melreads | Entries tagged with fiction

I mentioned in another entry that I am always writing down titles and authors from lists of book recommendations that I come across, and so this is an attempt at compiling a list of some of those books. This is only books that I haven't read or or the ones that I started but never finished (but only the ones that I didn't put on the DNF list because I haven't given up on it.). If I have read it OR if I started it but put it down in disgust, it's not here. Which is to say, it's really a list meant for my use more than it is for sharing - but I thought I'd share just the same. (At some point I'll have to make a list of my own recommendations!)

I'm separating into categories - so far, fiction, short stories, non-fiction (which includes memoirs) - but this is definitely a work in progress.

Latest additions to the list: Award-wining fantasy

All the Light We Cannot See - Doerr
Americanah - Adichie
Amsterdam - McEwan
Angela's Ashes - McCourt
Anna Karenina
Bel Canto - A.Patchett
The Book of Form & Emptiness - Ozeki
The Book Thief - Zusak
A Brief HIstory of Seven Killings - James
Broken Earth (a trilogy) - Jemisen
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Circe - M.Miller
The Confessions of Nat Turner - Styron
The Corrections - Franzen
Crossing to Safety - Stegner
The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon
Cutting for Stone - Verghese
Death in Venice - Mann
Demon Copperhead - Kingsolver
The Dutch House - Patchett
Exit West - M. Hamid
The Fault in Our Stars
The Friend - Nunez
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
The God of Small Things - A. Roy
The Goldfinch - Tartt
The Good Lord Bird - McBride
Hamnet - O'Farrell
The Handmaid's Tale
A Heartbreaking Book of Staggering Genius
Homegoing - Gyasi
The House of the Spirits - I.Allende
The House on Margo Street - S. Cisneros
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - J.Alvarez
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Angelou
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Interpreter of Maladies - J.Lahiri
Invisible Man - Ellison
The Kitchen God's Wife - Tan
The Kite Runner - Hosseini
Lavinia - LeGuin
A Lesson Before Dying - Gaines
Let the Great World Spin - McCann
Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
The Luminaries - E. Catton
March - G.Brooks ("March" as in the absent father of Little Women)
Middlesex - Eugenides
The Midnight Library - Haig
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
My Brilliant Friend - Ferrante
Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro
Pachinko - MJ Lee
Passing - N.Larsen
The Postman Always Rings Twice - Cain
The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro (hmm, have I read this?)
The Round House - L. Erdrich
Salvage the Bones - J.Ward
The Secret Life of Bees - Kidd
The Sellout - Beatty
Shadow Country - Matthiessen
The Signature of All Things - E. Gilbert
Sing, Unburied, Sing - J.Ward
A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler
The Starless Sea - Morgenstern
Stone Diaries - Shield
The Sympathizer - Nguyen
Tenth of December - Saunders
A Thousand Acres - J.Smiley
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Egan
White Noise - DeLillo
White Teeth - Z. Smith
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Murakami

Short story compilations
The Birds of America - L.Moore
Dear Life - A. Munro (also Selected Stories)
The Things They Carried - O'Brien

Non-fiction (includes essays, memoirs)
The Liars' Club - Karr
Team of Rivals - Goodwin
The Year of Magical Thinking - Didion

I have a bunch of lists stuck into my reading journal, I'm always copying lists of recommended books from here or there, and they're piling up. Here's one I found recently - I don't remember where it came from ("somewhere online" is not terribly helpful, is it?) - it was titled something to the effect of Books of the Last 50 Years You Should Read at Least Once. I was bored at the time - this is how it always happens! - so I copied down things I hadn't already read (or already own and haven't gotten around to reading yet) - so this is only part of the list I was copying from. But it occurred to me that since I am always doing this, I should really try to consolidate the ones I write down over and over. (Another reading-related "to-do" that I'll completely forget about later, I'm sure!

Anyway, here's what I wrote down (I'll do alpha order by title):

All the Light We Cannot See - Doerr
Amsterdam - McEwan
A Brief HIstory of Seven Killings - James
Crossing to Safety - Stegner
Demon Copperhead - Kingsolver
The Dutch House - Patchett
Exit West - M. Hamid
The Friend - Nunez
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
The God of Small Things - A. Roy
The Goldfinch - Tartt
The Good Lord Bird - McBride
Homegoing - Gyasi
The House on Margo Street - S. Cisneros
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Angelou
Interpreter of Maladies - J.Lahiri
A Lesson Before Dying - Gaines
Let the Great World Spin - McCann
Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
The Luminaries - E. Catton
March - G.Brooks ("March" as in the family in Little Women)
Middlesex - Eugenides
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
My Brilliant Friend - Ferrante
The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro (hmm, have I read this?)
The Round House - L. Erdrich
Salvage the Bones - J.Ward
The Sellout - Beatty
Shadow Country - P. Matthiessen
The Signature of All Things - E. Gilbert
A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler
Stone Diaries - Shield
The Sympathizer - Nguyen
Tenth of December
A Thousand Acres - J.Smiley
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Egan
White Noise - DeLillo
White Teeth - Z. Smith
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Murakami

Short story compilations
The Birds of America - L.Moore
Dear Life - A. Munro

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