I was looking at some books on my desk last night for to be inspired. What did I see? The Tractatus. An Anscombe book about the Tractatus. Fucking Chomsky linguistics books. Josh Kates’ book on Derrida. The Grammatology. Buber. My only consolation was rediscovering Félix Fénéon’s wonderful NYRB book, so that I could life one of his premises for a fancy. Otherwise, Jeez! I am the most boring person in the world. I’ve even, like, given away all my books of poems except for the big Lowell and the big Dickinson. And who knows if I could get out of those alive right now. Likely—not.

So when I saw this list of books, I decided I’d, like, read them all. All the ones I haven’t read yet, at least, because honestly who has the time to read Infinite Jest thrice or Gravity’s Rainbow twice. Those books are, like, not fancies so much as tombstones. I don’t mind ghoststories, but I like my ghosts to be alive—youknowwhaddimean?

After the “jump” is the list and my pre-progress if you’re interested.

• The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
• All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren
• American Pastoral Philip Roth
• An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
• Animal Farm George Orwell
• Appointment in Samarra John O’Hara
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret Judy Blume
• The Assistant Bernard Malamud
• At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O’Brien
• Atonement Ian McEwan
• Beloved Toni Morrison
• The Berlin Stories Christopher Isherwood
• The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
• The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
• Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
• Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
• Call It Sleep Henry Roth
• Catch-22 Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
• A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
• The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron
• The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
• The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
• A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell
• The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
• Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
• A Death in the Family James Agee
• The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
• Deliverance James Dickey
• Dog Soldiers Robert Stone
• Falconer John Cheever
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
• The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
• Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin
• Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
• The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
• Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
• The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
• The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
• The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
• Herzog Saul Bellow
• Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
• A House for Mr. Biswas V.S. Naipaul
• I, Claudius Robert Graves
• Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
• Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
• Light in August William Faulkner
• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis
• Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
• Loving Henry Green Read the Original Review
• Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
• The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead
• Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
• Money Martin Amis
• The Moviegoer Walker Percy
• Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
• Naked Lunch William Burroughs
• Native Son Richard Wright
• Neuromancer William Gibson
• Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
• 1984 George Orwell
• On the Road Jack Kerouac
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey
• The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosinski
• Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
• A Passage to India E.M. Forster
• Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
• Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth
• Possession A.S. Byatt
• The Power and the Glory Graham Greene
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
• Rabbit, Run John Updike
• Ragtime E.L. Doctorow
• The Recognitions William Gaddis
• Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
• Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
• The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
• Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
• Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
• The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth
• The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
• The Sportswriter Richard Ford
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carre
• The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
• Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
• To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
• To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
• Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
• Ubik Philip K. Dick
• Under the Net Iris Murdoch
• Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
• Watchmen Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
• White Noise Don DeLillo
• White Teeth Zadie Smith
• Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys