For the record, this is the list I will be following, in no particular order.
1. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
2. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (read previously)
3. Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard
4. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (read previously)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
6. 1984, George Orwell (read previously)
7. Anthem, Ayn Rand
8. We the Living, Ayn Rand
9. Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard
10. Fear, L. Ron Hubbard
11. Ulysses, James Joyce
12. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
13. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Dune, Frank Herbert
15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
16. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
17. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
18. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
19. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
20. Animal Farm, George Orwell
21. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
22. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
23. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
24. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (read previously)
25. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
26. Shane, Jack Schaefer
27. Trustee from the Toolroom, Nevil Shute
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Stand, Stephen King
30. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
31. Beloved, Toni Morrison
32. The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison
33. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (finished 5/11)
34. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
35. Moonheart, Charles de Lint
36. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
37. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
38. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
39. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
40. Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
41. Someplace to be Flying, Charles de Lint
42. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
43. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (read previously)
44. Yarrow, Charles de Lint
45. At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
46. One Lonely Night, Mickey Spillane
47. Memory and Dream, Charles de Lint
48. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
49. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
50. Trader, Charles de Lint
51. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
52. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
53. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
54. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
55. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
56. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
57. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
58. Greenmantle, Charles de Lint
59. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
60. The Little Country, Charles de Lint
61. The Recognitions, William Gaddis
62. Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
63. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
64. The World According to Garp, John Irving
65. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
66. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
67. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
68. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
69. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (read previously)
70. The Wood Wife, Terri Windling
71. The Magus, John Fowles
72. The Door into Summer, Robert Heinlein
73. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
74. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
75. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
76. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
77. Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
78. Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
79. Watership Down, Richard Adams
80. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
81. The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
82. Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
83. The Puppet Masters, Robert Heinlein
84. It, Stephen King
85. V, Thomas Pynchon
86. Double Star, Robert Heinlein
87. Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein
88. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
89. Light in August, William Faulkner
90. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
91. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
92. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
93. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
94. My Antonia, Willa Cather
95. Mulengro, Charles de Lint
96. Suttree, Cormac McCarthy
97. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
98. Illusions, Richard Bach
99. The Cunning Man, Robertson Davies
100. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Project
The Date: Mid March, 2011
The Setting: My apartment bedroom
The Mood: Contemplative
It was just your average day in March when I decided to start a project that could last as long as eight years. Obviously, this journey would need to be chronicled. Hence, this blog.
I suppose it might be helpful to provide a little background on myself for those of you who haven't read one of my other blogs. I am currently a senior at Texas Christian University, though I will graduate in May and move on to bigger and better things that are as of yet undetermined. I double majored in Art History and English, which basically means that I read and write more than any sane person would ever want to. Still, I love it. I've loved reading since I was young and first read "Danny and the Dinosaur" by myself. Since then, my love of reading has been encouraged by my parents, who gave me books as rewards and took them away as punishment; by teachers, who challenged me to read new and challenging things; and by the books themselves, which were constantly revealing new lessons and characters to learn from.
Anyways, back to the project. I had recently come into the possession of a reading journal, which is in and of itself quite the aesthetically pleasing object. I was entering my first book into the journal (C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, if you wanted to know), and I decided to look at the back of the journal. The back holds numerous lists of books that have one various awards, are bestsellers, that everyone should read, etc. Just for curiosity's sake, I started marking off which books I had read.
Now, I am a very very very prolific reader. I'm sure the librarians of my childhood thought I was the oddest child ever, since on my basically bi-weekly visits I would inevitably leave with a stack of books about ten high ranging from historical fiction to mythology to biology to children's literature to languages and just about everything in between. I have a lot of books. I've read a lot of books. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that, on the list of The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, I had only read three of these books. That's right. Three.
Obviously, this would not do. I needed a plan. I needed to read this books. But how? With school, I haven't had a lot of time for 'fun' reading in the past few months. So, expecting more than one book a month when I'll likely be in grad school for a few years is a bit much. So, at least one book a month. There are 97 books I need to read, and one book a month, twelve months in a year....oh dear. Eight years. I don't know if I've done anything for eight years, except band, and I was always switching instruments so that doesn't seem to apply. It will certainly be a triumph if I succeed, and I intend to. I also plan on reading more than a book a month, so hopefully this won't actually take me eight years.
So, in summary:
The Project: Read every book on The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list
The goal: At least one book a month
The timeline: Up to eight years (yikes)
Please, follow me to keep track of my journey! I'll be reviewing each book when I finish and keeping track on here...there will probably also be quotes and trivia and miscellaneous fun, because that's how I roll. You could even read along with me!
Happy reading,
Ashley
The Setting: My apartment bedroom
The Mood: Contemplative
It was just your average day in March when I decided to start a project that could last as long as eight years. Obviously, this journey would need to be chronicled. Hence, this blog.
I suppose it might be helpful to provide a little background on myself for those of you who haven't read one of my other blogs. I am currently a senior at Texas Christian University, though I will graduate in May and move on to bigger and better things that are as of yet undetermined. I double majored in Art History and English, which basically means that I read and write more than any sane person would ever want to. Still, I love it. I've loved reading since I was young and first read "Danny and the Dinosaur" by myself. Since then, my love of reading has been encouraged by my parents, who gave me books as rewards and took them away as punishment; by teachers, who challenged me to read new and challenging things; and by the books themselves, which were constantly revealing new lessons and characters to learn from.
Anyways, back to the project. I had recently come into the possession of a reading journal, which is in and of itself quite the aesthetically pleasing object. I was entering my first book into the journal (C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, if you wanted to know), and I decided to look at the back of the journal. The back holds numerous lists of books that have one various awards, are bestsellers, that everyone should read, etc. Just for curiosity's sake, I started marking off which books I had read.
Now, I am a very very very prolific reader. I'm sure the librarians of my childhood thought I was the oddest child ever, since on my basically bi-weekly visits I would inevitably leave with a stack of books about ten high ranging from historical fiction to mythology to biology to children's literature to languages and just about everything in between. I have a lot of books. I've read a lot of books. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that, on the list of The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, I had only read three of these books. That's right. Three.
Obviously, this would not do. I needed a plan. I needed to read this books. But how? With school, I haven't had a lot of time for 'fun' reading in the past few months. So, expecting more than one book a month when I'll likely be in grad school for a few years is a bit much. So, at least one book a month. There are 97 books I need to read, and one book a month, twelve months in a year....oh dear. Eight years. I don't know if I've done anything for eight years, except band, and I was always switching instruments so that doesn't seem to apply. It will certainly be a triumph if I succeed, and I intend to. I also plan on reading more than a book a month, so hopefully this won't actually take me eight years.
So, in summary:
The Project: Read every book on The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list
The goal: At least one book a month
The timeline: Up to eight years (yikes)
Please, follow me to keep track of my journey! I'll be reviewing each book when I finish and keeping track on here...there will probably also be quotes and trivia and miscellaneous fun, because that's how I roll. You could even read along with me!
Happy reading,
Ashley
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