A note on this blog's organization

Since I first started this blog, I've read over 600 books. I decided to organize them by sections, so to navigate to specific blog entries, review the sections below. To look for a specific book, you can check the list below, then use it to find the right page of the blog. Alternatively, you can try typing the book title or author's name in the search bar at the top left of this blog, but that seems to only pull from 'Conquering the Classics' and '101 and Beyond'.

101 and Beyond - The Second Hundred 'Classics'

I used the same reading rules as for the first 100. 

 For this list, I chose to focus on three types of books:

- Books I wanted to read that could loosely be termed a 'classic'

- Books accepted as 'classics' that missed the first list

- Books by authors underrepresented in 'classic' lit (e.g., women, queer authors, international authors, authors of color, politically repressed authors)

101) Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving (Wednesday, January 6, 2016)

  • Keep passing the open windows.
  • Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.

    103) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (Thursday, January 7, 2016)
    • His shame inhabited our house as pervasively and invisibly as the aromatic musk of aging mahogany.
    Logan's Blog-Along on Fun Home (Saturday, January 9, 2016)
    • From time to time, someone read along with me and blogged their thoughts. Here is my sibling Logan's blog-along.
    • There was no room in God's army for the coward heart.
    105) The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie (Wednesday, February 3, 2016)
    • To be born again, first you have to die. To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly!
    106) Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (Monday, February 15, 2016)
    • Have you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?
    • No zoot suits and no jitterbugs, please.
    108) Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (Friday, April 15, 2016)
    • Would it be so awful if we all stayed here in this beautiful house?
    109) Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (Wednesday, May 11, 2016)
    • Take care of thyself, gentle Yahoo!
    • Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'm a cracked plate.
    111) Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey (Friday, September 9, 2016)
    • Here with the child in the trees, all things seemed possible and true.
    • It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.
    113) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Sunday, January 22, 2017)
    • Take heed, Oliver, take heed!
    • Clara the Clairvoyant could interpret dreams.
    115) Native Son - Richard Wright (Wednesday, May 10, 2017)
    • I shall witness for Bigger Thomas.
    116) Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko (Monday, May 29, 2017)
    • Once there had been a man who cursed the rain clouds, a man of monstrous dreams.
    • Why is a raven like a writing-desk?
    118) A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle (Thursday, August 3, 2017)
    • Playing with time and space is a dangerous game.
    • I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.
    120) Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen (Thursday, October 26, 2017)
    • They have not got nine in Swaheli.
    • Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?
    • We can't change the world with violence. Only with ideas.
    123) The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank (Tuesday, January 30, 2018)
    • Surely the time will come when we are people again, and not just Jews.
    • On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
    • A scarlet sin is a blab-mouth thing.
    • The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.
    126) Rabbit, Run - John Updike (Wednesday, May 2, 2018)
    • Maybe once you could play basketball but you can't do anything now.
    127) Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin (Friday, May 11, 2018)
    • What kind of life can we have in this room?
    • You really couldn't say you knew Mom.
    • I have come to distinguish what is really in me from what I foolishly imagined to be there.
    130) A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (Wednesday, July 11, 2018)
    • Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
    • From time to time, someone read along with me and blogged their thoughts. Here is my friend Daniel-ay's blog-along.
    • You will see what it is to be a king.
    132) Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (Tuesday, August 7, 2018)
    • What you have done will not please the Earth.
    133) March - Geraldine Brooks (Thursday, September 18, 2018)
    • How brave do you need to be to satisfy yourself?
    134) Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (Thursday, November 1, 2018)
    • I used to be in a very revolutionary mood, but now I think that we'll gain nothing by violence.
    • They were strangers who had met in a chance encounter. They had known each other before Life began.
    • She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.
    137) A Separate Peace - John Knowles (Saturday, December 22, 2018)
    • We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve.
    138) Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Thursday, December 27, 2018)
    • Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.
    • My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.
    • Did the wind-up bird forget to wind your spring?
    141) Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe (Wednesday, January 30, 2019)
    • What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it?
    142) In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (Monday, February 18, 2019)
    • Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered.
    143) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (Wednesday, March 6, 2019)
    • Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.
    • The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
    145) Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott (Tuesday, May 7, 2019)
    • Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons.
    • He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.
    • As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.
    • I counted Rikki's storms just like I counted God's.
    149) The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (Wednesday, June 5, 2019)
    • He is not well! Why else would Gregor miss a train?
    • And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.
    • You will not regret the time passed on board my vessel. You are going to visit the land of marvels.
    152) Jubilee - Margaret Walker (Monday, July 29, 2019)
    • You must not stop because you can't go on, but you must go on because you can't stop.
    153) The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu (Tuesday, October 22, 2019)
    • Many women were sheltered beneath his shade.
    • Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts.
    155) The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)
    • Are these creatures everywhere? Has the earth been given over to them?
    156) Kindred - Octavia Butler (Sunday, January 26, 2020)
    • I don't have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don't feel safe any more.
    • I needed to be alone so that he could come back.
    158) The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence (Sunday, February 23, 2020)
    • They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate from the world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible bounds.
    159) White Teeth - Zadie Smith (Monday, March 2, 2020)
    • These are old secrets. They will come out like wisdom teeth when the time is right.
    160) The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran (Tuesday, March 3, 2020)
    • You are the way and the wayfarers.
    • Should they not stop and laugh instead before their hands have turned blood red?
    • He began to think that who you are when you're with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.
    • From time to time, someone read along with me and blogged their thoughts. Here is my friend Elizabeth's blog-along.
    • Oh! How lucky you are that there is somebody who loves you!
    164) Passing - Nella Larsen (Saturday, March 14, 2020)
    • It's such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one's the type, all that's needed is a little nerve.
    165) The Call of the Wild - Jack London (Thursday, March 19, 2020)
    • He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.
    166) Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor (Sunday, April 12, 2020)
    • Listen, get this: I don't believe in anything.
    • We can't stay here. Everywhere I go is dangerous!
    168) Kim - Rudyard Kipling (Saturday, June 13, 2020)
    • Once gone, who shall find me?
    169) Sophie's Choice - William Styron (Thursday, June 25, 2020)
    • They made me afraid of everything! Why don't I tell the truth about myself?
    170) The Color Purple - Alice Walker (Thursday, July 2, 2020)
    • Somebody to run to. It seem too sweet to bear.
    171) Sandman - Neil Gaiman (Thursday, July 30, 2020)
    • The universe knows someone is missing, and slowly it attempts to replace him.
    • The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
    173) The Known World - Edward P. Jones (Sunday, September 6, 2020)
    • Henry had always said that he wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known.
    174) Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson (Tuesday, September 22, 2020)
    • It is true that one is always aware of the lake in Fingerbone, or the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below.
    175) Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (Saturday, October 31, 2020)
    • To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.
    • Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.
    177) Three Lives - Gertrude Stein (Wednesday, May 19, 2021)
    • Most women were interfering in their ways.
    178) Black Boy - Richard Wright (Monday, September 6, 2021)
    • What quality of will must a Negro possess to live and die with dignity in a country that denied his humanity?
    179) The Awakening - Kate Chopin (Tuesday, September 14, 2021)
    • She wanted something to happen - something, anything; she did not know what.
    180) Sanctuary - William Faulkner (Monday, November 29, 2021)
    • Don't you know that putting yourself in the position for disaster is the surest way in the world to bring it about?
    181) The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck (Monday, December 20, 2021)
    • Ah, I have heard of a Revolution, but I have been too busy in my life to attend to it. There was always the land.
    • Is it a crime to try and look my best when you come here?
    183) A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul (Wednesday, September 7, 2022)
    • I still thought of myself as a man just passing through.
    184) The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (Wednesday, December 7, 2022)
    • We don't feel the cold.
    185) Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (Wednesday, December 21, 2022)
    • She, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.
    • Little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don't want to lose them.
    187) Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson (Saturday, September 30, 2023)
    • Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
    188) The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Thursday, October 19, 2023)
    • Behind him's the fawn. Before him's the buck.
    189) The Hours - Michael Cunningham (Wednesday, November 15, 2023)
    • But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and then you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.
    190) Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri (Wednesday, December 6, 2023)
    • I was hoping you could make me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.
    191) A Passage to India - E.M. Forster (Friday, December 8, 2023)
    • Fancy inviting guests and not treating them properly!
    192) Nightwood - Djuna Barnes (Monday, February 12, 2024)
    • Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human.
    193) Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (Thursday, February 22, 2024)
    • I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
    • Memory returned like spring.
    195) Candide - Voltaire (Tuesday, March 21, 2024)
    • Tout est bien, tout va bien, tout va le mieux qu'il soit possible. [All's well, all's going well, all's going the best it possibly could.]
    196) Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison (Monday, April 22, 2024)
    • Do you now know what it's like to risk your one and only self?
    • Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
    198) My Antonia - Willa Cather (Saturday, May 11, 2024)
    • We'd never have got through if I hadn't been so strong.
    • Not easy to sentence a man to death, was their unvoiced remark. Who could speak of what it would do to your dreams?
    200) Roots - Alex Haley (Saturday, August 9, 2025)
    • What would it feel like to be 'free'?
    My blog post on finishing the second 200 (

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