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):
1984 by George Orwell- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Author Conan Doyle
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court by Mark Twain
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
- Deliverance by James Dickey
- Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
- The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
- The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Howards End by E.M. Forster
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
- A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora WeltyThe Outsiders by S. E. Hinton- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
- Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
- A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
- A Room with A View by E. M. Forster
Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse- Silas Marner by George Eliot
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
- Sophie's Choice by William Styron
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
- Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Underworld by Don DeLillo
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
- 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:
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.
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!
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!
Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I've heard about these books for so long, I'm getting excited about actually reading them finally!
Wow this is a great list and an awesome idea...thank you for giving some ideas!
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.
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.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
as well as
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
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!
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