And counting

Sometimes I notice some of my parents' traits in myself. Right now, for instance, I remind myself of my dad. What I'm doing is reading some books that are on Zoë's summer reading list. My dad and I frequently talk about the books we're reading; he'll often read something because I'm reading it, and vice versa. While I can't remember any specific example of a book that he read because I was assigned it in school, I'm sure it happened. It's been a long time since any of my assigned reading has been literary :). In fact, it's also been a while since I've had assigned reading!

This year, Zoë's summer reading included J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey and Toni Morrison's Sula. Since I'd never read either of them, she encouraged me to read them "with" her. There was extra motivation for Sula. I've read some Salinger before (Catcher in the Rye), and didn't like it, but I've never read anything of Morrison's. Zoë brought up the point that she's a Nobel laureate, so we began discussion Nobel prize winning authors in general. We found a list of Literature laureates online, and counted up the ones I've read. The grand total was 19. Clearly I needed to read Sula so that I could bump that number up to 20! So here they are, the 20 Nobel winning authors that I've read works by. I'll include Toni Morrison since I'm now halfway through Sula.

1. V.S. Naipaul
2. Gao Xingjian
3. Günter Grass
4. José Saramago
5. Kenzaburo Oe
6. Toni Morrison
7. Gabriel García Márquez
8. Czeslaw Milosz
9. Saul Bellow
10. John Steinbeck
    
11. Ernest Hemingway
12. William Faulkner
13. T.S. Eliot
14. André Gide
15. Hermann Hesse
16. Sinclair Lewis
17. Sigrid Undset
18. William Butler Yeats
19. Rudyard Kipling
20. Henryk Sienkiewicz

Actually, the number is 21 if you count Bertrand Russell since he was included in the readings for my Intro Philosophy class at Stanford.

Soon one more will be added to the list: Haldór Laxness; my dad recently read his novel Independent People and sent it on to me.

How do the Nobel laureates stack up on your bookshelves? Do you cream me?