Sunday, December 20, 2009

Filling in the Gaps Challenge

I'm still feverishly reading books to make my 100+ reading goal for this year (only 4 more books to go!), but I'm not going to let that stop me from going ahead and signing up for 2010 challenges!

The first one I'm going to commit to is actually a somewhat perpetual challenge. The idea is to list 100 books that you feel as if you should have read in the past but have never gotten around to reading and then read them over the next five years. You can find out more about this project at The Fill in the Gaps 100 blog and at MoonRat's blog.

Here is the list of books I've finally come up with (the ones in bold are already on my shelf - these are a few of the ones I hope to read in 2010):


  1. 1984 by George Orwell
  2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  3. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Author Conan Doyle
  4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
  6. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  8. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  11. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  12. A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
  13. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
  14. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  15. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  16. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  17. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  18. A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court by Mark Twain
  19. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  20. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  21. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
  22. Deliverance by James Dickey
  23. Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
  24. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  25. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  26. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  27. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  28. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  29. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
  30. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  31. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  32. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  33. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
  34. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  35. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
  36. The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
  37. Howards End by E.M. Forster
  38. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
  39. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  40. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  41. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
  42. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  43. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
  44. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
  45. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  46. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
  47. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
  48. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  49. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
  50. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  51. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
  52. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 
  53. Native Son by Richard Wright
  54. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  55. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
  56. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  57. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
  58. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
  59. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
  60. Paradise Lost by John Milton
  61. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
  62. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  63. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
  64. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
  65. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
  66. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce
  67. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  68. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
  69. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
  70. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  71. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
  72. A Room with A View by E. M. Forster
  73. Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  74. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  75. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  76. Silas Marner by George Eliot 
  77. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  78. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
  79. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
  80. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  81. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  82. Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  83. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
  84. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  85. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  86. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
  87. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
  88. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  89. Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller
  90. Ulysses by James Joyce
  91. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  92. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  93. Underworld by Don DeLillo
  94. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  95. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
  96. Watership Down by Richard Adams
  97. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  98. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
  99. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  100. The World According to Garp by John Irving

Has anyone read any of these? Which ones were your favorites? Which ones should I start with?

9 comments:

Wendi said...

What a wonderful idea. I should create a list like this for myself.

Anna Karenina is one of the handful of books that I've read more than once. The first time I read it I was in High School and then reread it during the time when my marriage was falling apart. The second reading found my understanding that first line so much clearer... Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I've also read All the Kings Men, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Watership Down (another one I've read twice because I love it so much)

I'm definitely going to do this and thanks for sharing your list.

Judi said...

I read voraciously in my late teens and early 20's. I'm now 51 and returning passionately to reading. I have read Sidhartha and many others by Hesse (Demian and Narziss und Goldmund are excellent). They are wonderful! I would also recommend Daphne duMaurier - try "The House on the Strand" Of Human Bondage is a great read. So is Atlas Shrugged (and the Fountainhead)"Victory" by Joseph Conrad (just read it) is beautiful prose. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was a very interesting read. I'm new to blogging. Your sight, its links and pointers are quite interesting!

Carin said...

This is a great list. I actually added some to my TBR list. A few you listed, I really think are great books (I didn't love them all, but some stayed with me which I've come to believe makes a good book): 1984, The Count of Monte Cristo, Crime and Punishment, Siddhartha, Sophie's Choice, Silas Marner, and Frankenstein.

Middlemarch by George Eliot is a really dense book. I've made it halfway through it, but put it down a few years ago. It is REALLY well written, but was a little to much for me. I plan to pick it up again at some point, but I think starting with Silas Marner is better. It's more accessible and is a great story.

As for what I think you should start with, Siddhartha, Silas Marner, Frankenstein, or 1984 would all be great. Sophie's Choice is good, but it's a really emotional, difficult book in some ways and I wouldn't want to start the list off with that book.

Call of the Wild or Heart of Darkness would also be good to start off with since you already own those. Those are also good reads.

Hope that helps you out and good luck!

Kristi said...

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I've heard about these books for so long, I'm getting excited about actually reading them finally!

Julia said...

Wow this is a great list and an awesome idea...thank you for giving some ideas!

Beth F said...

I've read many of these -- some I liked, some I didn't.

I vote for A Bend in the River. One of all-time favorite books.

roughterrain crane said...

Merry Christmas

First visit to your blog.
In your long life, you will read most of them. You will know that a good book for you doesn't mean the book that is popular and famous.
Some of 100books will leave words to you that can help your difficulties.

Charles Gates said...

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
as well as
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Kristi said...

Thank you for your recommendations, Charles. I've already read The Kite Runner and, I agree, it is a great book. I'll check out The Killer Angels as well. Thanks again!