Tuesday, April 6, 2010

On being well read

So today my boyfriend linked me to http://1morechapter.com/1percent/ and we have decided to undertake the challenge. Except that! I have read 26 of the 1001 books in the free (I am too poor to fork out for the huger list) excel spreadsheet downloadable here. 26 is 2% of the total 1294 books to read before you die (or whatever) so I have decided to undertake a new challenge.

I pledge to read 5% of the full 1294 books to read before you die. That is 65 books in total. I pledge to do so before April 2011. Should be a fun year...

Anyways. The list of books I shall read is as follows:
  • The Rainbow
  • Women in Love
  • A Farewell to Arms
  • American Psycho
  • Atonement
  • Captain Corelli's Mandolin
  • Cold Comfort Farm
  • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
  • Doctor Faustus
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Far From the Madding Crowd
  • Frankenstein
  • Gone With the Wind
  • Gormenghast
  • Great Expectations
  • Gulliver's Travels
  • Life of Pi
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Love in the time of Cholera
  • Middlemarch
  • Oliver Twist
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • Tarzan
  • The 39 steps
  • The Cider House Rules
  • The Count of Monte-Cristo
  • The English Patient
  • The Fall of the House of Usher
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • The Maltese Falcon
  • The Reader
  • The Satanic Verses
  • The Shining
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • The Thousand and One Nights
  • The Three Musketeers
  • The Time Machine
  • The Wasp Factory
  • Wild Swans
These are from a cut down list of roughly 80 and included books that I've heard of, been told I ought to read, know I ought to read, know I ought to have read and plain old books that are already on my bookshelf.

Those are all in alphabetical order save the first two as they come under the category of 'books that are on my bookshelf'. Wish me luck. I reckon I ought to be reading a book every two weeks to finish by next April and I shall endeavour to review each book before starting the next.

Tarrah xx

2 comments:

  1. Good luck. Some of those are on my list of favorites. Great Expectations, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo. As long as you're not turned off by older language and prose styles, the classics are really a lot of fun. There's quite a few on that list I've never read. Hmmmm...in my spare time...

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  2. Oh good! I'm glad someone said that! I decided in the spirit of foolishness to not look up what the stories were about (though I know these three) so I'm glad someone said they were favourites, I'm a teensy bit less worried now!

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