January 2013 – December 2013
The past couple of months, I have been thinking about all the books I’ve always meant to read. The list is extensive – and I’m sure many of you can relate! So, I decided that this year’s challenge is not going to be limited to one author. I’m going to challenge myself to read twelve books I’ve always meant to read, one each month of 2013. I’m hoping that some of you will want to read the same books, and thus each month will be like a read-along.
In order to get the most participation from you, my fellow readers, I’m going to give you a long list of books to vote on. You can join me for one book, two, five, or even all twelve! Simply leave your top five choices in the comments below. On December 28th, I’ll post the twelve titles that got the most votes, and a schedule of which books we’ll read each month.
I really meant to get this post up last month, so there would be longer to pick the books and be ready to start by January 1st, but I’m thinking that many of you probably have a lot of these books sitting on your to-read shelf, just like I do. Once I know the winning books, I will choose a short one for January, in case it takes some of us a week or so to get our hands on a copy.
Here are the books we’ll be choosing from:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
1984 by George Orwell
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Forever by Pete Hamill
The Local News by Miriam Gershow
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Again, leave your top five picks in the comments below. Once we have our titles and a schedule, I’ll post a challenge sign-up page that you can link your blog to. Happy reading!
For more information and to sign-up, please see this post.
