Okay, so here’s the books I’ve read in French so far this year. Or at least the books that I could be bothered to go find on my bookshelves or piled on the floor in my office and on my bed or all over the table in the dining room or on the second shelf of the coffee table in the living room or just, you know,  on top of the refrigerator (and more than once inside the refrigerator; I’m always amazed at what I manage to leave in the refrigerator when distracted). Or wherever else.

I’m not providing links to these because either you can’t find the editions I have, because when I’m in Paris or any city in France or even in the countryside I am drawn like a wood-worm to bookish places and have had really good luck finding things without looking for them, or they’re really easy to find. Everything on this list I recommend, if you can read French at all, though certainly most of this stuff requires a fair degree of fluency. Except for Houellebecq. He writes like a fourth-grader. But I still like his new novel —the one that (finally) won him the Goncourt — despite not usually having much interest in his output.

As always, stuff I re-read for research or for some other reason is indicated with an asterisk. Non-asterisked items are new-to-me, though not necessarily new.

1. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Un roman sentimental, Fayard

2. Boris Vian, Manuel de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (coffret), Livre de Poche

3, 4. Chateaubriand, Memoires d’Outre-Tombe, Tomes 1 & 2, Bibliotheque de la Pléiade (1958) *

5. Claude Simon, Le Jardin des Plantes, Les Éditions de Minuit *

6. Edouard Dujardin, Les lauriers sont coupés, Flammarion *

7. Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus, Gallimard *

8. Frédéric Révérend, L’Invention d’un château suivi de Le Coffre meurtrier, Éditions de l’Amandier

9. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Livre de Poche *

10. Henri Bergson, Matière et Memoire, Librairie Félix Alcan (1934) *

11. J-K Huysmans, A rebours, Flammarion *

12. Jean Cocteau, Les parents terribles, Gallimard (1938)

13. Jean-Laurent Cassely, Paris: Manuel de Survie, Parigramme

14. Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale, Folio Policier

15. Jean-Patrick Manchette, La Position du tireur couché, Folio Policier

16. Joseph Bédier, Le roman de Tristan et Iseult, L’Édition d’Art (1946)

17, 18, 19, 20. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Tomes 1, 2, 3, 4, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade *

21. Maurice Blanchot, L’arrêt de mort, Gallimard

22. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Gallimard (1966) *

23. Michel Houellebecq, La carte et le territoire, Flammarion

24. Michel Vianey, En attendant Godard, B. Grasset (1967)

25. Nathalie Sarraute, Les Fruits D’Or, Gallimard

26. Octave Mirbeau, Le Jardin des Supplices, Bibliotheque-Charpentier (1922) *

27. Pierre Clementi, Quelques messages personnels, Gallimard

28. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Le phénomène humain, Éditions de Seuil

29. Raymond Queneau, Zazie dans le Métro, Olympia Press (1959) *

30. Raymond Roussel, Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique, Princeton

31. Robert Pinget, Mahu ou Le Matériau, Les Éditions de Minuit *

32. Robert Pinget, Taches d’Encre, Les Éditions de Minuit *