100 classic novels in 365 days.

T

thematthewbone

Well-known member
I am trying to read 100 books over the course of the next year. I feel like there is all these great books out there that everyone talks about and nobody reads. Well, I figure it is time to find out what I am missing.

The list is as follows.
1) Robinson Curusoe – Daniel Defoe
2) 1984 – George Orwell
3) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4) The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Sallinger
5) The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
6) Lord of the Flies – William Golding
7) As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
8) The Count of Monte Christo – Alexandre Dumas
9) Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen
10) War & Peace – Leo Tolstoy
11) Animal Farm – George Orwell
12) Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
13) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
14) David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
15) The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
16) Moby Dick – Herman Melville
17) Lolita – Vladimir Nobokov
18) The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
19) East of Eden - John Steinbeck
20) Catch – 22 – Joseph Heller
21) A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
22) Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
23) Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
24) The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
25) Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
26) The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
27) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
28) A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
29) Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
30) A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
31) One Flew Over the Coockoo's Nest – Ken Kesey
32) Uncle Tom's Cabin – Harriett Beecher Stowe
33) Call of the Wild – Jack London
34) The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingslover
35) Life of Pi – Yann Martel
36) Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
37) Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
38) Watership Down - Richard Adams
39) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
40) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
41) On the Road - Jack Kerouac
42) This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald
43) Siddharthra - Herman Hesse
44) Absolam Absolam - William Faulkner
45) Hey Rube - Hunter S. Thompson
46) Naked Lunch -William Burroughs
47) Howl - Allen Ginsberg
48) The Bluest Eye -Toni Morrison
49) Dracula - Bram Stoker
50) Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
51) The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
52) A Graveyard for Lunatics - Ray Bradbury
53) I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

As you can see I haven't finished my list yet so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I figure I need to read about 4 a week to save some time for the behemoths like War and Peace, The Count of Monte Christo, etc etc.

I was just wondering if anyone else had ever tried something like this before? And if so any words of encouragement, advice...maybe?

Wish me luck.
 
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i am not too sure i am giving myself "deadlines." i look at it as more of a personal challenge.

of course we all read the majority of these books at some point in school and most then write them off. i feel like i have grown considerably since my high school and college lit days and therefore want to revisit the ones i've read and read the ones i have not.

i do present it as a challenge because it gives me a sense of motivation, of urgency. this is probably just my own lazy way but if i didn't attempt to do it this way i would put them off and put them off and i would spend my life without ever truly getting to understand why these books are so lauded.

at this moment this doesn't feel like a looming workload but more a project of passion. who better to learn storytelling from than the men and women who are on that list above. if i get to the point where i am no longer enjoying the books but merely speed-reading through them i will rethink this entire thing.

but until then, i will do. at least attempt to do.

an ambitious project it is but nonetheless, an exciting one. for me atleast.
 
Whoops, sorry, I deleted my post after you posted your list. My post didn't make sense after you edited yours.

Well, it looks like you have a lot of good material to start with. Good luck!

There's a bunch on your list that I started years ago and never finished...you're making me want to try them again. :)

Out of curiosity, how did you come up with that list? It's pretty eclectic is why I ask. Are they books you've been meaning to read or were recommended to you?
 
it is a compilation of books i read but can't recollect and the books that i always told myself i was going to read.

i actually just started writing a list. my roommates chirped in some too and if they had a book in their library that i wanted to read in snuck in there.

i started this on february 16th and here it is the 19th and i have read Brave New World, East of Eden and am just about to complete The Poisonwood Bible.

East of Eden is one of those gargantuan novels I never would have read but always would have liked to read. Books like that are the main reason I feel like I need to do this. Would never get through it without motivation. Let alone in a day and a half.
 
Great idea and I support you on your effort. (I should read MUCH more than I do.) My only concern is that you're trying to bite-off more books than you can chew and that you won't have the time you need to complete 4 books a week.

Questions; Does it normally take you longer than 2-3 days to read an entire book? Do you work full time? Do you have a social life? Do you make films in your spare time? If you answer yes to any of those then you might want to aim for 52 books in one year (a book a week) which is still A LOT of literature in one year. It's also the exact number of books on your list!! (A great list, by the way.)

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck. Now crack open those books!!! :)
 
Having read all of those, except Life of Pi and the Kingslover book, I can tell you you are going to miss out on a lot by trying to cram in 4 a week. Many of them are pretty dense and will likely require some secondary study to really get all that's going on.

If I were going to choose one Dickens, I might choose Bleak House over Copperfield. Copperfield has some great characters, like the evil step-dad, Uriah Heap and Micawber. But for some reason, it never really hit me as hard as Bleak House. But when I read one dickens novel, I was not able to stop until I had read them all. That's always a danger...:) I would definitely throw Tale of Two Cities off the list in favor something like Bleak House. It's a WAY better book.

Good luck. I don't read as much as I used to either, and it bugs me. I've recently made a decision to get back on it and have at least one books going at any one time. I am about to start the "Schrödinger's Cat trilogy." I had read the Illuminatus books years ago and thought they were a hoot, but had never got round to these.
 
I have read about half the books you list, but its been so long I feel I should probably revisit them. Many of the others on your list are books I've always wanted to read but never quite got to. If nothing else you've inspired me to start reading again :thumbsup:

I agree with everyone, slow down so you can actually enjoy and absorb the story's and the characters.

Mark - I've read Copperfield, but not Bleak House. I loved Copperfield so you have piqued my curiosity on the other book ... I think I'm heading to the book store today :)
 
Might want to throw some classic sci-fi in there.

The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
Rendevouz with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs (goofy fun)
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson (SOMEONE MAKE A MOVIE!)
 
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War and Peace . Possibly the best book I have ever read. Plus the size isn't really that daunting. I would love to see this box made into a 36 hour mini-series.
 
I see you already have it on your list. That is a great list there. I read about 40% of them. All great books.

Moby Dick is an odd book. Fantastic story but really part book and part encylopedia. You will learn more about whales than you ever thought you would.
 
NY Times ran a "25 Greatest Novels" cover story twice in the last 40 years in the Sunday paper. Try searching for that and drop what you don't have into your list.

BTW, you must be a might fast reader!
 
thank you battuta for the recommendations i am going to throw some sci-fi onto my list now.

in response to the time issue, i don't feel i am rushing through the books. i stopped watching television and playing video games and it is truly amazing how much time that has freed up. 5-6 hours a day.

i am kind of embarassed to admit i watched 6 hours of television a day but its true.

between the bus ride to and fro work, my newly found freetime, and of course the time spent going number two i have been able to get a lot of reading done in a shorter amount of time than i even thought before i undertook this.

and oh how these books are so more fulfilling, and thought-provoking than television.
 
Though not "classics", anything by Orson Scott Card is a good read also. Of course, "Ender's Game", but also his "Alvin Maker" series was a very interesting, intriguing read, IMHO
 
"1984" is without a doubt.. my favourite novel... ever.

damn...what a bittersweet piece of awesome..
 
I don't know if these are already on the list and I missed them, or if you've already read them, but:

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Stranger, Albert Camus

The Plague, Albert Camus
 
Burmese Days, George Orwell

The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie

The Name of the Rose, Baudolino, and The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco

Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, and The Western Lands, William S. Burroughs

Against the Fall of Night, Arthur C. Clarke

Hollywood, Charles Bukowski (you will laugh your ass off...)
 
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Michael Miller
The Power and the Glory
and The Quiet American by Graham Greene
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
 
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I just read this and I thought it was great.

I'm reading Catcher in the Rye right now and I'm enjoying it so far.

I never used to read very much but the past few months I've been reading a book a week.
 
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