2015 reading challenge

For the past two years, I’ve undertaken a Goodreads’ Reading Challenge for the year.

I failed in 2013, reading just 41 out of 52 books. I set the same goal for 2014, and succeeded! I was helped along the way with some graphic novel collections alternated with some epically long novels.

So for 2015 I wanted to try something a little different. I’ve come up with the idea of still reading 52 books in 52 weeks, I know it is doable – especially with plenty of holidays planned for the year. So of my 52 books for 2015, 12 of them, one a month, will be a “classic” book I’ve never read. I’ve drawn up a list of 24 books that I’m going to consider. And added bonus, between myself and my parents, I already have most of the books in hand. Lovely, old, well read, falling apart, taped together copies of books. Some of the from the 1950s/1960s.

Classic book challenge

Here is the list, and my public admittance that I’ve not read these books. Books in bold are ones I already own:

1. Moby Dick
2. Wide Sargasso Sea
3. Catch 22
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude
5. The Woman in White
6. Jude the Obscure
7. The Quiet American
8. On the Road
9. The Bell Jar
10. The Plague
11. Tristram Shandy
12. The Violent Bear it Away –  Flannery O’Connor
13. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
14. Slaughter House 5
15. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
16. Tortilla Flat – Steinbeck 
17. Neuromancer  William Gibson
18.  Foundation – Isaac Asimov
19. The Stars my Destination – Alfred Bester
20. The Death of Grass – John Christopher
21. The Female Man – Joanna Russ
22. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth 
23. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
24. Kindred – Octavia Butler

 

What else is on my list for 2015?

Some unread things on my Kindle:

• Hideous Creatures – SE Lister
• And Sons – David Gilbert
• J: A Novel – Howard Jacobson
• Authority – Jeff VanderMeer
• Acceptance – Jeff VanderMeer
• Countdown City – Ben H Winters (I need to re-read the previous book before reading this)
• The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
• MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood (I need to re-read the first two before finishing the series)
• The Whispering Muse – Sjon
• From the Mouth of the Whale – Sjon
• Dark Eden – Chris Beckett

A few other things on my wider list:

• American Rust – Phillip Meyer
• Silent History – Eli Horowitz, Kevin Moffett, Matthew Derby
• Decoded: A Novel – Mai Jia
• The Book of Strange New Things – Michel Faber
• Boy Snow Bird – Helen Oyeyemi
• All the Birds, Singing – Evie Wyld
• And a long, never ending list of science fiction of various levels of quality