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I thought it might be fun on the general board to get a sense of everyone's top ten NYRB Classic releases -- which we should feel free to edit and change as time goes on. If the list is less than ten now, I'd still like to see it!

I've also created a "General/Top Ten Discussion" thread, meant to be a place to discuss these lists, among other general things.

I know it's hard to put together a ranking, but I think it would be interesting if folks forced themselves to do it and examine why one book edged out another -- at least today, if not tomorrow.

What do you think?

Here's mine, cut down from 18 that I thought should be on the list (I've included links to my own reviews after each title for those interested):

1. Amsterdam Stories , by Nescio ()
2. Stoner , by John Williams ()
3. The Invention of Morel , by Adolfo Bioy Casares ()
4. The Peregrine , by J.A. Baker ()
5. Butcher's Crossing , by John Williams ()
6. Alice James: A Biography , by Jean Strouse ()
7. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti , by Milton Rockeach ()
8. Turtle Diary , by Russell Hoban ()
9. Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village , by Ronald Blythe
10. The Adventures of Sindbad , by Gyula Krúdy ()

1. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
2. Jakob von Gunten
3. The Summer Book
4. A High Wind in Jamaica
5. Selected Stories (Walser)
6. Stoner
7. A Month in the Country
8. Skylark
9. The Ten Thousand Things
10. The Invention of Morel

1. Stoner - Williams
2. As a Man Grows Older - Svevo
3. Fortunes of War: Balkan Trilogy - Manning
4. Alien Hearts - De Maupassant
5. Troubles - Farrell
6. Skylark - Kosztolanyi
7. The Gray Notebook - Pla
8. A Time of Gifts - Fermor
9. Life and Fate - Grossman
10. A Game of Hide and Seek - Taylor

1. Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter
2. Stoner by John Williams
3. Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhinovsky
4. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
5. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
7. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
8. Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood
9. The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
10. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

1) Niki: The Story of a Dog by Tibor Déry
2) Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser
3) The Letter Killer Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
4) Stoner by John Williams
5) A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes
6) Monsier Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon
7) Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers
8) The Adventures of Sindbad by Gyula Krúdy
9) A Month In The Country by J.L. Carr
10) Envy by Yuri Olesha

I've only read 25, apparently. I was able to pick 8 strong contenders. But there are so many I haven't read that I know are going to be terrific, so there's that.

1. In the Freud Archives
2. The Case of Comrade Tulayev
3. The Go-Between
4. The Pilgrim Hawk
5. The Skin
6. Belchamber
7. The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard
8. The Education Of A Gardener

I wonder why NYRB hasn't published Glenway Wescott's best novel, The Grandmothers? SOOOOO good.

I'm currently reading my tenth NYRB (Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, lovely so far), so here's what I have for now.

1. Alice James: A Biography - Jean Strouse
2. Stoner by John Edward Williams
3. The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
4. Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
5. The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût
6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
7. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
8. An African in Greenland - Tété-Michel Kpomassie
9. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
10. On the Abolition of All Political Parties - Simone Weil

I have reviews up for all of these.

Edit 6/7/14: Having finished SN, I have it up there at number three.

Edit 9/14/19: Did some reconfiguring now that I'm at 28 read rather than ten.

1. Skylark - Kosztolanyi
2. The Long Ships - Bengston
3. Urn Burial - Sir Thomas Browne
4. Soul of Wood - Lind
5. Foundation Pit - Platonov
6. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Mutis
7. Snows of Yesteryear - Rezzori
8. The Book of Ebenerzer Le Page - Edwards
9. Renard's Nature Stories
10. The Road, Life and Fate - Grossman

* also Stoner, Sinbad (although there's MUCH better Krudy out there, same with Dery - Nikki is great but Love is better to me at least), everything Platonov, all Queneau, Karinthy, Ride a Cockhorse, Envy, Tennants of Moonbloom, Turtle Diary, parts of Krzhizhanovsky, Valles - The Child...

in no particular order:











(runners up:
)
Of course, there are many NYRBs I haven't read yet, and also I read Dead Souls in another edition--otherwise it would have made the list too).

No order to mine either. And I cut a couple that I wish I hadn't had to.


1. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
2. Red Lights by Simenon
3. Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
4. Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi
5. Berlin Diaries by Robert Walser
6. The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Westcott
7. Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter
8. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
9. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
10.Don't Look Now by Daphne DuMaurier

Out of the 25 or so I've read, here are my favorites, in order

01.Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
02.Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
03.The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
04.The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
05.Stoner by John Williams
06.On the Yard by Malcolm Braly
07.Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker
08.The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
09.Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
10.A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

I've gotten some tweets containing top ten lists. I thought I'd share them here, without the handles since maybe they didn't post here because they didn't want to be known to one of you!

1. A photo showing:
- Ice Trilogy , by Vladimir Sorokin
- Stoner , by John Williams
- Butcher's Crossing , by John Williams
- The Winners , by Julio Cortazar (which made me jealous since the book is long OOP)
- The Mangan Inheritance , by Brian Moore

2. A photo showing:
- Memed, My Hawk , by Yashar Kemal
- The Complete Fiction: Francis Wyndham
- Summer Will Show , by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Basti , by Intizar Husain
- The Gate , by Nasume Soseki

3. A list:
- Riders in the Chariot , by Patrick White
- Life and Fate , by Vasily Grossman
- Siege of Krishnapur , by J.G. Farrell
- Stoner , by John Williams

4. A plug: "Despite favoring fiction, their Robert Burton & Nirad Chaudhuri would easily make my top 10; both brilliant; important"

My best ones in no particular order:

1. Stoner by John Williams
2. Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar
3. A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis
4. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
5. The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
6. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
7. We Think the World of You by J.R. Ackerley
8. Basic Black with Pearls by Helen Weinzweig
9. Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz
10. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

Out of maybe 35 I have read so far here is my somewhat ordered list:

Hmmm...an actual ordered list is proving difficult as I can't decide on a number one- so skip the ordered part.

1. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G. B Edwards (also the first one I ever read)

2. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore ( My favorite cover because of the figure literally blending into the background-a visual wallflower) The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

3. Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
4. Augustus by John Williams

5. The Land Breakers by John Ehle ( which made me take a break from NYRB to go read the rest of this series by Ehle- Land Breakers is only the first of seven)

6. Fear by Gabriel Chevallier
7. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

8. Love In A Fallen City by Eileen Chang ( kind of tie for favorite cover because I just thought it was beautiful and it was when I first figured out to go search out more NYRB titles because the covers signaled something really great was inside- thereby putting the lie to "Don't judge a book... Love in a Fallen City

9.Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn
10. The Woman Who Borrowed Memories by Tove Jansson

Honorable Mentions: The True Deceiver, The Glass Bees and Skylark

And I hate to say anything negative about my favorite books in the world but it somehow seems incomplete to not reference my least favorite, which so far is All About H. Hatterr by G. V. Desani

No Order:
Stoner, John Williams

White Walls, Tatyana Tolstaya

The Go-Between, Hartley

Pitch Dark, Renata Adler

The Dud Avocado, Dundy

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Brian Moore (orig. read in non-NYRB edition)

Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter

The Siege of Krishnapur, JG Farrell

Red Lights, Simenon


Saving the last spot for High Wind in Jamaica, which I'm starting soon...

Love these books and regularly recommend them to folks
Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter
High Wind in Jamaica- Richard Hughes
Red Shift-Alan Garner
Mani: Travels in the Peloponnese- Patrick Leigh Fermor
Stoner-John Williams
Pitch Dark- Renata Adler
Nightmare Alley-Gresham
Siege Of Krishnapour- J.G. Farrell
Warlock- Oakley Hall
The Stalin Front Gert Letig

Can't believe I forgot Warlock and (especially!!) Nightmare Alley.

Also, Judges of the Secret Court for 11

Dave and Topher, you can edit your posts. Indeed, I encourage that to keep these lists fluid or, as I put in the title, dynamic (not sure if that's the best term :-) ).

Speedboat
Diary of a Man in Despair
Dirty Snow
Warlock
Hard Rain Falling
My Face For The World To See
Amsterdam Stories
Nightmare Alley/The Other
Love's Work
Thoreau: Journals/The Case Of Comrade Tulayev

Not really in order, but some stand out as truly original, such as The Ten Thousand Things, Fancies and Goodnights, and To Each His Own. But they were all wonderful reads. Full disclosure, I read some of these books prior to the NYRB edition, ex: Lucky Jim and The Go-Between. But so wonderful of the publishers to re-release them!

The Ten Thousand Things
A Month in the Country
A High Wind in Jamaica
To Each His Own
The Death of Napoleon
Fancies and Goodnights (which has to be hands down my favorite cover!)
Lucky Jim
The Enchanted April
The Go-Between
The World of Odysseus

read:

The Liberal Imaginations by Lionel Trilling
Seven Men by Max Beerbohm
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing

want to read:

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Black Wings Has My Angel by Eliot Chaze
Part of Our Time by Murray Kempton

I do think these books are nicely packaged, and I almost can't help picking them up when I see them. For example, just last week I got: Rogue Male

Here's my list:

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
The Inferno of Dante Alighieri
My Face for the World to See
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Transit
Great Granny Webster
The Gate by Natsume Sōseki
Stoner by John Williams
Basic Black with Pearls

1. Cassandra at the Wedding
2. The Door - Magda Szabo
3. Loving - Henry Green
4. Life With Picasso
5. Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning
6. The Corner That Held Them - Sylvia Townsend Warner
7. Free Day
8. Zama
9. The Levant Trilogy
10. The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy


11/7/2023 - I have read a lot since I wrote the original list in 2017!

1. The Bridge of Beyond
2. Lolly Willowes
3. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
4. The Siege of Krishnapur
5. Memed, My Hawk
6. The Door
5. Stoner
6. Iza's Ballad
7. The Green Man
8. Katalin Street
9. Proud Beggars
10. During the Reign of the Queen of Persia

Can't rank them but

Journey By Moonlight, by Antal Szerb
Troubles, by J G Farrell
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
Warlock, by Oakley Hall
Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman
Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter
Unforgiving Years (or else Comrade Tulayev), by Victor Serge
Clark Gifford's Body, by Kenneth Fearing
Turtle Diary, by Russell Hoban
The Invention of Morel, by Alfredo Bioy Casares

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutis
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page - GB Edwards
The Long Ships - Frans G Bengtsson
Stoner - John Williams
A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Doblin
To Each His Own - Leonardo Sciascia
All For Nothing - Walter Kempowski
The Glory of the Empire - Jean D'Ormesson
Arabia Felix- Thorkild Hansen

For me, this is the kind of list that capriciously changes day by day, hour by hour. So this is my NYRB Classic top ten (or so) list for the moment, in no particular order...

The Book of Blam - Aleksandar Tisma
A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey - Sybille Bedford
Bright Magic: Stories - Alfred Doblin
Riders in the Chariot - Patrick White
The Family Mashber - Der Nister
The Lord Chandos Letter - Hugo von Hofmannsthal
An Ermine in Czernopol - Gregor von Rezzori
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village - Ronald Blythe
Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman
Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning
Shelley: The Pursuit - Richard Holmes
The Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage/Labyrinth - Tim Robinson
In Love - Alfred Hayes
Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutis

And that’s still 15+. But these are the NYRB titles that I keep returning to the most and which have stayed with me the longest. It was difficult enough to reduce the list to this many, and since it’s guaranteed that I’ll be forever changing my mind about it, I’m just going to leave it as it is for now.

And here’s a few more, because I simply couldn’t exclude them:

Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb
The Late Mattia Pascal - Luigi Pirandello
Fat City - Leonard Gardner
The Gray Notebook - Josep Pla
Troubles - JG Farrell
Late Fame - Arthur Schnitzler
That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda
Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi

Mr. Fortune

This will be a rotating list since there’s so many to come out and some I haven’t read but here’s my first attempt...

1) The Unpossessed- Tess Slesinger
2) An African In Greenland- Tete-Michel Kpomassie
3) Totempole- Sanford Friedman
4) Notes of a Crocodile- Qiu Miaojin
5) The Winners- Julio Cortazar
6) The Long Ships- Frans G. Bengtsson
7) Hard Rain Falling- Don Carpenter
8) Young Man With a Horn- Dorothy Baker
9) In the Freud Archives- Janet Malcolm
10) The Land Breakers- John Ehle

...that was fun.

I've picked up more of these than I've read so far, but most of those that I've read, I really enjoyed. A couple of my five star reads:

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood

The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell

Contempt by Alberto Moravia

ETA A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

ETA(2) Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
I also liked Sunflower by Gyula Krúdy

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

and Warlock by Oakley Hall

Almost time to start on Eric Auerbach's Dante: Poet of the Secular World. Short, but I expect it to be dense

The only two I didn't really care much for were A High Wind in Jamaica and Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers. I just thought they were 'ok'

So much fun looking at these lists. Here is mine, which is a definite work in progress.

1) The Prank: The Best of Young Chekhov
2) The Summer Book
3) Fair Play
4) Stoner
5) The Door
6) Katalin Street
7) All for Nothing
8) Ending Up
9) Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
10) Berlin Alexanderplatz

1 Life and Fate
2 Journey by Moonlight
3 The Singapore Grip
4 The Door
5 A Month in the Country
6 A Time of Gifts
7 Stalingrad
8 Butcher's Crossing
9 The Summer Book
10 Iza's Ballad

New here - I have 32 nyrb books, 22 of which I've read. The top 5 were a step above the rest for me.

1) The Long Ships
2) A Month in the Country
3) The Summer Book
4) Stoner
5) Transit
6) The Chess Story
7) The Vet's Daughter
8) The Enchanted April
9) Troubles
10) The Door

Lucky Jim
One Fat Englishman
The Alteration
Omer Pasha Latas: A Novel
Soul of Wood
Diary of a Man in Despair
The Goshawk
Little Reunions
The Old Devils
The Go-Between

Unranked:

The Land Breakers - John Ehle
Stoner - John Williams
The Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan
The Long Ships - Franz Bergstrom
Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter
Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman
Warlock - Oakley Hall
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G Farrell
Naked Earth - Eileen Chang

and the last spot I'm reserving for The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, by G.B. Edwards. I'm about 3/4 of the way done and it's spectacular.

I'm new to reading/collecting NYRB classics so I don't have a full list of 10 yet, but I'm sure I'll get there quickly at the rate I'm burning through them. They are so hard to rank when I gave them all 5 stars. I welcome all recommendations in the noir crime or horror categories!

1. In A Lonely Place
2. My Death
3. Black Wings Has My Angel
4. The Other
5. Slow Days, Fast Company


Up Next:
Wish Her Safe at Home
Invention of Morel
Don't Look Now
Fat City
The Expendable Man

I'll play along:
My very fluid top 10 in no order:

Cassandra at the Wedding
A Month in the Country
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
The Siege of Krishnapur
The Go-Between
Good Behaviour
Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy
Contempt
The Stone Face
Stoner

Hard to leave out Angel, Fathers and Children and The Enchanted April

alexis wrote: "I'm new to reading/collecting NYRB classics so I don't have a full list of 10 yet, but I'm sure I'll get there quickly at the rate I'm burning through them. They are so hard to rank when I gave the..."

If you haven't checked out Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter, that's a pretty solid noir read.

I can heartily recommend
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

Also included in Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s (LOA #268): Laura / The Horizontal Man / In a Lonely Place / The Blank Wall

It's been a dog's age since I did this, so here's where I'm at:

1. Last Words from Montmartre - Qiu Miaojin ( review)
2. Memories of the Future - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky ( review)
3. The Kindness of Strangers - Salka Viertel ( review)
4. Sleepless Nights - Elizabeth Hardwick ( review)
5. Alice James: A Biography - Jean Strouse ( review)
6. Stoner - John Williams ( review)
7. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermoût ( review)
8. Amsterdam Stories - Nescio ( review)
9. Pitch Dark - Renata Adler ( review)
10. Chess Story - Stefan Zweig ( review)

I see that Stoner is particularly popular with virtually everyone, which is great. My list (in no particular order):

1. Swann's Way
2. The Siege of Krishnapur
3. Stoner
4. The Seven Madmen
5. Havoc
6. The Invention of Morel
7. Fear: A Novel of World War I
8. The Post-Office Girl
9. The New York Stories of Edith Wharton
10. The Ten Thousand Things

I have omitted those translated from the Russian, since I read them in the original, and am still to read Grand Hotel, Merchant of Prato, Cassandra at the Wedding. Blood Dark, and Journey into the Past, which may be taking the place of any of the above.