Top Books First Read in 2020

[baby doll]

Have at it, boys (and girls, if any).

[baby doll]

Non-Fiction:
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)

[Milky Joe]

Fiction:

Look at the Harlequins!, Vladimir Nabokov
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
Stoner, John Williams

[dreamdead]

First Read in 2020 -ranked

Novels:
Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown
Yōko Tawada’s The Emissary
Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights
Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay
Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels
Maureen Johnson’s The Hand on the Wall

Poetry
Tomas Tranströmer’s The Great Enigma
Brenda Shaughnessy’s The Octopus Museum
Jake Skeets’s Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers
Monica Sok’s A Nail the Evening Hangs On
W.S. Merwin’s Shadow of Sirius

[Peng]

1. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)
2. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
3. Kien Bod Nung, Sud Kon Doo Hai Yuu Mud (Screenwriting) (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)

[bac0n]

After the dread realization of how woefully under-read I am, I'm trying to catch up on some of the great American masters of letters.

Read so far:
1. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) <- one of the most amazing things I have ever read, holy cow.
2. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
3. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)

Currently Reading:
All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)

In the hopper:

The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
Kindred (Octavia Butler)
There There (Tommy Orange)
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor)
The House of Spirits (Isabel Allende)

[baby doll]

Non-Fiction:
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)

Non-Fiction:
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)

[dreamdead]

Updated, and ranked with personal quality listed first in each:

Fiction:
Ann Petry’s The Street
Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown
Ronyoung Kim’s Clay Walls
Yōko Tawada’s The Emissary
Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights
H. T. Tsiang’s The Hanging on Union Square
Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman
Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay
Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels
Maureen Johnson’s The Hand on the Wall
Bienvenido N. Santos’s Scent of Apples
Abraham Cahan’s Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto
Omar El Akkad’s American War
Edith Wharton’s The Reef

Poetry:
Tomas Tranströmer’s The Great Enigma
Victoria Chang's Obit
Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem
Brenda Shaughnessy’s The Octopus Museum
Jake Skeets’s Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers
Diane Seuss’s Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
Don Mee Choi’s Hardly War
Monica Sok’s A Nail the Evening Hangs On
W.S. Merwin’s Shadow of Sirius

Nonfiction:
Elie Wiesel’s Night
Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)

Non-Fiction:
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)

[Peng]

1. Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon)
2. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
3. The Bone Collector (Jeffery Deaver)
3. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)
4. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
5. Kien Bod Nung, Sud Kon Doo Hai Yuu Mud (Screenwriting) (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)

Even though the Hemingway is #2, I'm still ambivalent about it; I'm encouraged though that in circles I frequent it's considered the least Hemingway among his four most famous novels. For anyone else here, is that the case?

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)

Non-Fiction:
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)

Non-Fiction:
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, 1996)
History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (Harry Harootunian, 2000)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and the Postwar Japanese Documentary (Abé Mark Nornes, 2007)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)

[Peng]

1. Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon)
2. Confessions (Kanae Minato)
3. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
4. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi)
5. Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon)
6. The Bone Collector (Jeffery Deaver)
7. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)
8. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
9. Kien Bod Nung, Sud Kon Doo Hai Yuu Mud - Film Screenwriting (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)

[bac0n]

Read so far:
1. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) <- one of the most amazing things I have ever read, holy cow.
2. All The Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
3. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
4. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)

Currently Reading:

How to be an Anti-Racist (Dr Ibram Xolani Kendi)
Kindred (Octavia Butler)

In the hopper:

The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
There There (Tommy Orange)
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor)
The House of Spirits (Isabel Allende)
The Crossing (Cormac McCarthy)



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Mysterious Dude]

The libraries are still closed, so I'm going through some books in the public domain.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844, Alexandre Dumas)
2. The Known World (2003, Edward P. Jones)
3. Jane Eyre (1847, Charlotte Brontë)
4. We Were the Mulvaneys (1996, Joyce Carol Oates)
5. The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886, Thomas Hardy)
6. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870, Jules Verne)
7. Old School (2003, Tobias Wolff)
8. The Flying Classroom (1933, Erich Kästner)
9. The Athenaeum (1888, Raul Pompéia)
10. Boy's Life (1991, Robert R. McCammon)
11. Such Fine Boys (1982, Patrick Modiano)
12. Stardance (1979, Jeanne & Spider Robinson)
13. Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888, Edward Bellamy)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)

Non-Fiction:
Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (V.F. Perkins, 1972)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, 1996)
History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (Harry Harootunian, 2000)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (Joanne Bernardi, 2001)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and the Postwar Japanese Documentary (Abé Mark Nornes, 2007)
The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity (Catherine Russell, 2008)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859-60)

Non-Fiction:
Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (V.F. Perkins, 1972)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (George M. Wilson, 1986)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, 1996)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (Harry Harootunian, 2000)
Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (Joanne Bernardi, 2001)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and the Postwar Japanese Documentary (Abé Mark Nornes, 2007)
The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity (Catherine Russell, 2008)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)
Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (Isolde Standish, 2011)

[Dukefrukem]

Howard Stern Comes Again :)

[Peng]

1. Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon)
2. Confessions (Kanae Minato)
3. The Shining (Stephen King)
4. The Thief of Always (Clive Barker)
5. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
6. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi)
7. Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon)
8. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
9. The Bone Collector (Jeffery Deaver)
10. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)

11. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
12. Kien Bod Nung, Sud Kon Doo Hai Yuu Mud - Film Screenwriting (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Fiction

House of Leaves (Danielewski)
The White Road (Lotz)
Dark Matter (Crouch)

NonFiction

Feeling Good (Burns)

Currently progressing through an obscene number of books:

The City of the Singing Flame (Clark Ashton Smith)
Conversations With Billy Wilder (Cameron Crowe)
The Book of Wonder (Lord Dunsany)
Dr. Sleep (Stephen King)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (<--)
The Fifth Season (NK Jemisin)
Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff)

[bac0n]

1. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) <- one of the most amazing things I have ever read, holy cow.
2. Kindred (Octavia Butler) <- Gripping read, a brutal window into the antebellum south. Couldn't put it down.
3. All The Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
4. How to be an Anti-Racist (Dr Ibram X. Kendi)
5. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
6. I'm Still Here (Austin Channing Brown)
7. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)

Currently Reading:

The Call of the Wild (Jack London)


In the hopper:

There There (Tommy Orange)
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor)
The House of Spirits (Isabel Allende)
The Crossing (Cormac McCarthy)

[Irish]

1. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) <- one of the most amazing things I have ever read, holy cow.
2. Kindred (Octavia Butler) <- Gripping read, a brutal window into the antebellum south. Couldn't put it down.
3. All The Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
4. How to be an Anti-Racist (Dr Ibram X. Kendi)
5. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
6. I'm Still Here (Austin Channing Brown)
7. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)

This is an exciting list and totally my jam and all else I can say is: If you haven't read "East of Eden" yet, move that to the top of the hopper.

[bac0n]

This is an exciting list and totally my jam and all else I can say is: If you haven't read "East of Eden" yet, move that to the top of the hopper.

Oh yeah, that's definitely on the list. Need a few lighter novels first tho.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859-60)
The Golden Bowl (Henry James, 1904)
Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence, 1913)

Poetry:
The Iliad (Homer, c. 8th century BCE)

Non-Fiction:
Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (V.F. Perkins, 1972)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (George M. Wilson, 1986)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, 1996)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (Harry Harootunian, 2000)
Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (Joanne Bernardi, 2001)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and the Postwar Japanese Documentary (Abé Mark Nornes, 2007)
The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity (Catherine Russell, 2008)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)
Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (Isolde Standish, 2011)

[Peng]

1. Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon)
2. Confessions (Kanae Minato)
3. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
4. The Shining (Stephen King)
5. The Dusk of Buddhist Era and Memory of Black Rose Cat (Veeraporn Nitiprapha)
6. The Thief of Always (Clive Barker)
7. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
8. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi)
9. Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon)
10. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

11. The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth (Veeraporn Nitiprapha)
12. The Bone Collector (Jeffery Deaver)
13. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)
14. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
15. Kien Bod Nung, Sud Kon Doo Hai Yuu Mud - Film Screenwriting (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)

[megladon8]

1.) Monstrumführer (Edward M. Erdilac)
2.) A Little Hatred (Joe Abercrombie)
3.) Thr Hypnotist (Lars Keplar)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol, 1842/55)
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859-60)
The Golden Bowl (Henry James, 1904)
Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence, 1913)
Underworld (Don DeLillo, 1997)

Poetry:
The Iliad (Homer, c. 8th century BCE)

Non-Fiction:
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (William James, 1902)
Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (V.F. Perkins, 1972)
Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Meir Sternberg, 1978)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism—Revised Edition (Benedict Anderson, 1983-2006)
Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (George M. Wilson, 1986)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, 1985)
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, 1996)
The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Eric Cazdyn, 2002)
The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945 (Peter B. High, 2003)
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (Aaron Gerow, 2010)
The Poetics of Prose (Tzvetan Todorov, 1971)
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Seymour Chatman, 1978)
Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (David Desser, 1988)
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (Oshima Nagisa, 1992)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Arjun Appardurai, 1996)
The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (Maureen Turim, 1998)
History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (Harry Harootunian, 2000)
Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (Joanne Bernardi, 2001)
Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I (Kristin Thompson, 2005)
Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and the Postwar Japanese Documentary (Abé Mark Nornes, 2007)
The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity (Catherine Russell, 2008)
Film Narratology (Peter Verstraten, 2009)
Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (Isolde Standish, 2011)

[Peng]

Final 2020 list:

1. Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon)
2. Confessions (Kanae Minato)
3. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
4. The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)
5. The Shining (Stephen King)
6. The Dusk of Buddhist Era and Memory of Black Rose Cat (Veeraporn Nitiprapha)
7. The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)
8. The Thief of Always (Clive Barker)
9. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
10. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi)

11. Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon)
12. Rage (Stephen King)
13. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
14. The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth (Veeraporn Nitiprapha)
15. The Bone Collector (Jeffery Deaver)
16. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet: Where Cinema Ruled (Sonthaya Subyen & Morimart Raden-Ahmad)
17. No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
18. Film Screenwriting (Thida Plitpholkarnpim)