What books did I read in a year? How can you read more ? (2018/2019 school year)

Hello and welcome to The Young Reader’s Review! Exactly one year ago, I uploaded on this blog a “What books did I read in a year?” post that, surprisingly enough, became one of the most viewed posts on this blog. I thought that it would be interesting for me to post another one of these while giving tips on how you can find more time to read. 

This year, being my first year in the “literature and languages” section at school, my compulsory reading list significantly increased. I also found myself reading mostly books of essays, poetry (I only included poetry books that I read in their entirety) as well as books by Japanese authors, which I mostly read since I conducted a six-month long school project on women in Japanese literature. As you can probably tell, this year there were mostly two common literary “themes”: the Beat Generation and literary theory. If I have any predictions for next year, since I will have eight hours of philosophy so I will be reading more in this vein. I would also like to keep reading Japanese novels since, living in Japan, I find that this provides valuable insight on not only the Japanese culture and traditions, but on the Japanese psyche and way of thinking in a more general sense. 

Having recently finished my second year of high school (equivalent to “junior” year in the American system), finding time to read while having to juggle homework and extracurricular activities can certainly be difficult. Last year, I wrote that the most important aspect of reading (in your free time) is the enjoyment factor. Once again, I cannot stress how important actually getting pleasure from reading is in order to, well, read more. Once you have experimented with various genres, I think that finding time is the new challenge. Here in Japan, I see many people reading in public transportation and I have also noticed at the library and at cafés that some people tend to read for a few minutes before getting on with their work. Therefore, I think that we tend to underestimate how much reading twenty minutes in the morning and in the evening can amount to. I must also say that the quantity of books that you read is not very important: you can very well skim through a book and say that you read it, meanwhile actually understanding a book and eventually taking notes is a different matter.

So here are the books that I read this past school year:

Novels: 

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 🇺🇸

The Counterfeiters (Les Faux-Monnayeurs) by André Gide 🇫🇷

Strait is the Gate (La Porte Étroite) by André Gide 🇫🇷

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 🇬🇧

The Makioka Sisters (細雪) by Junichiro Tanizaki 🇯🇵

Swann’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann) by Marcel Proust 🇫🇷

The Setting Sun (斜陽) by Osamu Dazai 🇯🇵

No Longer Human (人間失格) by Osamu Dazai 🇯🇵

Spring Snow (春の雪) by Yukio Mishima 🇯🇵

The House of the Sleeping Beauties (眠れる美女) by Yasnuari Kawabata 🇯🇵

The Lover (L’Amant) by Marguerite Duras 🇫🇷

The North China Lover (L’Amant de la Chine du Nord) by Marguerite Duras 🇫🇷 

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote 🇺🇸

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs 🇺🇸

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 🇺🇸

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac 🇺🇸

Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac 🇺🇸 

The Words (Les Mots) by Jean-Paul Sartre 🇫🇷

Maurice by E.M. Forster 🇬🇧

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin 🇺🇸 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson 🇺🇸

Essays: 

My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiguro 🇬🇧

On Reading (Sur la lecture) by Marcel Proust 🇫🇷

Empire of Signs (L’empire des signes) by Roland Barthes 🇫🇷

What Is Literature (Qu’est-ce que la littérature?) by Jean-Paul Sartre 🇫🇷

Writing Degree Zero (Le degré zero de l’écriture) by Roland Barthes 🇫🇷

New Critical Essays (Nouveaux Essais Critiques) by Roland Barthes 🇫🇷

A room of one’s own by Virginia Woolf 🇬🇧

Charles Dickens on theatre 🇬🇧

The Universe of the Novel (L’univers du roman) by Roland Bourneuf and Real Ouellet 🇫🇷

Walden by Henry David Thoreau 🇺🇸

Theater and its double (Le Théâtre et son double) by Antonin Artaud 🇫🇷

The Pleasure of the Text (Le Plaisir du texte) by Roland Barthes 🇫🇷

Theorists of Modern Poetry by Rebecca Beasley 

The Best Minds of My Generation by Allen Ginsberg 🇺🇸

Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris 🇺🇸

Supplement to the voyage of Bougainville (Supplément au voyage de Bougainville) by Denis Diderot 🇫🇷

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin 🇺🇸

The Art of Fiction by David Lodge 🇬🇧

A Very Short Introduction to Comparative Literature by Ben Hutchinson 

A Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory by Jonathan Culler 

Ezra Pound in Context edited by Ira B. Nadel 🇬🇧 

Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt 🇺🇸

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood 🇨🇦

On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates 🇺🇸

Poetry books: 

Howl and other poems by Allen Ginsberg 🇺🇸

Kaddish and other poems by Allen Ginsberg 🇺🇸

Selected Poems by Ezra Pound 🇺🇸

Little Poems in Prose (Petits Poèmes en Prose) by Charles Baudelaire 🇫🇷

The Wasteland and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot 🇺🇸

Ariel by Sylvia Plath 🇺🇸

Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud 🇫🇷

The Winding Stair and Other Poems by William Butler Yeats 🇮🇪

William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems P.1 🇺🇸

Selected Poems by Langston Hughes 🇺🇸

Plays:

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams 🇺🇸

The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) by Eugène Ionesco 🇫🇷

Exit the King (Le Roi se Meurt) by Eugène Ionesco 🇫🇷

Richard III by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧

The Crucible by Arthur Miller 🇺🇸

The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 🇺🇸

Hernani by Victor Hugo 🇫🇷

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht 🇩🇪

Lorenzaccio by Alfred de Musset 🇫🇷

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 🇬🇧

Antigone by Jean Cocteau 🇫🇷

As you like it by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧

The Mule Bone by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston 🇺🇸

Horace by Pierre Corneille 🇫🇷

King Lear by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧

Sweat by Lynn Nottage 🇺🇸

Hamlet by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧

Pericles by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧

Cymbeline by William Shakespeare 🇬🇧 

Books for school:

French literature:

Gargantua by François Rabelais 🇫🇷

Essays (Essais) by Montaigne (extracts) 🇫🇷

The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus 🇫🇷

No Trifling with Love (On ne badine pas avec l’amour) by Alfred de Musset 🇫🇷

Iphigénie by Jean Racine 🇫🇷

Iphigenia in Aulis (Iphigénie à Aulis) by Euripide 🇫🇷

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire 🇫🇷

English literature: 

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 🇺🇸

Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage 🇺🇸

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin 🇺🇸

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 🇺🇸

Kentucky by Leah Nakano Winkler 🇺🇸

Fabulation by Lynn Nottage 🇺🇸

Spanish literature:

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) by Gabriel García Márquez 🇨🇴

Doctor Brodie’s Report (El Informe de Brodie) by Jorge Luis Borges 🇦🇷

The Spirit of Science Fiction (El espiritu de la ciencia ficción) by Roberto Bolaño 🇨🇱

And that is it! I hope that this inspires you to read more. If you have any questions about a particular book, send me a message or leave a comment below! See you next time for another blog post!