thomasbrightwell.com

The strikethroughs show my progress against Art Garfunkel's top 100. Always a source of inspriation when I'm lacking ideas for my next book.

• 1. Jun 1968 Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Confessions 1781 606 pp.
• 2. Jun 1968 Erich Fromm The Art of Loving 1956 146 pp.
• 3. Oct 1968 P.D. Ouspensky In Search of the Miraculous 1949 389 pp.
• 4. Feb 1969 L.N. Tolstoy War and Peace 1869 1444 pp.
• 5. May 1969 Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint 1969 274 pp.
• 6. Sep 1969 Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights 1847 320 pp.
• 7. Jan 1970 Johann Wolfgang Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774 199 pp.
• 8. Mar 1970 Garrett Mattingly The Armada 1959 402 pp.
• 9. Mar 1971 Bill Moyers Listening to America 1971 342 pp.
• 10. Jul 1971 Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre 1947 477 pp.
• 11. Jan 1972 L. N. Tolstoy Anna Karenina 1873 852 pp.
• 12. Mar 1972 Albert Schweitzer J.S. Bach, Vol. 1 1911 428 pp.
• 13. Oct 1973 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice 1797 430 pp.
• 14. Oct 1974 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1892 248 pp.
• 15. Feb 1975 Robert A. Caro The Power Broker 1974 1162 pp.
• 16. Jun 1975 Henry James Portrait of a Lady 1881 545 pp.
• 17. Dec 1976 John S. Shelton Geology Illustrated 1966 424 pp.
• 18. Jan 1977 Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift 1973 472 pp.
• 19. May 1977 C.G. Jung Modern Man in Search of a Soul 1933 244 pp.
• 20. May 1977 Charles Chaplin My Autobiography 1964 497 pp.
• 21. Sep 1977 Stephen King The Shining 1977 447 pp.
• 22. Jul 1977 Bulfinch Mythology 1855 236 pp.
• 23. Apr 1978 Charles Darwin The Origin of Species 1859 460 pp.
• 24. Apr 1978 Robert M. Persig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974 406 pp.
• 25. May 1978 Erik Erikson Childhood and Society 1950 424 pp.
• 26. May 1978 Marcel Proust Swann's Way 1928 325 pp.
• 27. Jul 1978 Plato The Last Days of Socrates Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, Phaedo 390 b.c. 199 pp.
• 28. Aug 1978 Fydor Dostoevsky The Idiot 642 pp.
• 29. Sep 1978 Robertson Davies Fifth Business 1970 268 pp.
• 30. Dec 1978 Jack Kerouac On the Road 1955 310 pp.
• 31. Aug 1979 Jean Rhys Good Morning, Midnight 1974 190 pp.
• 32. Sep 1979 Richard Price Ladies' Man 1978 264 pp.
• 33. Sep 1979 Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark 1934 159 pp.
• 34. Nov 1979 Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure 1896 164 pp.
• 35. De 1979 Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels 1726 360 pp.
• 36. Jan. 1980 Isaac Bashevis Singer The Slave 1962 287 pp.
• 37. Sep 1980 Jean Dorst The Life of Birds, vol. 1 1971 341 pp.
• 38. Sep 1980 Marcel Proust Within a Budding Grove 1920 386 pp.
• 39. Feb 1981 Edward Gibbon The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged) 1787 713 pp.
• 40. Feb 1981 J. P. Donleavy The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman 1977 402 pp.
• 41. Mar 1981 James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916 253 pp.
• 42. Jun 1981 Gary Zukav The Dancing Wu Li Masters 1979 332 pp.
• 43. Jul 1981 David Halberstam The Powers That Be 1979 1027 pp.
• 44. Oct 1981 Saint Augustine Confessions 398 a.d. 347 pp.
• 45. Jan 1982 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Don Quixote 1604 940 pp.
• 46. Jan 1982 Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own 1929 118 pp.
• 47. Feb 1982 Baldesar Castiglione The Book of the Courtier 1518 345 pp.
• 48. Mar 1982 D.M. Thomas The White Hotel 1981 240 pp.
• 49. Apr 1982 Leon Edel Henry James - The Middle Years: 1882--1895 1962 389 pp.
• 50. Jun 1982 Johan Huizinga The Waning of the Middle Ages 1919 335 pp.
• 51. Jun 1982 Honoré de Balzac The Black Sheep 1842 339 pp.
• 52. Oct 1982 Robert G. Weisbord Ebony Kinship 1973 220 pp.
• 53. Feb 1983 William James The Varieties of Religious Experience 1902 500 pp.
• 54. Mar 1983 Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey 1927 124 pp.
• 55. Jun 1983 Emil Ludwig Napoleon 1926 682 pp.
• 56. Aug 1983 Henry David Thoreau Walden 1854 247 pp.
• 57. Aug 1983 Peter Gay The Enlightenment (The Rise of Modern Paganism) 1966 419 pp.
• 58. Sep 1983 W. Somerset Maugham The Razor's Edge 1944 314 pp.
• 59. Sep 1983 Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Literature 1980 382 pp.
• 60. Jan. 1984 James Joyce Ulysses 1921 783 pp.
• 61. Mar 1984 J.D. Salinger Nine Stories 1953 198 pp.
• 62. Ap. 1984 Thomas Mann The Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man (The Early Years) 1955 378 pp.
• 63. May 1984 L.N. Tolstoy What is Art? 1896 191 pp.
• 64. Oct 1984 Iris Murdoch A Severed Head 1961 205 pp.
• 65. Jan 1985 William M. Thackeray Vanity Fair 1847 636 pp.
• 66. Feb 1985 Thornton Wilder The Ides of March 1948 204 pp.
• 67. Mar 1985 Constantin Stanislavski An Actor Prepares 1936 295 pp.
• 68. May 1985 Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852 590 pp.
• 69. Jun 1985 Lucretius On the Nature of the Universe c. 54 bc. 256 pp.
• 70. Jul 1985 Marcel Proust The Guermantes Way 1925 425 pp.
• 71. Aug 1985 Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching 6 Cent. bc. 81 pp.
• 72. Sep 1985 L.N. Tolstoy Confession 1879 93 pp.
• 73. Oct 1985 Richard Ellmann James Joyce 1959 744 pp.
• 74. Oct 1985 Herodotus The Histories 446 bc. 624 pp.
• 75. Nov 1985 Edith Wharton The House of Mirth 1905 329 pp.
• 76. Jan 1986 Virgil The Aeneid 30-19bc. 336 pp.
• 77. Ap. 1986 Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind 1976 446 pp.
• 78. Sep 1986 William Kennedy Ironweed 1983 227 pp.
• 79. Nov 1986 Vladimir Nabokov The Enchanter 1939 95 pp.
• 80. Dec 1986 Harold C. Schonberg The Lives of the Great Composers 1970 627 pp.
• 81. Dec 1986 David A. Stockman The Triumph of Politics 1986 411 pp.
• 82. Jan 1987 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 1651 729 pp.
• 83. May 1987 Carrie Fisher Postcards from the Edge 1987 218 pp.
• 84. Jun 1987 Marcel Proust Cities of the Plain 1913 378 pp.
• 85. Oct 1987 Rudyard Kipling Just So Stories 1902 158 pp.
• 86. Oct 1987 Peter Ladefoged Elements of Acoustic Phonetics 1962 108 pp.
• 87. Nov 1987 Mark Twain Life on the Mississippi 1882 352 pp.
• 88. Feb 1988 Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground 1864 158 pp.
• 89. Apr 1988 George Eliot Middlemarch 1872 908 pp.
• 90. Jun 1988 Francis Parkman The Oregon Trail 1849 286 pp.
• 91. Jan 1989 Charles Dickens Bleak House 1853 975 pp.
• 92. Mar 1989 E.L. Doctorrow Billy Bathgate 1989 323 pp.
• 93. Jul 1989 Brenda Maddox Nora - The Real Life of Molly Bloom 1988 381 pp.
• 94. Aug 1989 Sanche de Gramont Epitaph for Kings 1969 428 pp.
• 95. Oct 1989 Sigmund Freud Civilization and Its Discontents 1930 104 pp.
• 96. Jul 1990 Mark Twain Innocents Abroad 1867 492 pp.
• 97. Jul 1990 Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar 1963 216 pp.
• 98. Nov 1990 Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain 1927 716 pp.
• 99. Nov 1990 Fredric Dannen Hit Men 1990 327 pp.
• 100. Feb 1991 Will and Ariel Durant The Story of Civilization VIII: The Age of Louis XIV 1963 74 pp.
• 101. Mar 1991 Thomas L. Friedman From Beirut to Jerusalem 1989 525 pp.
• 102. Apr 1991 Marcus Aurelius The Meditations 177 ad. 129 pp.
• 103. May 1991 Marcel Proust The Captive 1921 289 pp.
• 104. Au. 1991 Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love 1989 407 pp.
• 105. Nov 1991 John Updike Rabbit, Run 1960 249 pp.
• 106. Nov 1991 William Styron The Confessions of Nat Turner 1966 429 pp.
• 107. Jan 1992 H.G. Wells A Short History of the World 1922 357 pp.
• 108. Feb 1992 Swami Prabhavananda The Sermon on the Mount according to Vendanta 1963 126 pp.
• 109. Apr 1992 Nathaniel Hawthorne The House of Seven Gables 1851 245 pp.
• 110. Dec 1992 Camille Paglia Sex, Art and American Culture 1992 287 pp.
• 111. Fe. 1993 Hermann Hesse Demian 1919 179 pp.
• 112. May 1994 Franz Kafka The Trial 1920 256 pp.
• 113. May 1994 Daneil Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year 1725 256 pp.
• 114. May 1994 Jean Rhys After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie 1931 191 pp.
• 115. Aug 1994 Henry Kissinger Diplomacy 1994 835 pp.
• 116. Dec 1994 Gustav Janouch Conversations with Kafka 1923 201 pp.
• 117. Jan 1995 Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh 1903 444 pp.
• 118. Apr 1995 Stendahl The Red and the Black 1830 574 pp.
• 119. Mar 1996 Robert D. Kaplan Balkan Ghosts 1993 300 pp.
• 120 Ma. 1996 Gustave Flaubert Flaubert in Egypt 1850 222 pp.
• 121. Jun 1997 Charles and Mary Lamb Tales from Shakespeare 1807 313 pp.
• 122. Oct 1997 Keith B. Richburg Out of America 1997 254 pp.
• 123. Dec 1997 David Denby Great Books 1996 463 pp.
• 124. May 1998 Patrick Süskind Perfume 1985 263 pp.
• 125. Au. 1998 Ralph Ellison Invisible Man 1952 469 pp.
• 126. Nov 1998 D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 1913 484 pp.
• 127. Feb 1999 Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha 1997 428 pp.
• 128. Apr 1999 Russell Banks Cloudsplitter 1998 758 pp.
• 129. Oct 1999 Dan Kindlon, Michael Thompson Raising Cain 1999 267 pp.
• 130. May 2000 Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937
• 131. Aug 2000 Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence 2000
• 132. Nov 2000 Jakob Walter The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier 1830
• 133. Mar 2002 Elizabeth Gaskell Wives and Daughters 1866
• 134. Dec 2002 Harold Nicolson Good Behavior 1955 285 pp.
• 135. Feb 2003 Charles Bukowski Post Office 1971 196 pp.
• 136. Jul 2003 Paul Berman Terror and Liberalism 2003 210 pp.
• 137. Mar 2004 Tracy Chevalier Girl With a Pearl Earring 1999 233 pp.
• 138. Oct 2004 Bob Dylan Chronicles, vol. 1 2004 295 pp.
• 139. Jan 2005 Laurens van deer Post A Story Like The Wind 1972 370 pp.
• 140. Sep 2005 Anthony Trollope The Way We LIve Now 1873 779 pp.
• 141. Jan 2006 W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage 1915 628 pp.
• 142. May 2006 Geoff Emerick Here, There and Everywhere 2006 371 pp.
• 143. Nov 2006 Fareed Zakaria The Future of Freedom 2003 256 pp.
• 144. Nov 2006 J.P. Donleavey The Ginger Man 1955 347 pp.
• 145. Feb 2007 Jonathan Franzen The Corrections 2001 566 pp.
• 146. Jun 2007 Isaiah Berlin Russian Thinkers 1978 317 pp.
• 147. Feb 2007 Ian McEwan On Chesil Beach 2007 203 pp.
• 148. Jul 2007 Jonathan Lethem Motherless Brooklyn 1999 311 pp.
• 149. Sep 2007 Jose Saramago The Gospel According to Jesus Christ 1991 377 pp.
• 150. Oct 2007 Reinhold Niebuhr Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic 1991 377 pp.
• 151. Nov 2007 Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons 1918 307 pp.