So for 2020, one of my goals is to read more books. Reading for me has always been a chore. I have dyslexia so reading has not been one of my strongest tasks. Often at the end of a busy day at school, I would be too frustrated to read for fun. Later, at University I had a degree that required a lot of reading (actually most degrees require that…) so reading for fun at the end of the day was never an option for me. Reading films as well can also be quite a challenge and requires me to pause the film for a bit and come back to it on occasion.
This year although I would like to see how far I can get down this 100 Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die (Ranked!) list from Business Insider.
Although the first thing I did was to change the order. A couple of authors appear on this list more than once (J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling for example), I’ve moved them together so I can follow the book story, rather than chop and change to another book. I have a feeling I would, if I enjoyed the story, wish to continue with it, and for J.R.R. Tolkien in particular, The Lord of the Rings was ranked higher than the Hobbit, even though the Hobbit is set before. With J.K. Rowling I will probably break from the list and read the missing books from the series, so after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I would read the Chamber of Secrets and then come back to read the Prisoner of Azkaban. Also, I moved the Bronte sisters together as I thought it might be interesting to compare their styles.
One thing that perplexes me about this list is: why does the Lord of the Rings get lumped together as one book, when other series, like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games, get more than one listing on the top 100?
The challenge is to see how far down this list I can get in 12 months. Wish me luck!
- Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (01/01/2020-09/02/2020)
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- Anne Frank – The Diary of Anne Frank
- George Orwell – 1984
- George Orwell – Animal Farm
- J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
- J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit
- J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
- The Following of the Ring
- The Two Towers
- The Lord of the Rings
- F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
- E.B. White – Charlotte’s Web
- Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
- Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
- Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
- Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
- Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
- J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
- Markus Zusak – The Book Thief
- Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Mark Twain – The Adventure of Tom Sawyer
- Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games
- Suzanne Collins – Catching Fire
- Suzanne Collins – Mockingjay
- Kathryn Stockett – The Help
- C.S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia
- C.S. Lewis – The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe
- John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
- John Steinbeck – East of Eden
- William Golding – The Lord of the Flies
- Khaled Hosseini – The Kate Runner
- Elie Wiesel – Night
- William Shakespeare – Hamlet
- William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet
- Williams Shakespeare – Macbeth
- Madeleine L’Engle – A Wrinkle in Time
- Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities
- Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
- Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
- Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
- Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
- Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
- Lois Lowry – The Giver
- Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
- Shel Silverstein – Where the Sidewalk Ends
- John Green – The Fault in Our Stars
- L.M. Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables
- Stieg Larrson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
- The Holy Bible: King James Version
- Alice Walker – The Color Purple
- Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo
- Betty Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
- Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
- Joseph Heller – Catch-22
- Stephen King – The Stand
- Diana Gabaldon – Outlander
- OrsonScott Card – Enders Game
- Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
- Richard Adams – Watership Down
- Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha
- Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
- George R.R. Martin- A Game of Thrones
- Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
- Arthur Conan Doyle – The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (#3)
- Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
- Yann Martel – Life of Pi
- Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar – Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge
- Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth
- Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Bram Stoker – Dracula
- William Goldman – The Princess Bride
- Sara Gruen – Water for Elephants
- Edgar Allan Poe – The Raven
- Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees
- Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
- Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife
- Homer – The Obyssey
- Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth (House of Earth #1)
- Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None
- Colleen McCullough – The Thorn Birds
- John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Jeannette Walls – The Glass Castle
- Rebecca Skloot – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
- Cormac McCarthy – The Road
- Tim O’Brien – The Things They Carried
- Hermann Hesse – Siddhrtha
- Toni Morrison – Beloved
- Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse
- Abraham Verghese – Cutting for Stone
- Norton Juster – The Phantom Tollbooth
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
- Helen Keller – The Story of My Life
Random Endeavours 