The Big Goal

One of the many time-suck activities on Facebook is to go through the BBC's "Big Read" list of 100 books that everyone should read (average person has read 7ish) and mark which ones you have read. I'm pretty sure this is some sort of spot the nerd test, but since it said "book" and "BBC" I duly joined in and discovered to my pleasant surprise that I had read a little less than half the books. Making me a little less than half a complete book nerd.

And since I love to complete a list, and because I've developed a little case of Library Card-enduced ADD (I go in for a book and come out with 12, and then panic and think I have to read all 12 at once. Moderation has never been a strength I've claimed.), I set a goal for myself to finish off the Big Read. No end date, but I read about a book a week, so maybe by the end of 2010 if I'm not too distracted by other books that come out.

It's been nice having a target for when I make my library trip. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. And there are a few that I want to read aloud to Colin for a little mommy and bumble time since I know I am extremely selfish when it comes to taking the time to read. (I was reading the other day and Colin thumbed through the pages and said, "that's lots of pages Mommy!")

If you at all track my Library Thing list thingie over there on the right, I'm not going to add all these books in there except for those I started reading after my self challenge. Here's where I stand today:

Have read:
1. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
2. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
3. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
4. Animal Farm - George Orwell
5. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
6. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
7. Atonement - Ian McEwan
8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
9. Charlotte's Web - EB White
10. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
11. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12. Dracula - Bram Stoker
13. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
14. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
15. Hamlet - Shakespeare
16. Harry Potter series
17. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
18. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
19. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
20. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
21. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
22. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
23. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
24. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude
26. Possession - AS Byatt
27. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
28. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
29. The Bible – (the good bits)
30. The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
31. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
33. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
34. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
35. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
36. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
39. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
40. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
41. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
42. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
43. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
44. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
45. Watership Down - Richard Adams
46. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
47. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier


To Read:
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
2. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
3. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
4. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
5. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
6. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
7. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
8. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
9. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
10. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
11. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
12. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
15. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
16. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
17. Complete Works of Shakespeare
18. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
19. Dune - Frank Herbert
20. Emma - Jane Austen
21. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
22. Germinal - Emile Zola
23. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
24. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
25. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
26. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
27. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
28. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
29. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
30. Middlemarch - George Eliot
31. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
32. Nineteen eightyfour - George Orwell
33. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
34. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
35. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
36. Persuasion - Jane Austen
37. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
38. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
39. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
40. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
41. The Five People You Meet In Heaven
42. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
43. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe
44. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
45. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
46. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
47. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
48. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
49. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
50. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
51. Ulysses - James Joyce
52. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
53. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
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Incidentially, I went on to the BBC's website to find out when the list was created, and while they do have a list, it doesn't quite match up with the Facebook version. Since I've read more on the Facebook version, I'm sticking with that one. =)