Reading Project

Eli and I both love to read. I would bet if you did an analysis of our spending, you would find that our biggest non-household/baby/bill expenditure would be for books. We also patronize our local library, but we both much prefer to own books. We actually tend to read them over and over again. We currently have 6 bookcases filled with books, not including all of Eli's reference books which are currently packed in a rubbermaid storage container. Every couple of years we go through all the bookcases and make a donation either to Goodwill or the local library, but honestly we don't usually give up many of our books.

We both have our favorite authors, and our collection is heavy on their writing. What we both realized a few weeks ago is that we haven't done much reading outside of our favorites list in a very long time. This discussion led us to a mutual desire to read books that have earned the label of "classic". We both began looking for lists on the internet; lists of AP reading suggestions, college book reviews' top 100 novels, even lists of the new modern classics. We were both amazed at the number of books we had not read. We both took AP English and several upper level literature classes in college, and yet only manage to take a tiny chunk out of a huge list. In reviewing the lists and marking those books we had read, we realized in many cases we'd had to pick one of two books for a class assignment, and the other book was never read. This led to what we feel are some major holes in our reading resumes.

We have each created a list of 10 books to begin our project. We expanded our selection to include Time's 100 novels of the 20th century as voted on by their board, and also their list as voted on by the public. This means that we have included some novels that you might never read in a classroom, but have been given recognition by the public as something special. We also have included volumes of poetry and some plays.

Here are our lists:

Sam
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The World According to Garp, John Irving
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Animal Farm, George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Persuasion, Jane Austen

Eli
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Ulysses, James Joyce
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Wild Duck, Henrik Ibsen
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The Divine Comedy, Dante