The point of this project is to (shockingly) fill in the gaps in your reading. So you take a hundred or so books that you've always meant to read or that illustrate a gap in your well-read-ness, and ideally get them read within the next five years. Click here to sign up.
Splitting them up, that's only twenty books a year and I figure I should easily manage that. Some of these I've been dying to read but just haven't got round to them yet, so it's not like I'll resent having to read them!
Here's my list, in no particular order:
I've read 35 out of 100 books.
1)
2) Tristam Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
6) Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
9) Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
12) 1984 by George Orwell
14) The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
| 17) Louise de la Valliere by Alexandre Dumas | ||||
| 18) The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas |
20) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
21) Sophie's Choice by William Styron
22) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
23) The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
24) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
26) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
28) Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
30) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
31) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
34) Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
35) The Collector by John Fowles
36) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
41) I Will Repay by Baroness Orczy
43) The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
44) The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
46) Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford
47) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
48) SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
49) The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights by John Steinbeck
50) Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
51) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
52) Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen
54) The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
55) The Time Machine by H.G.Wells
57) Salome by Oscar Wilde
58) Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
63) American Gods by Neil Gaiman
64) Middlemarch by George Eliot
65)
66) Kafka on the Shore by Murakami
67) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
68) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
69) The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
70) The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
71) Lord Tony's Wife by Baroness Orczy
72) El Dorado by Baroness Orczy
75) Lady Susan - Jane Austen
76) The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (retelling acceptable)
78) Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
79) Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
80) Modern Baptists by James Wilcox
82) Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
83) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
84) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
85) Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
86) The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
87) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
88) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
89) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
90) Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
91) Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
92) We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury
93) Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
94) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
95) The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry96) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
97) The Trial by Franz Kafka
98) A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
99) Like Water For Chocolate by Lauren Esquivel
Gosh, I don't even know where to start with commenting on this because, let's face it, neither you nor anybody else wants me sat here commenting on every book!
ReplyDeleteHmmm..ones that stick out? Lord of the Flies was my GCSE text so that ones stuck in my brain forever. Fortunately, I had a great teacher so they're good memories and it is a fascinating book. I also studied Frankenstein for A-Level but had a less great teacher for that and it's a bit tainted for me...Also Dracula because I was brave and read it and it's awesome!
I have The Count of Monte Cristo, Slaughterhouse Five and 1984 to read this year (and probably some others..) so yey for those.
The only one I can see that I didn't like is The Wide Sargasso Sea. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't what I got and I didn't like it...I'll tell you why when you've read it so that I don't spoil it for you! Will be interested to see what you think when you eventually get to it...
@LIB - You know, I would HAPPILY sit here and read your comments on every single book! It wouldn't bother me one tiny little bit.
ReplyDeleteI have actually read Frankenstein. I know that's not the point of the challenge, but it's the only one, I swear! But I don't even remember one tiny little bit (is that the phrase of the day or something? :s) of it. I think I was about fourteen. I only added it here as a place-filler but I think I'll leave it. I seem to remember a lot of essays on morality and not much else, but I may like it more eight years later (and now I feel old).
I have Slaughterhouse Five and 1984 ready and waiting on my TBR shelf! I'm really, really looking forward to the former, although I don't really know why.
Hmm. I'm really tempted to start The Wide Sargasso Sea just so I get a nice long Lit Addicted Brit ranty e-mail :)
You've got Like Water for Chocolate on there twice, at 24 and 99......
ReplyDeleteI'll get my coat.
You're amazing, how did you even spot that? :/
DeleteNot complaining, I have room for Moby Dick now!