Thursday, January 24, 2013

100 Books Project - 5 year Challenge



 I recently came across the 100 Books Project and thought it looked like a pretty nifty idea. The objective is to make a list of 100 books that you have been meaning to read but just can't seem to get read.  So to motivate and organize your wayward self you make a list of these books and give yourself 5 years to get through them.

While I like this idea, I do have some concerns.  I read roughly 60-70 books a year and am pretty much wholly a whim reader.  So committing to the idea that fully one-third of the of the books I read must come from this list is a little daunting. The first and even second year wouldn't be too bad but the last couple years might backfire. I considered cheating and just doing 50 books but when I looked at my list I felt like 98% really should be on there.  So hopefully the fact that I did try to fill the list primarily with books I truly wish to read will keep me from flaking out.

My list is a little bit of mixed bag of some classic books/authors that I feel like I should read and a whole lot of books that are high on my To-Be-Read list.

MY UPDATED LIST WITH BOOKS READ CAN BE FOUND HERE.


  1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  2. The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
  3. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  4. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
  5. The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt
  6. Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  7. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  8. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  9. The Passage by Justin Cronin
  10. Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
  11. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
  12. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  13. Howard’s End by E.M. Forster
  14. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
  15. Loving by Henry Green
  16. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
  17. Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey
  18. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
  19. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  20. Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
  21. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
  22. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  23. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
  24. Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings
  25. Some Kind of Fairytale by Graham Joyce
  26. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
  27. Hood by Stephen R. Lawhead
  28. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  29. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  30. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
  31. The City & The City by China Mieville
  32. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
  33. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
  34. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
  35. Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates
  36. 1984 by George Orwell
  37. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
  38. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
  39. Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
  40. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
  41. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  42. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
  43. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
  44. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
  45. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  46. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  47. Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier
  48. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
  49. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  50. The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
  51. The Fault in our Stars by John Green
  52. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
  53. Quiet by Susan Cain
  54. Shadow and Bone  by Leigh Bardugo
  55. Defending Jacob by William Landay
  56. Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore
  57. In the Garden of Iden (The Company #1) by Kage Baker
  58. Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon
  59. The Providence Rider by Robert McCammon
  60. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
  61. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  62. A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh
  63. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  64. Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shin
  65. Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
  66. Sabriel by Garth Nix
  67. The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
  68. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  69. Crazed by Ha Jin
  70. Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas
  71. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  72. Rabbit Run by John Updike
  73. Of Men and Marshes by Paul Errington
  74. Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter
  75. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
  76. Silas Marner by George Eliot
  77. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
  78. Little Women By Louisa May Alcott
  79. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
  80. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
  81. Utopia by Thomas More
  82. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  83. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  85. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  86. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  87. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  88. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  89. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
  90. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  91. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
  92. Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye
  93. The Likeness by Tana French
  94. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
  95. Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
  96. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon
  97. Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self  by Claire Tomalin
  98. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
  99. Nine Princes of Amber by Richard Zelazny 
  100. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

 So do you have 100 books you've been meaning to read??
 

No comments:

Post a Comment