Book Lists of the Past, Present, and Future

This semester is over.  All I have left to do now is turn in my end of semester evaluation of myself and my mentor which I've already started and will finish tomorrow.  I generated quite a bit or new material for my novel and got a little bit of work done on some shorter pieces.  The best parts of the semester: reading, reading, reading, and the feedback.  My mentor's comments made sense and were incredibly helpful.  The following is a list of the books that I managed to finish.  It's not as long as I would like, but since I have about six books and a few articles that I have to read in June to get ready for the residency, I'm not going to stress too much about that.  

• The Plague by Albert Camus 
• The Trial by Franz Kafka 
• The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy 
• I am Legend by Richard Matheson 
• Collected Fictions (Anthology) by Jorge Luis Borges 
• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose 
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
• The Spire by William Golding

This next group is comprised of books that I am still working on finishing up before the next semester begins.  I've started several of them, but due to laziness and poor time management (yeah, that's what it boils down to) I was unable to finish them.  Some of them were unavailable through our library network and I had to turn to Amazon.com and Hastings.  

• Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
• Slaughterhouse-Five/Cat's Cradle/Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The rest of these are books that I want to read at some point.  I will use this as my basis for my reading list next semester.  In the end I only want to have about 18 books on the list - a combination of what I have listed below and what my mentor suggests/requires.  I had a very large list this first time around and it overwhelmed me and stymied my reading at some points.  

• The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
• Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer by Sandra Scofield
• The Deep Dark by Greg Olson
• On Directing by Harold Clurman
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Executioner Always Chops Twice by Geoffrey Abbott
• The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges
• Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint
• The Child Theif by Brom
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
• Collected Fictions (Anthology) by Jorge Luis Borges (read more stories)
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• All the Names by Jose Saramago
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A.Heinlein
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Conner
• The Coal Tattoo by Silas House
• Kraken by China Mieville