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  • Friday, May 30, 2008

     

    TransUnion to Provide Free Access to Credit Scores

    Under a class-action settlement, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, TransUnion Corp., will provide free access to credit scores to anyone who had any type of loan account between January 1987 and Wednesday, May 28, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reports.

    Federal law entitles everyone to a free copy of his or her credit report once a year from each of the three major credit-reporting companies, but it doesn't provide access to credit scores.

    Under the settlement, anyone who had any type of loan account between January 1987 and Wednesday would be able to select one of two options:

    A basic service would provide free credit monitoring for six months. It normally retails for $59.75, according to the settlement. Those who select this service can also apply for a cash payment.

    An enhanced service would provide nine months of free monitoring, plus use of a "mortgage simulator" that lets consumers see whether improving their credit score would affect their mortgage rates and how much they could save if it did. This option also includes access to one's insurance score, which is used by some insurers to set rates (though California bars their use).
    The settlement values this option at $115.50.

    Under the settlement, a credit card number would not be required to sign up for either service. After the free service ends, TransUnion could not charge for an extension unless it was requested by the consumer.

    Saturday, May 24, 2008

     

    World Oil Shortfall Likely By 2015

    According to the May 22, 2008 Wall Street Journal, with crude oil prices rocketing to over $130 a barrel, double what they were a year ago, a growing number of people in the oil industry are endorsing a version of the "peak oil" theory: that oil production will plateau in coming years, as suppliers fail to replace depleted fields with enough fresh ones to boost overall output.

    On May 22, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that the world's premier energy monitor, the International Energy Agency (IEA), is predicting that the world could face an oil shortfall by 2015 of as much as 12.5 million barrels a day, unless there is a sharp drop in expected demand.

    The United States Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration has made preliminary findings that daily output of conventional crude oil alone, now about 73 million barrels, will plateau at 84 million barrels, and that it will take a significant uptick in production of nonconventional fuels such as ethanol to push global fuel supplies over 100 million barrels a day by 2030, when global oil demand is predicted by the IEA to be in excess of 116 million barrels a day.

    On May 23, 2008, the WSJ reported how mounting concerns about the global energy supply and public outrage over high gasoline prices are increasing pressure on the United States government and Congress to end longstanding bans on domestic drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, such as off the coasts of California and Florida, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Oil company executives, such as Exxon's President Rex Tillerson, claim to have no doubt there are significant conventional oil resources in the off-limits areas.

    However, WSJ admits that little data exist about how much oil and gas might be found under the waters now closed for exploration. I have heard people assert that there is enough oil in the closed areas to supply the U.S. with oil for the next fifty years. Apparently, there is no data to support such an assertion.

    Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that increased drilling will lead to lower gasoline prices.


    Saturday, May 17, 2008

     

    Another Sign of Foreclosure Crisis: Personal Property Auctioned for Unpaid Storage Fees

    The New York Times reports on another sign of the foreclosure crisis:

    When homes go into foreclosure and the owners leave, many move their possessions, such as furniture, electronic equipment, exercise bikes, lamps, fish tanks, etc., into self-storage units. This is generally hoped to be a temporary situation.

    One poignant quote from the report: “Storage has my hopes in it,” said Mr. Martin, who sleeps on a foldout bed in his mother’s guest room. “I don’t tell anyone this, but at least once a week I go over and look at my couch, my refrigerator, my TV stand, my mattress and realize I did have a life, and maybe there’s a way to go back to it.”

    However, in some instances, the same economic and financial problems that resulted in defaulting on the mortgage cause people to fall behind on the storage fees. If the storage fees remain unpaid, the storage facility owner will change the lock on the unit and auction off the contents of the storage unit. People buy the contents at very low prices and then sell the items on E-Bay or at yard sales.

    There are no statistics measuring this phenomenon. "It is impossible to put precise numbers on the phenomenon, partly because the industry is highly fragmented — the majority of facilities are locally owned — and also because the topic is not one the industry cares to dwell on. But auctioneers who dispose of units in default, as well as the bidders who try to buy their contents, say they see increasing signs of strain. They note that more auctions involve people who appear to have had their homes foreclosed."

    The bright side is that times are good for storage companies. "U-Store-It’s stock is up 33 percent this year. Extra Space is up 18 percent. Public Storage is up 18 percent."

    Thursday, May 15, 2008

     

    Foreclosure Sales in Broward County Up 500%

    South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports: For the month of April 2008, scheduled mortgage foreclosure sales in Broward County hit 2,568, a more than 500% increase over the 426 in April 2007, according to Realestat.com, a Plantation-based research firm.

    In Palm Beach County, there were 785 scheduled sales in April, a 370 percent increase over the 167 from a year ago.

    In April, there were 3,150 delinquent property owners in Broward, up from 1,135 last April, according to Realestat.com. Palm Beach County had 1,984 people facing foreclosure, up from 814 a year ago.

    Reasons given by report for this spike in foreclosures:


    1. Home sales have slowed;
    2. Refinancing is difficult in many cases because of falling home values;
    3. Adjustable-rate mortgage resets; and,
    4. Deteriorating economy leading to significant job losses across the region and hindering homeowners from paying their mortgages.

    Wednesday, May 14, 2008

     

    Prosecutorial and Judicial Shenanigans in Broward County?

    Imagine the Assistant State Attorney prosecuting a capital murder case out partying at night and discussing the case with the presiding Judge during the pendency of the trial. Go here for the scoop.

    Only in Broward County?

    Tuesday, May 13, 2008

     

    Dr. Peter Boxall's 1001 Books (Novels) You Must Read Before You Die

    According to this book's editors, each work of literature listed here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word. These works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek Attridge (world expert on James Joyce), Cedric Watts (renowned authority on Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene), Laura Marcus (noted Virginia Woolf expert), and David Mariott (poet and expert on African-American literature), among some twenty others. (Description from Amazon.com)


    Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Saturday – Ian McEwan
    On Beauty – Zadie Smith
    Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
    Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
    The Sea – John Banville
    The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
    The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
    The Master – Colm Tóibín
    Vanishing Point – David Markson
    The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
    Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
    Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
    Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
    The Colour – Rose Tremain
    Thursbitch – Alan Garner
    The Light of Day – Graham Swift
    What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon
    Islands – Dan Sleigh
    Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
    London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
    Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
    Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
    The Double – José Saramago
    Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
    Unless – Carol Shields
    Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
    The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
    That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
    In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
    Shroud – John Banville
    Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
    Youth – J.M. Coetzee
    Dead Air – Iain Banks
    Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
    The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
    Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
    Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
    Platform – Michael Houellebecq
    Schooling – Heather McGowan
    Atonement – Ian McEwan
    The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
    Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
    The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
    Fury – Salman Rushdie
    At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
    Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
    Life of Pi – Yann Martel
    The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
    An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
    The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
    Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
    White Teeth – Zadie Smith
    The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
    Under the Skin – Michel Faber
    Ignorance – Milan Kundera
    Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
    Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
    City of God – E.L. Doctorow
    How the Dead Live – Will Self
    The Human Stain – Philip Roth
    The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
    After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
    Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
    Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
    House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
    Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
    Pastoralia – George Saunders
    Timbuktu – Paul Auster
    The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
    Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
    As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
    Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
    Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
    The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
    Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
    Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
    Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
    Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
    Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
    Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
    All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
    The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
    Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
    The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
    Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
    Another World – Pat Barker
    The Hours – Michael Cunningham
    Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
    Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
    The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
    Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
    Great Apes – Will Self
    Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
    Underworld – Don DeLillo
    Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
    The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
    American Pastoral – Philip Roth
    The Untouchable – John Banville
    Silk – Alessandro Baricco
    Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
    Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
    Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
    The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
    Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
    Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
    The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
    Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
    The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
    The Information – Martin Amis
    The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
    Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
    The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
    The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
    A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
    Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
    The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
    Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
    The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
    Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
    Land – Park Kyong-ni
    The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
    Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
    City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
    How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
    Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
    Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
    Disappearance – David Dabydeen
    The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
    The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
    Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
    Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
    Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
    Complicity – Iain Banks
    On Love – Alain de Botton
    What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
    A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
    The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
    The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
    The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
    The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
    The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
    The Secret History – Donna Tartt
    Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
    The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
    A Heart So White – Javier Marias
    Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
    Indigo – Marina Warner
    The Crow Road – Iain Banks
    Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
    Jazz – Toni Morrison
    The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
    Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
    The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
    Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
    The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
    Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
    Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
    Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
    Arcadia – Jim Crace
    Wild Swans – Jung Chang
    American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
    Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
    Mao II – Don DeLillo
    Typical – Padgett Powell
    Regeneration – Pat Barker
    Downriver – Iain Sinclair
    Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
    Wise Children – Angela Carter
    Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
    Amongst Women – John McGahern
    Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
    Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
    Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
    The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
    The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
    A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
    Like Life – Lorrie Moore
    Possession – A.S. Byatt
    The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
    The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
    A Disaffection – James Kelman
    Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
    Moon Palace – Paul Auster
    Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
    Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
    The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
    The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
    The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
    The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
    Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
    A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
    London Fields – Martin Amis
    The Book of Evidence – John Banville
    Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
    Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
    The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
    Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
    The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
    The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
    Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
    Libra – Don DeLillo
    The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
    Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
    The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
    Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
    The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
    The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
    The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
    The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
    The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
    The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
    Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
    The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
    The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
    World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
    Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
    The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
    Beloved – Toni Morrison
    Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
    Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
    Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
    Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
    The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
    Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
    An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
    Foe – J.M. Coetzee
    The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
    Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
    The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
    Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
    Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
    The Cider House Rules – John Irving
    A Maggot – John Fowles
    Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
    Contact – Carl Sagan
    The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
    Perfume – Patrick Süskind
    Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
    White Noise – Don DeLillo
    Queer – William Burroughs
    Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
    Legend – David Gemmell
    Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavic
    The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
    The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
    The Lover – Marguerite Duras
    Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
    The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
    Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
    The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
    Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
    Neuromancer – William Gibson
    Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
    Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
    Shame – Salman Rushdie
    Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
    Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
    La Brava – Elmore Leonard
    Waterland – Graham Swift
    The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
    The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
    The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
    The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
    If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
    A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
    The Color Purple – Alice Walker
    Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
    A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
    The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
    The Newton Letter – John Banville
    On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
    Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
    The Names – Don DeLillo
    Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
    Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
    The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
    July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
    Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
    Broken April – Ismail Kadare
    Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
    Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
    Rites of Passage – William Golding
    Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
    Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
    City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
    The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
    The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
    Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
    Shikasta – Doris Lessing
    A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
    Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
    The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
    If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
    The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
    The World According to Garp – John Irving
    Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
    The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
    The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
    Yes – Thomas Bernhard
    The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
    In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
    The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
    Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
    The Shining – Stephen King
    Dispatches – Michael Herr
    Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
    Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
    The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
    The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
    Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
    The Public Burning – Robert Coover
    Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
    Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
    Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
    Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
    Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
    W, or the Memory of childhood – Georges Perec
    A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
    Grimus – Salman Rushdie
    The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
    Fateless – Imre Kertész
    Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
    High Rise – J.G. Ballard
    Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
    Dead Babies – Martin Amis
    Correction – Thomas Bernhard
    Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
    The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
    Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
    The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
    Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
    A Question of Power – Bessie Head
    The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
    The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
    Crash – J.G. Ballard
    The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
    Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
    The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
    Sula – Toni Morrison
    Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
    The Breast – Philip Roth
    The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
    G – John Berger
    Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
    House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
    In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
    The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
    Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
    The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
    Rabbit Redux – John Updike
    The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
    The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
    The Ogre – Michael Tournier
    The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
    Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
    Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
    Troubles – J.G. Farrell
    Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
    The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
    Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
    Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
    Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
    Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
    The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
    Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
    The Godfather – Mario Puzo
    Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
    Them – Joyce Carol Oates
    A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
    Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
    Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
    The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
    Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
    Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
    Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
    The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
    In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
    A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
    The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
    Chocky – John Wyndham
    The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
    The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
    One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
    The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
    Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
    The Joke – Milan Kundera
    No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
    The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
    A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
    The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
    Trawl – B.S. Johnson
    In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
    The Magus – John Fowles
    The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
    Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
    Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
    The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
    Things – Georges Perec
    The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
    August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
    God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
    Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
    The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
    Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
    Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
    Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
    Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
    The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
    Herzog – Saul Bellow
    V. – Thomas Pynchon
    Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
    The Graduate – Charles Webb
    Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
    The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
    Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
    The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
    The Collector – John Fowles
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
    A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
    Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
    The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
    The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
    Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
    Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
    The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
    Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
    Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
    A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
    Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
    Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
    Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
    Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
    The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
    How It Is – Samuel Beckett
    Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
    The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
    To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
    Rabbit, Run – John Updike
    Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
    Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
    Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
    Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
    The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
    Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
    Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
    Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
    Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
    Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
    The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
    Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
    A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
    The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
    Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
    Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
    Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
    Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
    The End of the Road – John Barth
    The Once and Future King – T.H. White
    The Bell – Iris Murdoch
    Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Voss – Patrick White
    The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
    Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
    Homo Faber – Max Frisch
    On the Road – Jack Kerouac
    Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
    Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
    The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
    Justine – Lawrence Durrell
    Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
    The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
    The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
    Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
    The Floating Opera – John Barth
    The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
    The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
    Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
    A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
    The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
    The Quiet American – Graham Greene
    The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
    The Recognitions – William Gaddis
    The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
    Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
    I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
    Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
    The Story of O – Pauline Réage
    A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
    Lord of the Flies – William Golding
    Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
    The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
    The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
    The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
    Watt – Samuel Beckett
    Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
    Junkie – William Burroughs
    The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
    Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
    Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
    The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
    Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
    The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
    Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
    The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
    Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
    Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
    Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
    Foundation – Isaac Asimov
    The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
    The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
    The Rebel – Albert Camus
    Molloy – Samuel Beckett
    The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
    The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
    The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
    The Third Man – Graham Greene
    The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
    Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
    The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
    I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
    The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
    The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
    Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
    The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
    The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
    Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
    The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
    Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
    All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
    Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
    Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
    The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
    Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
    Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
    The Victim – Saul Bellow
    Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
    If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
    Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
    The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
    The Plague – Albert Camus
    Back – Henry Green
    Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
    The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
    Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
    Animal Farm – George Orwell
    Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
    The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
    Loving – Henry Green
    Arcanum 17 – André Breton
    Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
    The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
    Transit – Anna Seghers
    Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
    Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
    The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    Caught – Henry Green
    The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
    Embers – Sandor Marai
    Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
    The Outsider – Albert Camus
    In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
    The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
    The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
    Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
    Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
    The Hamlet – William Faulkner
    Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
    For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
    Native Son – Richard Wright
    The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
    The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
    Party Going – Henry Green
    The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
    Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
    At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
    Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
    Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
    Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
    Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
    The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
    After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
    Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
    Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
    Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
    Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
    Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
    U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
    Murphy – Samuel Beckett
    Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
    Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
    The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
    The Years – Virginia Woolf
    In Parenthesis – David Jones
    The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
    Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
    To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
    Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
    Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
    The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
    Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
    Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
    Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
    Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
    At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
    Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
    Independent People – Halldór Laxness
    Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
    The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
    They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
    The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
    England Made Me – Graham Greene
    Burmese Days – George Orwell
    The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
    Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
    Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
    The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
    Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
    A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
    Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
    Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
    Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
    Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
    Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
    The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
    Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
    A Day Off – Storm Jameson
    The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
    A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
    Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
    Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
    To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
    The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
    The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
    The Waves – Virginia Woolf
    The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
    Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
    The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
    Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
    Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
    The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
    Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
    Passing – Nella Larsen
    A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
    Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
    Living – Henry Green
    The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
    All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
    Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
    The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
    Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
    The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
    Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
    Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
    Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
    Orlando – Virginia Woolf
    Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
    The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
    The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
    Quartet – Jean Rhys
    Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
    Quicksand – Nella Larsen
    Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
    Nadja – André Breton
    Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
    Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
    To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
    Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
    Amerika – Franz Kafka
    The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
    Blindness – Henry Green
    The Castle – Franz Kafka
    The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
    The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
    One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
    The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
    Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
    Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
    The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
    The Counterfeiters – André Gide
    The Trial – Franz Kafka
    The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
    The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
    Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
    The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
    The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
    We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
    A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
    The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
    Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
    Cane – Jean Toomer
    Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
    Amok – Stefan Zweig
    The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
    The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
    Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
    Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
    The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
    Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
    The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
    Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
    Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
    Ulysses – James Joyce
    The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
    Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
    The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
    Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
    Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
    Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
    Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
    The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
    The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
    Summer – Edith Wharton
    Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
    Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
    Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
    Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
    The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
    The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
    Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
    The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
    The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
    Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
    Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
    Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
    Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
    The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
    Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
    Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
    The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
    Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
    Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
    Howards End – E.M. Forster
    Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
    Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
    Martin Eden – Jack London
    Strait is the Gate – André Gide
    Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
    The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
    A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
    The Iron Heel – Jack London
    The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
    The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
    Mother – Maxim Gorky
    The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
    The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
    Young Törless – Robert Musil
    The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
    The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
    Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
    Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
    Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
    Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
    The Golden Bowl – Henry James
    The Ambassadors – Henry James
    The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
    The Immoralist – André Gide
    The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
    Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
    The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
    Kim – Rudyard Kipling
    Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
    Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
    Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
    The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
    The Awakening – Kate Chopin
    The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
    The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
    The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
    What Maisie Knew – Henry James
    Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
    Dracula – Bram Stoker
    Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
    The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
    The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
    Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
    Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
    The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
    The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    Born in Exile – George Gissing
    Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
    The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    News from Nowhere – William Morris
    New Grub Street – George Gissing
    Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
    Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
    The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
    The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
    La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
    By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
    Hunger – Knut Hamsun
    The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
    Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
    Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
    The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
    The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
    She – H. Rider Haggard
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
    The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
    Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
    King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
    Germinal – Émile Zola
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
    Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
    Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
    Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
    The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
    A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
    Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
    The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
    The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
    Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
    Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
    Nana – Émile Zola
    The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    The Red Room – August Strindberg
    Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
    Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
    Drunkard – Émile Zola
    Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
    Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
    The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
    The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
    Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
    The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
    Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
    In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
    The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Erewhon – Samuel Butler
    Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
    Middlemarch – George Eliot
    Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
    King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
    He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
    War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
    Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
    Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
    Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
    The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
    Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
    Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
    The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
    Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
    Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
    Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
    Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
    Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
    The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
    Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
    Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
    Silas Marner – George Eliot
    Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
    On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
    Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
    The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
    The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
    The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    Max Havelaar – Multatuli
    A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
    Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
    Adam Bede – George Eliot
    Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
    North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
    Hard Times – Charles Dickens
    Walden – Henry David Thoreau
    Bleak House – Charles Dickens
    Villette – Charlotte Brontë
    Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
    Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
    The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
    The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
    Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
    Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
    The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
    Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
    Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
    Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
    Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
    The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
    La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
    The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
    The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
    Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
    The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
    Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
    A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
    Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
    The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
    The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
    The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
    Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
    The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
    Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
    Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
    The Red and the Black – Stendhal
    The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
    Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
    The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
    The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
    Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
    The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
    Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
    Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
    Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
    Persuasion – Jane Austen
    Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
    Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
    Emma – Jane Austen
    Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
    Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
    The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
    Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
    Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
    Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
    The Nun – Denis Diderot
    Camilla – Fanny Burney
    The Monk – M.G. Lewis
    Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
    The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
    The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
    Justine – Marquis de Sade
    Vathek – William Beckford
    The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
    Cecilia – Fanny Burney
    Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
    Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Evelina – Fanny Burney
    The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
    The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
    A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
    Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
    The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
    The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
    Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
    Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
    Candide – Voltaire
    The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
    Amelia – Henry Fielding
    Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
    Fanny Hill – John Cleland
    Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
    Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
    Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
    Pamela – Samuel Richardson
    Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
    Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
    Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
    A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
    Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
    Roxana – Daniel Defoe
    Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
    Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
    Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
    A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
    Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
    The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
    The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
    Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
    The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
    Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
    Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
    The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
    The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
    Aithiopika – Heliodorus
    Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
    Metamorphoses – Ovid
    Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

     

    Florida State Prison Population Has Grown Twice As Fast As Florida Residential Population

    From 1990 to 2007, Florida's residential population increased by approximately 44%.



    According to the February 2008 Pew Center on the States report, between 1993 and 2007, Florida's inmate population has increased from 53,000 to over 97,000, an increase of more than 83%.



    Thus, the population residing in Florida's state prisons has grown at double the rate of Florida's population of residents.


    Crime in Florida has dropped substantially between 1993 and 2007, but crime has fallen as much or more in some states that have not grown their prison systems, or even shrunk them, such as New York.

    Why has Florida's prison population grown at such a high rate compared to overall population growth? Analysts agree most of the growth has stemmed from a host of correctional policies and practices adopted by the state:

    1. In 1995, the Florida legislature abolished "good time" credits and discretionary release by the parole board, and required that all prisoners - regardless of their crime, prior record, or risk to recidivate - serve 85% of their sentence;

    2. A "zero tolerance" policy for parole violations and increasing prison time for even "technical violations."

    In addition, some observers point to the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders. According to South Florida Sun Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo here, at 20.7 percent, drug offenders make up the biggest segment of the state prison population, according to the state. Of the 3,307 people sent to prison from Broward last year, 537 (16.2 percent) were for cocaine possession, according to the Broward State Attorney's Office.

    If the same trend continues, Florida is expected to reach a peak of nearly 125,000 inmates by 2013. Based on that projection, the state will run out of prison capacity by early 2009 and will need to add another 16,500 beds to keep pace. According to Mayo, the upcoming Florida state budget includes $309 million to build three new prisons. That's in addition to the $2.5 billion the Department of Corrections gets for annual operating expenses.

    Meanwhile, the May 15, 2008 Florida Bar News laments massive cuts to funding for Florida's judicial branch that could result in 299 full-time court employees (not judges) being laid off. The final court system budget for FY 2008-09 adopted by the legislature sliced an additional $18.4 million and impacts 182.5 positions on top of two previous reductions the court system suffered last year. Calculate the latest reduction to hefty previous cuts since July 1, 2007, and the bottom line for the judicial branch general revenue base budget totals $43,716,419, or a 9.8 percent decline from where the courts started a year ago.The net loss to the salary budget totals is 299 FTEs (full-time equivalent positions) or 6.8 percent of the court system workforce.

    Is it possible the budget cuts to the judicial branch might slow the growth in Florida's prison population?


    Monday, May 12, 2008

     

    Interesting Mormon Beliefs About Polygamy

    According to an article in the May 16, 2008 issue of The Week magazine:

    1. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, said that, on July 17, 1831, God told him that only a man with at least three wives could enter heaven;

    2. In Mormon theology, the individual human soul exists both before and after mortal life, and it was therefore considered the duty of all Mormon men to have as many children as possible in order to spare those souls the indignity of being born, as Mormon apostle Orson Pratt put it, "among the Hottentots, the African negroes, the idolatrous Hindoos, or any other fallen nations that dwell upon the face of the Earth;"

    3. All Mormons are not polygamous because God changed his mind just in time for Utah to join the United States. In 1890, while Utah territory was applying to become a state, church president Wilford Woodruff received a revelation from God to the effect that Mormons were to submit themselves to U.S. law and to cease the practice of plural marriage. The "mainstream" Mormons followed Woodruff's revelation. The "fundamentalist" sects did not.

     

    Thousands of Board of Patent Appeals Decisions Since 2000 May Be Questionable Due To Unconstitutional Appointment Process

    John F. Duffy, a law professor at George Washington University, has recently released a controversial paper that calls into question thousands of decisions made by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences since 2000. According to Duffy, the appointment process used to select judges for the panel has been unconstitutional since 1999, when a law was passed that gave the power of appointment, once enjoyed by the Secretary of Commerce, to the director of the Patent and Trademark Office. Duffy contends that the Constitution clearly delineates who can make what appointments, and that the undersecretary of a department does not meet these qualifications. Thus, the justices were appointed improperly, and judging from the amount at stake in many of their decisions, losing parties to their cases are now likely to challenge their decisions.




    One such challenger is the company Translogic Technology, which lost its case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in January previous to the release of Duffy's article. Translogic has appealed to the Supreme Court, which has not yet agreed to hear the case.





    Source: Fastcase Blog (who got it from New York Times)


     

    U.S. Consumer Bankruptcy Filings Up 50%

    U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings increased 47.7 percent nationwide in April 2008 from the same period a year ago, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), relying on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC). The overall April consumer filing total of 92,291 also represented a 7.1 percent increase from the 86,165 filings in March. Chapter 13 filings constituted 31.14 percent of all consumer cases in April, a slight decrease from March.


    “The sharp spike in consumer bankruptcies reflects the growing financial stress faced by American families, saddled with household debt and mortgage woes,” said ABI Executive Director Samuel J. Gerdano. “We expect consumer bankruptcies to top 1 million new cases this year".

    Thursday, May 08, 2008

     

    Separated At Birth? GEICO Caveman and Former American Idol Contestant Bo Bice












    Thanks to my wife Linda for noticing this!

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