Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Over 16 Years of Books: The Notting Hill Napoleons' Reading List to Date

A couple of weeks ago I posted the Notting Hill Napoleon's reading schedule for 2008. And I promised that I would soon give you the entire list from our sixteen plus years of reading and discussing classic (and, of course, on occasion a few not-so-classic) novels.

I've taken the liberty of putting asterisks in front of the titles of Claire's and my favorites. I'm sure that the other members (currently Quint & Carol, John & Barb, Chet, Bill & Karin, Karla, and Ruth -- others over the years have included Tom & Jane, Robert, and Jo) would place their marks in different places.

In the same vein, I've put a simple dash (signifying a minus sign) in front of the ones I've considered clunkers! And if there's a question mark in front of the title, it's because I was either out of the country or for some other reason didn't read that month's book. And, quite probably, there's a few I've put question marks in front of that I did read but just don't remember at all.

1992
* 1) A Man Called Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
2) Inferno by Durante degli Alighieri (aka Dante)
3) 1984 by George Orwell
4) The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
* 5) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- 6) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)
* 7) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- 8) The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
9) Christmas Stories by George MacDonald and The Fourth Wiseman by Henry Van Dyke

1993
1) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2) Shadows in the Grass by Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen)
3) The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
4) The Power by James Mills
5) The Merchant of Venice by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 6) The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K.Chesterton
7) That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
* 8) Our Town by Thornton Wilder
* 9) First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
* 10) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

1994
1) Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
2) Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
* 3) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
4) One of Ours by Willa Cather
5) Love’s Labour’s Lost by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 6) The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexander Dumas
7) Four Faultless Felons by G.K. Chesterton
* 8) Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
? 9) The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
? 10) Billy Budd by Herman Melville
* 11) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

1995
* 1) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2) Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton
? 3) The Source by James Michener
4) O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
* 5) Henry V by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 6) Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
7) The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
8) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
* 9) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

1996
- 1) The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
* 2) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
* 3) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
* 4) The Children of Men by P. D. James
* 5) The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin
* 6) Taming of the Shrew by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 7) Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
* 8) The Ball and the Cross by G.K. Chesterton
- 9) Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
* 10) Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
- 11) Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
* 12) Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

1997
* 1) Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
2) Spring Came on Forever by Bess Streeter Aldrich
? 3) Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
4) The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond by G.K. Chesterton
5) Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
* 6) Julius Caesar by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
7) The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
* 8) Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott
9) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
* 11) The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

1998
* 1) The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
2) The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3) Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
4) How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
5) The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
6) A Midsummer Night's Dream by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 7) Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
8) The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
* 9) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
10) The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
* 11) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
12) Snow by Calvin Miller

1999
1) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
* 2) Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
3) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
* 4) Watership Down by Richard Adams
5) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness de Orczy
* 6) Macbeth by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 7) The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
* 8) August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
* 9) Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
* 10) Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
* 11) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

2000
* 1) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2) Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
3) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
4) My Antonia by Willa Cather
5) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
6) Romeo and Juliet by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
* 7) Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott
* 8) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
9) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
* 10) Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
- 11) Lilith by George MacDonald

2001
1) Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
* 2) The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
* 3) Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
* 4) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- 5) Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag
* 6) Hamlet by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
7) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
* 8) The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton (our first re-read)
9) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- 10) The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
* 11) Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
* 12) Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

2002
* 1) The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
* 2) The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
? 4) The Chosen by Chaim Potok
5) Officers and Gentlemen by Evelyn Waugh
6) The Tempest by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
7) Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
* 8) The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton
* 9) Animal Farm by George Orwell
10) The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
* 11) Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
- 12) Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

2003
1) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
2) Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
3) Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas
4) The End of the Battle by Evelyn Waugh
* 5) Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
* 6) Othello by Edward de Vere (aka William Shakespeare)
7) Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
* 8) The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott
? 9) The Once and Future King by T.H. White
* 10) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
* 11) Manalive by G.K. Chesterton

2004
1) The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
2) Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
* 3) Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
4) The Desert of Wheat by Zane Grey
5) The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
* 6) Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
7) Tom Sawyer by Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)
8) The Wreath (First part of Kristin Lavransdatter) by Sigrid Undset
9) Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
* 10) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
11) True Grit by Charles Portis

2005
1) Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
2) Black No More by George S. Schuyler
3) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
* 4) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
* 5) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
* 6) Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott
7) Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)
* 8) Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
* 9) Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
10) Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
* 11) Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

2006
1) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
2) Rodney Stone by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
* 3) Pied Piper by Nevil Shute
* 4) Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
? 5) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
* 6) The Antiquary by Sir Walter Scott
* 7) The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
? 8) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
9) The Warden by Anthony Trollope
* 10) Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
* 11) The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
* 12) A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg

2007
* 1) The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
- 2) Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
3) Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
* 4) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
5) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6) The Song of Roland edited by Dorothy Sayers
* 7) Witch Wood by John Buchan
* 8) Bellarion the Fortunate by Rafael Sabatini
? 9) Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
10) Tales of the Long Bow by G.K. Chesterton
* 11) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
12) The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson