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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

2022 Wrap-Up

If you take a look at my book review postings from this year, I started out reading a lot and then dropped off in the middle. That happened in 2021 because I got divorced. This year, 2022, it was because I started dating again. Here's to learning, growing, overcoming challenges, and taking steps forward!

Anyway - back to the books. I had a goal to read 21 books and I only read 18, so I was close! I had goals to read specific authors, participate in the Back to the Classics reading challenge, and participate in Mindful Readers Bookclub (with my family). I read 10 books from my TBR. I also read a play and Christmas story - which I try to do every year.

Top 3 Books of 2022
1. The Arrows Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950- )     9.6/10
    -Arrow's Flight (1987) - 9.1/10
    -Arrow's Fall (1988) - 9.4/10

by Ray Bradbury 
(American, 1920-2012)

by Tamora Pierce (American, 1954-)

Back to the Classics 2022
I read books that fit into 9 of the categories, which gets me 2 entries into the drawing. I emailed Karen directly for my form of contact. I just noticed that I read LOTS of short stories this year! I believe I've switched up the categories on some of them since posting them initially, but here they are:

1. 19th Century Classic
by Louisa May Alcott (American, 1832-1888)

2. 20th Century Classic

3. Classic by a Woman
by Jane Austen (English, 1775-1817)

4. Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

5. Classic Short Stories
by 20 different authors

6. Nonfiction Classic
by CS Lewis (British, 1898-1963)

7. Classic on Your TBR  Longest
by Ray Bradbury (American, 1920-2012)

8. Classic in a Place You'd Like to (Re)Visit
by 14 authors, edited by Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)
New York!

9. Wild Card Classic
by George Bernard Shaw (Irish, 1856-1950)

Author Challenges - all TBR
Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950-)
The Arrows Trilogy

Tamora Pierce (American, 1954-)
The Circle Reforged Series
     -The Will of the Empress (2005) - Sandry
     -Melting Stones (2008) - Evvy (simultaneous to Will of the Empr.)
     -Battle Magic (2013) - Briar (Prequel to Will of the Empress)

Mindful Readers - Family Book Club
(some are duplicates from above)

January - Mystery
by GK Chesterton (English, 1874-1936)

February - Romance
by Jane Austen (English, 1775-1817)

March - Feminism 
by 14 authors, edited by Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)

April - Fantasy
Fable (2020) (not pictured)
by Adrienne Young 
(American, 1985- )

May - Comedy/Satire
by Ray Bradbury 
(American, 1920-2012)

June - Thriller
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

July - Romance
by George Bernard Shaw (Irish, 1856-1950)

August, September, November
x, x, x

October - Thriller
by HP Lovecraft (American,  1890-1937)

December - Christmas/Winter
by 20 different authors

Bottom 3 Books of 2022
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

by George Bernard Shaw 
(Irish, 1856-1950)

18. Persuasion (1817) - 4.4/10
by Jane Austen 
(English, 1775-1817)

Bottom of the Barrel
Books I started, but didn't finish:

The Moonstone (1868)
by Willkie Collins (English, 1824-1889)

Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights (1967)
by Ryu Mitsuse (Japanese, 1928-1999)

by Amos Tutuola (Nigerian, 1920-1997)

The Blazing World (1666)
by Margaret Cavendish (English, 1623-1673)

I hope the Back to the Classics reading challenge happens again next year, but, unfortunately, I doubt it. My family is doing the Mindful Readers bookclub again! I plan to focus on Mercedes Lackey and reading more of my TBR in 2023. 

Another blog with my reading plans for 2023 will be coming soon!
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Monday, December 26, 2022

Home for Christmas - Short Stories

 
Title: Home for Christmas - Stories for Young and Old

Author: 20 stories by 20 different authors
Originally published: 1895-1995 
(I couldn't find the publication date for 7 stories.)
Page count: 33

Dates read: 11/13/22-12/22/22
2022 book goal progress: 18 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: 
Classic Short Story Collection
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: December - Christmas/Winter

Read my other book reviews for my 2022 goals HERE.

Description on Back of Book:
They are some of the warmest childhood memories, those unhurried evenings around the fireplace, Christmas tree, or dinner table, when there was time for a story. Now, with this collection, you can keep the telling tradition alive in your family, and pass it on to your children or grandchildren.

Home For Christmas includes twenty time-honored favorites. Several are by world-famous children's authors; others are little-known European tales not available in English anywhere else. Selected for their literary quality and their spiritual integrity, they will resonate with readers of all ages, year after year.

Mini Overall Review:
Most stories were cute and heartwarming. It is a good read overall. Some stories are very religious and most have religious undertones. If you're looking for a collection of Santa stories, this is not the book you're looking for.

Contents and Ultra-Mini Reviews of All Individual Stories
1. Brother Robber by Helene Christaller (German, 1872-1953)
Heartwarming. 7 pages

2. Three Young Kings (1956) by George Sumner Albee (American, 1905-1964)
Humorous and heartwarming. One of my favorite stories in the whole collection. 16 pages

"Father Miguel, who was eighty-two, was so frail that his white linen cassock appeared more often than not to be unoccupied. There was very little of him still in residence on earth. He had a small, poetically modeled head and a voice, and that was about all."

"Lazaro was efficient. Either that or he was lazy. Or it may be that efficiency and laziness are merely different names for the same thing."

3. Transfiguration by Madeleine L'Engle (American, 1918-2007)
Meh. 12 pages

4. The Cribmaker's Trip to Heaven (1920s) by Reimmichl (Austrian, 1867-1953)
Christian Scrooge - meh. 10 pages

5. The Guest by Nikolai S. Lesskov (Russian, 1831-1895)
Very religious - meh. 10 pages

6. Christmas Day in the Morning (1955) by Pearl S. Buck (American, 1892-1973)
Cute, but bittersweet. 7 pages

7. The Other Wise Man (1895) by Henry van Dyke (American, 1852-1933)
Unnecessarily long, but a beautiful and heartwarming story. It's a mixed retelling of the 3 wise men and The Gift of the Magi. 29 pages

"He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick, and comforted the captive; and his years went by more swiftly than the weaver's shuttle that flashed back and forth through the loom while the web grows and the invisible pattern is complete."

8. The Miraculous Staircase (1966) by Arthur Gordon (American, 1912-2002)
Interesting - based on a true story. 6 pages

9. No Room in the Inn (1995) by Katherine Paterson (American, 1932- )
Meh. 11 pages

10. The Chess Player by Ger Koopman (Dutch, 1912-1983)
Weird - meh. 10 pages

11. The Christmas Lie (1957) by Dorothy Thomas (American, 1898-1990)
Heartwarming. 20 pages

12. The Riders of St.Nicholas by Jack Schaefer (American, 1907-1991)
Not religious, which was refreshing and nice. 28 pages

13. Grandfather's Stories by Ernst Wiechert (German, 1887-1950)
Violent - I didn't like the story. 10 pages

14. The Vexation of Barney Hatch (1957) by BJ Chute (American, 1913-1987)
Beautifully written story, but I had mixed feelings about the ending. 24 pages

15. The Empty Cup (1951) by Opal Menius (American, 1915-2013)
Very sad; very religious; cute ending; left me with a bad taste in my mouth overall. 14 pages

"We were, that night, two shadows in a garden of shadows, but the gloom was only beauty to us in that time when no shadows lay across our lives."

16. The Well of the Star (1941) by Elizabeth Goudge (British, 1900-1984)
Adorable story. I will be finding more of her Christmas stories to read. 24 pages

17. A Certain Small Shepherd (1965) by Rebecca Caudill (American, 1899-1985)
Cute. 20 pages

18. The Carpenter's Christmas by Peter K. Rosegger (Austrian, 1843-1918)
Humorous, yet frustrating. This shows how goodwill and generosity are better than being pious and religious. 9 pages

19. What the Kings Brought (1916) by Ruth Sawyer (American, 1880-1970)
Very cute and heartwarming. 12 pages

20. The Christmas Rose (1908) by Selma Lagerlof (Swedish, 1958-1940)
Magical, but overly caricature-like - meh. 19 pages

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let BJ Chute have the last words:

(The following are the first few paragraphs from The Vexation of Barney Hatch.)

"The big bell clanged in the church tower, and all the pidgeons gossiping on the roof flew up in a violent state of nerves, as if the Day of Judgement had come upon them.

This created a fine rumpus of snow-gray wings in the snow-gray sky over Barney Hatch, but it confirmed him in a private theory that pidgepns were not quite right in the head. The church had been around for more than a century, and the bell gave its great shout every hour, which meant that twenty-four times a day for over a hundred years the pidgeons or their ancestors had been blowing their tops. Barney was not mathematically an able man, but even he could see that the thing had got out of hand.

A panhandler himself, Barney had a certain professional sypathy for pidgeons, birds with an eye to the main chance and an alert capacity for spotting likely crumb-droppers."

Note:
I usually give the first sentence of the book and also rate the books I write a review on. That doesn't seem appropriate for a collection of short stories all by different authors, so I skipped that in this review.

Also, for books to be counted towards the Back to the Classics 2022 reading challenge, they need to be published before 1972. Of the 20 stories - 12 were published between 1895-1966 and 1 was published in 1995. Of the 7 stories I couldn't find the publication date for, 4 authors passed before 1972 and 3 passed after. That's 16 stories before 1972 and, since the challenge asks for at least 6 stories to count for this category, I'm going to count it even though not all of them fit the criteria.
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Friday, October 21, 2022

Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft

 

Title: The Call of Cthulhu

Author: HP Lovecraft (American,  1890-1937)
Originally published: 1928
Page count: 38

Dates read: 10/18/22-10/20/22
2022 book goal progress: 17 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: Wild Card Classic
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: October - Thriller


Read my other book reviews for my 2022 goals HERE.

Description on back of book:
The Call of Cthulhu is a collection of anthropology notes and other accounts of a mysterious cult. The cult worships Cthulhu, a monstrous human, octopus, and dragon hybrid that lives in the sunken corpse city of R'lyeh, whose dreams influence reality.

First sentences:
"The most merciful thing in the word, I think, is the inablility of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a pacid island of ignorance in the middle of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyge far." 

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 6.6/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 5
Atmosphere   - 8
Writing Style - 7
Plot                - 7
Intrigue          - 8
Logic             - 5
Enjoyment     - 6
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:
I'm not really into horror, so I definitely kept a distance from any sort of suspension of belief. I knew Lovecraft was a white supremist and, unfortunately, that came out in this writing. To me, this one was pretty meh and I don't know if I'll read any more by him.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let HP Lovecraft have the last words:

"Some day the piecing together of dissasociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revaltion or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
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Thursday, July 14, 2022

Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw

Title: Arms and the Man (play)

Author: George Bernard Shaw (Irish, 1856-1950)
Originally published: 1894
Page count: 71

Dates read: 6/4/22-6/1/22
2022 book goal progress: 16 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: x
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: July - Romance


Read my other book reviews for
my 2022 goals HERE.


Description on back of book:
One of Bernard Shaw's most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war, and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valor is revealed.

First line:
CATHERINE [entering hastily, full of good news] Raina! [She pronounces it Rah-eena, with the stress on the ee] Raina! [She goes to the bed, expecting to find Raina there]. Why, where - ? [Raina looks into the room]. Heavens child! are you out in the night air instead of in your bed? You'll catch your death. Louka told me you were asleep.

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 5/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 6
Atmosphere   - 5
Writing Style - 4
Plot                - 5
Intrigue          - 6
Logic             - 4
Enjoyment     - 5
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:
Overall, I found this play to be meh. I didn't find it particularly funny, but maybe it'd be different if I saw it performed. I enjoyed the Don Quixote references. I tried reading the other 3 plays in Shaw's collection of Plays Pleasant, but I just couldn't get into them.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Shaw have the last words:

"He did it like an operatic tenor. A regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely mustache, shouting his war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We did laugh."
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Monday, July 11, 2022

The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton

Title: The Man Who Was Thursday

Author: GK Chesterton (English, 1874-1936)
Originally published: 1908
Page count: 181

Dates read: 6/15/22-6/30/22
2022 book goal progress: 15 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: Classic set in a place you'd like to visit. (London, England)
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: June - Thriller


Read my other book reviews for my 2022 goals HERE.


Description on back of book:
The story centers around seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the days of the week. Fearing an impending act of terrorism, Gabriel Syme is sent by Scotland Yard to infiltrate their ranks by becoming "Thursday." Elected undercover into the Central European Council of Anarchists, Syme must avoid detection and save the world from future bombings.

First sentence:
"The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, 
as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset."

Favorite quotes:
"The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit into them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not 'artists,' the whole was nevertheless artistic... A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy."

"Through all this ordeal, his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one."

"Bad is so bad that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good that we feel certain that evil could be explained."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 5.1/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 8
Atmosphere   - 5
Writing Style - 7
Plot                - 6
Intrigue          - 4
Logic             - 2
Enjoyment     - 4
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:
I was not impressed by this book. I found it very predictable, yet had an unexpected spiritual twist in the end, which felt forced and like it didn't belong with the rest of the book. The ending was strange and abrupt - and overall just didn't make sense. I did enjoy the dark humor in the book, but it didn't make it worth the read.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let GK Chesterton have the last words:

" 'My God!' said the colonel. 'Someone has shot at us.'

'It need not interrupt conversation,' said the gloomy Ratcliff. 'Pray resume your remarks, colonel. You were talking, I think, about the plain people of a peaceable French town.'

The staring colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes all around the street. 'It's extraordinary,' he said, 'most extraordinary.'

'A fastidious person,' said Syme, 'might even call it unpleasant.' "
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Tuesday, June 28, 2022

The Brave African Huntress by Tutuola

Title: The Brave African Huntress

Author: Amos Tutuola (Nigerian, 1920-1997)
Originally published: 1958
Page count: 169
Dates read: 5/30/22-6/4/22

Read my other book reviews for my 2022 goals HERE.

Description on back of book:
This is the story of Adebisi, a brave African huntress who sets out for the Jungle of the Pigmies to rescue her four brothers. Along the way, she conquers a giant, serves as the barber to a king, and endures the horrors of the pigmies' prison. Yet she will not give up. By employing her strength and intelligence, she finds a way to release her brothers and returns home to a hero's welcome.

First sentence:
"I Adebisi, the African huntress, will first relate the adventure of my late father, one of the ancient brave hunters, in brief."

Review:
I just could not get immersed in the story. I applaud Tutuola for writing a book in his second language, but I reworded every sentence in my head as I was reading. He overused the words 'like,' 'that,' and 'etc,' which became annoying. I wish he had written in his native language and then had the book translated. The story was also written more by telling rather than showing, which kept me from being immersed as well. I decided there were other books I wanted to read and didn't finish this one.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Amos Tutuola have the last words:

"The leaves on the tree on which I hid were so covered me that if I did not climb this tree on the presence of somebody there was nobody who could believe that I was there. Then everyone of us kept as quiet in his or her hiding place and stopped talking as when the heavy rain stopped the voices of birds."
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Sunday, May 29, 2022

On Stories by CS Lewis

Title: On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature 

Author: CS Lewis (British, 1898-1963)
Originally published: 1937-1968
Page count: 261

Dates read: 5/3/22-5/15/22; 5/24/22-5/29/22
2022 book goal progress: 14 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: Nonfiction Classic
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: x


Read my other 2022 book reviews HERE.



Description on back of book:
While CS Lewis was a professor of literature at Oxford University, he was renowned for his insightful and often witty presentations on the nature of stories. This collection assembles 20 essays that encapsulate his opinions of specific authors, as well as his ideas about reading, writing, and/or critiquing fiction. Usually, the genre involved is specifically children's stories, fantasy/fairytales, and/or science fiction.

Contents (and short notes):

1. On Stories (1947)
    -This was hard to wrap my head around. I didn't understand 'Story' vs. 'story.'
2. The Novels of Charles Williams (1949)
3. A Tribute to ER Eddision (1968)
4. On Three Ways of Writing for Children (1952)
    -This was one of my favorites!
5. Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said (1956)
    -Much of the same as the previous essays.
6. On Juvenile Tastes (1958)
7. It All Began with a Picture (1960)
8. On Science Fiction (1955)
9. A Reply to Professor Haldane (1946)
10. The Hobbit (1937)
11. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1955)
12. A Panegyric for Dorothy L Sayers (1958)
    -This was not as positive as I would expect something to be for a memorial service.
13. The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard (1960)
14. George Orwell (1955)
    -This compares 1984 with Animal Farm, of which, Lewis views the latter as far superior.
15. The Death of Words (1944)
    -I really liked this one! It's about how the meaning of words change over time.
16. The Parthenon and the Optative (1944)
17. Period Criticism (1946)
    -This is about GK Chesterton.
18. Different Tastes in Literature (1946)
19. On Criticism (1966)
20. Unreal Estates (1962)
    -Transcript of a recorded conversation between CS Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Brian Aldiss.

Review:
Overall, it's a good collection. As would be expected, some were much better than others. They were collected together because they all follow a similar theme, which sometimes felt repetitive. He often uses the term 'romance,' which I believe he uses as a sort of synonym to 'fiction,' rather than meaning the 'romance genre' that we think of today. 

Some fun facts: Many people know that Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, but many don't know he actually wrote a Space Trilogy, which is quite fantastic. Did you know that CS Lewis died the same day President JFK was assassinated? Did you know that CS Lewis died the day before the very first episode of Doctor Who was aired? I wish we could have gotten his critique of the show!

Book suggestions:
Well, with critiquing a bunch of books, if nothing else, I have greatly expanded my list of books I want to read:

Voyage to Arcturus, Worm of Ouroboros, Wind in the Willows, Bastable Trilogy, Flatland, The Borrowers, Brave New World, Iter Extaticum Celeste, Sayers' detective stories, The Mind of the Maker, The Zeal of Thy House, Sayers' translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, She, King of Solomon's Mines, The Ancient Mariner, The Well at the Word's End, Deirdre, Sheckley's Sci-Fi shorts, Lucky Jim

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let CS Lewis have the last words with a multitude of quotes:

"Good stories often introduce the marvelous or supernatural, and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood as this. Thus, for example, Dr. Johnson, if I remember rightly, thought that children liked the marvelous because they were too ignorant to know that they were impossible. But children do not always like them, nor are those who like them always children; and to enjoy reading about fairies - much more about giants and dragons - it is not necessary to believe in them. Belief at best is irrelevant; it may be a positive disadvantage." 
-On Stories

"It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more ) worth reading at the age of fifty - except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all." 
-On Stories

"A children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story." 
-On Three Ways of Writing for Children

"What shows we are reading myth, not allegory, is that there are no pointers to a specifically theological, or political, or psychological application. A myth points, for each reader, to the realm he lives in most. It is a master key; use it on the door you like." 
-Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

" 'But why,' (some ask), 'why if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality... And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?... The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores them to the rich significance which has been hidden by 'the veil of familiarity.' " 
-Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

LEWIS: I've never started [a story] from a message or a moral, have you?
AMIS: No, never. You get interested in the situation.
LEWIS: The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.
AMIS: Exactly. I think that sort of thing is true of all kinds of fiction.
-Unreal Estates
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Saturday, May 28, 2022

Fun Statistics!

Here's my 100 Must-Read Books: An Inclusive List

How did I come up with thelist?
 
GENERAL CALCULATIONS
 
Out of 898 books, 130 of them were mentioned in 3-10 of the 27 lists.

 
Then those were narrowed down to:
 
100 books total by 86 authors
 
39 books by female authors
 
36 books in translation (not originally written in English)
 
26 books by world authors
 
25 books written in English by white men
 

5 books in translation by female world authors:
 
23. The Tale of Genji (1012) by Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese, ~973-1031)
 
27. Like Water for Chocolate (1992) by Laura Esquivel (Mexican, 1950- )
 
51. The House of the Spirits (1982) by Isabel Allende (Chilean, 1942- )
 
66. So Long a Letter (1979) by Mariama Ba (Senegalese, 1929-1981)
 
98. Half a Lifelong Romance (1948) by Eileen Chang (Chinese-American, 1920-1995)
 
 
HIGHEST RANKED
 
Overall (by a female) – 1. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley (English, 1797-1851)
 
By a world author (and in translation) – 4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) 
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombian, 1927-2014)
 
By a white man – 9. Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce (Irish, 1882-1941)
 
 
OLDEST vs. NEWEST
 
Oldest overall book (in translation) – 24. The Iliad (~725 BC) 
by Homer (Greek)
 
Oldest by a word author - 45. One Thousand and One Nights (~750) 
by Unknown Collection (Middle Eastern and South Asian)
 
Oldest by a female - 23. The Tale of Genji (~1008) 
by Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese, ~973-1031)
 
Oldest in (Middle) English - 89. The Canterbury Tales (1300s) 
by Geoffrey Chaucer (English, 1340s-1400)
 
 
Newest overall book (in English by world female) – 55. The God of Small Things 
(1997) by Arundhati Roy (Indian, 1961- )
 
Newest in translation - 27. Like Water for Chocolate (1992) 
by Laura Esquivel (Mexican, 1950- )
 
Newest by a white author - 60. The Secret History (1992) 
by Donna Tartt (American, 1963- )
 
Newest by a man -100.  Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991) 
by Haruki Murakami (Japanese, 1949- )
 
 
MULTIPLE BOOKS BY SAME AUTHOR
 
There are 3 authors that have 3 books on the list:
 
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian, 1821-1881) – ranked 10, 18, and 68
 
William Faulkner (American, 1897-1962) – ranked 63, 77, and 82
 
Virginia Woolf (English, 1882-1941) – ranked 3, 6, and 42
 
Dostoevsky and Woolf both had a 4th book removed from the list in order to allow for the recognition of other authors.
 
 
There are 8 authors who have 2 books on the list:
 
Joseph Conrad (Polish-British, 1857-1924)
 
Charles Dickens (English, 1812-1870)
 
Homer (Greek, BC)
 
James Joyce (Irish, 1882-1941)
 
Franz Kafka (Czechoslovak, 1883-1924)
 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombian, 1927-2014)
 
Toni Morrison (American, 1931-2019)
 
Leo Tolstoy (Russian, 1828-1910)
 
 
These 11 authors make up 25% of the entire list!
 
 
FEMALE POWER
 
Of the 100 books, 39 are by women – 39%
 
Of the top 30 books, 15 are by women – 50%
 
Of the top 15 books, 9 are by women – 60%
 
Of the top 10 books, 7 are by women – 70%
 
Of the top 5 books, 4 are by women – 80%
 
ALL OF THE TOP 3 BOOKS ARE BY WOMEN – 100%!
 
 
AM I SPEAKING YOUR LANGUAGE?

36 books in translation






















LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION (by author)

World Authors (24)
(NOT White North American or European)		White Authors (62)
(North American or European)
Basic Locations:Basic Locations:
North American – 7British / English – 20
South American – 5North American – 16
Asian – 4French – 7
African – 3Irish – 6
South Asian / Middle Eastern – 3Russian – 4
Australian – 2Greek – 2
Other European - 7
Detailed Locations:Detailed Locations:
American (USA) – 7American (USA) – 15
Argentine – 1British / English – 16
Australian / South African-Australian - 2British- Dominican / Indian /
             Polish / Zimbabwean – 4
Chilean – 1British-American-Indian - 1
Chinese – 1Canadian – 1
Colombian – 1Czechoslovak - 1
Indian / Middle Eastern / South Asian - 2French / French-Algerian – 7
Japanese – 3German - 1
Kenyan - 1Greek - 2
Mexican - 1Irish / Anglo-Irish / Irish-British – 6
Nigerian – 1Italian – 1
Peruvian-Spanish - 1Roman - 1
Senegalese – 1Russian / Russian-American – 4
Sudanese - 1Scottish - 1
Spanish – 1
 
 
DATE NIGHT
 





















Detailed Dates:
~725-24 BC (~700 years) – 4 books1910-1919 (10 years) – 4 books
~750-1472 AD (~720 years) – 4 books1920-1929 (10 years) – 8 books
~1600-1605 (~5 years) – 2 books1930-1939 (10 years) – 9 books
1726-1759 (~35 years) – 2 books1940-1949 (10 years) – 7 books
1800-1824 (25 years) – 3 books1950-1959 (10 years) – 7 books
1825-1849 (25 years) – 5 books1960-1969 (10 years) – 11 books
1850-1874 (25 years) – 10 books1970-1979 (10 years) – 5 books
1875-1899 (25 years) – 4 books1980-1989 (10 years) – 8 books
1900-1909 (10 years) – 3 books1990-1999 (10 years) – 4 books
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