2013 Reads: The Longlist

Last year I started a new practice, reading lists. Perhaps it’s a little OCD, but my obsessive compulsiveness does not extend beyond my reading. The practice is this: I make lists of books that I want to read for various reasons and I consult those lists when I’m looking for something to read. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But somehow I’ve made it into the most complex process ever. I started compiling my list of 52, what I call my longlist, back in September. I’ve scoured my bookshelves, ranked the books on this list, crossed off titles only to re-add them…

Too complicated? Yes. Simply, these are the top 52 books currently on my to-read list. That’s not to say I will not lose interest in some before I get around to them, or that other books will not come along and pique my interest, but when I’m without a book, this list is the first place I’ll look to. The shortlist, which I’ll unveil next week, is more practical. It is made up of ten books selected from the titles on my longlist–the ten books selected as shortlist titles are ones that I have put off far too long and will make it a point to read in 2013.

So, without further ado, Chris Blocker’s 2013 Reads Longlist (exciting, eh?)

A Good Man Is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

At the Mouth of the River of Bees – Kij Johnson

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

Dune – Frank Herbert

Empire Falls – Richard Russo

Folklores, Memoirs, & Other Writings – Zora Neale Hurston

Ghostwritten – David Mitchell

God’s Bits of Wood – Sembene Ousmane

Gods Tomorrow – Aaron Pogue

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Heat – Joyce Carol Oates

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization – Nicholson Baker

Hunting and Gathering – Anna Gavalda

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden – Hannah Green

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

Lamb – Christopher Moore

Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Little, Big – John Crowley

Mama Day – Gloria Naylor

Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

Not Without Laughter – Langston Hughes

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Shepherd of the Hills – Harold Bell Wright

Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime – J. California Cooper

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

The Bone People – Keri Hulme

The Counterfeiters – André Gide

The Deptford Trilogy – Robertson Davies

The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami

The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles

The Garlic Ballads – Mo Yan

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

The Gospel in Brief – Leo Tolstoy

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers

The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller

The Question of Bruno – Aleksandar Hemon

The Sky Unwashed – Irene Zabytko

The Stand – Stephen King

The Street – Ann Petry

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë

The Tenants – Bernard Malamud

The Trees – Conrad Richter

The World’s Fair – E.L. Doctorow

Union Dues – John Sayles

We, the Drowned – Carsten Jensen

Weeds – Edith Summers Kelley

Wool Omnibus – Hugh Howey

Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg

Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room – Janet Frame

Which of these books have you read and loved? How do you determine what you’re going to read next? Do you have a to-read list and how often do you consult it?