1001 Novels You Must Read Before You Die

Well the Brits have done it again!

An overwhelming list of the proper books to consume to make your life complete.

As a masochist of the first sort.. I can hardly resist!

I downloaded the list.. randomized the order using a trusty excel spreadsheet.. and

ended up with my first ten books to read this summer.

This - on top of - my annual undertaking of the Pulitzer Prize winners!

I will order these from Abe Books (Check this on-line house out if you don't know them)

and see how the selection goes.

Here are the first ten for me. If you want the entire list - email me and I can forward it on to you! ;-)

1 A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
2 Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
3 Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
4 Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
5 Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
6 Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
7 Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
8 The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
9 Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
10 Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon

As always.. any comments on my undertaking are welcome!

Pablo Neruda

I am re-reading my many volumes of Neruda this long week-end.

The 1971 Nobel Laureate is truly amazing - what a voice and soooo prolific too.

I especially like the Captain's Verses. My used 1972 edition is a little dog-eared. It is full of annotations and random thoughts.

But I think that is what makes it special. I love to underline and capture ideas as I read. It makes for a messy book.. but it is very interesting a decade later.

Consider a poem from his third book.. at only 20!

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like the world in your posture of surrender.
My savage peasant body digs through you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
(From "Song I")