July Group Challenge, 2019

Here is our July Challenge:
There are many authors on the list that have multiple entries. Choose an author for whom you have the most unread books and read one of them. Or choose any author that still has multiple unread books on the list. For those of you who have read many books on the list, you may be digging a little deeper than the rest of us. Also feel free to comment on what you think of these repeat authors. Are there any that you think really deserve all the books that are on the list? Are there any that you think absolutely don’t deserve so many? Have you read all the books on the list for any of these authors?

I think these are all the authors with six or more books on the list. Feel free to add any I’ve missed.

Margaret Atwood – 6
Jane Austen – 6
Paul Auster – 7
J.G. Ballard – 7
Samuel Beckett – 8
Saul Bellow – 7
Thomas Bernhard – 6
Elizabeth Bowen – 6
J.M. Coetzee – 10
Don DeLillo – 8
Charles Dickens – 10
Henry Green – 6
Graham Greene – 8
Thomas Hardy – 7
Henry James – 6
D.H. Lawrence – 7
Ian McEwan – 8
Iris Murdoch – 6
Thomas Pynchon – 6
Philip Roth – 8
Salman Rushdie – 7
Edith Wharton – 6
Virginia Woolf – 9

My "most unread' author is Thomas Bernhard, mainly because his books are hard to find in Australia. Of the five unread books, I do have one on the shelves though, 'Correction" so I'll read that as part of this challenge.

And this challenge reinforces why I am reading from the 2008 edition. Those same authors after the 2008 purge look more like this:

Atwood, Margaret - 3
Austen, Jane - 4
Auster, Paul - 4
Ballard, J.G. - 2
Beckett, Samuel - 3
Bellow, Saul - 3
Bernhard, Thomas - 3
Bowen, Elizabeth - 3
Coetzee, J.M. - 5
DeLillo, Don - 4
Dickens, Charles - 4
Green, Henry - 4
Greene, Graham - 5
Hardy, Thomas - 3
James, Henry - 4
Lawrence, D.H. - 4
McEwan, Ian - 3
Murdoch, Iris - 4
Pynchon, Thomas - 4
Roth, Philip - 4
Rushdie, Salman - 3
Wharton, Edith - 3
Woolf, Virginia - 4

What I like more is the list of authors from 2008 and on:

Austen, Jane - 4
Auster, Paul - 4
Calvino, Italo - 4
Coetzee, J.M. - 5
DeLillo, Don - 4
Dickens, Charles - 4
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - 4
Eliot, George - 4
García Márquez, Gabriel - 4
Gide, André - 4
Green, Henry - 4
Greene, Graham - 5
Hemingway, Ernest - 4
Ishiguro, Kazuo - 4
James, Henry - 4
Lawrence, D.H. - 4
Mann, Thomas - 5
Murdoch, Iris - 4
Nabokov, Vladimir - 4
Perec, Georges - 4
Pynchon, Thomas - 4
Roth, Philip - 4
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - 4
Saramago, Jose - 4
Woolf, Virginia - 4
Zola, Émile - 5

From my list, I should read Perec, as I haven't read a single book written by him.

>3 ELiz_M: This is really, really interesting! I haven't ever taken the time to do a lot of analysis of the differences in the various editions of the list. Those subsequent lists are very improved in my opinion. Thank you for taking the time to post them!

From the combined lists in my initial post, I have read all of Atwood, Austen, Wharton, and Woolf. Even though I love all of those authors, I think that none of them needs more than 3 or 4 of their books on the list. I think of these that I'm familiar with, Woolf has the best argument for multiple books because her writing trajectory really morphs and does present some inventive twists for novel development.

For the challenge, I really should read a Coetzee book since I've read none of his, he has 10 on the list, and I have one on my shelf (Slow Man). But he's honestly never really appealed to me. There are two on the list that I am very interested in getting to that I haven't read any books by yet, Henry Green and Salmon Rushdie. I may choose one of those instead.

Although I have read books by both these authors, I am going to read The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood and will finish Adam Bede by George Eliot. If I am able to add any more books to my month, I will read The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

>4 japaul22: And I can'r believe I have been reading from this list for more than a decade! I had to go back and change all my 2018s to 2008s!

Coetzee isn't all bad. I have had a variety of opinions on his works (hated one, disliked two, enjoyed one).

DeltaQueen50 - if you've never read any Graham Greene please, please don't start with The Quiet American. It's not one of his best. You'd be better off with The Human Factor, Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory or The End of the Affair. Don't want you to get put off one of my fave authors!

It will have to be Coetzee for me. Have read two, not felt strongly either way. Willing to do another for July..

Looks like either Beckett or Bernhard for me.

I am currently reading The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard. For anyone who has not read anything by Ballard, do not start with this one! Seriously!

>9 BentleyMay: And don't start with Crash either...

It's probably Coetzee for me too. I haven't read any by him, and I have Disgrace to be read.

I have a number of possibles:

J.G. Ballard – Super-Cannes *read
Samuel Beckett – Malloy (reread) Malone dies, The Unnamable *read
Thomas Bernhard – Correction *read
Henry Green – Caught *read
Graham Greene – The Honorary Consul *read
D.H. Lawrence – Aaron's Rod *read
Salman Rushdie – The Moor's Last Sigh *read
Edith Wharton – Bunner Sisters *read
Iris Murdoch- A severed head *read

>7 arukiyomi: Oh dear, I will try to rein in my expectations for The Quiet American. I have read Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair and loved both of them. These books have made him a fave of mine as well.

I have completed my read of The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. While this book doesn't reach the perfection that The Handmaid's Tale did for me, it did make me run an emotional gamut and will be one that I long remember.

I read Correction: A Novel by Thomas Bernhard. As with Bernhard's other novels this is as much about style as substance. The 250 pages consist of two paragraphs. I had previously read Old Masters which had one 250 page paragraph. Whereas the latter suited the ranting style of the narrator, I couldn't really see that this book justified the style. Nevertheless it was quite compelling and despite the intimidating look and a fair bit of repetition I found myself pouring over page after page. I own one other Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew which again appears to be a single paragraph novel. I assume the other three novels are similar? He writes in a compelling way, but do you need to read 6 stylistically interesting but similar novels by Bernhard before you die? Probably not.

Margaret Atwood – all 6 read
I am a big Atwood fan, her longevity is something that sets her apart from many writers. I would agree, however, with the removing some of her books from the list. For me, Surfacing is an overrated book, maybe I was missing something, but I just thought it sputtered out after a promising start. I love The Handmaid's Tale and look forward to a reread before the new book hits the bookshops and this is a novel that has stood the test of time and is also scarily prescient in today's time. I wonder about The Edible Woman being missed off, while the book has dated, it captures a definite era in women's fight for equality. My first Atwood was The Blind Assassin, and while it is a good book and certainly inspired me to (fairly obsessively) search out all her other work, The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace are better crafted.

Jane Austen – all 6 read
Another fabulous author, behind the romance there is a fascinating social commentary. Depending on my mood, I go between Emma and Persuasion as being my favourites, though I recognise that the latter is more for the plot than the form. Certainly having all 6 on the list was overkill, I find Mansfield Park deeply dissatisfying for a number of reasons, however Austen is the grande dame of women's literature.

Paul Auster – 6 from 7 read
Auster was a writer I had never really heard of until the 1001 list, I have found his books enjoyable, but was not overly surprised to see them culled to two and the two left on the list are the most unusual and memorable of the six I have read. I will keep looking out for The Music of Chance to complete the set.

J.G. Ballard – 5/ 7 with Super-Cannes read for this month's challenge.
Empire of the Sun is one of the first films I remember watching multiple times, I read the book for the first time when I was at school, possibly stealing it off my mother's shelves. His biographical books are very different from the others on the list, in which sex, death and drugs are intertwined. Crash was eye-opening and looked at the darker depths of humankind, it also slightly
inoculated me for the contents of other books. Super-Cannes was outlandish, but I did find it page-turning, it was strange to read it after my own visit to Nice and also after seeing Riviera.

Saul Bellow – 6/7
Another author I had never heard of - UK vs US education I presume. I find his books entertaining and a good commentary on the human condition, really the male condition. I agree with the reduction of books and the ones they have chosen to remove - Henderson the Rain King was definitely past its sell-by date.

Thomas Bernhard – 1/6 read with Correction read for this month's challenge.
Gosh, you have to pay attention - luckily I had already read Puckers' comment above before starting! Will I read another, probably but not as an eBook as I needed to remind myself to slow down.

Elizabeth Bowen – 6/6
I love Bowen's writing style, quiet books with a lot going on if you read into the text. I was sad to see The Last September removed as I think the tension in the book was top-notch. Eva Trout is probably the one that stayed longest in my brain after finishing.

J.M. Coetzee – 10/10
I was initially sceptical that one author could have so many books on the list, but Coetzee does have different styles. My first was Disgrace, brutal but fantastically written. The only one that really did nothing for me was Elizabeth Costello, I don't think it went anywhere, but I was flummoxed by Foe being removed from the list, as I think there was a lot going on here and I enjoy books about books. No, there shouldn't be ten on the list, but I think 5 is correct due to the different genres.

>16 soffitta1: Thanks for this thoughtful summary!

This is a great challenge this month, it has really made me think about the list as a whole. The different balance of the second edition really made the list come alive for me. Your post above highlighting the differences brings that home, there are still a number on that list I haven't got round to.

>16 soffitta1: Great summary!

Reading Foe by Coetzee. I have not been madly taken with other books I've read by him and so far this one is the same. Not terrible at all, but not earthshaking. I might like it more had I read Robinson Crusoe more recently, or had I not read The Witness fairly recently.

And as from others, thanks to >16 soffitta1: for that overview!

I have completed The Quiet American by Graham Greene. I love how Graham Greene peoples his books with characters that are morally ambivalent yet still reaches the reader's emotions and intelligence. While this isn't my favorite book of his, it is a true classic.

Graham Greene 7/8 read
I read The Honorary Consul, I have been wanting to read this for a while because of the setting. Like some of the other Greene books, it is slightly slow out of the blocks as the author sets up the plot. As DeltaQueen50 said above, it is another book with morally ambivalent characters searching or running from love, but what grabbed me most was the timing of the novel. As for the list, I didn't really enjoy The Power and the Glory as much. I am not surprised that The Third Man was dropped from the list, it reads like a script and, for me, lacks meat on its bones.

Samuel Beckett 3/8
Malloy (reread), Malone dies, The Unnamable
Similar to Thomas Bernhard, the style takes a lot to get used to. If I'm honest, I'm not sure I followed all the twists and turns. Of the three, The Unnamable was the weakest and I am not surprised to see it knocked off the list. I am not sure I'd read more from the list, due to the similarity in the style.

Though he wasn't my author with the most unread books, I chose Henry Green's Living. I hadn't read anything by him. I was not enjoying it at first - the dialect and experimental writing choice of using few articles was hard to get into - but I made it over the hump and ended up really enjoying it.

I have Loving on my shelf as well which I'm looking forward to now. This is another author I don't believe I would have ever come across without the list.

Henry Green - 4/6
>23 japaul22: Living was my first Green book as well, I grabbed it off a bookshelf at a National Trust property because the title rang a bell from the list. I started it twice, then got more into it. I read two more earlier this year as I picked up a 3-in-1 volume of his work, but Living impacted me most because I hadn't read his style before. When I asked around, none of my friends had heard of the writer either, I suppose the list also gives us a flavour of trends in taste as well as trends in writing.

For this challenge, I read Caught, I think this was the most accessible of his books, but the plot didn't grab me as much as the others. I would agree with it and Party Going to be taken off the main list as the others seem to better examples of his work. I have the missing two books on my kindle and look forward to reading them.

Salman Rushdie – 5/7
I read The Moor's Last Sigh, which only appears on the first edition of the list. I enjoyed it, probably because I got one strand of the in jokes (Portuguese nicknames of the family) and it was a period of history I am interested in. Rushdie always makes for interesting reading, though you have to make the decision of trying to work out every reference he makes from character names, plot points or throw away lines. Maybe I enjoyed this book because it was not as convoluted (can't think of a less loaded word than that) as some of his other work. The Satanic Verses are a fascinating read, but I know I missed whole chunks of subtext, my favourite would have to be Midnight's Children. The two books left for me to read are not on the current list, so I think I would read them if I came across them, but I am not likely to look out specially for them.

D. H. Lawrence - 7/7
My last one to read was Aaron's Rod, taken off the original list. I wasn't massively pulled in by this one, not in the way I had been by his more famous work. Of the four still on the list, I rate them all, they are both of their era and ground-breaking in how he discusses relationships and the UK class system. I did also enjoy The Plumed Serpent as I visited Mexico a number of times.