Catch up on my reading: Year 2

My first year of "reading Up" had a slow start. Unfortunately, this means that I did not complete the list of 4o books that I had made for myself, despite my Speed-Reader-Extrodinare status. (sigh) Ah, well. I did manage to finish 26 books on that list, which was no small feat (see post about Atlas Shrugged).

Onward to this year's reading quest! I am going to try to finish the fourteen books from the previous list along with the following 40. (Yes, I know that total is 54~more books than there are weeks in the year....It's a goal, okay?) This year I stuck with all male authors...and boy, are there a lot of them to choose from! When you start poking around famous novel lists (which are everywhere, btw), you see the disparity in the number of male vs. female authors. Anyway, it was even harder to narrow down this list than it was the last one...but I already have the beginnings of a list for AFTER I turn 40! (But that is another blog idea entirely.)

So without further ado, here it is, in no particular order whatsoever:

1. A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith


2. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis


3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol


4. Watership Down by Richard Adams


5. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden


6. Night by Elie Wiesel


7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau


8. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques


9. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett


10. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame


11. A High Wind in Jamacia by Richard Hughes


12. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas


13. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens


14. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway


15. Dracula by Bram Stoker


16. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien


17. The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne


18. The Godfather by Mario Puzo


19. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson


20. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum


21. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


22. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck


23. The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale


24. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson


25. In Defense of Food by Mihale Pollan


26. Winning Thru Intimidation by Robert Ringer


27. On the Road by Jack Kerouac


28. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert


29. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger


30. Crime and Punnishment by Fydor Dostoevsky


31. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey


32. A Study in Scarlett by Arthur Conan Doyle


33. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming


34. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren


35. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


36. The Call of the Wild by Jack London


37. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving


38. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty


39. 1984 by George Orwell


40. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

I learned a valuable lesson from my first list...make sure you counter heavy reading (ie: Anna Karenina, Crime and Punnishment) with light reading (ie: Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz), else your head might explode.

Reading at LAST!

Reading at last! I finished The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and Persuasion by Jane Austen. Loved them both. The links provide the story background if you are interested, but suffice to say that for me The Red Tent was very thought-provoking for a girl who grew up in the church, and Austen, well, is lovely...and Persuasion worth reading just for Wentworth's letter towards the end of the story.

I have made inroads on a few other items as well...#9, #11, and #14 are all in the works. I have inquired about the watercolor class (which I can hopefully take in March), plan to start going to yoga tomorrow (!) and have the movie here at the house (thanks, Netflix) which I plan to watch this week! And I have started reading The Beauty Myth, which is already taxing my brain, but is very interesting so far. That one might take me a while to plow through.

I do have to confess that I missed January's breast self-exam. It is one of those things I keep thinking 'I need to do it, I need to do it'....and then time has passed and I haven't done it! Ack! So I will have to either A) add one in there when the months are longer, or B) add a month on to the end of my countdown. But obviously the goal is to get into the habit so that I am doing it beyond the countdown timeframe...duh. Anyway. So I've confessed my failure on that particular item, but I am determined to get February's done!!!! (I have seven more days, right?)

Have a good week!

What to Read

I love to read. Love, Love, LOVE. Love it at least as much as I love birthdays. Wanting to read isn't my problem. Wanting to read the list of books I've given myself IS. Or rather, wanting to read Persuasion more than I want to read the new Laurell K. Hamilton. I can't seem to focus on my list...instead I keep bringing all these sci-fi fantasy books home from the library--say, 6-8 at a time, and devouring them immediately, one after the other. Very gratifying from an entertainment perspective, but a bit off task.

And the irony is that I really do want to read the books on my list. The thing is, they are, well, work. As opposed to the others, which are really my version of mindless television. So I guess the bottom line is that maybe I am a little bit lazy? Anyway, any suggestions on how I can get more involved in my reading list (which, by the way, I expected to be one of the EASIER items to accomplish on my list...yikesy!), would be greatly appreciated.

2. Catch up on my reading.

My love affair with books started early (see above). Reading is my most perfect escape, and to me books are the most loyal of friends. (Along with Teddy, obviously.)

Most all of my reading is done for pure pleasure...not for the direct improvement of my mind (although I would argue that something can be learned from even the trashiest read), and I am as addicted to finding something new to read as much as any junkie. But as I prowl the bookstores and libraries for my next fix, it started to occur to me that there are a lot of great books out there that I have never read. (And by great, I mean great with a capital "G".)

So as part of my countdown list, I am going to read 80 books (40 each year) that I have never read before, and let you know what I think about them. I did not necessarily choose the most popular book by each author, instead I choose the book that sounded the most interesting to me personally. (Which means that yes, I really did some research to choose these books! Again, I know what a geek I am, thanks.) There are biographies, short stories, children's titles....and a few books that actually rocked the world.

The first 40, as you will notice, are all by female authors...I had to narrow the list down somehow! It was actually really hard to choose...but here is the final cut. If you have (or haven't) read any of these titles, I would love to hear what YOU thought!

1. Helen Keller: The Story of My Life


2. Anne Frank: The Diary of Anne Frank


3. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women


4. Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar


5. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird


6. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale


7. Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye


8. Amy Tan: The Hundred Secret Senses


9. Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings


10. Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind


11. Virginia Woolfe: A Room of One's Own


12. Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre


13. Alice Walker: The Color Purple


14. Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find


15. Alice Steinbach: Without Reservations


16. Julia Child: My Life in France


17. Erica Jong: Fear of Flying


18. Isabel Allende: Daughter of Fortune


19. Ursula Le Guin: Lavinia


20. SARK: Succulent Wild Woman


21. Barbara Robinson: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever


22. Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones' Diary


23. Candace Bushnell: Sex & the City


24. Pearl Buck: The Good Earth


25. Daphne de Murier: Rebecca


26. Anne Morrow Lindbergh: A Gift from the Sea


27. Dorothy Parker: The Portable Dorothy Parker


28. Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique


29. Anita Diamant: The Red Tent


30. Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden


31. Judy Blume: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret


32. Katherine Paterson: Bridge to Terabithia


33. Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth


34. Jane Austen: Pride & Prejudice


35. Jane Austen: Persuasion


36. Jane Austen: Emma


37. Jane Austen: Mansfield Park


38. Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey


39. Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged


40. Enid Blyton: The Enchanted Wood