A while back I came across this: it's the Guardian's list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. I liked the list because it's not just a boring old "Greatest Novels" list, but it's divided into genres, and everyone gets a chance. From Dickens to Crichton. Pride and Prejudice to Bridget Jones.
I've read 53 on the list. That leaves a lot to cover.
So I thought, hey! The New Year is coming up. Maybe I should make a resolution. A resolution to read 100 books off the list in a year.
Then I thought about tacos. But my mind eventually came back to the idea.
So that's what this post is about. This is my declaration of intent. My manifesto of insanity. I'm going to attempt to read 100 novels in 1 year. Nevermind that I only read 24 novels last year. And 24 the previous year. Can I quadruple my output? I don't know. In all likelihood I will delete this entry within a week. And you can call me a quitter. And I can call you a doody head.
Here's the books I've picked from the list to read in 2011:
1. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
2. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
3. Cakes and Ale, Somerset Maugham
4. Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
5. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
6. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
7. Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
8. Tono Bungay, HG Wells
9. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
10. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
11. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
12. No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
13. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
14. The Outsider, Albert Camus
15. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
16. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
17. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
18. The Moviegoer, Walkeer Percy
19. The History of Mr. Polly, HG Wells
20. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
21. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
22. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
23. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
24. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
25. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flubert
26. A Room With a View, EM Forster
27. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
28. Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
29. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
30. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
31. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
32. Foundation, Isaac Asimov
33. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
34. Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear
35. Vathek, William Beckford
36. Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown
37. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
38. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
39. The Passion of New Eve, Angela Carter
40. Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
41. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
42. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Phillip K Dick
43. Neuromancer, William Gibson
44. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
45. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
46. Dune, Frank Herbert
47. The Children of Men, PD James
48. Flowers of Algernon, Daniel Keyes
49, 50, & 51. The Earthsea Series, Ursula LeGuin
52. Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Maturin
53. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M Miller Jr.
54. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
55. His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman
56. The Mysteries of Udolpho
57. The Female Man, Joanna Russ
58, 59, & 60. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
61. Shirley, Charlotte Bronte
62. Underworld, Don Delillo
63. Middlemarch, George Eliot
64. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
65. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
66. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
67. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
68. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
69. Maus, Art Spiegelman
70. Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
71. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne
72. Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut
73. The Island of Dr. Moreau, HG Wells
"But Jessica, that isn't 100 books!"
I know. I haven't decided on the others yet. I'm actually looking for some input. Are there any from the Guardian's list that you've read, think is awesome, and I haven't put on the list yet? (granted I may have already read it).
So input is appreciated. But please don't mock me for not having read Lord of the Flies or Great Gatsby. I know. I know.
First up! #53: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M Miller Jr.
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