1. Five skewed-reality novels:
    Explorers of the New Century, Magnus Mills, 2005
     Under the Skin, Michael Haber, 2000
     The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro, 1995
     Blindness, José Saramago, 1995
     Ice, Anna Kavan, 1967

2. Five retellings:
    Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, 1972 [The Travels of Marco Polo]
     Grendel, John Gardner, 1971 [Beowulf]
     Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922 [The Odyssey]
     The Hours, Michael Cunningham, 1998 [Mrs. Dalloway]
     The Plague, Albert Camus, 1947 [A Journal of a Plague Year]

3. Five good novels you may not have heard of:
     Stump, Niall Griffiths, 2003
     The Funeral Party, Ludmila Ulitskaya, 2001
     The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell, 2001
     The Beautiful Mrs. Siedenman, Andrzej Szczypiorski, 1986
     The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West, 1918

4. Five more:
    April Fool’s Day, Josip Novakovich, 2004
     Cal, Bernard MacLaverty, 1983
     The Seige of Krishnapur, J. G. Farrell, 1973
     The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark, 1963
     Time Will Darken It, William Maxwell, 1948

5. Five short, odd novels:
    The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker, 1988
     If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino, 1979
     Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan, 1967
     Aura, Carlos Fuentes, 1962
     Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo, 1955

6. Five from Estonia:
    Evening Brings Everything Back [poems], Jaan Kaplinski, 2004
     Estonian Short Stories, ed. by Kajar Pruul and Darlene Reddaway, 1996
     Treading Air, Jaan Kross, 1998
     Border State, Tônu Õnnepalu, 1993
     Things in the Night, Mati Unt, 1990

7. Five by Joyce Carol Oates:
    High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006, 2006
     Black Water, 1992
     Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart, 1990
     I Lock My Door Upon Myself, 1990
     You Must Remember This, 1987

8. Five Montana novels:
    As Cool As I Am, Pete Fromm, 2003
     Winter Range, Claire Davis, 2000
     One Sweet Quarrel, Deirdre McNamer, 1994
     Fools Crow, James Welch, 1986
     In Shelley’s Leg, Sara Vogan, 1981

9. Five Czech novels:
    Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, Ivan Klima, 1994
     The Miracle Game, Josef Skvorecky, 1990
     The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, 1982
     Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal, 1965
     Gimme the Money, Iva Pekarkova, 1996

10. Five from the Balkans:
      The Question of Bruno [stories], Aleksandar Hemon, 2000
        The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, Slavenka Ugresic, 1998
        A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Danilo Kis, 1976
        The Book of Blam, Aleksandar Tisma, 1972
        The Bridge on the Drina, Ivo Andric, 1945

11. Five short story collections:
      Vintage Munro, Alice Munro, 2004
        I Sailed with Magellan, Stuart Dybek, 2003
        Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson, 1992
        Billie Dyer and Other Stories, William Maxwell, 1992
        Ellis Island and Other Stories, Mark Helprin, 1981

12. Five more:
      Borges: Collected Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, 1998
        Birds of America, Lorrie Moore, 1998
        Trust Me, John Updike, 1987
        In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William Gass, 1968
        Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Richard Yates, 1962

13. Five terrific stories not in the above collections:
      “A Small, Good Thing,” Raymond Carver
        “A Father’s Story,” Andre Dubus
        “Babylon Revisited,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
        “The Last Running,” John Graves
        “Bullet in the Brain,” Tobias Wolff

14. Five more:
      “Wickedness,” Ron Hansen
        “Lust,” Susan Minot
        “The Falls,” George Saunders
        “No Place For You, My Love,” Eudora Welty
        “On the Desert,” Patricia Zelver

15. Five memoirs:
      The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion, 2005
        Those Days, Richard Critchfield, 1986
        This House of Sky, Ivan Doig, 1978
        Because I Was Flesh, Edward Dahlberg, 1964
        Instead of a Letter, Diana Athill, 1963

16. Five plays:
      Wit, Margaret Edson, 1999
        The Designated Mourner, Wallace Shawn, 1996
        Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet, 1983
        Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee, 1962
        Endgame, Samuel Beckettt, 1958

17. Five scripts, screenplays, monologs:
      Yes [screenplay], Sally Potter, 2005
        The English Patient [screenplay], Anthony Minghella [based on novel by Michael Ondaatje], 1996
        Gray’s Anatomy, Spalding Gray [monolog], 1993
        Chinatown and Other Screenplays, Robert Towne, 1988
        My Dinner With André [script], Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, 1981

18. Plague lit

        The Road, Cormac McCarthy, 2006
        Blindness, José Saramago, 1995
        On the Beach, Nevil Shute, 1957
        The Plague, Albert Camus, 1947
        A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel DeFoe, 1722

19. Five from the year I was born

        The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen, 1948
        The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene, 1948
        The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, 1948
        Time Will Darken It, William Maxwell, 1948
        Old Mr. Flood [nonfiction], Joseph Mitchell, 1948

20. Five from Scandanavia

        Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson, 2003 [Norway]
        Popular Music from Vittula, Mikael Niemi, 2000 [Sweden]
        Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad, 1996 [Norway]
        Wonderful Women By the Sea, Monika Fagerholm, 1994 [Finland]
        People in the Summer Night, F. E. Sillanpää, 1934 [Finland]

21. Five from 1925

        Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos
        The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
        The Trial, Franz Kafka
        Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
        Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf