I was reading April's blog, Good Books & Good Wine, and she mentioned in a post of hers reading a particular book because of a Fill in the Gaps project. Intrigued, I browsed through her blog to see what it meant. A few days later, I stumbled across this blog, The Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project that talks about the challenge a little more, because it's specifically about this challenge.
I like this idea a lot. There's a lot of books/authors out there that I feel a little bit like a failure at life because I've never read. There are definitely a lot of gaps in my reading repertoire, many books I really want to read (whether I'm interested in the book itself, or merely so I can haughtily say, Why yes, I have read that.) and I like this challenge, because it gives me focus, as well as a time line. And, since I'm putting it on my blog, that's like, commitment.
So, the 'rules' are a little loose, and open to personal interpretation, but I'm going with pretty much what they laid out on the blog — 100 'missing' books read within the next 5 years. Although, since it's almost December now, I'm going to give myself until December of 2015, so I guess I'm snitching an extra 2 days. I'm committing to reading this whole list within the next 5 years. We'll see how that goes!:) If any of you are participating in this, I'd love to see what you are reading/ the progress you are making!
So, thanks April, for being my inspiration.
My list of 100 'missing' books, to remedy the fact that I'm almost a literary failure: (*= books I own)
1. The Return of the King — J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Harriet the Spy — Louise Fitzhugh*
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — Ken Kesey*
4. White Fang — Jack London*
5. The Illiad — Homer
6. The Divine Comedy — Dante*
7. On the Road — Jack Kerouac
8. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte*
9. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen* (or any Austen minus Pride and Prejudice)
10. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley*
11. The Mists of Avalon — Marion Zimmer Bradley
12. The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood*
13. The Shining — Stephen King
14. A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
15. American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis
16. Flowers for Algernon — Daniel Keyes
17. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 — Beverly Cleary
18. Blubber — Judy Blume
19. I am the Cheese — Robert Cormier
20. A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway* (Or The Sun Also Rises*)
21. Uncle Tom's Cabin — Harriet Beecher Stowe*
22. Stargirl — Jerry Spinelli
23. Anthem — Ayn Rand
24. After the Rain — Norma Fox Mazer*
25. The Stand — Stephen King
26. Gone with the Wind — Margaret Mitchell
27. Pigs in Heaven — Barbara Kingsolver*
28. The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner*
29. King of the Wind — Marguerite Henry*
30. Great Expectations — Charles Dickens* (Or any other Dickens minus A Christmas Carol)
31. Homeland — R.A. Salvatore32. O. Henry's Stories — O. Henry (at least one collection)*
33. Our Town — Thornton Wilder*
34. Candide — Voltaire*
35. Pygmalion — George Bernard Shaw*
36. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
37. The Screwtape Letters — C.S. Lewis*
38. The Shipping News — Annie Proulx*
39. Wicked — Gregory Maguire
40. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers*
41. The Road — Cormac McCarthy
42. Watership Down — Richard Adams
43. The Golden Compass — Phillip Pullman*
44. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle — Hugh Lofting*
45. The Story of Mankind — Hendrik Van Loon*
46. Black Beauty — Anna Sewell
47. The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett*
48. Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery
49. Sabriel — Garth Nix
50. The Princess and the Goblin — George MacDonald
51. In the Forests of the Night — Amelia Atwater Rhodes
52. The Cider House Rules — John Irving*
53. The Winter's Tale — William Shakespeare (substitute possible)
54. Howl's Moving Castle — Diana Wynne Jones
55. Ender's Game — Orson Scott Card
56. The Glass Castle — Jeannette Walls
57. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — Betty Smith
58. A Little Princess — Frances Hodgson Burnett*
59. The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame
60. Middlesex — Jeffry Eugenides
61. The Secret Life of Bees — Sue Monk Kidd*
62. Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden*
63. War of the Worlds — H.G. Wells*
64. Beloved — Toni Morrison
65. Nineteen Minutes — Jodi Picoult (Substitute Picoult book possible)
66. East of Eden — John Steinbeck*
67. The Five People You Met in Heaven — Mitch Albom*
68. The Knife of Never Letting Go — Patrick Ness
69. Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
70. Dealing with Dragons — Patricia C. Wrede
71. Among the Hidden — Margaret Peterson Haddix
72. The Book of Three — Lloyd Alexander
73. The Lightning Thief — Rick Riordan
74. Rebecca — Daphne Du Marier*
75. The Jungle — Upton Sinclair*
76. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
77. Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe
78. My Name is Asher Lev — Chaim Potok
79. The Thirteenth Tale — Diane Setterfield*
80. Man's Search for Meaning — Victor Frankl81. Trumpet of the Swan — E.B. White*
82. Twenty Boy Summer — Sarah Ockler*
83. An Abundance of Katherines — John Green
84. One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez (or Love in the Time of Cholera)
85. The (Unabridged) Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
86. The Ropemaker — Peter Dickinson*
87. Inkheart — Cornelia Funke
88. The Mysterious Benedict Society — Trenton Lee Stewart
89. Milkweed — Jerry Spinelli90. Freakonimics — Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner*
91. Mother Night — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.*
92. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — Mark Twain*
93. Oedipus Rex — Sophocles*
94. Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostevsky*
95. The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper*
96. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — Alexander Solzhenitsyn*
97. The Perilous Gard — Elizabeth Marie Pope
98. Tam Lin — Pamela Dean
99. 84, Charing Cross Road — Helene Hanff
100. Twelfth Night — William Shakespeare
Read: 3/100
Need to Read: 97/100