Wendy's Challenge List

UPDATE August 17, 2008: I have officially thrown in the towel on this challenge. I’ve failed miserably having only read one book out of the six I had hoped to read. Part of the reason for this has been my ever growing pile of Advance Readers Editions. At any rate, I thank Imani for hosting this challenge!

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I've chosen six books for this challenge:

1. The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene (Mexico)
2. The Woman of Rome, by Albert Moravia (Italy)
3. Consuelo, by George Sand (Austria, Italy and Bohemia)
4. The Toilers of the Sea, by Victor Hugo (Channel Islands)
5. Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe (England)
6. Candide, by Voltaire (Multiple countries) -Completed December30, 2007; rated 4.5/5; read my review.

You can read my post about the challenge here.

Kimmie's List

I've finally gotten my list together. It wasn't easy to pick just three countries and get a decent list together while trying to coridinate whith my BoGB goal but I did it.

1.) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert France
2.) Les Misérables by Victor Hugo France
3.) The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo France
4.) Justine by the Marquis de Sade France
5.) Candide by Voltaire France
6.) The Prince by Niccolὸ AMachiavelli Italy
7.) The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene England
8.) Paradise Lost by Milton England
9.) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Ireland

Stephanie's Intro and List of books!

Hi everyone!! Sorry for the delay in posting! After joining up with this challenge, I went on vacation. Then experienced technical difficulties with my modem. But now that I'm up and running, I wanted to say HI!! I read such a variety of books anyway. From cozies to classics, vampire books to non-fiction. Fantasty and historical fiction. Science fiction and award winners. I figured this challenge would be a chance to learn something new....and read some classics I've wanted to for a very long time!!

That being said, here is the list of books that I have chosen for this challenge:

• Candide by Voltaire
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (re-read)
• Nana (or The Ladies' Paradise) by Emile Zola
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
• Indiana by George Sand
• The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• Justine by Marquis de Sade

I stuck with mainly fiction, since that's the genre I'm most interested in. 12 books for 12 months, but who knows if I'll be able to make through all of them!

Eloise's reading list

I have been looking through the lists of banned authors on various sites and getting very excited. I will start off gently and have picked six authors who will meet the rules and that I know I have or am reasonably certain I can get hold of. I am certain to increase the number of banned authors I own over the next year, so this list may be a work in progress. I am a little peeved, though, that I have just waded my way through Emmanuel Swedenborg's The Universal Human and Soul-Body Interaction, when if I had left it a month I could have included it as part of the challenge!

Here we go, England, Ireland and France:

Francis Bacon: Essays
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty
Laurence Sterne: Journal to Eliza
Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub
Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables

I may also re-read Machiavelli's The Prince.

The book I really, really want from the list is Defoe's The History of the Devil, so if I manage to get a copy I'll also include this.

Musings on a reading list

As I've blogged on my own site before, if there's anything I am it is curious. For a curious reader, the incidental stumble upon the brief mention of the Vatican's Prohibited Books list, in this book, was like finding a "X" mark over buried treasure. (Buried it is, or at least partly. I have the resources of three university library collections at my finger tips and not one has a complete bibliography in English.) The Roman Catholic censors had varied and enviable taste (if misguided intentions) and over the centuries compiled an overwhelming list of intellectual marvels. Here was an opportunity to tackle some of the fiction and philosophy I always meant to, and to be introduced to authors I knew little or nothing about. From internet resources alone I've been able to make good ground -- as far as making a list goes, anyway.

I made the challenge a year long because I plan to read both fiction and philosophy, and I take absolutely forever with non-fiction reads that aren't assigned. I also expect to be back in school come January, which is sure to curtail what time I have for leisure reads. Finally, I'm a huge proponent for the slackest sort of rules when it comes to reading challenges. I was rather horrified at myself for a few seconds after I made the three countries quota because I realised that it forced participants to choose at least three books, contradicting my free-wheeling stance. Still, it is a year long challenge, and it serves the higher purpose of diversity and exposure, so I try not to feel too bad about that.

Here is my rough preliminary list. Choices will be restricted by availability, reported quality of translations and whether they pass the middle-of-the-book test. I also plan to go to the library to take a look at its copy of the Index. The plan is for me to complement the largely incomplete or unusable internet resources by providing more specific information as to which particular works were banned (though the church made it easy for many by simply banning authors' entire output) and mentioning less familiar but potentially interesting writers. I imagine it will be an ongoing project.

1. John Milton (England) -- Paradise Lost
2. Voltaire (France) -- Candide
3. Simone de Beauvoir (France)
4. Auguste Comte (France)
5. Anatole France/ Jacques A F Thibault (France)
6. Victor Hugo (France) - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
7. Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece) - Alexander; Christ Recrucified; The Last Temptation of Christ
8. Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium) - Pelléas et Mélisande; The Blue bird; Treasure of the Humble
9. Spinoza (Netherlands, Portugal)
10. George Sand (France)
11. Gerard Walschap (Belgium) - Adelaide
12. Marquis de Sade (France)
13. Gustave Flaubert (France)
14. Honore de Balzac (France)
15. Alberto Moravia (Italy)
16. Giovanni Boccaccio (Italy) - Decameron
17. Nicolaus Copernicus (Poland) - On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres

The predominance of France on my list is part of what's driving me to see if any other countries match its shocking overflow of immorality. It may just be my instinctive attraction to their literature: most of the authors were ones I considered or intended to read before I came upon the Vatican's list. That's probably why I was so impressed with it: why, the popes of the past were just like me!

Rachel D. has her list ready as well:

1. Stendhal (France) - The Red and the Black
2. Edward Gibbon (England) - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. I
3. Giovanni Boccaccio (Italy) - Decameron
4. Alexandre Dumas (France) - The Count of Monte Cristo