I had really good intentions of blogging about my life with twins, but I haven't made an effort to keep up with it. I think because I'm so busy with the babies that when I have a few minutes to myself, the last thing I want to do is think about babies. So I've decided to try a new topic for the blog - books!
I thought it would be really cool to try to read the greatest books ever written and blog about them. The problem is, how can anyone know what the greatest books ever written are? I googled it, and there are literally hundreds of lists of the greatest books ever written, and none of them are the same. In the end, the list I chose to follow is not one of the greatest books of all time at all, although it claims to be. The list was put together by Indigo Books, who asked Canadians in an online poll what their favorite books were, and compiled the top 100. This list is mostly newer books, and there's no way this is meant to be the greatest books of all time - Confessions of a Shopaholic made the list, but Lolita didn't. But I like this list because it shows what the average person is reading and enjoying. It also has some distinctly Canadian content (Anne of Green Gables and Fall on Your Knees). There are a few true classics (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre), and even a few that I've never heard of (Catch-22 and Summer Tree).
Just to make things interesting, I'm giving myself a timeline - 1 year to read 100 great books. That's roughly a book every 3 days, but some are super quick reads, like Charlotte's Web and Tuesday's With Morrie. If I can do the short ones in a day, I can have extra time for the lengthy ones, like A Fine Balance or Dune. And even though I've read a lot of these before, the rule is that I have to reread them. I'll try to blog about each of the books as I go along - maybe a few at a time if I get behind, but I'll try to stay caught up. We'll see how it goes with the babies.
So, without further adieu, here is the complete list:
1 The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
2 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3 To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4 Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
5 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
6 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
7 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
8 Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
9 Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
10 A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
11 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
12 Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
13 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
14 A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
15 Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
16 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
17 Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald
18 The Stand, Stephen King
19 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
20 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
21 The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
22 The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
23 Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
24 The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
25 Life of Pi, Yann Martel
26 The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
27 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
28 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
29 East of Eden, John Steinbeck
30 Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
31 Dune, Frank Herbert
32 The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
33 Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
34 1984, George Orwell
35 The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
36 The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
37 The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
38 I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
39 The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
40 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
41 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
42 The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
43 Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sophie Kinsella
44 The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
45 The Bible
46 Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
47 The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
48 Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
49 The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
50 She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
51 The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
52 A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
53 Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
54 Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
55 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
56 The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence
57 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling
58 The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
59 The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
60 The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
61 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
62 The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
63 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
64 Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
65 Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
66 One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
67 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares
68 Catch-22, Joseph Heller
69 Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
70 The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
71 Bridget Jones’ Diary, Helen Fielding
72 Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
73 Shogun, James Clavell
74 The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
75 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
76 Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay
77 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
78 The World According to Garp, John Irving
79 The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
80 Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
81 Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley
82 Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
83 Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
84 Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind
85 Emma, Jane Austen
86 Watership Down, Richard Adams
87 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88 The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
89 Blindness, Jose Saramago
90 Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
91 In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
92 Lord of The Flies, William Golding
93 The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
94 The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
95 The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum
96 The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
97 White Oleander, Janet Fitch
98 A Woman of Substance, Barbara Taylor Bradford
99 The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
100 Ulysses, James Joyce
