03 January, 2015

100 Best Book Challenge 2015

This is a continuation of a challenge I started in 2014. Basically I found a Best Books list that I liked and decided to see if I could read 10 books from it that I hadn't read before. I chose this list - 100 Books to Read Before You Die, but you could use any list you want. Once again I'm aiming for 10 books, one from each category. The full list is below. 

In red are the books I have read prior to starting the challenge in 2014. At this stage I had read 39 of the 100 books listed.

In blue are the books read in 2014. I added 9 books to my have read list in 2014, taking my total to 48 of the 100 books.

In 2015 I will be highlighting the books read in
orange.


COMPLETE LIST

Australian
Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
My Brilliant Career – Miles Franklin
The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Steuel
Foal's Bread – Gillian Mears
Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay
True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
Carpentaria – Alexis Wright
Riders In The Chariot – Patrick White
The Power of One – Bryce Courtenay
For the Term of his Natural Life – Marcus Clarke
General Fiction
The Handmaid's Tale – Magaret Atwood
Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Middlesex – Jeffery Eugenides
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Life of Pi – Yann Matel
Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
My Sister's Keeper – Jodi Picoult
Crime

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
From Russia with Love – Ian Fleming
The Woman in While – Wilkie Collins
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Gorky Park – Martin Cruz Smith
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – John le Carre
Classic
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Love
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
Outlander (Cross Stitch) – Diana Gabaldon
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
Fifty Shades of Grey – EL James
The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough
War
For Whom The Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Desert Boys – Peter Rees
The Debacle – Emile Zola
The Iliad – Homer
The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
From Here to Eternity – James Jones
Matterhorn – Karl Marlantes
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Young Adult
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Charlotte's Web – EB White
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Arrival – Shaun Tan
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exapery
Harry Potter and The Philospher's Stone – JK Rowling
Humorous
Bridget Jones's Diary – Helen Fielding
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
Travels with my Aunt – Graham Greene
Catch 22 – Joseph Hieler
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Adams
The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens
The Wode of the Woosters – PG Wodehouse
Sci-Fi
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
1984 – George Orwell
Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep – Phillip K Dick
I, Robot – Issac Asimov
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut Jr
War of the Worlds – HG Wells
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeline L'Engle
Fantasy
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Fairytales from the Brothers Grimm – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Wizard of Oz – L Frank Baum
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Stand – Stephen King
A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin
Mort – Terry Pratchett
The Wheel of Time – Robert Jordan
The Dying Earth – Jack Vance