A complete list of all the books I've read in my reading club
The purpose of this page is mostly personal, but may also act as inspiration for anyone looking for a good (or bad) book to read :)
Roughly every second month, I meet with my friends Morten, Mikkel, Klaus, and Jeff to discuss a book we've read. And maybe have a beer. We have a reading club called "…men Hans Diller lever".
The name comes from a piece of graffiti at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen, where all students and teachers have a collective crush on Michel Foucault. Possibly in a somewhat odd attempt to mock the humanists, someone wrote, with huge letters in front of the entrance, "FOUCAULT IS GAY". Later, "IS" was edited to "WAS" to clarify that he had died, and even later someone added "MEN HANS DILLER LEVER", which is both a dull joke (meaning "but his willie is alive" in Danish) and a reference to the little-known German classical scholar and historian Hans Diller. That's meta-humanity-humour for ya.
These are the books we've read.
For sorting reasons, dates are written as yyyy/mm/dd. Country codes follow FIFA's country codes.
We also rated them on a scale from 0 to 5. The ratings shows the mean and spread (standard deviation, i.e. how much we agreed/disagreed on the rating). Because I like statistics, below the table you'll find a summary of how our readings are distributed according to various parameters.
| Date | Author | Country | Title | Year | Pages | Stars | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025.07.11 | Jorge Luis Borges | ARG | The Aleph | 1949 | 195 | (currently reading) | |
| 2025.05.09 | Stine Askov | DEN | The Austerity | 2022 | 366 | 3.7 | ±0.7 |
| 2025.03.28 | Florian Illies | GER | Love in a Time of Hate | 2023 | 400 | 4.2 | ±0.7 |
| 2025.01.11 | Albert Camus | FRA | The Stranger | 1942 | 144 | 3.6 | ±0.4 |
| 2024.10.04 | Kurt Vonnegut | USA | Slaughterhouse-Five | 1969 | 207 | 4.3 | ±0.5 |
| 2024.08.10 | Paul Auster | USA | Oracle Night | 2003 | 247 | 4.1 | ±0.5 |
| 2024.05.17 | Pascal Mercier | SUI | Perlmann's Silence | 1995 | 512 | 4.3 | ±0.2 |
| 2024.03.22 | Ernest Hemingway | USA | A Farewell to Arms | 1929 | 336 | 2.5 | ±1.3 |
| 2024.02.10 | Helle Helle | DEN | Hafni fortæller | 2023 | 180 | 3.1 | ±0.6 |
| 2024.12.16 | Mary Shelly | ENG | Frankenstein | 1818 | 240 | 3.5 | ±0.9 |
| 2024.11.03 | Virginie Despentes | FRA | Vernon Subutex | 2019 | 327 | 4.2 | ±0.4 |
| 2023.08.11 | Tove Ditlevsen | DEN | A Child was hurt | 1941 | 168 | 4.1 | ±0.2 |
| 2023.06.17 | John Fante | USA | Ask the Dust | 1939 | 202 | 3.6 | ±0.2 |
| 2023.04.06 | Göran Tunström | SWE | The Christmas Oratorio | 1983 | 326 | 3.6 | ±0.6 |
| 2023.10.02 | Édouard Louis | FRA | The End of Eddy | 2014 | 220 | 4.2 | ±0.2 |
| 2023.14.01 | Gustave Flaubert | FRA | Madame Bovary | 1857 | 432 | 1.9 | ±0.7 |
| 2022.11.04 | Luke Rhinehart | USA | The Dice Man | 1971 | 477 | 1.2 | ±0.8 |
| 2022.08.26 | Margaret Atwood | CAN | The Handmaid's Tale | 1985 | 311 | 3.1 | ±0.4 |
| 2022.06.02 | Jennifer Egan | USA | A Visit from the Goon Squad | 2010 | 293 | 4.0 | ±0.0 |
| 2022.03.09 | Hans Kirk | DEN | De ny tider | 1939 | 211 | 3.2 | ±0.5 |
| 2022.01.08 | Lone Frank | DEN | Størst af alt | 2020 | 292 | 3.3 | ±0.7 |
| 2021.10.29 | Jack Kerouac | USA | On the Road | 1957 | 285 | 2.9 | ±1.1 |
| 2021.08.14 | Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa | ITA | The Leopard | 1958 | 247 | 2.7 | ±0.8 |
| 2021.06.12 | William Golding | ENG | Lord of the Flies | 1954 | 196 | 3.1 | ±0.9 |
| 2021.04.03 | Ray Bradbury | USA | The Martian Chronicles | 1950 | 192 | 3.2 | ±0.8 |
| 2021.04.03 | Alistair MacLean | SCO | Where Eagles Dare | 1967 | 166 | 2.9 | ±0.7 |
| 2021.01.30 | Vladimir Nabokov | USA | Lolita | 1955 | 307 | 4.1 | ±0.4 |
| 2020.11.21 | Halldór Laxness | ISL | Salka Valka | 1931 | 373 | 3.0 | ±0.6 |
| 2020.09.18 | Laurence Sterne | ENG | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | 1759 | 588 | 2.7 | ±0.6 |
| 2020.05.30 | José Saramago | POR | Blindness | 1995 | 284 | 4.1 | ±0.4 |
| 2020.04.04 | Iain M. Banks | SCO | The Wasp Factory | 1984 | 232 | 4.0 | ±0.0 |
| 2020.02.11 | Arto Paasilinna | FIN | The Year of the Hare | 1975 | 183 | 3.5 | ±0.8 |
| 2019.12.27 | Siri Hustvedt | USA | The Blazing World | 2014 | 434 | 3.8 | ±0.5 |
| 2019.10.26 | Isaac Asimov | USA | Caves of Steel | 1953 | 214 | 1.7 | ±0.2 |
| 2019.08.09 | Sophus Helle og Morten Søndergaard (overs.) | SUM | Gilgamesh | -2100 | 140 | 3.8 | ±0.8 |
| 2019.05.11 | Brett Easton Ellis | USA | Less than zero | 1985 | 163 | 2.8 | ±0.7 |
| 2019.02.08 | F. Scott Fitzgerald | USA | The Great Gatsby | 1925 | 171 | 2.6 | ±1.0 |
| 2018.11.24 | Günther Grass | GER | The Tin Drum | 1959 | 555 | 1.5 | ±0.9 |
| 2018.08.24 | Peter Adolphsen | DEN | Rynkekneppesygen | 2017 | 245 | 3.6 | ±0.2 |
| 2018.06.02 | Ourselves | DEN | We wrote our own short stories | 2018 | 018 | 5.0 | ±0.0 |
| 2018.04.07 | Svend Aage Madsen | DEN | Between Heaven and Earth | 1990 | 208 | 4.1 | ±0.2 |
| 2018.02.17 | Louis-Ferdinand Céline | FRA | Death on Credit | 1936 | 508 | 4.9 | ±0.2 |
| 2017.12.15 | Karen Blixen | DEN | Seven Gothic Tales | 1934 | 500 | 2.3 | ±0.8 |
| 2017.10.06 | Erich Maria Remarque | GER | All Quiet on the Western Front | 1929 | 202 | 4.3 | ±0.2 |
| 2017.07.18 | Jens Blendstrup | DEN | Slagterkoner og Bagerenker | 2016 | 418 | 4.2 | ±0.2 |
| 2017.04.08 | Jan Sonnergaard | DEN | Radiator and other short stories | 1997 | 221 | 3.8 | ±0.7 |
| 2017.02.10 | H. P. Lovecraft | USA | The Call of Cthulhu and other short stories | 1928 | 117 | 4.0 | ±1.0 |
| 2016.11.19 | John le Carré | ENG | The Spy Who Came in from the Cold | 1963 | 225 | 2.2 | ±0.2 |
| 2016.08.26 | Peter Madsen | DEN | The Book of Job (comic book version) | -450 | 104 | 1.0 | ±0.4 |
| 2016.08.26 | Virginia Woolf | ENG | To the Lighthouse | 1927 | 210 | 2.5 | ±0.4 |
| 2016.07.10 | Aksel Sandemose | DEN | A Fugitive Crosses his Tracks | 1933 | 425 | 4.0 | ±1.0 |
| 2016.05.14 | Morten Pape | DEN | Planen | 2015 | 557 | 4.3 | ±0.4 |
| 2016.02.19 | Orhan Pamuk | TUR | The White Castle | 1985 | 160 | 3.6 | ±0.2 |
| 2015.12.05 | Thomas Pynchon | USA | Bleeding Edge | 2013 | 519 | 0.4 | ±0.2 |
| 2015.10.10 | Dan Turèll | DEN | Vangede Billeder | 1975 | 193 | 3.6 | ±0.4 |
| 2015.08.28 | Harper Lee | USA | To Kill a Mocking Bird | 1960 | 307 | 3.2 | ±0.2 |
| 2015.05.14 | Michel Houellebecq | FRA | The Map and the Territory | 2010 | 312 | 4.5 | ±0.3 |
| 2015.03.13 | Joseph Conrad | POL | Heart of Darkness | 1899 | 128 | 2.9 | ±0.5 |
| 2015.01.30 | Fjodor Dostojevskij | RUS | Notes from Underground | 1864 | 166 | 4.3 | ±0.4 |
| 2014.12.06 | Charles Dickens | ENG | A Tale of Two Cities | 1859 | 440 | 2.9 | ±0.4 |
| 2014.09.27 | Gabriel García Marquéz | COL | One Hundred Years of Solitude | 1967 | 308 | 2.5 | ±0.6 |
| 2014.06.21 | Knut Hamsun | NOR | Hunger | 1890 | 108 | 4.5 | ±0.3 |
| 2014.06.21 | Lewis Carroll | ENG | Alice In Wonderland | 1865 | 140 | 3.4 | ±0.5 |
| 2014.04.17 | John Steinbeck | USA | East Of Eden | 1952 | 579 | 4.0 | ±0.0 |
| 2014.03.22 | Ernest Hemingway | USA | The Old Man and the Sea | 1952 | 112 | 3.0 | ±0.0 |
Diller statistics
The following sections show some statistics of the books we've read, our ratings, etc.
The figures and the underlying analysis are coded in Python, and will be updated after each meeting.
Our general enthusiasm of the the books we've read are distributed as shown above. Median values are shown in the box, along with uncertainties given by the 16th and 84th percentiles. Although we typically rate around the 4 stars, the distributions are asymmetrically skewed toward lower ratings, pulling down the average (and to a lesser degree the median).
Considering the average and 1σ standard deviations as a function of time, the picture emerges that, over time, we've been more in disagreement (that is, the error bars increase with time), although perhaps we've been better at avoiding books that we all dislike (except for a dip with The Dice Man and Madame Bovary, which were rather horrible).
On average, the books we read had 282±141 pages. This average is, however, pulled somewhat up by a few (much too) long books, although our own novels pull it down again.
The median and 16/84 percentiles of the number of pages is \(232_{-71}^{+206}\), and the full distribution is seen on the histogram above, where I've binned the number of pages in intervals of 50 pages.
This plot shows a histogram of the year of publication of the books we've read. Note the discontinuous x axis, so designed in order to show Gilgamesh (earliest inscriptions date back to at least 2100 f.Kr.), The Book of Job (most estimates are "between the 7th and the 3rd century B.C."; although we read the graphic novel version from 1999), and Tristram Shandy (1759–1767).
This pie chart of the distribution of the nationalities of the authors shows (not surprisingly) an overabundance of Danish authors, and perhaps also not so surprisingly multiple American and British authors. These are the nationalities that we're mostly exposed to, but we do try to diversify our choice og books somewhat, and roughly 1/3 is spanning multiple nationalities.
Country codes follow FIFA's notation.
