All entries for Monday 05 February 2007

February 05, 2007

On Bettering Oneself

I used to read a book a day, and now I’ve sunk to such levels that I’m lucky if I manage a book a year. It bothers me so much that I’ve set myself the task of bridging this literary deficit as quickly as possible, starting with “To Kill a Mocking Bird”.

What are the classics that you would consider unmissable reading? Are there any books that changed your life or worldview? I’m giving myself a year to get through as many suggestions as possible…

_{And yes Hughes, Catch 22 is on the list already.}

M xxx

Should read:
1984 – George Orwell
A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
A Million Little Pieces - James Fray
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Animal Farm – Orwell
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Between Silk and Cyanide – Leo Marks
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Coming Up For Air – George Orwell
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
Emma - Jane Austen
Everything Is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Going Solo - Roald Dahl
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
Homage To Catalonia - George Orwell
How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell - Susanna Clarke
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Once in a House on Fire - Andrea Ashworth
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha – Roddy Doyle
Romance Of The Three Kingdoms - Lo Kuan-Chung and C.H. Brewitt-Taylor
Sandman - Neil Gaiman
Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder
Tess D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
The Forever War
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
The Kite Runner – Khaleid Hosseini
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The Outsider - Albert Camus
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Transmetropolitan - Warren Ellis
War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

Currently reading: Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson
& The Sound Of Laughter - Peter Kay

Have read:
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett (I fell off the waggon...)
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (I fell off the waggon again...)
The Discworld Companion - Terry Pratchett (And again...)
Colony - Rob Grant (Screw the waggon.)
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee
The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson