It was hard to come up with a list of 100 books I want to read in the next 5 years.
This was a project originally started by Andromeda. I saw it first on Moon Rat's blog. Then Emily Cross started a blog dedicated to Project Fill-in-the-Gaps.
I'm going to post my list on the Fill-in-the-Gaps blog too, and I'll be following along and making updates with everyone else there.
The rules as paraphrased from Andromeda and Moon Rat are the following:
I've collected a list of 100 books that I wants to have read in my life to fill in some of my reading gaps of classics and great contemporary fiction.
Personally, I decided to make a list of books primarily written by, or about, People of Color or Women.
Like Moon Rat, I'm giving myself 5 years and a little extra, so until New Year 2015, to try to get through the list. I'm also giving myself 25% forgiveness, so if I finish 75 of these books in that time, I'll win the challenge.
I had a hard time coming up with a list of books, mainly because I probably only have time to read 20 books per year at the most, and I am not certain I want to spend all my reading time on this list. Luckily, the 25% discount will help with this. I've already realized I forgot Native Son by Richard Wright. And I know that I will hear about new books in that time that I will want to read too. Especially if we are all posting our reviews on the blog. But I'm up for the challenge!
Here's my list: (Red=Read, Blue=Started, Green=Saw the movie)
1. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
2. Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe
3. Half a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
6. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
7. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
8. Emma - Jane Austen
9. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
10. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
11. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
12. The Teahouse Fire - Ellis Avery
13. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
14. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
15. The Good Earth - Pearl Buck
16. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
17. Possession - A.S. Byatt
18. My Antonia - Willa Cather
19. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
20. Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
21. Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark
22. Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
23. In the Heart of the Country - JM Coetzee
24. Disgrace - JM Coetzee
25. Life and Times of Michael K - JM Coetzee
26. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
27. The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier
28. Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga
29. Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delaney
30. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue - Samuel R. Delaney
31. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
32. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
33. Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
34. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
35. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
36. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
37. What is the What - Dave Eggers
38. Middlemarch - George Eliot
39. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
40. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman
41. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
42. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
43. Room with a View - E. M. Forster
44. Passage to India - E.M. Forster
45. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
46. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight - Alexandra Fuller
47. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
48. Tess of the Durbervilles - Thomas Hardy
49. Roots - Alex Haley
50. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
51. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
52. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
53. The Known World - Edward P. Jones
54. Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
55. Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
56. The Mermaid Chair - Sue Monk Kidd
57. Immortality - Milan Kundera
58. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
59. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
60. Lady Chatterley’s Lover - D.H. Lawrence
61. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
62. Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence
63. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
64. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
65. Kaffir Boy - Mark Mathabane
66. Miriam’s Song - Miriam and Mark Mathabane
67. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
68. Sula - Toni Morrison
69. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
70. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
71. Beloved - Toni Morrison
72. A Mercy - Toni Morrison
73. Runway - Alice Munro
74. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
75. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
76. A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
77. In A Free Country - V.S. Naipaul
78. The English Patient - Micheal Ondaatje
79. The Wishing Year - Noelle Oxenhandler
80. Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
81. Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
82. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
83. Peony in Love - Lisa See
84. Unless - Carol Shields
85. The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields
86. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series Books 3-10 - Alexander McCall Smith
87. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
88. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
89. Slumdog Millionaire - Vikas Swarup
90. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
91. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
92. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
93. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
94. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
95. Optimists Daughter - Eudora Welty
96. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
97. Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
98. Native Son - Richard Wright
99. I Am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe
100. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
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5 comments:
Had to make some editing changes - added Richard Wright's Native Son after all and Alice Munro's Runaway because of misnumbering and a duplicate book.
Now my list is done!
technically, Lord Of The Rings could count as three books.
Yes - and the no. 1 Ladies Detective Agency could count as 8! But if I don't like one book of the series, I don't want it to throw me off completely. :)
I love your book list. It is a very interesting list and it contains a lot of books I myself would wish to read had I not limited myself to African writers, but I know i would change along the way. I see your list contains some Nobel Laureates...interesting.
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