{"id":27941,"date":"2021-01-01T19:35:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T23:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=27941"},"modified":"2021-01-01T19:35:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T23:35:48","slug":"my-own-list-of-betterment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2021\/01\/01\/my-own-list-of-betterment\/","title":{"rendered":"My Own List of Betterment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ text_color=””]I[\/fusion_dropcap]n June I listened to Andy Miller read his book\u00a0The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life<\/em><\/a>. It was excellent! As you may know from some of my Weekend Thoughts posts, I’m a big fan of the Backlisted podcast<\/a>, where Miller and John Mitchinson talk with guests about books, particularly the old ones. They’ve influenced my thinking about books over the past several years, in a good way, and this book was a wonderful continuation of that. Miller’s book is about his “list of betterment,” a list of books he he set down to read at a time when finishing a book — which, he says astutely, is a skill to be honed and practiced — was difficult. These were books he’d always intended to read; indeed, they were books he often pretended to have read. It’s an exceptional book because it is about the books as well as about the effect they had over that year of his life. I strongly recommend picking it up, or, even better, because Miller does such a good job narrating it himself, get his audiobook.<\/p>\n

I got to thinking, what would my own list of betterment look like. What fifty books have I been meaning to read, that have already kind of become a part of my life, but that I keep putting off to save them in some misguided form of reverence? It was a lot of fun to sort through these and put together this list. I actually ended up putting a few books on here that I have read in the past, but that I don’t remember well enough to feel I have read them — To the Lighthouse<\/em>, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek<\/em>, A Heart So White<\/em>, and The Master<\/em>; I think about them often and call them favorites, but in all honesty I don’t remember them well at all. Many others I have picked up and started reading at one time or another in my life, but they remained unfinished or even just sat unstarted on my nightstand for a month or two or more before finally finding their way back to the bookshelf. I look forward to having a named goal — List of Betterment, I like it! — and hope it will continue to inspire me to take the time to sit and read.<\/p>\n

Reading these in 2021 is not a goal I have; I am confident this will take me some time, and if I were to make it my goal I’d just get behind and give up. I’d like to pick at this list in between other projects and whims, but pick through it I will do. I’ve already started\u00a0The Folded Leaf<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is the list I came up with, in order of original publication date. What, if you’ll share, would be on your list?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall<\/em>, by Anne Bront\u00eb<\/li>\n
  2. Villette<\/em>, by Charlotte Bront\u00eb<\/li>\n
  3. The Warden<\/em>, by Anthony Trollope<\/li>\n
  4. The Mill on the Floss<\/em>, by George Eliot<\/li>\n
  5. Great Expectations<\/em>, by Charles Dickens<\/li>\n
  6. Portrait of a Lady<\/em>, by Henry James<\/li>\n
  7. The Posthumous Memoirs of Br\u00e1s Cubas<\/em>, by Joaquim Machado de Assis<\/li>\n
  8. La Regenta<\/em>, by Leopolda Alas<\/li>\n
  9. The Illustrious House of Ramires<\/em>, by E\u00e7a de Queiroz<\/li>\n
  10. Customs of the Country<\/em>, by Edith Wharton<\/li>\n
  11. Swann’s Way<\/em>, by Marcel Proust<\/li>\n
  12. The Professor’s House<\/em>, by Willa Cather<\/li>\n
  13. To the Lighthouse<\/em>, by Virginia Woolf<\/li>\n
  14. South Riding<\/em>, by Winifred Holtby<\/li>\n
  15. Death of the Heart<\/em>, by Elizabeth Bowen<\/li>\n
  16. Brighton Rock<\/em>, by Graham Greene<\/li>\n
  17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter<\/em>, by Carson McCullers<\/li>\n
  18. The Robber Bridegroom<\/em>, by Eudora Welty<\/li>\n
  19. The Folded Leaf<\/em>, by William Maxwell<\/li>\n
  20. I Capture the Castle<\/em>, by Dodie Smith<\/li>\n
  21. Excellent Women<\/em>, by Barbara Pym<\/li>\n
  22. Wise Blood<\/em>, by Flannery O’Connor<\/li>\n
  23. The Bell<\/em>, by Iris Murdoch<\/li>\n
  24. Memento Mori<\/em>, by Muriel Spark<\/li>\n
  25. Pale Fire<\/em>, by Vladimir Nabokov<\/li>\n
  26. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing,<\/em> by May Sarton<\/li>\n
  27. A Long Way from Verona<\/em>, by Jane Gardam<\/li>\n
  28. If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em>, by James Baldwin<\/li>\n
  29. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek<\/em>, by Annie Dillard<\/li>\n
  30. Correction<\/em>, by Thomas Bernhard<\/li>\n
  31. Song of Solomon<\/em>, by Toni Morison<\/li>\n
  32. Suttree<\/em>, by Cormac McCarthy<\/li>\n
  33. Earthly Powers<\/em>, by Anthony Burgess<\/li>\n
  34. The Sportswriter<\/em>, by Richard Ford<\/li>\n
  35. Crossing to Safety<\/em>, by Wallace Stegner<\/li>\n
  36. The Messiah of Stockholm<\/em>, by Cynthia Ozick<\/li>\n
  37. Libra<\/em>, by Don DeLillo<\/li>\n
  38. A Heart So White<\/em>, by Javier Mar\u00edas<\/li>\n
  39. The Stone Diaries<\/em>, by Carol Shields<\/li>\n
  40. Mason & Dixon<\/em>, by Thomas Pynchon<\/li>\n
  41. The Savage Detectives<\/em>, by Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/li>\n
  42. Austerlitz<\/em>, by W.G. Sebald<\/li>\n
  43. The Story of Lucy Gault<\/em>, by William Trevor<\/li>\n
  44. Servants of the Map<\/em>, by Andrea Barrett<\/li>\n
  45. The Known World<\/em>, by Edward P. Jones<\/li>\n
  46. The Wizard and the Crow<\/em>, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o<\/li>\n
  47. The Master<\/em>, by Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/li>\n
  48. The Plot Against America<\/em>, by Philip Roth<\/li>\n
  49. The Plague of Doves<\/em>, by Louise Erdrich<\/li>\n
  50. The Barley Patch<\/em>, by Gerald Murnane<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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