Tuesday 7 December 2010

The 1001 Books to Read Before You Die Challenge


Now, although this is a new challenge and I'm signing up I'm not counting it in my alloted challenges because each year I try to read 30 books of the 1001 list, and participate with a group of readers over at bookcrossing who do something similar (in fact some of them aim for 50 or 100 books from the list a year!) But I saw that the 1001 challenge was being hosted at Pub Writes and signed up as I'm hoping other readers reviews will push me towards some of the books on the list I'm not aware of.
The challenge over on this blog is to have read between 5-16 books, I'm aiming for 40 as that is a doable amount, and making it harder I'm trying to spread my reading across the centuries. Here is a list I'd like to work through, those in bold I own.
21st century
1. The Red Queen, Margaret Drabble
2. Youth, J.M Coetzee
3. Adjunct: An Undigest, Peter Manson
4. Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas
5. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
20th Century
6. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
7. Great Apes, Will Self
8. Cocaine Nights, JG Ballard
9. Written on the Body, Jenette Winterson
10. Jazz, Toni Morrison
11. Wild Swans, Jung Chang
12. Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, Louis de Bernieres
13. A Disaffection, James Kelman
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
15. The Swimming Pool Diary, Alan Hollinghurst
16. Nervous Conditions, Tsisti Dangarmbga
17. Shindlers Ark, Thomas Keanally
18. The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
19. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
20. Do Androids Dream of Sheep, Phillip K. Dick
21. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
22. Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe
23. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa
24. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
25. A Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier
26. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
27. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
28. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
29. Orlando, Virginia Woolf
30. Amerika, Franz Kafka
31. The Forsythe Saga, John Galsworthy
32. Gabriella, Clove, Cinnamon, Jorge Amado
19th Century
33. Hunger, Knat Hamsum
34. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
35. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
35. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
36. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
18th Century +
37. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
38. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
39. Don Quixote, Migel da Cervantes Saavedra
40. Metamorphoses, Ovid
41, Aesop's Fables, Aesopus
42. The Tale of Genjii, Mueraski Shikibu
43. The Thousand and One Nights
44. Ooronoko, Aphra Behn

As you can see it is an ambiyios list but if managed I would lighten up a good few book shelves, as most of these books would be sent out through book crossing to find other readers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a diverse list! If I do this challenge next year, I am going to up the levels. I figured I would wean people into reading from the list!

Thanks for joining!