Every summer (and most winters), I pick a theme and read three books on that theme.
Here are the lists so far.
Emma Goldman
This year’s lists:
Summer 2024: Exophonia
Jaeggy, Sweet Days of Discipline
Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear
Lucian, A True Story
Winter 2024-2025: Theory’s Novel
Glissant, The Overseer’s Cabin
Galiano, Mirrors
Williams, Border Country
Previous Years
Summer 2008: Girls
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Austen, Emma
Brontë, Jane Eyre
Summer 2009: Things Fall Apart
Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz
Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
Faulkner, Sound and the Fury
Summer 2010: William Faulkner
Faulkner, Sound and the Fury
Faulkner, Light in August
Faulkner, Sanctuary
Summer 2011: Wo-Man Booker Prize Winners
Byatt, Possession
Enright, The Gathering
Hulme, The Bone People
Summer 2012: Thatcher’s Boys
Amis, London Fields
Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library
Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
Winter 2012-2013: Books for My Seventeen-Year-Old Self
Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Hesse, Siddhartha
Camus, The Stranger
Summer 2013: The Ivory Tower
Nabokov, Pnin
Amis, Lucky Jim
Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
Summer 2014: The Gay South
Gurganus, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Price, A Long and Happy Life
Winter 2014-2015: Books About Boats
Bengtsson, The Long Ships
Golding, Rites of Passage
Melville, Moby-Dick
Summer 2015: Gender Trouble in Austria (in honour of Conchita Wurst)
Zweig, The Post-Office Girl
Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless
Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Winter 2015-2016: Socialism
Poole, The Harbor
Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World
Summer 2016: Taciturn Morrison
Morrison, Jazz
Morrison, Sula
Morrison, Home
Winter 2016-2017: Unfinished Books
Ellison, Juneteenth
Soseki, Light and Darkness
Camus, The First Man
Summer 2017: >1000
Hugo, Les Misérables
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Seth, A Suitable Boy
Winter 2017-2018: Full of Sound and Fury (Titles from Macbeth)
Marias, A Heart so White
Bowles, Let it Come Down
Ginzburg, All our Yesterdays
Summer 2018: Tiny Island Lit
Lovell, Fire in the Canes (Barbados)
Goh Poh Seng, If we Dream too Long (Singapore)
Shiel, The Purple Cloud (Redonda)
Winter 2018-2019: Mary McCarthy
McCarthy, The Group
McCarthy, The Groves of Academe
McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
Summer 2019: Temp
Walser, The Assistant
Butler, The New Me
Geissler, Seasonal Associate
Winter 2019-2020: The World During Kapital (1867-1883)
Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
James, The American
Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio
Summer 2020: Generation #
Valle-Inclán, Tyrant Banderas (Generación del 98, Spain)
Amado, The Violent Land (Geração de 30, Brazil)
Johnson, Speculations about Jakob (Gruppe 47, Germany)
Winter 2020-2021: Runner-Ups
Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (National Book Award Finalist)
Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Boyd, An Ice-Cream War (Booker Prize Shortlist)
Summer 2021: Mononymous
Sjón, Codex 1962
Saki, When William Came
Colette, Chéri
Winter 2021-2021: Bennington College Class of 1986
Tartt, The Secret History
Ellis, Glamorama
Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
Summer 2022: Books
Truong, The Book of Salt
Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob
Winter 2022-2023: JG Farrell’s Empire Trilogy
Farrell, Troubles
Farrell, The Singapore Grip
Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
Summer 2023: B-Sides
Musil, Three Women
Shelley, The Last Man
Hugo, Bug-Jargal