnes has not been allowed to swing his favorite red bats since May 2, when umpire Charlie Reliford informed manager Bob Melvin that the league office had barred the bats because they were not an approved color. Byrnes said he has mixed and matched since, using some of his old bats and borrowing others from teammates. He has six hits in his last 60 at-bats after going 0-for-4 Tuesday.

Red bats or not, you have to make some contact, Byrnsie. (Note that this story doesn't quote Byrnes, who may or may not be talking about this at all. But SOMEONE is pushing this story, and it is just some seriously weak sauce.)

Not a great day for Hill...

When both John Edwards and perhaps more importantly, NARAL, endorse Barack Obama, the writing is clearly on the wall. I suspect she has no real reason to bow out anytime before June 3, but if she has any sense of political future (and she does), it's time to dial it down.

Sigh.

It's somewhat funny, because I was making the exact same point that Bill Clinton is making here - except to prove the complete opposite point.

“I never thought it would be the Democratic Party that didn’t want to count votes in Florida,” he said at a rally at the University of Montana. “I thought that was a Republican strategy -- or strategery as the case may be. And I just ask you all this, do you really believe Florida would be getting this kind of treatment if the vote had turned out the other way?”

First of all, comparing what is going on with Florida right now to the debacle of the 2000 election is way below the belt. If Clinton wants to blame anyone, blame the DNC who imposed the rules, and then the penalties. Hillary agreed to those rules and the penalties and only cares about it now because it's the last gasp she has in this race.

And does Bill or Hillary or ANYONE ELSE think they'd give a rat's ass about those primaries had Obama won? Of course not. Those delegates are going to be seated in Denver, and Florida and Michigan will both be vital to the November election. But rules weren't made to be broken. It's getting very desperate, and it sucks to watch someone I admire as much as Bill Clinton stooping to this level.

The Coolest Thing You'll See All Day

Just trust me on that.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

My New Favorite Joke

Found, of all places, on ThingsYoungerThanMcCain.com.

A polar bear asks his Mother, "Mom, am I a real polar bear?"

"Yes darling, of course you are," his mother answered.

"Are you SURE I’m a polar bear?"

"Yes dear,” his mother replied, “You are. I am, your sister is, your father is, we’re all polar bears."

"Are you POSITIVE?"

"Yes, yes, for the last time, you’re a polar bear! Why do you keep asking?"

"Because I’m fucking freezing!"

Dear Mike Norman of Cobb, GA

You are a gigantic asshole. Why? Because you created a shirt comparing Barack Obama to a monkey. Sure, it's a cartoon monkey, but a monkey nonetheless. What's worse is you won't even admit it's racist, wrong and completely insulting.

"I'm saying out loud what everyone in this town whispers," Norman said.

...

Norman said those offended are "hunting for a reason to be mad" and insisted he is "not a racist."

Why picture Obama as Curious George? "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George," Norman said.

He said it's just a coincidence that the character he chose for the t-shirt is a monkey.

What really irks me is that people from the South are not, in general, racists. But the South has a terrible legacy of racism and morons like Mike Norman not only don't help that rep, they exacerbate it. I'm glad people are protesting this bar, and the ignorant racists who don't think it's somehow wrong to compare a human being with a monkey are either willfully ignoring the evidence or too stupid to be legally allowed to drink, vote and certainly own a gun.

I really hate the South. I like and love a lot of places and people from that area, but really...shit like this has to stop.

Bill O'Reilly Has Always Been An A-Hole

Sure, I could have said "asshole," but "a-hole" is just funnier.

What do Alaska, the Slinky, Plutonium and the AARP have in common?

They are all YOUNGER than John McCain. And while this site is not nearly as mean-spirited as the Facebook group I joined today called "John McCain is a Decrepit Old Turtle," it's a pretty funny site nonetheless. What site is that? Things Younger than McCain.

Seriously, people talk about what a challenge it will be for a bi-racial candidate (frankly, Obama is alwasy referred to as an African-American or black candidate, even though he's bi-racial) to win in November, but McCain will be 72 entering office if he manages to win. That's really, really old.

Is it why McCain keeps getting things wrong, like whether Iran supports Al Qaeda (they don't, though he's said it several times), or whether the constitution prevents or allows for eminent domain (it prevents it, though he stressed the opposite)?

Probably not. He's probably just misinformed, or makes a few misstatements here and there, like anyone else. On the other hand...

The Thinking Chair

As some of you know, I write for a few fantasy websites (that's fantasy sports, not other stuff, sicko)...in addition to writing for AOL Fanhouse, I've been helping some great folks in the development of RotoExperts.com, and writing a column called The Thinking Chair for them.

Well, it's been syndicated by SI.com's fantasy site, FanNation and here's the first article. Check it out, and of course, head on over to RotoExperts as well to see all the great writing over there.

A Survivor Wrapup and Primer

So, last night Parvati Shallow (yes, that's her last name) won Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites. It was by all accounts one of the better seasons, not the least of which was due to people getting "blind-sided" in almost every Tribal Council. I think Jeff Probst - the best host reality TV has ever seen - played that up a bit much, but it was still always exciting to watch.

So, did Parv deserve to win? I suppose so. After last week's debacle, when Erik - aka Leif Garrett - stunningly handed away the immunity idol in what has justly been called the dumbest move in the history of the game, we were left with a final four of fan Natalie and favorites Cirie, Amanda and Parvati. Though I could care less about the "girl power" aspect of an all female final four, and the "stirring the witches cauldron" dance got old quick, it was a nice change up. But once Amanda won the immunity challenge, it was fairly obvious Natalie was going home. As should have been the case, since she was both a threat to win immunity in the next round (though the girls somehow all assumed there wouldn't be one), and could have made a good case to the jury that she'd played a strong, strategic game.

More importantly, Cirie, Parv and Amanda had a history and that wasn't going to change. In the SHOCKING final immunity challenge, Parvati actually lost very quickly, and Cirie did a good job of hanging in there, but Amanda perserved again. Which makes it two Survivors she not only made the final two, but won the last two challenges in each.

And lost both times.

She would have lost had she brought Cirie, but I was sure that she was simply more likeable than Parvati and would get the majority of the jury's votes. (James said as much during the final TC.) But once again, it seems that the jury - despite an emotionally based vote here or there - favors former loyalty or game play.

Which means yet again, Amanda blew it at the final TC. While we never see everything, I can't understand why she wouldn't have mentioned how well she played off having the immunity idol - and that she'd asked to be sent to Exile Island to find it. That was one of the best moments of the game and for those, like Eliza, who seemed to be struggling to decide who to vote for, it could have been persuasive.

So what makes a Survivor winner? Let's go to the tape. A pre-emptive shot: I know this is geeky, but I loves me some Survivor and if you don't? You lose.

• LUCK. It's clear that especially early on, what tribe you get assigned to and the chance of injuring yourself early are big things you can't prepare for. Whether it was Tracey this year (who folks seem to think was worthy of going farther), Jessie in Africa getting sick, or the slew of folks like Michael in Season 2, James and Jonathan Penner this year who had to be taken out for injury, luck plays a big role.


• Smart, strategic gameplay. The jury talks a big game, but they tend to reward those who played smartly. If it was a popularity contest (as the contestants always seem to feel it is as they get closer to the end), Amanda would have walked away with it. Todd in Survivor China, who also beat Amanda, was a little runt who turned on everyone - but no one could deny he'd played smartly. That being said...


• Physical strength...in moderation. I am sure if I noodle on it for awhile, I can find a winner who wasn't physically fit, but in general you have to win a few challenges to stay alive. This is why Erik actually had a chance at the end, but he was too naive to understand the rest of the game. But the "in moderation" part is also key - a guy like Ozzy can't win, because everyone is terrified that he'll never lose. As soon as a guy (or girl) like that doesn't win immunity, someone is going to have the idea to kick them off.


• It isn't rocket science. The game's over used subtitle is "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast." The outwit parts goes to the strategic gameplay, and the outplay is the physical (and sometimes mental) aspect of the challenges. And of course, the entire point of the game is to outlast the others. But the sheer fact is that people make dumb moves on this show because they out think themselves. Ozzy and Jason didn't use immunity idols that they had because they convinced themselves, in spite of the evidence, that they didn't need to. Erik got convinced that he, and he alone, had said such nasty things to the potential jurors that he could never win TC without a grand gesture. And the fans as a group knocked themselves out of the game far too early because of the same over thinking. This is why a smart, but not too smart, girl like Parvarti can win, where folks like Cirie and Yao Man are simply too smart to win.

A few more notes:

The $100,000 they give to the fans favorites is nice for the winner, and I'm certainly glad that James has now pocketed $200K as a result. But it's a bit contrary to the game and I blame Rupert for this.

I didn't pay all that much attention during the reunion show (though Survivor cleverly delays the announcement of the winner until then to ensure folks DO watch), but I did hear Ozzy make two statements that were decidedly lame. One was, in response to Probst asking if he and Amanda were still an item, "Oh, you know how these Survivor women are, Jeff!" That was a not-so-veiled reference to the fact that Probst has been dating Julie Berry from Survivor Vanuatu for a few years now. (And for anyone who argues about who the hottest survivor ever has been, let me not only present you with this photographic evidence but state that Probst has seen them all, and this is who he wanted. I'm just sayin.

Ozzy also said something along the lines of, "I lost my job as a waiter and now I'm cleaning toilets." Again, Ozzy ain't so subtle. This is a reference to Denise (the lunchlady) who famously said something similar at the reunion show and got show producer Mark Burnett to pony up $50K on the spot in sympathy. It turned out not to be exactly an honest admission from Denise, and she's been very public about how bad she felt. So, a real class move by the Oz man. (Though I will say, he undoubtedly feels pretty torn that he's never won a game that he's essentially built for. That being said, he's dating Amanda so I'm sure his life isn't terrible.)

For a show that essentially began the so-called Reality TV movement, Survivor really isn't showing signs of age. It's constantly tweaking the format without upsetting the basic structure and Probst's presence is a key to all of that. His constant jabs at contestants like Penner and Johnny Fairplay this season were great, and he keeps the show on solid footing. The show is moving back to Africa, though it appears to be a much less desolate area than Season 4, which many thought was the worst of all seasons. I'm very much looking forward to it, because until proven otherwise, it's the reality show to beat.

Of Course It's Cancelled

Why would a struggling "network" want to keep a pretty amusing, original show on the air?

Instead, Aliens in America has been given the axe. We'll miss you, Raja.

I Am A Sore Loser

Pretty amusing opening sketch from last night's SNL:



And no, I didn't see it. I was asleep because I'm old.

Yeccch We Can

So, there's a commercial on these days for Electrolux, which I guess makes home appliances. It stars Kelly Ripa, who jets from the set to hosting a party to putting her kids to sleep. I suppose I'm supposed to think, "Wow, what a great person who can juggle all those things. And Electrolux makes it happen!"

Instead, all I can think is, "Man, Kelly Ripa is one emaciated looking twig."

A Specious Argument Falls Apart

Hillary Clinton’s performance in the so-called “big states” is perhaps her last, desperate claim on the Democratic nomination. It doesn’t matter that New York, Illinois and California, for example, are almost certainly going to vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is – that’s her stake, since she seems to feel strongly her performance outshines Barack Obama’s in those areas.

So let’s take a look.

I was surprised last night when I heard that North Carolina is the 10th most populous state in the nation – I never would have guessed that. But indeed it is. In fact, here are the top ten in population, as of 2007 according to Ye Olde Wikipedia.

1. California


2. Texas


3. New York


4. Florida


5. Illinois


6. Pennsylvania


7. Ohio


8. Michigan


9. Georgia


10. North Carolina


11. New Jersey


12. Virginia

Those mathematically inclined will notice that this top ten list includes twelve states. (Even though blogger somehow refuses to use the correct HTML code to assign numbers, and instead gives it bullets. Grr.)

That’s because two of the top ten, Florida and Michigan, are states in dispute because their party officials broke the nomination rules and – before the primaries began – Clinton and Obama both agreed that the results wouldn’t count. So, I’m adding in the next two states for arguments sake.

Of these, Obama has won: Texas (yes, he did – he got more electoral votes there), Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Clinton has won California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey.

In other words, they’ve each won 5 of the 10 biggest states in the country. And if you don't include New Jersey and Virginia, they've each won 4 of the 8 non-contested states. (Sure, adding up the populations of each state favors Clinton, but that takes an already extremely shaky argument and pushes it over the edge of reason.)

Even if you want to give Texas to Clinton – which is, once again, incorrect, since Obama received more electoral votes – the argument is incredibly weak. And at this point, it’s really all the campaign has.

I’m just sayin.

Who said this?

“This primary election on Tuesday is a game changer. This is going to make a huge difference in what happens going forward. The entire country – probably even a lot of the world is looking to see what North Carolina decides.”

Yep, that's right. Hillary Clinton said it. Well, North Carolina apparently decided it liked Barack Obama by a very large margin (60/40 at this point). I'm not saying that she'll actually acknowledge she ever said it or make a decision based on this, but she said this, just a few days ago.

Yes, we can!

Gnarly

I'll admit that I really, really like this song, the latest single by Gnarls Barkley. And since Justin Timberlake is once again making fun of himself (or, at the least, willing to make himself look silly), I have to give him a few reluctant props as well.

Enjoy the tunage.

A question for Hillary supporters

Since most everyone I know now favors Obama over HRC, I have to post this to a blog. I think it’s fairly obvious that anyone running for elected office craves power in some way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t motivated by a desire to do good, to help the community and country – but you don’t want the spotlight on you unless … well, you want the spotlight on you. But part of the reason that the kind of people who get elected tend to be “folksy” and “one of us” is that no one wants to SEE how brazenly political the candidates are. This almost entirely explains the appeal of our current president, I believe. (That is, to the 22% of people who still oddly approve of him.) And while I laugh at her pretending to be a gun lover, I get that. It's part of the game.

But not everything is. For that, check out below the jump.

I’ve always wondered about why folks can’t stand Hillary, and while some of the things she’s done this campaign thus far have helped explain it, I’ve never truly been disappointed with her until recently. Digging up dirt on Obama and flinging it around will, undoubtedly, road-test him for the general election, and while there are better ways of doing it than the Clinton campaign has, I can’t really fault them too much.

But lately, it’s really gotten sick making. The gas-tax holiday is a ridiculous pander. The fact that not only can she not name a single economist who thinks it’s a good idea, but that she justifies it by saying “I’m not going to throw my lot in with a bunch of economists” is jarring. This from a woman who wants to run on the success of her husband’s candidacy, which famously used an internal saying “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” This from a woman who recognizes that the economy is the single most pressing issue to most voters – she doesn’t care what economists think? Of course she does. She just knows this is nothing but a political pander. What’s refreshing is that Obama refuses to take the bait, and his framing of this has been brilliant and hopefully effective.

She doubles down in the idiocy department, however, by saying now that she’s going to get rid of OPEC. How, exactly, is she going to do that? (She’s not.)
It’s just an easy target, just like the gas tax holiday.

Now, of course Obama does this too – he seems to be in favor of a clean coal initiative in Kentucky which is poppycock, and like all politicians won’t readily admit that ethanol is a total waste of taxpayer subsidies. But the actual brazen craving of power that Clinton is showing right now looks very ugly.

Calling Obama an elitist is also just wrong...it tables it up for McCain and it is just preposterous to call HIM elitist when she's a rich white woman who went to Yale and who made over $100 million in the last seven years. It's pandering to the working class she pretends to be part of.

So, my question for Clinton supporters is – doesn’t this bother you? When coupled with the fact that she is trying to rewrite the rules of what counts (it’s delegates! No, wait…it’s popular votes! But only in states that I won!), doesn’t that just feel desperate?

Drive Thru Coffee

Have I mentioned how much I love this? My local franchise that provides this insanely helpful feature is java detour, and I know that Starbucks has locations that also have drive thru ordering. It's insane how valuable those few minutes I save from parking, waiting in line, etc. feel. What's more, the service is fantastic (when there's a backup, employees run out to the cars and take orders from the cars waiting in line), the coffee is delicious and my commute is ever so much more delightful.

It's not a huge stretch to understand why I love this -- coffee is one of my chief vices and getting it quickly is only going to be something that makes me even happier.

Just thought I'd mention it.

The King Stay The King

Yesterday, via Alan Sepinwall's blog, I saw the following image which is an incredibly awesome artist's attempt to merge The Simpsons with The Wire. (Yes, you read that right.)


It reminded me that this is perhaps the greatest scene in one of the greatest TV shows of all time. And yes, I know it's trite to talk about how great The Wire is, or was, but there you go.

Naturally, this scene makes a hell of a lot more sense if you've seen the prior two episodes (this is in the third episode of the 1st season), but it's damn good on its own.



I miss The Wire.