Thank you, Bettie, Hayes, Laura, Wanda, Anne Sofie, Misha and Nesrin.

Wow...



I am not worthy!

you are in the nobel prize mood now, aren't you ? ;)

Hayes wrote: "Wow...

I am not worthy!"

Actually, I've been cheating big time here. (Err. Well. Cough.) When I first came across this list, it contained -- apart from Susanna's truly lavish list of entries -- a mere 8 books, and most of them of the sort that's to be found on plenty of other lists as well anyway. So I figured, since this is the one place where to highlight books associated with this particular distinction, instead of just adding a random selection of Nobel Prize winners' books that I've actually read (and remember well enough to rate), I'm also going to spruce up the list a bit, including with (a) books by what to me at least seem to be less widely-known Nobel Prize winning authors (think Gerhart Hauptmann, Nelly Sachs, Ivan Bunin, Frédéric Mistral, Czesław Miłosz and Miguel Ángel Asturias) and (b) what I perceive as, at least internationally, lesser-known books by well-known authors (e.g., some of the books by Vargas Llosa and Heinrich Böll). (Needless to say I may be wrong about some of my choices, but the number of votes on most of these books suggests I'm at least not entirely off.) So in essence this is a mix of "have actually read and remember well enough to rate," "haven't read this particular edition/compilation but some of the stuff in it and, heck, I've only got 100 votes so I'm just going to vote for this thingy by way of a shortcut," "have a mushy memory of having read this at some point but feel uncomfortable rating because I remember next to nothing, though I do have a vague sense I liked it," "have this sitting on a shelf in my living room jostling for attention with a few 100 other books clamoring to be read," and "should finally get around to reading this one because, dammit, the author is a Nobel Prize winner after all" ... :(

(And, needless to say, since we now have 2 other "Literature Nobel Prize" lists, I've lazily just copied my entries in this list into the others as well!)

Not at all in the spirit of personal reading experience, I admit. But hopefully in the spirit of an overall more rounded reflection of some of the body of work having been deemed worthy of the Lit Nobel?