Reading path
The Soil's Memory
Writers so telluric, so rooted in their patch of earth, that the land itself does the work. Place stops being scenery and becomes character. Bog and moor, river and farmland, the soil with its long memory and the dust that outlasts every dynasty. Heaney's bog poems sit at the centre, with bodies surfacing from the peat. These are the books you couldn't lift up and set down anywhere else.
In the app a path keeps your place, marks what you have read, and hands you the next work when you are ready for it.
The first button needs the app on this device; the second gets it there.
The route
- 1. The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthMatsuo Bashō, 1689
- 2. Wuthering HeightsEmily Brontë, 1847
- 3. WaldenHenry David Thoreau, 1854
- 4. The WoodlandersThomas Hardy, 1887
- 5. The WindhoverGerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
- 6. Tess of the d'UrbervillesThomas Hardy, 1891
- 7. As I Lay DyingWilliam Faulkner, 1930
- 8. The Grapes of WrathJohn Steinbeck, 1939
- 9. Pedro PáramoJuan Rulfo, 1955
- 10. Things Fall ApartChinua Achebe, 1958
- 11. The LeopardGiuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958
- 12. The Half-Finished HeavenTomas Tranströmer, 1962
- 13. CrowTed Hughes, 1970
- 14. PunishmentSeamus Heaney, 1975
- 15. SuttreeCormac McCarthy, 1979
- 16. Lonesome DoveLarry McMurtry, 1985
- 17. Growth of the SoilKnut Hamsun, 1917
- 18. Angle of ReposeWallace Stegner, 1971
- 19. My AntoniaWilla Cather, 1918
- 20. The Good EarthPearl S. Buck, 1931
- 21. Kristin LavransdatterSigrid Undset, 1920
- 22. Martín FierroJosé Hernández, 1872
- 23. The Famished RoadBen Okri, 1991
- 24. Memed, My HawkYashar Kemal, 1955
- 25. Cantares MexicanosAnonymous, 1585
- 26. Picnic at Hanging RockJoan Lindsay, 1967
- 27. CarpentariaAlexis Wright, 2006
- 28. CloudstreetTim Winton, 1991
- 29. Femme noire (Black Woman)Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1945
- 30. LandPak Kyongni, 1969
- 31. A Pair of Blue EyesThomas Hardy, 1873
- 32. The Return of the NativeThomas Hardy, 1878
- 33. Rob RoySir Walter Scott, 1817
- 34. The Life of Charlotte BrontëElizabeth Gaskell, 1857
- 35. The CossacksLeo Tolstoy, 1863
- 36. O Pioneers!Willa Cather, 1913
- 37. The Lion of FlandersHendrik Conscience, 1838
- 38. The Legend Of Thyl Ulenspiegel And Lamme GoedzakCharles de Coster, 1867
- 39. TangiWiti Ihimaera, 1973
- 40. The Bone PeopleKeri Hulme, 1984
- 41. KaterynaTaras Shevchenko, 1838
- 42. Njal's SagaIceland, 1280
- 43. Royal Commentaries of the IncasInca Garcilaso de la Vega, 1609
- 44. Deep RiversJosé María Arguedas, 1958
- 45. Seven BrothersAleksis Kivi, 1870
- 46. Meek HeritageFrans Eemil Sillanpää, 1919