The books that changed me the most

(a work in progress…)

• Barbara COMYNS – The Vet’s Daughter
• Julio CORTAZAR – Hopscotch
• Emily DICKINSON – The Complete Poems
• Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY – Crime and Punishment
• Marguerite DURAS – The Lover
• William FAULKNER – The Wild Palms
• Janet FRAME – The Lagoon
• Arnon GRUNBERG – Tirza
• Henry JAMES – The Beast in the Jungle
• Franz KAFKA – The Zurau Aphorisms, The Diaries
• Clarice LISPECTOR – An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures
• Thomas MANN – The Magic Mountain
• Carson MCCULLERS – The Member of the Wedding
• Alice MUNRO – Dear Life
• Vladimir NABOKOV – Lolita
• Jean RHYS – Wide Sargasso Sea
• Marilynne ROBINSON – Housekeeping
• Jean-Paul SARTRE – Nausea
• Magda SZABO – The Door
• Wislawa SZYMBORSKA – View with a Grain of Sand
• Érico VERÍSSIMO – Clarissa
• Virginia WOOLF – The Waves
• Marguerite YOURCENAR –  Memoirs of Hadrian

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Favourite authors

• Comyns, Barbara (England, 1907 – 1992)
  • The Vet’s Daughter (1959)
• Jackson, Shirley (USA, 1916 – 1965)
  • The Bird’s Nest (1954)
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
• Krauss, Nicole (USA, 1974)
  • Forest Dark (2017)
• Laurence, Margaret (Canada, 1926 – 1987)
  • The Fire-Dwellers (1969)
• Levy, Deborah (South Africa/ England, 1959)
  • Hot Milk (2016)
  • Swimming Home (2011)
• Munro, Alice (Canada, 1931)
  • Runaway (2004)
• Rhys, Jean (Dominica, 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979)
  • Wide Sargasso Sea, (1966)
• Robinson, Marilynne (USA, 1943)
  • Housekeeping (1980)
• Smith, Ali (Scotland, 1962)
  • There But For The (2011)
  • How to Be Both (2014)
  • Public Library and Other Stories (2015)
  • Autumn (2016)
• Szabo, Magda (Hungary, 1917 – 2007)
  • The Door, tr. Len Rix, 2005 (Az ajtó, 1987)
• Woolf, Virginia (England, 1882 – 1941)
  • Orlando (1928)

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Favourite books reviewed on the blog

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Are there any contemporary writers we must read, or does “canonical” mean “dead”?

One problem with trying to decide who should be kicked out of the canon is that I’m never exactly sure who is in it. I’ve always felt that the canon was like the guest list to a secret party, a roster drawn up by covert hosts at some undisclosed location. I know that Harold Bloom wrote a book in which he ruled, quite definitively, on which writers do and don’t belong. But not having read his book, I have only some vague memory of the brief controversy that erupted when someone noted how few women Bloom included.” – Francine Prose, New York Times, 2015