Tuesday, June 17, 2014

It's a challenge!

While browsing several book blogs I've learned a few things:

First, there's a running feature/ weekly meme created by the broke and the bookish called Top Ten Tuesdays.  I used to think that its just a feature crated by one blogger for her blog turns out almost all the book blog I've been to is running the same feature and decided to finally know what the fuss is about. I wish I could join but honestly, I don't think it would sound smart to just bring up the same books over and over again every tuesdays as my choices are far diverse from many but very limited in comparison to other book blogs. And as much as I would like to share insights of my own, when class begins and it will soon, every tuesday is going to be a huge drain from my energy reserves. (I checked my schedule that day: Pharmacology, Microbiology and Surgery all in the same day! Those are big and major percentage of my grades by the way.) 

Second, woah! in the span of four freaking years of my stagnant and non-reading phase of high school that is, I missed so many books that would have been in my prized possession did I not stop. And I am slowly just slowly beginning to catch up with all those books and during these times may not be best for Reading and Relaxation, I am in the most critical phase of my career, please! 

Thirdly, so while I was really sad about not being able to join and devastated by my lack of knowledge for a vast number of beautifully published novels, I learned another project that book bloggers can also join. Its entitled The Fill in the Gaps. Now the slightly sad news is I'm kind of drifting away temporarily from doing YA book reviews. and the slightly better one is that since, after much deliberation, I've decided this is gonna be worth it at the end, I'm practically adopting this project. 

The mechanics was to pick approximately 100 books which you have always meant to read but haven't gotten around yet, and make a list and allow five years to complete the reading challenge. BUT instead of choosing the books, I had BBC chosen it for me. Read the article here. Its a win win situation actually: I get to read the 100 Books that will make my existence complete and full, and I get to finish this challenge which though maybe a bit everything but effortless, given the time allowance is very feasible. Truth is, when I went through the list, only 13 out of the massive 100 books listed made it into my Read shelf which is not only self deprecating but a bit embarrassing as well. And to think, here I am blogging my way through different book reviews not having read 87 of the greatest books ever published. Who was I to judge right? So I gave my resolve. Here's my 100 books to read:

Start: June 2014
Finish June 2019

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. A Brief History in Time  - Stephen Hawking
5. A Long Way Gone: Memoir of A Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah
6. A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma -Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. Life after Life - Kate Atkinson
65. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
66. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Inferno – Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. The Sun also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Are You There God? It's me Margaret - Judy Blume

Wish me Luck!



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