A Century of Books

I found this idea in another blog that I really like. The blogger had the goal to read a book from every year in the last century during the year 2012. Now, I'm not as adventurous as that, I know I wouldn't be able to read all those books in one year plus my book club books and any new books friends recommend. So, I started to go through my notes and see which years I already have or which are on my wishlist already and came up with the following list. I will add to the list as soon as I read new books from those years.

1900 - Jerome K. Jerome "Three Men on the Bummel" (Three Men on Wheels)
1901 - Thomas Mann "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (Buddenbrooks)
1902 - Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"
1903 - W.E.B. Du Bois "The Souls of Black Folk"
1904 - Henry James "The Golden Bowl"
1905 - Edith Wharton "The House of Mirth"
1906 - Maxim Gorki "The Mother" (Мать/Matj)
1907 - Molnár, Ferenc "The Paul Street Boys" (A Pál-utcai Fiúk)
1908 - Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) "Anne of Green Gables" 
1909 - Frances Hodgson Burnett "The Secret Garden"
1910 - E.M. Forster "Howard's End"
1911 - Edith Wharton "Ethan Frome"
1912 - Thomas Mann "Death in Venice" (Der Tod in Venedig)
1913 - Sarah Morgan Dawson "1842-1909 A Confederate Girl's Diary"
1914 - Mann, Heinrich "Man of Straw" (Der Untertan)
1915 - Franz Kafka "The Metamorphosis" (Die Verwandlung)
1916 - James Joyce "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
1917 - Lagerlöf, Selma "Sancta Lucia. Weihnachtliche Geschichten" [Christmas Stories] (Kristuslegender) - 1893-1917
1918 - Willa Cather "My Ántonia"
1919 -
1920 - Sigrid Undset "Kristin Lavransdatter"
1921 -
1922 - Herman Hesse "Siddhartha" (Siddharta)
1923 - Khalil Gibran "The Prophet" 
1924 - E.M. Forster "A Passage to India"
1925 - F. Scott Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby"
1926 - A.A. Milne "Winnie the Pooh"
1927 - Virginia Woolf "To the Lighthouse"
1928 - Grimm, Hans Herbert aka Emil Schulz "Schlump. The Story of an unknown soldier" (Schlump. Geschichten und Abenteuer des unbekannten Musketiers Emil Schulz, genannt 'Schlump', von ihm selbst erzählt) - 1928
1929 - Thomas Wolfe "Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life."
1930 - Pearl S. Buck "East Wind: West Wind"
1931 - Willa Cather "Shadows on the Rock"
1932 - Stella Gibbons "Cold Comfort Farm"
1933 - Pearl S. Buck "The Mother"
1934 - Mikahil Sholokhov "And Quiet flows the Don"
1935 - Canetti, Elias "Auto-da-Fé" (Die Blendung)
1936 - Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind"
1937 - Isak Dinesen= Karen Blixen "Out of Africa"
1938 - Graham Greene "Brighton Rock"
1939 - Pearl S. Buck "The Patriot"
1940 - John Steinbeck "The Grapes of Wrath"
1941 - Rey, H.A. "Curious George" - 1941-1966
1942 - Albert Camus "The Stranger/The Outsider" (L’Etranger)
1943 - Betty Smith "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"
1944 - Eleanor Estes "The Hundred Dresses"
1945 - Mika Waltari "The Egyptian" (Sinuhe Egyptiläinen)
1946 - Pearl S. Buck "Pavilion of Women"
1947 - Albert Camus "The Plague" (La Peste)
1948 - Alan Paton "Cry, The Beloved Country"
1949 - George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four"
1950 - Nevil Shute "A Town Like Alice"
1951 - Jack Kerouac "On the Road"
1952 - Ernest Hemingway "The Old Man and the Sea"
1953 - Mary Scott "Breakfast at Six"
1954 - William Golding "Lord of the Flies"
1955 - Yaşar Kemal "The Drumming-Out" (Teneke)
1956 - Iris Murdoch "The Flight From the Enchanter"
1957 - Mahfouz, Naguib "Sugar Street" (السكرية/Al-Sukkariyya)
1958 - Elie Wiesel "Night" (La Nuit)
1959 - Goscinny, René; Uderzo, Albert "Asterix the Gaul" (Astérix le Gaulois)
1960 - Harper Lee "To Kill a Mockingbird"
1961 - V.S. Naipaul. "A House for Mr. Biswas"
1962 - Doris Lessing "The Golden Notebook"
1963 - Mary Scott "It’s Perfectly Easy"
1964 - Hannah Green (Joanne Greenberg) I Never Promised you a Rose Garden"
1965 - Scott, Mary "Freddie" - 1965
1966 - Jean Rhys "Wide Sargasso Sea"
1967 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez "One hundred years of solitude" (Cien años de soledad)
1968 - Lew Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy "War and Peace" (Война и мир = Woina i mir) 
1969 - Jurek Becker "Jacob the Liar" (Jakob der Lügner)
1970 - Dee Brown "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee"
1971 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn "The Red Wheel" cycle
            (Узел I - «Август Четырнадцатого», Красное колесо)
1972 - Richard Adams "Watership Down"
1973 - Kurt Vonnegut "Breakfast of Champions"
1974 - Valentin Rasputin "To Live and Remember" (Zhiwi e pomni = Живи и помни)
1975 - Imre Kertész "Fateless/Fatelessness" (Sorstalanság)
1976 - Rasputin, Valentin (Распутин, Валентин Григорьевич) "Farewell to Matyora" (Прощание с Матёрой) 
1977 - Mario Vargas Llosa "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (La tía Julia y el escribidor) 
1978 - Rita Mae Brown "Six of One"
1979 - Italo Calvino "If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller" (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore)
1980 - Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (Der Name der Rose/Il nome della rosa)  
1981 - Morton Rhue "The Wave"
1982 - Isabel Allende "The House of the Spirits" - Walker, Alice "The Color Purple" 
1983 - Sten Nadolny "The Discovery of Slowness" (Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit)
1984 - Kross, Jaan "Professor Martens' Departure" (Professor Martensi ärasõit)
1985 - Margaret Atwood "The Handmaid’s Tale"
1986 - Patricia MacLachlan "Sarah, Plain & Tall"
1987 - Toni Morrison "Beloved"
1988 - Paulo Coelho "The Alchemist: A Fable about Following Your Dream" (O Alquimista)
1989 - Ken Follett "The Pillars of the Earth"
1990 - A.S. Byatt "Possession"
1991 - Jung Chang "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China"
1992 - Harry Mulisch "The Discovery of Heaven" (De Ontdekking van de hemel)
1993 - Vikram Seth "A Suitable Boy"
1994 - Marianne Fredriksson "Hanna’s Daughters" (Anna, Hanna og Johanna)
1995 - Stefanie Zweig "Nowhere in Africa" (Nirgendwo in Afrika)
1996 - Joyce Carol Oates "We Were the Mulvaneys"
1997 - Charles Frazier "Cold Mountain"
1998 - Jane Smiley "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton"
1999 - Nancy E. Turner "These is my words"

Find the original list here and  here.

My favourite books 2012 and 2011

A lot of friends keep asking me about my favourite book of last year. Tough question, I'm sure I'd give a different answer every day. And the same applies to my ten favourite books. However, I have been going through my list and have chosen a selection of books that have left an impression on me. I hope there is something there for everybody, I think there are quite a few different choices. Enjoy.

My favourite books 2012

Allende, Isabel "Island Beneath the Sea" (E: La isla bajo el mar) - 2010
Atwood, Margaret "The Handmaid’s Tale" – 1985
Bryson, Bill "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - 2003
Chang, Jung "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" - 1991
Follett, Ken "World Without End" – 2007
Hamill, Pete "Snow in August" - 1998 
Mandela, Nelson "Long Walk to Freedom" - 1994
Oates, Joyce Carol "Mudwoman" - 2012
Sackville, Amy "The Still Point" - 2010
Shute, Nevil "A Town Like Alice" - 1950 

My favourite books 2011

Bryson, Bill "At Home. A Short History of Private Life" – 2010
Camus, Albert "The Plague" (FR: La Peste) – 1947
Falcones, Ildefonso "The Hand of Fatima" (E: La mano de Fátima) – 2009
Ilibagiza, Immaculée with Erwin, Steve "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" – 2006
Lowenstein, Anna "The Stone City" (Esperanto: La Ŝtona Urbo) – 1999
Mortenson, Greg "Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan" - 2009
O'Farrell, John "An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2,000 Years of Upper Calls Idiots in Charge" – 2007
Pamuk, Orhan "Istanbul - Memories of a City" (TR: İstanbul - Hatıralar ve Şehir) – 2003
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Prince of Mist" (E: El príncipe de la niebla) – 1993
Rutherfurd, Edward "The Forest" – 2000

Oates, Joyce Carol "Mudwoman"

Oates, Joyce Carol "Mudwoman" - 2012

Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favourite authors. She surprises me with every new novel. As she did with this one.

Meredith Ruth (M.R.) Neukirchen is an abandoned and then adopted child that grows into a very successful woman. When she is at the top, she starts struggling with her past.

It is amazing how ordinary events can bring up topics you have long forgotten. And it is close to a miracle how Joyce Carol Oates can bring this to life on her pages. An almost fantasy-like story, although more magic realism, a story that has it all, it's a thriller, but it's so much more than a thriller. It's a philosophical book as well as the description of a journey to find oneself.

A quote to think about: "Earth-time is a way of preventing everything happening at once."

From the back cover:

"A riveting novel that explores the high price of success in the life of one woman - the first female president of a lauded ivy league institution - and her hold upon her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons, from Joyce Carol Oates, author of the New York Times bestseller A Widow’s Story.

Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or destiny. After her rescue, the well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their middle-class values, seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past.

Meredith 'M.R.' Neukirchen is the first woman president of an Ivy League university. Her commitment to her career and moral fervor for her role are all-consuming. Involved with a secret lover whose feelings for her are teasingly undefined, and concerned with the intensifying crisis of the American political climate as the United States edges toward war with Iraq, M.R. is confronted with challenges to her leadership that test her in ways she could not have anticipated. The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undo her.

A reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Neukirchen into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past, Mudwoman is at once a psychic ghost story and an intimate portrait of a woman cracking the glass ceiling at enormous personal cost, which explores the tension between childhood and adulthood, the real and the imagined, and the 'public' and 'private' in the life of a highly complex contemporary woman."

Find links to all my other Joyce Carol Oates reviews here.

Hamill, Pete "Snow in August"

Hamill, Pete "Snow in August" - 1998

Brooklyn, two years after World War II. An 11 year old Irish Catholic boy whose father died in battle and who lives alone with his mother befriends a Czech Rabbi and learns about Judaism and the Holocaust. Together they face racism and violence. Together with Michael, we learn about the Yiddish language, Jewish history, Jewish literature, the Jewish folkloristic Golem and - baseball.

The story is well-told, switching between the past and the present, building anticipation. You could almost read the story in a day but you don't want to say good-bye too early to the characters as you hopefully grow to love them as much as I did.

I really loved this book and would like to read more by this author.

From the back cover:

"In the year 1947, Michael Devlin, eleven years old and 100 percent American-Irish, is about to forge an extraordinary bond with a refugee of war named Rabbi Judah Hirsch. Standing united against a common enemy, they will summon from ancient sources a power in desperately short supply in modern Brooklyn-a force that's forgotten by most of the world but is known to believers as magic."

Liao, Yiwu "Testimonials or: For a Song and a Hundred Songs"

Liao, Yiwu "Testimonials or: For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison" (Chinese: 證詞/Zheng-Ci) - 2000

I read the expanded German translation of a Chinese book by Yiwu Liao "Für ein Lied und hundert Lieder: Ein Zeugenbericht aus chinesischen Gefängnissen". He just received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis). The book "describes the horrific treatment of Liao Yiwu and other political prisoners in a Chongqing prison who were arrested after the June 4, 1989 crackdown".

It's terrifying to read what people in Chinese prisons have to go through. This is a good book to read but with horrible pictures of what they do to each other. It's hardly believable that human beings can be like that.

What a tragic report of so many lives lost and wasted. At times, I thought, "Do I really want to know all this?" But then I carried on because if people can endure those tortures, we should at least make an effort to know about it. How much can a person endure?

There is also a lot of poetry in this book since Yiwu Liao is a poet, and a lot of Chinese history and literature, information about Chinese life and thinking. My favourite proverb mentioned: "Distant water won't quench your immediate thirst".

From the back cover:

"In the spring of 1989, news of the Tiananmen Square protests and their bloody resolution reverberated throughout the world. A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had up until then lead an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment, and, like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage - only his weapon would be his words. Liao's memoir, For a Song and a Hundred Songs, captures the four dehumanizing years he spent in jail for writing the incendiary poem 'Massacre'. Through the power and beauty of his prose, he reveals the brutal reality of crowded Chinese prisons - the harassment from guards and fellow prisoners, the torture, the conflicts among human beings in close confinement, and the boredom of everyday life. Hailed by Philip Gourevitch as 'one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time,' Liao presents a stark and devastating portrait of a nation in flux, exposing a side of China that outsiders rarely ever get to see. This honest account and witness to history will forever change the way you view the rising superpower of China."

Yiwu Liao received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2012.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

Stowe, Harriet Beecher "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" - 1852

This is one of the most tragic stories I have ever read, and I think I've read my fair share of tragedies. I have read books about wars, concentration camps and slavery, to name but a few. As with other classic stories, I had heard about the content, I knew what was going to happen to Uncle Tom, I knew what happened to slaves, how they were sold and tortured, how they would sell spouses and children away from their families. But it's tragic every time again, especially if you put a name to the people involved, if they are described in such a way that they come alive on the paper.

Harriet Beecher Stowe has managed to do just this, she brings alive all those poor people who had no rights at all and who had no hope that anything would ever improve in their lives, that they and their loved ones would get away from a fate worth than death.

There is Uncle Tom, a faithful servant to a good "master" who would never sell him. Or would he? Several other characters in the novel learn that when money is involved, everything is possible, whether the owner wants to sell their "possessions" or not. Then there is his family who have to say good-bye to husband and father, knowing they will never see him again. And then there are all the other poor souls, all of whom have a cross to bear, one story seems more unbearable than the next. Amazing how they still can go on and even have compassion. But they do.

I read that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not read in school anymore because of the racial prejudices that were around at the time and that the author repeats several times. I don't think that's a reason not to read it anymore, on the contrary. That would be the same as not reading anything about concentration camps and the Nazis anymore. No, I think as long as we read these stories and are aware of the prejudices that used to exist, we can fight those that still are around. The more we see about it, the more ridiculous they seem and the earlier they will be eliminated.

I totally loved reading this story, even though I never like this way of describing a story of this content.

From the back cover:

"Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, 'a man of humanity, as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking, controversial, and powerful work - exposing the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward "the peculiar institution" and documenting, in heartrending detail, the tragic breakup of black Kentucky families "sold down the river." An immediate international sensation, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the first year, was translated into thirty-seven languages, and has never gone out of print: its political impact was immense, its emotional influence immeasurable.

The narrative drive of Stowe's classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact, it is a compelling adventure story with richly drawn characters and has earned a place in both literary and American history. Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme - the exploration of the nature of Christianity and how Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery."

Buck, Pearl S. "The Exile"

Buck, Pearl S. "The Exile" - 1936

Pearl S. Buck grew up mostly in China, the daughter of American missionaries. In her many novels she describes the life of Chinese people past and present.

This book, however, is a biography about her mother, Carie Stulting Sydenstricker, a missionary and the wife of a missionary, who led most of her adult life in a foreign place, who went through hard times both politically as well as personally. She lived through several invasions, the Japanese, the Russians, through illnesses and death of her children. She lives in two worlds and cannot claim either of them as her real home in the end.

Same as her novels, I really loved this biography of the author's mother. She shows how much love can change life of the people around you and sometimes of a lot more.

From the back cover:

"The biography of the mother of Pearl S. Buck, a portrait of an American woman in China."

Find other books by Pearl S. Book that I read here.

Pearl S. Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.