A note on this blog's organization

Since I first started this blog, I've read well 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, try typing the book title or author's name in the search bar at the top left of this blog.

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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