Just a fun project for the criminally insane cataloguers, indexers, and archivers... not that anyone like that would ever be on this forum!
Self-explanatory - or see the example below. And fun to update one's own every so often and see how it changes, or grows - though I think it's more fun to let it grow naturally, rather than deliberately try to fill in the blanks. But to each yer own!
- Unknown publication dates, authors, genres, collections, editions, w/e: w/e you want, use Goodreads, guess, approximate, exaggerate; w/e floats your boat!
- Get ready for long posts... hide it with spoiler tags if you're nice; not, if you're not
Last edited by Holymanm on Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
1990s: In the Miso Soup (Ryū Murakami, 1997)
1980s: Coin Locker Babies (Ryū Murakami, 1980)
1970s: Fatelessness (Imre Kertész, 1975)
1960s: Black Rain (Masuji Ibuse, 1965)
1950s: The Leopard (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958)
1940s: Sasameyuki (Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 1948)
1930s: Narziss and Goldmund (Hermann Hesse, 1930)
1920s: Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse, 1927)
1910s: Demian (Hermann Hesse, 1919)
1900s: Peter Camenzind (Hermann Hesse, 1904)
1890s: Effi Briest (Theodor Fontane, 1894)
1880s: Against Nature (Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884)
1870s: Spring Torrents (Ivan Turgenev, 1872)
1860s: The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1869)
1850s: Home of the Gentry (Ivan Turgenev, 1859)
1840s: Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol, 1842)
1830s: The Red and the Black (Stendhal, 1830)
1820s: The Negro of Peter the Great (Alexander Pushkin, 1828)
1810s: Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
1800s:
1790s:
1780s:
1770s: The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774)
1760s: L'ingenu (Voltaire, 1767)
1750s: Candide (Voltaire, 1759)
1740s: Zadig (Voltaire, 1747)
1730s:
1720s: Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)
1710s:
1700s:
1690s:
1680s:
1670s:
1660s: The Misanthrope (Molière, 1666)
1650s:
1640s:
1630s:
1620s:
1610s: Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1615)
1600s: King Lear (William Shakespeare, 1605)
1590s: A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595)
1580s:
1570s:
1560s: The Conquest of New Spain (Bernal Díaz del Castillo, 1568)
1550s: Popol Vuh (?, ~1550)
1540s:
1530s:
1520s:
1510s:
1500s:
1400s:
1300s:
1200s:
1100s:
1090s:
1080s:
1070s:
1060s:
1050s: Sarashina Nikki ("Lady Sarashina", ~1050)
1040s:
1030s:
1020s:
1010s: The Diary of Lady Murasaki ("Murasaki Shikibu", ~1010)
1000s: The Tale of Genji ("Murasaki Shikibu", ~1008)
I like that list, especially as a visual timeline showing when these cultural artefacts first appeared and their respective positions in time relative to the others.
When did the Old Testament first appear in hard-copy/manuscript form? I take it that for the oldest books/stories/literature you've noted there, you're talking about their first appearance as physical objects (i.e., written down or copied onto a medium that can be passed around and shared, eg. on paper, papyrus, animal skins, stone tablets, etc.) ?
Were Homer's works physical, or just aural? I've forgotten.
When did the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh first air, and when was it first physically published on a durable medium?
I'm not sure but I'm guessing some ancient stories would have first appeared in physical form as artwork on buildings, structures and objects (like on Greek vases) to be "read" in a particular designated sequence, as we do with modern day comics like Tintin.
2000s: "Snow" (Orhan Pamuk, 2002)
1990s: "The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear" (Walter Moers, 1999)
1980s: It (Stephen King, 1986)
1970s: "Almost Transparent Blue" (Ryu Murakami, 1976)
1960s: "Ah, Wilderness" (Shuji Terayama, 1966)
1950s: "The Horseman on the Roof" (Jean Giono, 1951)
1940s: "The Skin" (Curzio Malaparte, 1949)
1930s: "A Sad Affair" (Wolfgang Koeppen, 1934)
1920s: Bella (Jean Giraudoux, 1926)
1910s: "The Great Meaulnes" (Alain-Fournier, 1913)
1900s: “Prisoners“ (Ferenc Molnar, 1907)
1890s: Pan (Knut Hamsun, 1894)
1880s: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1885)
1870s: “The Red Room“ (August Strindberg, 1879)
1840s: "The Three Musketeers" (Alexandre Dumas, 1844)
1820s: "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing" (Joseph von Eichendorff, 1826)
1810s: "The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper. First Volume" (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, 1819)
1610s: "Don Quixote II" (Miguel de Cervantes, 1615)
1600s: "Don Quixote I" (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605)
1590s: A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1590s)
1020s: "Percival" (Wolfram von Eschenbach, ~1210)
MINUS TIME
380s: Gorgias (Plato, ~380 BC)
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
2010s: the dig (jones)
2000s: senselessness (castellanos moya)
1990s: the governesses (serre)
1980s: the serf (winkler)
1970s: gemini (tournier)
1960s: season of migration to the north (salih)
1950s: balun canan (castellanos)
1940s: the kingdom of this world (carpentier)
1930s: the waves (woolf)
1920s: loving (green)
1910s: poems of alberto caeiro (caeiro/pessoa)
1900s: jakob von gunten (walser)
1890s: jude the obscure (hardy)
1880s: bouvard and pecuchet (flaubert)
1870s: daniel deronda (eliot)
1860s: our mutual friend (dickens)
1850s: pierre, or the ambiguities (melville)
1840s: dead souls (gogol)
1830s: sartor resartus (carlyle)
1820s: eugene onegin (pushkin)
1810s: the sketch-book of geoffrey crayon, gent. (irving)
1800s: the broken jug (kleist)
1790s: the book of thel (blake)
1780s: rusticatio mexicana (landívar)
1770s: jacques the fatalist (diderot)
1760s: a sentimental journey (sterne)
1750s: tristram shandy (sterne)
1740s: new science (vico)
1730s:
1720s:
1710s:
1700s:
1690s:
1680s:
1670s: the nine-cloud dream (kim man-jung)
1660s: the misanthrope (moliére)
1650s: the criticón (gracián)
1640s: religio medici (browne)
1630s: life is a dream (calderón)
1620s: the anatomy of melancholy (burton)
1610s: the winter's tale (shakespeare)
1600s: don quixote (cervantes)
1590s: titus andronicus (shakespeare)
1580s: essays (montaigne)
1570s: the lusiads (camões)
1560s:
1550s:
1540s: fourth book of pantagruel (rabelais)
1530s: gargantua (rabelais)
1520s: lozana andaluza (delicado)
1510s: autos das barcas (gil vicente)
1500s:
1490s: the celestina (de rojas)
1400s: canterbury tales (chaucer)
pabs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:19 am
When did the Old Testament first appear in hard-copy/manuscript form?
for the old testament, it depends on the book. some were probably written all at once, some were part of an oral tradition first, some were added to later. i think the consensus is that it was all written down sometime between 1200 and maybe around 200 bc.
pabs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:19 am
Were Homer's works physical, or just aural? I've forgotten.
first oral, probably from around 1200 bc, then written down around 800 bc. but there was probably not a real homer, or not a single person who wrote both the iliad and the odyssey down.
pabs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:19 am
When did the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh first air, and when was it first physically published on a durable medium?
i don't know the dates, but there are several versions of it spread over a few hundred years at least. i think it was part of a few different cultural traditions in the region. (checking online, looks like the earliest version is from around the 1900s bc and the more standard version from around 1100-1400 bc.)
pabs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:19 am
I'm not sure but I'm guessing some ancient stories would have first appeared in physical form as artwork on buildings, structures and objects (like on Greek vases) to be "read" in a particular designated sequence, as we do with modern day comics like Tintin.
not sure about this, but it probably depends a bit on the writing system. mayan codexes for example were pictorial in part, egyptian writing was hieroglyphic, while greek writing was alphabetic. there are definitely scenes from greek myths on vases and other objects, sometimes clashing with the myths that were written down, but i don't know that those were made to be read sequentially. but it's an interesting thought.
"Most esteemed biographer of Peter Barrington Hutton"
MrCarmady wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 11:10 am
Why is your favourite 2010s novel from 2008?
Roscoe wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:45 pm
Forgive me -- but why are KING LEAR and DON QUIXOTE on the list twice, in different centuries?
I messed up five things... adding a 2010s book when I don't have one, not separating 2000s/2010s from the 1900s, not adding the (empty) 2020s row, not removing the Shakespeares from the "template" I was C/Ving, and forgetting to come back to the 1820s after looking up what I had for it. Rectified!
wba wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:49 pm1970s: "Almost Transparent Blue" (Ryu Murakami, 1976)
1910s: "The Great Meaulnes" (Alain-Fournier, 1913)
That Murakami was my second choice... and Meaulnes was my second choice too - and in fact my second-favourite book of all time, but unfortunately my #1 is from the same decade
brian d wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:16 pm1660s: the misanthrope (moliére)
What use is it to have a man embrace you,
Swear friendship, zeal, esteem, and faithful love,
And loudly praise you to your face, then run
And do as much for any scamp he meets?
No, no. No self-respecting man can ever
Accept esteem that 's prostituted so;
The highest honour has but little charm
If given to all the universe alike;
Real love must rest upon some preference;
You might as well love none, as everybody.
Since you go in for these prevailing vices,
By God, you 're not my kind of man, that's all;
I'll be no sharer in the fellowship
Of hearts that make for merit no distinction;
I must be singled out; to put it flatly,
The friend of all mankind’s no friend for me.
Wonder how Le Misanthrope would feel about being on lists (including mine) with so many other books on them too...
wba wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:49 pm1970s: "Almost Transparent Blue" (Ryu Murakami, 1976)
1910s: "The Great Meaulnes" (Alain-Fournier, 1913)
That Murakami was my second choice... and Meaulnes was my second choice too - and in fact my second-favourite book of all time, but unfortunately my #1 is from the same decade
I had similar problems - a lot -
If I'd make a Top 50 list, some of my above choices wouldn't make it.
But I'm satisfied, as I only listed personal favorites. So there's a lot of empty decades, if I merely thought a book great but didn't love it.
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
nrh wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:48 pm
anyone who loves meulnes should check out ruiz the lost domain, one of his least seen films and a movie that is haunted by that book...
Will do! Never seen anything by that man-of-ten-million-movies anyway; this one might be a good way to start.
wba wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:30 pm
But I'm satisfied, as I only listed personal favorites. So there's a lot of empty decades, if I merely thought a book great but didn't love it.
And that's why it's a fun long-term project, too - updating it every so often and seeing if anything changes!
brian d wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:02 pm
for the old testament, it depends on the book. some were probably written all at once, some were part of an oral tradition first, some were added to later. i think the consensus is that it was all written down sometime between 1200 and maybe around 200 bc.
Thanks so much for all your answers brian d! You saved me lots of time. I love art history.
I ONLY INCLUDED DECADES FROM WHICH I HAVE READ A FEW BOOKS AND HAVE A TRUE "FAVOURITE"
white nights (fyodor dostoevsky, 1848)
oblomov (ivan goncharov, 1859)
first love (ivan turgenev, 1860)
the brothers karamazov (fyodor dostoevsky, 1879)
the shooting party (anton chekhov, 1884)
hunger (knut hamsen, 1890)
beneath the wheel (hermann hesse, 1906)
kokoro (natsume soseki, 1914)
an american tragedy (theodore dreiser, 1925)
death on the installment plan (louis-ferdinand celine, 1936)
the death of virgil (hermann broch, 1945)
lolita (vladimir nabokov, 1955)
the favourite game (leonard cohen, 1963)
the trouble with being born (emil cioran, 1973)
moon palace (paul auster, 1989)
infinite jest (david foster wallace, 1996)
the will to change: men, masculinity, and love (bell hooks, 2004)
you know you want this (kristen roupenian, 2019)
did russians just invent dope literature? have americans just taken over and won at literature in recent years? the answer to both these questions is "yes"
also, nowadays, only women write dope books. this is the latest science and if you disagree then you are a climate change denier
I'm no where broad enough in my reading to pull this off.
But I'll make an attempt anyway.
2010s: The Sellout - Paul Beatty
2000s: Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon
1990s: High Fidelity - Nick Hornby (This is the only book I remember kind of liking from this decade)
1980s: A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
1970s: Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
1960s: Destroy, She Said - Marguerite Duras
1950s: Jealousy - Alain Robbe-Grillet
1940s: The Stranger - Albert Camus
1930s: Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
1920s: Ulysses - James Joyce
1910s: The Metamorphoses - Franz Kafka
1900s: The Octopus - Frank Norris
1890s: Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
1880s: Bel Ami - Guy De Maupassant
1870s: Demons - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1860s: The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1850s: Moby Dick - Herman Melleville
1840s: A Harlot High and Low - Honore De Balzac
1830s: Lost Illusions - Honore De Balzac
1820s:
1810s: Frankenstein - Mary Shelly
1800s:
1690s:
1680s:
1670s:
1660s:
1650s:
1640s:
1630s:
1620s: The Anatomy of Melancholy - Robert Burton
1610s: Don Quixote II - Miguel De Cervantes
1600s: Don Quixote I - Miguel De Cervantes
