Even though I started this year off without any special plans, I always have little reading projects going on that I chip away at. They are all meant to be for pleasure and entertainment or because my reading paths just go in one direction or another. One is my ongoing Century of Books project. How long now have I been working on it? It seems as though I formally began at the beginning of 2013, so two years on and am I even halfway there? Last time I checked in I was up to 40 books. I am now up to 46 books so nearing that nmiddle point. Okay, so I am cheating a little as one of the books is still in progress, but this is motivation for me to keep reading so I can finish sooner than later.
1905: Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderbeerg, tr. Paul B. Austin
1912: Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather
1915: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
1917: Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
1920: Fear by Stefan Zweig
1922: Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
1924: The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
1928: Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth
1929: The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
1931: Maigret in Holland by Georges Simenon
1932: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey
1933: Flush by Virginia Woolf
1935: Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
1941: Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
1942: The Lieutenant's Lady by Bess Streeter Aldrich
1943: The Last of Summer by Kate O'Brien
1949: Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar
1950: There's No Home by Alexander Baron
1951: Transit by Anna Seghers
1953: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1956: Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart
1958: My Face the World to See by Alfred Hayes
1961: Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
1962: The Garden of the Finzi Continis by Giorgio Bassani (in progress)
1963: Up the Junction by Nell Dunn
1965: Airs Above Ground by Mary Stewart
1968: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
1972: My Michael by Amos Oz (English translation)
1973: Maus I by Art Spiegelman
1974: Cashelmara by Susan Howatch
1975: Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
1977: The Wars by Timothy Findley
1981: A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson
1983: Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
1984: Testing the Current by William McPherson
1985: Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym
1986: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
1987: Gallows View by Peter Robinson
1989: The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
1991: Letters from Constance by Mary Hocking
1992: At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott
1993: A Grave Talent by Laurie King
1995: Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo
1996: Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes
1997: The Black Flower by Howard Bahr
1998: The Moor by Laurie King
Last time I also came up with a list of reading possibilities from which I read not a single book! So I guess I won't do that this time around (as much fun as it is to play around with possible reading lists). I do have a few books that I never got around to writing about (though I'll be writing about my first Alan Banks mystery by Peter Robins soon). I am contemplating removing them from the list--if I read another book that will fit.
I do think, however, I need to look for something published in that very difficult first decade of the century that remains almost completely unfilled. That poor book looks so sad all alone. Any ideas on a good book published between 1900-1909 (but skipping 1905)?