American Literature in 2018
After much deliberation my official rankings for my 2018 reading is over. My trek through American literature has come to an end (though I still need to finish The Grapes of Wrath). And in the memory of those readings I’ve attempted to put together an ordered list of my enjoyment. This list is inherently flawed. Some of this literature is clearly too good to be placed in a list or compared. But I said I would do this. And so here it is.
An ordered attempt:
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
To A God Unknown by John Steinbeck
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and Fury by William Faulkner
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Son Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Beautiful and Damned F. Scott Fitzgerald
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
White Fang by Jack London
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
In conjunction with an ordered list of the books, I wanted to provide an ordered list of the authors for whom I read multiple books. There were only a couple authors who got multiple books:
F. Scott Fitzgerald (4 books)
Ernest Hemingway (4 books)
John Steinbeck (3 books)
Edith Wharton (3 books)
Kurt Vonnegut (2 books)
These lists are more to make certain friends upset than to reflect some level of deep thought on my behalf. 2018 was a good year. And I’m well on my way in 2019 on British literature.
