10th Book. Plus, a new addition to the list.

I started my tenth book today (The Quiet American by Graham Greene). I ordered it from the library the night I finished my ninth book (Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison) and it arrived in the mail today. Have to say, I love the rural delivery of library books we have here in my province. The only library in the area (which is now closed due to funding cuts) had mainly housed romance novels, westerns by Louis L'Amour, etc., which is great if that is your cup of tea. But when you're looking for the kind of books that are on my list, the local library wasn't much help. The next library closest to my town is roughly 45 minutes away so having the books delivered to my door a few days after requesting them online is a godsend for this project. 

Also wanted to mention that I've added a new book to my list, making it the odd number of 151. The late addition is "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. The reason for adding this book almost as an after-thought is because of the movie "A Love Song for Bobby Long" starring Scarlett Johansson and John Travolta, which I watched (again) the other night. This is a favorite movie of mine and one I hadn't watched since last fall, I don't think. The Carson McCullers book is featured in the film, with the theme song 'My Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Lorraine's Song)' being slightly based on the book (or at least based on the fact that Travolta's character gave the book to Johansson's character's mother, Lorraine - with me so far?) While watching the movie the other night, I thought about my book project and wondered if I should go with this book next (I sort of rely on chance to pick my next read, rather then working through the list alphabetically - even asking friends or family to randomly give me a number between 1 and 150...well, 151 now, of course). When I checked my list, I realized that this book was not included (gasp!). I can't remember if I had a reason for excluding it - or if it was even on any of the original lists I formed my own list from. So, on the list it went, to be read at a later date.

Update: Mistakenly titled this post as "10th book" when actually, I'm only on my 8th book of my list. I was counting two chick-lit books I had read as well (The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls and Paint It Black by Janet Fitch - both excellent books, in case you're interested) but they aren't on my actual list, so shouldn't be listed in this blog/project. I'm not the most organized person and therefore mess up often. It's an endearing trait of mine. Learn to love it.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second one, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt and because what difference does it make?¹

I enjoyed Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. It dealt primarily with misunderstandings and how they can tear a family (and friends) apart and lay waste to years that could have been spent happily together; how rejection can change the lives of both the person doing the rejecting as well as the person being rejected; and how money can be the divide between a life lived with shame and and a life of true happiness. 

"All our lives were like that: first he would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon.²

As with all of Toni Morrison’s books, the reader learns a flip side to people and situations they wouldn’t normally understand (or want to understand). Racial issues are a secondary character in this book, both between black and white people, but more so between an African American family with money and their less fortunate contemporaries of 1960's America.

Money is freedom, Macon. The only real freedom there is.³

The second part of the book, in my opinion, was better than the first - sort of the "meat and potatoes" of the story after an exhaustive background setting of the first half. The ending was sad and surprising, and brought a generational issue full circle to a final end. Flight is a symbolic thread running through this story and is marked by the appearance of a bird at important parts of the story.

A powerful speech given by a secondary character to another towards the end of the book really rang true to me and is something I think everyone, but most especially females, would benefit from reading:

Guitar spoke softly to her. "You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right - that his judgment and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, "belong". Especially when you put it with somebody you love. [....] You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean anymore to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.⁴"

 All in all, I liked this book and would read it again.

¹. Excerpt from Chapter 4 (91).

². Excerpt from Chapter 9 (216).

³. Excerpt from Chapter 7 (163).

⁴. Excerpt from Chapter 13 (305 and 306)

My Progress so far...

Although I've only started blogging about this project, I actually officially started it in November 2010. My first completed book was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I loved it. I still love it. I'll always love it. It was the perfect book with which to begin this literary journey. I've been a fan of Khaled Hosseini ever since I read The Kite Runner a few years back. That book changed my perspective on Afghanistan and made it more personal to me. A Thousand Splendid Suns reinforced that changed perspective to the point that I'm unable to hear the word Afghanistan without thinking of characters in both books. Afghanistan is no longer a remote country I know nothing about. It is a very real place where Miriams (Splendid Suns) and Hassans (Kite Runner) live and survive each and every day.

My favorite quote from A Thousand Splendid Suns is as follows:

"Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings."

There are so many emotions in this quote that as I first read it, my heart ached for Miriam and I still feel that ache when I read it now. It's a beautiful story and I hope someone who has never read this book will pick it up and give it a read.

My second book was American Pastoral by Philip Roth. Ugh. Only my second book in and I had to admit defeat with this one and mark it as unread on the list. I couldn't get through it. I couldn't force myself to finish it. I thought it was the most boring book I've ever read (or attempted to read). When the project is over, I may go back and try to finish any books that I couldn't finish the first time around. Maybe this second chance will spark an interest in this book, but I'm not holding out high hopes. Instead, I may just catch the movie.

My third book was a good choice. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is a book many people likely came across as children, but I never did. Or if I did, I never picked it up and gave it a read. But I'm glad I read it now. I really enjoyed this book over Christmas 2010 and I look forward to reading other Sherlock Holmes adventures in the future. The Five Orange Pips and The Adventure of The Blue Carbuncle are probably my two favorite adventures from this book.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien was my fourth book and I was excited to read it. It didn't disappoint, I'm happy to say. It was while I was reading it that Peter Jackson announced that he would start production on The Hobbit in March 2011 and that just made reading it all the more enjoyable, knowing a movie was being made and would be released within a year or so. This book has become one of the stand out books on my list so far. 

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was my fifth book choice and was a quick and easy read. A total of 107 pages, it was just what I needed at the time. The story was simple, but has stayed with me.

My sixth book was Dracula by Bram Stoker ("One of the least-known authors of one of the best known books ever written"). I very much enjoyed this book. I will even admit that I became so engrossed in the story at times that I would have slightly nightmarish dreams if I fell asleep while reading it. I was disappointed in the ending though. The second half of the book was a build-up to the final destruction of Count Dracula… the waiting, the traveling, the planning… and it all happened so uneventfully, so easily, that the ending was a letdown. 

Favorite quote from the book:

"Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told."

My seventh (and current) book is Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. I'm a fan of Toni Morrison. She is a terrific storyteller and I highly recommend The Bluest Eye. It's the sort of book that stays with you long after you've put it back on the shelf. I've read it several times and enjoy it each time like it was the first. There are hints of those same qualities in Song of Solomon as well. I'm about 1/3 of the way through it and can tell it's going to become a favorite of mine.

The Rules

The Rules for my book list are simple:

1. Must start at least one book each month. I don't like to read more than one book at a time, so basically, I guess this means I must finish at least one book per month as well.
2. Must give each book a fair chance. I have to read at least 10 chapters or 1/3 of the book before I decide to continue on or abandon the book.
3. Must not spend any money on books. None of the books can be purchased. Each book on the list has to be a) borrowed from a library b) borrowed from a friend c) found online as an e-book or d) downloaded as an audiobook (this is a last resort. I love audiobooks but to really experience the book, I feel it needs to be in text form. Being able to hold the book is ideal.)
4. Have fun! Enjoy reading the book. Research the author. Get the backstory on the book. Find out what others thought of it. Learn something new with each book.

The List

1. A Bend in the River - V. S. Naipaul
2. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
3. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
4. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
5. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
6. An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
7. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
8. A Passage to India - E. M. Forster 
9. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 
10. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hussein
11. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
12. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
13. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
14. Atonement - Ian McEwen
15. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
16. Austerlitz - W. G. Sebald
17. Beloved - Toni Morrison
18. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
19. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
20. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
21. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
22. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
23. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
24. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
25. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (7 book series)
26. Clarissa - Samuel Richardson
27. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
28. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
29. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
30. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
31. Dangerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
32. Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
33. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
34. Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
35. Dracula - Bram Stoker
36. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
37. Dune - Frank Herbert
38. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
39. Emma - Jane Austen
40. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
41. Frankenstein-Mary Shelley
42. Germinal - Emile Zola
43. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
44. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
45. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
46. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
47. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
48. Herzog - Saul Bellow
49. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (3 book series)
50. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
51. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
52. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison 
53. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
54. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine
55. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
56. LA Confidential - James Ellroy
57. Lanark - Alasdair Gray
58. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
59. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
60. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
61. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
62. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
63. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
64. Malone Dies - Samuel Beckett
65. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
66. Men Without Women - Ernest Hemingway
67. Middlemarch - George Eliot
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Money - Martin Amis
71. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
72. Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
73. Native Son - Richard Wright
74. Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock
75. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
76. Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
77. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
78. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
79. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
80. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
81. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
82. Oscar And Lucinda - Peter Carey
83. Persuasion - Jane Austen
84. Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
85. Possession - AS Byatt
86. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
87. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
88. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
89. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
90. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
91. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
92. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
93. Sybil - Benjamin Disraeli
94. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
95. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
96. The BFG - Roald Dahl
97. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
98. The Black Sheep - Honore De Balzac
99. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
100. The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge
101. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
102. The Call of the Wild - Jack London
103. The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
104. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
105. The Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith
106. The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer
107. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
108. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
109. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
110. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
111. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
112. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
113. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - JRR Tolkien (3 book series)
114. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
115. The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
116. The Periodic Table - Primo Levi
117. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
118. The Plague - Albert Camus
119. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
120. The Pursuit Of Love - Nancy Mitford
121. The Quiet American - Graham Greene
122. The Rainbow - D. H. Lawrence
123. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
124. The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers
125. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
126. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
127. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
128. The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan (5 book series) 
129. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
130. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
131. The Tin Drum - Günter Grass
132. The Trial - Franz Kafka
133. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
134. The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
135. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
136. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
137. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
138. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
139. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carre
140. Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
141. Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
142. Ulysses - James Joyce
143. USA - John Dos Passos
144. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
145. Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
146. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
147. Watership Down - Richard Adams
148. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
149. Wise Children - Angela Carter
150. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 
151. ADDED April 29th 2011 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

Bolded Yellow - Currently reading
Red - Marked as unfinished
Blue - Finished

The Intro

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

Charles W. Eliot

The purpose of this blog is to follow-through on a goal I've set for myself last winter. I've always enjoyed books and started reading before I began school. My childhood bedroom was a constant mess of stacks of books from all genres and periods. Once every few months, my mother would make me clean out from under my bed where there would invariably be twenty or more books that never made it back to the library or friends bookshelves (I've gotten much better at returning books - trust me). I would have to box up my books about once a year and donate or give away in order to make space for new books that would always come my way. As I got older, relatives began giving me boxes of books they or their children have outgrown and I was introduced to the romantic novel this way, which is sort of to blame for the creation of this project. Truthfully, I never cared for romantic novels and really only read them when I could find nothing else.

Over the past two years, I've had some health problems that led me to being unemployed and in and out of hospitals often. I had a lot of time on my hands and never being a huge fan of tv, I read more in the past two years than I ever have before. I would literally read an entire book in one day and start another right away. My vision became blurry, my back cramped but still I read anything I could get my hands on. Nurses were a great source of books - but usually only romance novels like Nora Roberts or Mauve Binchy. I suffered through them but also began forming an idea in my head that would eventually become this list. What if I composed a list of books that are considered classics, or must-reads for educated people? Books that will contribute to my outlook on life, my knowledge? Never having gone to University, I've always suffered from a sort of idiot-complex. I envy University students who sit through lengthy lit classes and have intelligent discussions about Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and Hemingway. If I could research and put together a list of say, 150 books, and work on it for however long it took to read each one, I too could have some slice of knowledge that I could carry around with me, tucked away in some part of my brain. If ever a conversation about Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy came up, I too could say something somewhat intelligent, or at least that I've read that book and yes, I liked it too.

So, I looked around on the internet and found several lists of books that are stated to be what people (educated or not) should read at some point in their life, removed the duplicates, as well as the books I have already read and limited it to 150. Of course, you will notice that there are actually more than 150 books on this list as some of the choices are a series of books that I felt it was important to read the whole series and not just the first book in the series written by the author. An example of this is The Lord of The Rings trilogy by J.R.R Tolkien.

I plan to keep a private "book journal" where I list what I thought of the book, length of time to read the book and whether I would recommend the book to others, some of that information, I will share here as well. Really, the list/journal is not for anyone else to take to heart, and I will be the first to say that I am in no way, shape or form, an expert with credentials to be forming such a list. However, I love to read and I also love to set goals for myself. Basically, this book list is a long term goal for me to accomplish. The blog is really a form of accountability for myself while working through my list. And if anyone happens to stumble across it and wants to agree/disagree with me or share their own list, that would be a perk to having the blog out there. 

I have not set a deadline for myself, but do think I will start at least one book per month. Some of the books on the list are over 1500 pages in length and may take longer than a month to read, depending on what else I have going on in my life at the time.

One rule I have set for myself is that I must give each and every book a fair chance. So, I'm setting a flexible "minimum chapters read". I should give the book at least 10 chapters to get me interested. If, after 10 chapters, I'm really not in sync with , or liking the book, I will mark it as unread and carry on with the next choice on the list.

The list has been alphabetized by title for organizational purposes and is not an indication of the order in which the books are to be read. Truthfully, the books will be read in the order of my personal interest and the ability to find the book at the library or online. None of the following books will be purchased. All will either be borrowed or downloaded. Audio books will also be acceptable substitutes.