Das Bookshelf
July 12, 2008 :: Link :: Journal | Reading

Thanks to E&T for the shelves! I don't know what we would have done without them. Well, actually I do. We would have put up with books in piles around the apartment until we got sick of it and shelled out too much money for particle-board shelves from Target. Thanks for helping us avoid that!
Just to announce to those who didn't already know: As of this month of July, my girlfriend Christa and I are officially living together. It's a good match, for many reasons, one of which is that we both really, really like words. We both majored in English. We both have blogs [link]. But best of all, we both have a lot of books, and now that we're living together, we've been able to co-mingle our personal collections, put them into all kinds of geeky order, and get far too excited about strapping on our spectacles and reading the living shit of of them.
I'm not sure why I'm doing this, other than as an excuse to re-open the comments to my fellow nerds and to put this list in writing for some undetermined future purpose, but here goes.
Below is a list of our current fiction section. (Yes! We have sections! Fiction, poetry, drama, reference, general nonfiction, art, web design, graphic novels, how-to, cookbooks, and sports, to be exact.) Please don't call me/us crazy.
What I'm asking is, if you were faced with this collection, what would you read first? Now, it's true that I've already read some of these books before, but I have no qualms about re-reading books. That's why you own books in the first place.
What would you read? What should I read?
* I was gonna re-open comments for this post, but I deleted all the comment code out of my template (to prevent lapses just like this!) and I can't put it all back in for just one post. Sorry kids! But I'd still like to hear your feedback, so email me at bchase@gmail.com. And let's face it, if you're willing to read through this huge nerdy list and then offer comments, going to your email is not much of a hurdle.
Alborn, Mitch
- The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Alexie, Sherman
- The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven
- The Toughest Indian in the World
Ali, Monica
- Brick Lane
Amis, Martin
- House of Meetings
Anderson, Sherwood
- Winesburg, Ohio
Atwood, Margaret
- The Blind Assassin
- Bluebird's Egg
- Bodily Harm
- Cat's Eye
- The Edible Woman
- The Handmaid's Tale (2)
- Life Before Man
- The Robber Bride (2)
- Surfacing
- Wilderness Tips
Austen, Jane
- Mansfield Park
- Pride and Prejudice
- Sense and Sensibiity
Auster, Paul
- The Brooklyn Follies
- The New York Trilogy
Balzac, Honore de
- Droll Stories
Bank, Melissa
- The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
- The Wonder Spot
Barnes, Julian
- Love, etc.
Baxter, Charles
- The Feast of Love (2)
- The Soul Thief
Berg, Elizabeth
- The Year of Pleasures
Belle, Jennifer
- High Maintenance
Berry, Steve
- The Romanov Prophecy
Bradybury, Ray
- Fahrenheit 451
Brontë, Emily
- Jane Eyre
- Wuthering Heights (2)
Bukoski, Anthony
- Polonaise
Bukowski, Charles
- Ham on Rye
- Post Office
- Women
Burroughs, William S.
- Naked Lunch
- The Place of Dead Roads
Buter, Samuel
- Erewhon
Callanan, Liam
- The Cloud Atlas
Camus, Albert
- The Stranger
Carey, Peter
- The History of the Kelly Gang
Carver, Raymond
- Where I'm Calling From
- Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
Cervantes
- Don Quixote
Chabon, Michael
- The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Chekov, Anton
- The Essential Tales of Chekov
Chopin, Kate
- The Awakening
Christensen, Kate
- The Epicure's Lament
Cisneros, Sandra
- The House on Mango Street
Clarke, Brock
- The Ordinary White Boy
Coelho, Paulo
- The Alchemist
Coetzee, J.M.
- Waiting for the Barbarians
Conrad, Joseph
- Lord Jim
Coupland, Douglas
- Girlfriend in a Coma
- Hey Nostradamus!
Crane, Stephen
- The Red Badge of Courage
Cunningham, Michael
- A Home at the End of the World
- The Hours
Daum, Meghan
- The Quality of Life Report
Delillo, Don
- The Body Artist
- Underworld
Diamant, Anita
- The Red Tent
Diaz, Junot
- The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
Dickens, Charles
- A Christmas Carol
- Hard Times (2)
- Great Expectations (2)
- A Tale of Two Cities
Didion, Joan
- Play it as it Lays
Dorris, Michael
- A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Dos Passos, John
- Manhattan Transfer
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
- Crime and Punishment (2)
- The Idiot
- Notes from Underground
Doyle, Larry
- I Love You, Beth Cooper
Dubus, Andre
- In the Bedroom
Dumas, Alexander
- The Count of Monte Cristo
Dunn, Katherine
- Geek Love
Drury, Joan M.
- Closed in Silence
Ellis, Bret Easton
- Glamorama
- The Informer
- Lunar Park
Egan, Jennifer
- The Keep
- Look at Me
Ellroy, James
- The Black Dahlia
Enger, Leif
- Peace Like a River
Erdrich, Louise
- Love Medicine (2)
Faulkner, William
- Four Novels
- The Hamlet
- The Sound and the Fury
Figes, Eva
- Winter Journey
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
- The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Beautiful and the Damned
- The Great Gatsby (3)
- The St. Paul Stories
- Tender is the Night
- This Side of Paradise
Flaubert, Gustave
- Madam Bovary
Ford, Richard
- The Sportswriter
- Women with Men
Fowles, Nick
- A Thing (or Two) About Curtis and Camilla
Franzen, Jonathan
- The Corrections
Gardner, John
- Grendel
- October Light
Gravalda, Anna
- I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere
Glass, Stephen
- The Fabulist
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von
- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Golden, Arthur
- Memoirs of a Geisha
Golding, William
- Darkness Visible
Gordon, Mary
- Spending
Grayson, David
- Adventures in Solitude
Greene, Graham
- Complete Short Stories
Griesemer, John
- No One Thinks of Greenland
Gunn, Elizabeth
- Five Card Stud
Haddon, Mark
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hamilton, Jane
- When Madeline Was Young
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
- The Scarlet Letter
Hemmingway, Ernest
- A Farewell to Arms
- Islands in the Stream
- The Nick Adams Stories
- The Old Man and the Sea
- The Sun Also Rises (2)
- The Torrents of Spring
Heller, Zoe
- What What She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal)
Hempel, Amy
- The Collected Stories
- The Dog of Marriage
Hesse, Hermann
- Siddhartha
- Steppenwolf (2)
Hinton, S.E.
- The Outsiders
Hornbacher, Marya
- The Center of Winter
Hornby, Nick
- How to Be Good
- A Long Way Down
Hosseini, Khaled
- The Kite Runner
Hudson, W.H.
- Green Mansions
Huxley, Aldous
- Brave New World
Iagnemma, Karl
- On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction
Irving, John
- The 158-Pound Marriage
- The Cider House Rules
- The Fourth Hand
- The Hotel New Hampshire
- Setting Free the Bears
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (2)
- The Water-Method Man (2)
- A Widow for One Year
- The World According to Garp
Ishiguro, Kazuo
- The Remains of the Day
James, Henry
- The Ambassadors
- The Portrait of a Lady
Jenkins, Dan
- You Gotta Play Hurt
Jin, Ha
- A Free Life
Jong, Erica
- Fear of Flying
Joyce, James
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz
- The Metamorphosis
Keillor, Garrison
- Lake Wobegon Days
- Love Me
Kerouac, Jack
- Maggie Cassidy
- On the Road
- The Portable Jack Kerouac
Kinder, Chuck
- Honeymooners
Kingsolver, Barbara
- The Bean Trees
Knowles, John
- A Separate Peace
Knox, Malcolm
- Summerland
Kosinski, Jerzy
- The Painted Bird
Kundera, Milan
- Immortality
- The Joke
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
L'Amour, Louis
- The Collected Stories of Louis L'Amour
Lamott, Anne
- Crooked Little Heart
- Rosie
Larsen, Eric
- An American Memory
Laurens, Camille
- In His Arms
Lawrence, D.H.
- Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lee, Harper
- To Kill a Mockingbird
LeGuin, Ursula
- The Farthest Shore
- The Tombs of Atuan
- A Wizard of Earthsea
Lennon, J. Robert
- Mailman
- On the Night Plain
Leonard, Elmore
- Stick
- The Switch
Levin, Ira
- The Stepford Wives
Lewis, C.S.
- The Chronicles of Narnia
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow
- Gift from the Sea
Lopez, Erika
- Flaming Iguanas
MacDonald, Anne Marie
- Fall on Your Knees
Martel, Yann
- Life of Pi
Martin, Steve
- Shopgirl
Maupin, Armistead
- Maybe the Moon
Max, B. Delores
- Dumped
McCarthy, Cormac
- All the Pretty Horses
- Blood Meridian
McCarthy, Mary
- The Group
McEwan, Ian
- Atonement
McGuane
- Ninety-Two in the Shade
McInerney, Jay
- Bright Lights, Big City
- Brightness Falls
- The Good Life
- The Last of the Savages
- Model Behavior
Melville, Herman
- Billy Budd, Foretopman
- Moby Dick
Moore, Lorrie
- Birds of America
- Like Life
- Self-Help
Moore, Susanna
- The Big Girls
Mendelsohn
- I Was Amelia Earhart
Mendelson, Cheryl
- Morningside Heights
Messud, Claire
- The Emperor's Children
Metalious, Grace
- Peyton Place
Miller, Henry
- Tropic of Cancer
Mitchell, David
- Ghostwritten
Morrison, Toni
- Beloved
- Song of Solomon
Munger, Mark
- The Legacy
Mukherjee, Bharati
- The Tiger's Daughter
Murakami, Haruki
- After Dark
- Almost Transparent Blue
Murray, Paul
- An Evening of Long Goodbyes
Nabokov, Vladimir
- Lolita
Niffenegger, Audrey
- The Time Traveler's Wife
Nissen, Thisbe
- The Good People of New York
Nin, Anais
- Delta of Venus
- Henry & June
Nunez, Sigrid
- Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury
Oates, Joyce Carol
- Black Water
- Blonde
- I'll Take You There
- Man Crazy
- Middle Age
- We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Brien, Tim
- July, July
- Tomcat in Love
Olson, Shannon
- Children of God Go Bowling
- Welcome to My Planet
Ondaatje, Michael
- Anil's Ghost
- The English Patient
- Vintage Ondaatje
Orwell, George
- 1984
- Animal Farm
Palahniuk, Chuck
- Choke
- Diary
- Haunted
- Invisible Monsters
- Lullaby
- Snuff
Perrotta, Tom
- Bad Haircut
- Joe College
- Little Children
Plath, Sylvia
- The Bell Jar
Pollack, Neil
- Never Mind the Pollacks
Potok, Chaim
- The Chosen
- My Name is Asher Lev
- The Promise
Purcell, Sarahbeth
- Love is the Drug
Quindlen, Anna
- Rise and Shine
Rand, Ayn
- Atlas Shrugged
Redfield, James
- The Celestine Prophecy
Rigby, Kate
- The Fall of The Flamingo Circus
Robbins, Tom
- Villa Incognito
Rölvaag, O.E.
- Giants in the Earth
Rosenfeld, Lucinda
- What She Saw
Rossner, Judith
- Looking for Mr. Goodbar
Roth, Philip
- Portnoy's Complaint
- The Professor of Desire
Rougeau, Remy
- All We Know of Heaven
Roy, Arundhati
- The God of Small Things
Rushdie, Salman
- The Satanic Verses
Russo, Richard
- Bridge of Sighs
- Empire Falls
- Straight Man
Salinger, J.D.
- The Catcer in the Rye (2)
Schaefer, Jack
- Shane
Schickler, David
- Kissing in Manhattan
- Sweet and Vicious
Schlink, Berhard
- The Reader
Shteyngart, Gary
- The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Selby, Hubert Jr.
- Last Exit to Brooklyn
Seeley, Mabel
- The Chuckling Fingers
Sharma, Akhil
- An Obedient Father
Shaw, Irwin
- Rich Man, Poor Man
Shields, Carol
- Dressing Up for the CArnival
- Unless
Sinclair, Upton
- The Jungle
Sittenfeld, Curtis
- Prep
Spitz, Mark
- How Soon is Never?
Steinbeck, John
- The Grapes of Wrath
- In Dubious Battle
- Of Mice and Men (2)
- Tortilla Flat (2)
- The Winter of Our Discontent
- Travels with Charley
Stoker, Bram
- Dracula
Stone, Robert
- Dog Soldiers
Swift, Graham
- Tomorrow
Sullivan, Faith
- The Empress of One
Susann, Jacqueline
- Valley of the Dolls
Taylor, Peter
- A Summons to Memphis
Thompson, Jean
- Who Do You Love
Tinti, Hannah
- Animal Crackers
Tolkein, J.R.R.
- The Hobbit
- The Fellowship of the Ring
- The Tolkien Reader
- Unfinished Tales
Toole, John Kennedy
- A Confederacy of Dunces (2)
Tolstoy, Leo
- Anna Karenina
- Master and Man
Tropper, Jonathan
- The Book of Joe
- Everything Changes
- How to Talk to a Widower
Twain, Mark
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
- Letters from the Earth
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
Turgenev, Ivan
- Fathers and Sons
Tyler, Anne
- The Amateur Marriage
- Back When We Were Grownups
- Breathing Lessons
- Ladder of Years
- A Patchwork Planet
Updike, John
- Rabbit, Run
Verne, Jules
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- Around the World in 80 Days
Voltaire
- The Best Known Works of Voltaire
- Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt
- Breakfast of Champions (2)
- Cat's Cradle (2)
- Deadeye Dick
- Slapstick
- Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
Vonnegut, Mark
- The Eden Express
Waldman, Ayelet
- Daugher's Keeper
Wallace, David Foster
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Warren, Robert Penn
- All the King's Men
Wells, H.G.
- The Time Machine
- The War of the Worlds
Weisberger, Lauren
- The Devil Wears Prada
Wharton, Edith
- The Age of Innocence
- The Glimpses of the Moon
- The House of Mirth
Wharton, William
- Birdy
Wilde, Oscar
- The Best Known Works of Oscar Wilde
- Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings
Wolfe, Thomas
- Look Homeward, Angel
Wolfe, Tom
- The Bonfire of the Vanities
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- I Am Charlotte Simmons
Woliter, Meg
- The Position
- The Wife
Woolf, Virginia
- Mrs. Dalloway