One of the gifts I've given myself this year is permission to read great novels and not get waylaid by trying to catch up on the books I should have read and didn't quite get to. Yes, some of those shoulda, coulda, woulda books are still on my "waiting to be read" shelf, but some are not. Here's why:
On New Year's Eve, I persuaded my sweet hubby to help me clean up the house for company that we'd invited for the evening. He suggested that perhaps we should do something about those books. Meaning, of course, the obstacle course in front of the beautiful bookcases he built on one entire wall of our den. It hasn't always been a hazard to walk past, but in the past year or so, my "to-be-read" shelves had begun to bulge, and because I really did mean to read EVERY SINGLE ONE of those books, I started stacking them on the floor in front of the shelves. This has led to profound guilt, denial that I have a book hoarding obsession, and may, in fact, be the beginning of some deep-seated inability to grasp reality.
I could not read all those books in the coming year and probably not in the next five years even if I did nothing else, so an intervention was in order. I'm happy to report that two sacks and two boxes of books will find wonderful new homes. We still have three shelves of "to-be-read" books, but they are not stacked two and three deep. We also have a "his" and "hers" shelf so Max doesn't have to sift through many of mine in which he has no interest. And vice versa.
So, on to the topic of this post: My Year of Reading Pleasures for 2011 will include:
South of Broad by Pat Conroy (halfway through this one already)
Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls of The Glass Castle Fame
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer
The Book Thief by Markus Zusack (yes, I'm very late to the game w/ this one)
Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise by Joyce Magnin
The Summer Kitchen by Lisa Wingate
Blue Skies Tomorrow by Sarah Sundin (not released yet)
I'm also looking forward to Wings of a Dream by Anne Mateer, an up and coming debut novelist as well as new titles from Gina Holmes and Marybeth Whalen whose debut novels I enjoyed this year.
It's going to be a great year! A little humor, a little history, and a whole lot of great writing.
What's on your list for reading this year? It's not too late for me to sneak one or two more titles on my "to-be-read" shelf.
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
HOW WELL READ ARE YOU?
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Normally you just put an ( X ) if you've read it. But I'm also putting an asterisk if I read part of it and couldn't get through it, or didn't finish the series! Man, do I have a lot of books to finish!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ( )
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ( )
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( X )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ( )
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( X )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ( )
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger( )
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ( )
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ( X )
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ( X)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ( X )
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( X )
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( X )
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ( )
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( )
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ( X )
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (x)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ( )
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (*)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( )
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ( X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ( )
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( *)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( *)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( X )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( X )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ( )
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( )
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ( X )
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( X )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( X )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ( X )
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( )
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )
Okay, I beat the prediction of the BBC with 26 reads. A lot from high school and college. Many, many other favorite "classics" aren't on the list, so I wonder how the selections were made.
How about you? How many have you read?
Normally you just put an ( X ) if you've read it. But I'm also putting an asterisk if I read part of it and couldn't get through it, or didn't finish the series! Man, do I have a lot of books to finish!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ( )
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ( )
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( X )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ( )
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( X )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ( )
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger( )
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ( )
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ( X )
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ( X)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ( X )
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( X )
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( X )
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ( )
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( )
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ( X )
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (x)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ( )
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (*)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( )
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ( X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ( )
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( *)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( *)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( X )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( X )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ( )
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( )
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ( X )
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( X )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( X )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ( X )
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( )
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )
Okay, I beat the prediction of the BBC with 26 reads. A lot from high school and college. Many, many other favorite "classics" aren't on the list, so I wonder how the selections were made.
How about you? How many have you read?
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