28 Apr 2009

5 Year Reading Plan

I'm not returning to my earlier level of challenge commitment yet, but the 100project on LiveJournal sounded like a suitable compromise. The idea is to pick 100 books you've been wanting to read for awhile, and commit yourself to reading those within the next 5 years, posting regularly with progress reports. I like the idea that it's a 5 year plan, as that makes it a lot more realistic challenge. I easily read more than 100 books in a year (am at 64 so far this year alone), but with my various jobs I can't have that many books from a reading list. I wouldn't have time to read anything else, and I'd get bored. There HAS to be some room for spontaneity. But 5 years is perfect - that's just 20 books from the list each year or one every second'ish week.

The books I've chosen are a random selection of my GoodReads 'to-read-owned' and 'to-read-not-owned' lists - I've limited myself to books I know are available at the libraries, as I don't want to be hindered by the difficulty of finding the books.

The Lost Diary of Don Juan - Douglas Carlton Abrams
If You Could See Me Now - Cecelia Ahern
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Alborn
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mich Alborn
Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong
A Gentle Madness - Nicholas A. Basbanes
Library: An Unquiet History - Matthew Battles
*Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernières
Libri di Luca - Mikkel Birkegaard
Daughter of the Blood - Anne Bishop
Valiant - Holly Black
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne
In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson
Ill Wind - Rachel Caine
*Xenocide - Orson Scott Card
The Rape of Nankin - Iris Chang
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
About the Author - John Colapinto
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
Limes Billede - Leif Davidsen
*Blink - Ted Dekker
Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue
The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
*The Last Concubine - Lesley Downer
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michelle Sagara Faber
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader - Anne Fadiman
Cathedral of the Sea - Ildefonso Falcones
Time and Again - Jack Finney
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
World Without End - Ken Follett
Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke
*The Last Gospel - David Gibbins
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
And Then He Kissed Her - Laura Lee Guhrke
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
*Pompeii - Robert Harris
The Observations - Jane Harris
Dune - Frank Herbert
Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb
The Year of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacobs
*A Very Long Engagement - Sébastien Japrisot
*The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
Ironweed - William Kennedy
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Halfway to Forever - Karen Kingsbury
Blood and Chocolate - Annette Curtis Klause
Goodnight, Beautiful - Dorothy Koomson
Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress
Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Laihiri
Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane
*Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin
What the Dead Know - Laura Lippman
The Giver - Lois Lowry
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
Bella Tuscany - Frances Mayes
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Birth House - Ami McKay
Firethorn - Sarah Micklem
Sabriel - Garth Nix
The Scarlet Pimpernel - Emmuska Orczy
Here be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
Bloodhound - Tamora Pierce
*September - Rosamunde Pilcher
The Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett
*Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett
The Cross-Legged Knight - Candace M Robb
*Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Contact - Carl Sagan
Idlewild - Nick Sagan
*Border Wedding - Amanda Scott
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Peony in Love - Lisa See
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Shape-Changer's Wife - Sharon Shinn
The Pilot's Wife - Anita Shreve
Outer Banks - Anne Rivers Siddons
The Bronze Horseman - Paullina Simons
Animal's People - Indra Sinha
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Safran Stroud
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
The Bonesetter's Daughter - Amy Tan
The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan
The Hundred Secret Senses - Amy Tan
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
*Vienna Prelude - Bodie Thoene
The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas
City of Pearl - Karen Traviss
Reunion - Fred Uhlman
Rabbit Angstrom - John Updike
*Ben Hur - Lew Wallace
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Cast in Shadow - Michelle Sagara West
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

2 comments:

Samantha said...

Dear participant of the genre challenge,

I am happy to announce that the genre challenge blog is finally up and running! Due to some real life problems, this has taken longer than planned, but now that it’s finished, I invite you over to post your reviews there. It’s at http://genrechallenge.blogspot.com/

The process is really simple, just post the link to your review in the comments of the appropriate post. An example: if you reviewed a fantasy book for the genre challenge, post the review in the comments of the Fantasy Fiction Reviews 2008-2009 post.

Because of the transfer from my general book blog to the genre challenge blog, some review links might have become lost, so please check to see if all of your reviews have been linked. If not, please repost the links I missed. According to my information, you haven’t posted any links yet. Just to remind you, to be eligible for the prize drawing, all of your reviews must be posted before 1 November 2009.

Thanks for joining this challenge!

Happy reading,

Samantha

Samantha said...

Dear participant of the genre challenge,

congratulations on finishing the genre challenge! You are now eligible for the prize drawing. You can read about the (changed!) prizes at the new blog, and the winners of the prize drawings will be announced there on 2 November 2009.
For a last request, could you fill in this small questionnaire? You can just leave the answers in a comment under the Prizes and People Eligible For Them post. Thanks in advance!

1. What do you think of the set-up of the new genre challenge blog?
2. What did you like best about the genre challenge?
3. What didn’t you like about the genre challenge?
4. What could be done better next time?
5. Which genres would you like to see included in some way in the challenge?
6. Would you join the challenge again (running from 1 January 2010 – 31 December 2010)?
7. Would you be interested in a mini-challenge based on the genre challenge, only this time reading a novel, a short story, a collection of poems, and a play?

Thanks for joining this challenge!

Happy reading,

Samantha