Saturday, August 28, 2010

52 books in a year.

I was browsing around the Good Reads website (can you tell I am obsessed with it now?) and I was looking for some groups to join.  I saw one that was about reading 50 books in a year, another one for reading 72 in a year, and another one for 100 books in a year!  This got me thinking.  I am going to try and tackle reading one book per week (I think it will give me enough time to enjoy the book and get everything out of it as well as if I am having a busy week it will allow for more time to finish and I won't feel like this is a burden rather than the fun that it is supposed to bring. (Then I told my friend Cheryl and she thinks a week isn't long enough!  I guess we will find out now won't we!  Sorry for the long explanation!), and if I can get more in I think that will only be a bonus! These are the books I am planning on reading (Note: This is not an iron clad list...if I decide that I am not liking the book, I will change to another one!  This is what I am going to do with Crime and Punishment...I can't get through it for the life of me!  Maybe one day in the future I will be able to get through it...I hope!) in no specific order:

1.) Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
2.) Masquerade by Nancy Moser
3.) The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
4.) 1984 by George Orwell
5.) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6.) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
7.) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thoms Pynchon
8.) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
9.) Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
10.) Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
11-17) The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
18.) Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks
19.) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
20.) Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
21.) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
22.) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
23.) Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
24.) The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
25.) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
26.) The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
27.) The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
28.) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
29.) The Cider House Rules by John Irving
30.) The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
31.) The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
32.) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
33.) The Giver by Lois Lowry
34.) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
35.) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
36.) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
37.)  Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
38.) Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
39.) The Collector by John Fowles
40.) A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
41.) We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
42.) Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
43.) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
44.) The Awakening by Kate Chopin
45.) The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
46.) Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
47.) I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
48.) The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
49.) Blindness by Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontierro
50.) The Trial by Franz Kafka
51.) By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho
52.) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

I am completely open to suggestions and omissions.  I just picked these out either through recommendations from friends or through the summaries I had read about them.  So please, let me know what you think!

Now to decide which one to start with...

5 comments:

tediousandbrief said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog!

I've read a couple of those books on your list. The Trial was really good. Water for Elephants is one that I'm thinking of tackling sometime this year.

I managed 52 or 53 books last year...barely. It's a good challenge to do.

Hope you'll stop by my blog again

IngridLola said...

Hi Katie! I suggest you switch our Cannery Row for East of Eden. Also ... The Lovely Bones was not one of my favorites. If you liked the movie The Outsiders you may like the book ... otherwise I'd skip that one too. Otherwise I think you've got some great stuff on here, particularly 4, 5, 33, 44, and 50.

Oh, and a word about Harry Potter ... in my opinion, if you've seen the movies you probably don't need to read the books. It offers some good entertainment, but not much else, and takes up A TON of time.

Anyways that's just my opinion. Good luck!!!

Ingrid from The Blue Bookcase

Maggie said...

I recently read 'Remains of the Day' and it was absolutely lovely...there are a few on this list I hadn't heard of--I'm always on the hunt for new book suggestions!

karamurano said...

I have some of those books if you'd like to borrow them :)

j.marie said...

I like your list! I'm going to refer to this when I'm in need of a book to read :)