Poet´s Best Book List

Michel Melamed is a Brazilian poet, theater director, performer, playwrighter and actor. Here is a Book List with incredible suggestions for you to read.

Some of the names are in portuguese, but you can guess by the author what book it might be. I am sorry, I am too lazy to translate and the beach is calling me. Today is Saturday, so I have an excuse.

Here you go, THE BEST BOOK LIST:

1. Ulisses (1922) - James Joyce
2. Em Busca do Tempo Perdido (1913-27) - Marcel Proust 
3. O Processo - Franz Kafka 
4. Doutor Fausto (1947) - Thomas Mann
5. Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956) - Guimarães Rosa
6. O Castelo (1926) - Franz Kafka
7. A Montanha Mágica (1924) - Thomas Mann 
8. O Som e a Fúria (1929) - William Faulkner
9. O Homem sem Qualidades (1930-43) - Robert Musil
10. Finnegans Wake (1939) - James Joyce
11. A Morte de Vírgilio (1945) - Hermann Broch
12. Coração das Trevas (1902) - Joseph Conrad 
13. O Estrangeiro (1942) - Albert Camus
14. O Inominável (1953) - Samuel Beckett
15. Cem Anos de Solidão (1967) - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
16. Admirável Mundo Novo (1932) - Aldous Huxley
17. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) - Virgínia Woolf 
18. Ao Farol (1927) - Virgínia Woolf
19. Os Embaixadores (1903) - Henry James 
20. A Consciência de Zeno (1923) - Italo Svevo
21. Lolita (1958) - Vladimir Nabokov
22. Paradiso (1960) - José Lezama Lima 
23. O Leopardo (1958) - Tomaso di Lampedusa
24. 1984 (1949) - George Orwell 
25. A Náusea (1938) - Jean-Paul Sartre
26. O Quarteto de Alexandria (1957-1960) - Lawrence Durrell 
27. Os Moedeiros Falsos (1925) - André Gide
28. Malone Morre (1951) - Samuel Beckett
29. O Deserto de Tártaros (1940) - Dino Buzzati
30. Lord Jim (1900) - Joseph Conrad 
31. Orlando (1928) - Virginia Woolf 
32. A Peste (1947) - Albert Camus
33. O Grande Gatsby (1925) - Scott Fitzgerald
34. O Tambor (1959) - Günter Grass
35. Pedro Páramo (1955) - Juan Rulfo 
36. Viagem ao Fim da Noite (1932) - Louis-Ferdinand Céline 
37. Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) - Alfred Döblin
38. Doutor Jivago (1957) - Boris Pasternak
39. Molloy (1951) - Samuel Beckett 
40. A Condição Humana (1933) - André Malraux
41. O Jogo da Amarelinha (1963) - Julio Cortázar
42. Retrato do Artista quando Jovem (1917) - James Joyce 
43. A Cidade e as Serras (1901) - Eça de Queirós
44. Aquela Confusão Louca da Via Merulana (1957) - Carlo Emilio Gadda
45. As Vinhas da Ira (1939) - John Steinbeck
46. Auto de Fé (1935) - Elias Canetti
47. À Sombra do Vulcão (1947) - Malcolm Lowry 
48. O Visconde Partido ao Meio (1952) - Italo Calvino
49. Macunaíma (1928) - Mário de Andrade
50. O Bosque das Ilusões Perdidas (1913) - Alain Fournier
51. Morte a Crédito (1936) - Louis-Ferdinand Céline 
52. O Amante de Lady Chatterley (1928) - D.H. Lawrence
53. O Século das Luzes (1962) - Alejo Carpentier
54. Uma Tragédia Americana (1925) - Theodore Dreiser
55. América (1927) - Franz Kafka 
56. Fontamara (1930) - Ignazio Silone
57. Luz em Agosto (1932) - William Faulkner
58. Nostromo (1904) - Joseph Conrad
59. A Vida - Modo de Usar (1978) - Georges Perec
60. José e Seus Irmãos (1933-1943) - Thomas Mann 
61. Os Thibault (1921-1940) - Roger Martin du Gard
62. Cidades Invisíveis (1972) - Italo Calvino
63. Paralelo 42 (1930) - John dos Passos
64. Memórias de Adriano (1951) - Marguerite Yourcenar
65. Passagem para a índia (1924) - E.M. Forster
66. Trópico de Câncer (1934) - Henry Miller
67. Enquanto Agonizo (1930) - William Faulkner
68. As Asas da Pomba (1902) - Henry James 
69. O Jovem Törless (1906) - Robert Musil 
70. A Modificação (1957) - Michel Butor
71. A Colméia (1951) - Camilo José Cela
72. A Estrada de Flandres (1960) - Claude Simon 
73. A Sangue Frio (1966) - Truman Capote
74. A Laranja Mecânica (1962) - Anthony Burgess
75. O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio (1951) - J.D. Salinger
76. Cavalaria Vermelha (1926) - Isaac Babel 
77. Jean Christophe (1904-12) - Romain Rolland
78. Complexo de Portnoy (1969) - Philip Roth 
79. Nós (1924) - Evgueni Ivanovitch
80. O Ciúme (1957) - Allain Robbe-Grillet 
81. O Imoralista (1902) - André Gide
82. O Mestre a Margarida (1940) - Mikhail Bulgákov Afanasevitch
83. O Senhor Presidente (1946) - Miguel ángel Asturias
84. O Lobo da Estepe (1927) - Herman Hesse
85. Os Cadernos de Malte Laurids Bridge (1910) - Rainer Maria Rilke
86. Satã em Gorai (1934) - Isaac B. Singer 
87. Zazie no Metrô (1959) - Raymond Queneau
88. Revolução dos Bichos (1945) - George Orwell
89. O Anão (1944) - Pär Lagerkvist
90. A Tigela Dourada (1904) - Henry James
91. Santuário (1931) - William Faulkner
92. A Morte de Artemio Cruz (1962) - Carlos Fuentes
93. Don Segundo Sombra (1926) - Ricardo Güiraldes
94. A Invenção de Morel (1940) - Adolfo Bioy Casares 
95. Absalão, Absalão (1936) - William Faulkner
96. Fogo Pálido (1962) - Vladimir Nabokov
97. Herzog (1964) - Saul Bellow
98. Memorial do Convento (1982) - José Saramago
99. Judeus sem Dinheiro (1930) - Michael Gold 
100. Os Cus de Judas (1980) - Antonio Lobo Antunes


Brazilian Selection:

1. Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956) - Guimarães Rosa
2. Dom Casmurro (1900) - Machado de Assis 
3. Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881) - Machado de Assis 
4. Macunaíma (1928) - Mário de Andrade
5. Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915) - Lima Barreto 
6. Quincas Borba (1892) - Machado de Assis
7. Vidas Secas (1938) - Graciliano Ramos
8. São Bernardo (1934) - Graciliano Ramos
9. Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar (1924) - Oswald de Andrade
10. A Hora da Estrela (1977) - Clarice Lispector
11. A Paixão Segundo G.H. (1964) - Clarice Lispector
12. Serafim Ponte Grande (1933) - Oswald de Andrade
13. O Ateneu (1888) - Raul Pompéia
14. O Tempo e o Vento (1949-1961) - Érico Veríssimo
15. Fogo Morto (1943) - José Lins do Rego
16. Esaú e Jacó (1904) - Machado de Assis
17. A Menina Morta (1954) - Cornélia Penna
18. Menino de Engenho (1932) - José Lins do Rego
19. Os Ratos (1936) - Dionélio Machado
20. Iracema (1865) - José de Alencar
21. O Amanuense Belmiro (1937) - Cyro dos Anjos
22. Corpo de Baile (1956, 3 volumes) - Guimarães Rosa
23. Angústia (1936) - Graciliano Ramos
24. O Cortiço (1890) - Aluísio de Azevedo
25. O Quinze (1930) - Rachel de Queiroz>
26. Água Viva (1973) - Clarice Lispector
27. Crônica da Casa Assassinada (1959) - Lúcio Cardoso
28. Mar Morto (1936) - Jorge Amado
29. Terras do Sem Fim (1942) - Jorge Amado
30. Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias (1854-55) - Manuel Antônio de Almeida 


Foreigner Selection:

1. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
2. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
3. Fairy Tales and Stories - Hans Christian Andersen
4. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
5. Old Goriot - Honore de Balzac
6. Trilogy: Molloy - Samuel Beckett
7. Trilogy: Malone Dies - Samuel Beckett
8. Trilogy: The Unnamable - Samuel Beckett
9. Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio
10. Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
12. The Stranger - Albert Camus
13. Poems - Paul Celan
14. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis Ferdinand Celine
15. Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
16. Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
17. The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
18. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
19. Jacques the Fatalist and His Master - Denis Diderot
20. Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Döblin
21. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
22. The Idiot - Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
23. The Possessed - Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
24. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
25. Middlemarch - George Eliot
26. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
27. Medea - Euripides
28. Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
29. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
30. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
31. A Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
32. Gypsy Ballads - Federico Garcia Lorca
33. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
35. Mesopotamia - Gilgamesh
36. Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
37. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
38. The Tin Drum - Günter Grass
39. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - Joao Guimaraes Rosa
40. Hunger - Knut Hamsun
41. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
42. The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer
43. Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
44. The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC) 45. Ulysses - James Joyce
46. The Complete Stories - Franz Kafka
47. The Trial - Franz Kafka
48. The Castle Bohemia - Franz Kafka
49. The Recognition of Sakuntala - Kalidasa
50. The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
51. Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis
52. Sons and Lovers - DH Lawrence
53. Independent People - Halldor K Laxness
54. Complete Poems - Giacomo Leopardi
55. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
56. Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren
57. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Lu Xun
58. Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC)
59. Children of Gebelawi - Naguib Mahfouz
60. Buddenbrook - Thomas Mann
61. The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
62. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
63. Essays - Michel de Montaigne
64. History - Elsa Morante
65. Beloved - Toni Morrison
66. The Tale of Genji Genji - Shikibu Murasaki
67. The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
68. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
69. Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300)
70. 1984 - George Orwell
71. Metamorphoses - Ovid
72. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
73. The Complete Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
74. Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
75. Gargantua - Francois Rabelais
76. Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais
77. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
78. Mathnawi - Jalal ad-din Rumi
79. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
80. The Orchard - Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi
81. Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
82. Blindness - José Saramago
83. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
84. King Lear - William Shakespeare
85. Othello - William Shakespeare
86. Oedipus the King - Sophocles
87. The Red and the Black - Stendhal
88. Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sternethe
89. Confessions of Zeno - Italo Svevo
90. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
91. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
92. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
93. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories - Leo Tolstoy
94. Selected Stories - Anton P Chekhov
95. Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500)
96. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
97. Ramayana - Valmiki
98. The Aeneid - Virgil
99. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
100. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
101. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
102. Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar


I am always in doubt on what to buy on a book store. Having a book list with great names on it, its great. You can not miss a good read.


Also, check if you can find any of the Brazilian authors in your language. I am sorry but Paulo Coelho is not so good comparing to the author we have here. You should know better.

Recently, I have watched "Veronica wants to die", a movie based on his book with Buffy (yes, that actress from Buffy) and it was not so good. The plot was empty, the main arguement was weak and the movie was slow. It seemed that it wanted to give you a message for life in every scene. Thats how I feel reading Paulo Coelhos books. There always a passage from the Arabia giving some message in the form of a moral history.

Just say it, the important stuff is invisible for the eyes, for example. Its easier.

Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist

With endearing honesty and vulnerability, Raghava KK tells the colorful tale of how art has taken his life to new places, and how life experiences in turn have driven his multiple reincarnations as an artist -- from cartoonist to painter, media darling to social outcast, and son to father.


Raghava KK's paintings and drawings use cartoonish shapes and colors to examine the body, society, our world.


Check is speech at TED:

No knight, no shining armor - by Seth Godin

Today's post by Seth Godin is very inspiring for who has an on going project. Which is my case. I have two books already designed to be published. One is taking endlessly to be picked by a publisher. Its being more than 9 months now. Its about time its born, but its there burning inside the oven.

The other one decided to take a fun trip. Its been transformed into a governamental incentive project. Check its paths and how it works in Brazil here!

So, in resume, I have been patientily waiting and waiting...Its about time I do something...Gosh...

Read below Godin's post:

"Sure, Seth can do that (release his book without a publisher), because he has a popular blog."


Some people responded to my decision to forgo traditional publishers (not traditional books, btw) by pointing out that I can do that because I have a way of reaching readers electronically.

What they missed is that this asset is a choice, not an accident.

Does your project depend on a miracle, a bolt of lightning, on being chosen by some arbiter of who will succeed? I think your work is too important for you to depend on a lottery ticket. In some ways, this is the work of the Resistance, an insurance policy that gives you deniability if the project doesn't succeed. "Oh, it didn't work because we didn't get featured on that blog, didn't get distribution in the right store, didn't get the right endorsement..."

There's nothing wrong with leverage, no problem at all with an unexpected lift that changes everything. But why would you build that as the foundation of your plan?


The magic of the tribe is that you can build it incrementally, that day by day you can earn the asset that will allow you to bring your work to people who want it. Or you can skip that and wait to get picked. Picked to be on Oprah or American Idol or at the cash register at Borders.


Getting picked is great. Building a tribe is reliable, it's hard work and it's worth doing.

How often do you read?

That's an interesting question, principally for a city that was invaded by Coffee Shops + Book Stores in the last 5 years. Brazilians do not read much, I've got to admit, but we are getting better.

I am a slow reader myself. I read a book per month. But I have a piece of information to clarify. I don't read silly books like the ones you find everywhere. Silly vampire, murder romance or self-help books. I mostly read theory books. Yes, I am that kind of person. yeahh...blurh...

So the readings are more dense and take more time. I just finished the last book I suggested in this blog: The Paper Canoe by Eugenio Barba about theater antrophology. It was amazing. He builds a paralel between the ocidental and oriental theaters, its costumes, its inpirations, ideologies, theories and thecniques.
It is a good choice of book for theater lovers.

Now, I am reading another book. Its called The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed by Sara Gay Forden. This is a great book for fashion lovers. It is an inside history from one of the most glamourous brands. My father and my sister work with fashion. I gave this book as a present but they did not reas it yet. So, I am confiscating and reading.

Another great book I have read before, is From Zero to Zara about Zara's history.
Its worth it! It tells the whole Inditex sucess history.

Cliffs along the sea - by Christian Hansen

Cliffs Along The Sea from Christian Hansen on Vimeo.


Nice, calm video to relax and be inspired in this hell sunny Monday!

Where the Hell is Matt?

This is a funny dancing video and a huge effort.
14 months + 42 different countries + one strange dance.



Matt´s Outtakes!




And find out how Matt got all those people to dance with him. This video was watched by more than a million people. Get to know his secret to get more than 2387 people to dance with him, so peharps you can persue someone to dance with you in a nightclub! Gotta try anything!

Mystery Guitar Man - Bali Instruments + Pa Panamericano

Here is the orginal Pa- Panamericano Video!




Enjoy it! Its electro version is the hit of the moment.

OSPOP - Chinese Proud Shoes

OSPOP (One Small Point of Pride) was the first footwear brand to use Chinese workers as not only the manufacturing labor, but also the product's design inspiration.

The shoes are based on a style commonly worn by Chinese laborers but constructed with superior materials, positioned at a premium price of USD 75 and intended to appeal to Western consumers. Part of the increased cost covers improved working conditions for employees and a portion of revenue also goes to charities. The company has widened its product range to include three canvas bags, also inspired by the equipment of Chinese workers.