My doctor's appointment went relatively well on Monday. There's some progress and a bit more frustration. I'll talk more about that on Friday. Today, let's talk lists. I love lists. And when it comes to reading, I keep many. There are lists I make of books that I'd like to read, and there are lists that I've found of books that I should read. I enjoy tracking my books and comparing them to those "best of" or "must read" lists.
Recently, I came across a list of the 30 books you should read before turning 30 (found via Miss Bibliophile). I turn 30 in three months so I was curious to see where I stood. Here's the list, with the books I've read bolded and books I own in blue:
30 Before 30
- The Iliad and the Odyssey: Homer
- The Secret History: Donna Tartt
- Jesus’ Son: Denis Johnson
- The Complete Stories: Flannery O’Connor
- Much Ado about Nothing: William Shakespeare
- The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway
- The Road: Cormac McCarthy
- Maus: Art Spiegelman
- Ender’s Game: Orson Scott Card
- Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen
- Middlesex: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Ghost World: Daniel Clowes
- On the Road: Jack Kerouac
- Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston
- Cat’s Cradle: Kurt Vonnegut
- Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov
- The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien
- 1984: George Orwell
- The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger
- The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Beloved: Toni Morrison
- Infinite Jest: David Foster Wallace
- Lord of the Flies: William Golding
- Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes
- The Trial: Franz Kafka
- To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf
- Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury
- Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison
- To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee
- Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stevenson
Yikes! Apparently, I'll be entering my 30s lacking a lot of literary enlightenment.
Another recent find is the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge (also via Miss Bibliophile). I love Gilmore Girls and it's mind-boggling to see just how many books were referenced during its seven season run. This challenge lists all of them. There are around 250 titles on the list. So far, I've read 56 of them. Or possibly 46. I lost count somewhere along the way!
Other lists I use:
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (64/1294*)
Modern Library Top 100 (11 from the Board list, 14 from the Reader list)
The Observer's 100 Best Novels of All Time (18)
*There have been two more editions of this list since it originally came out. The 1294 comes from combining all of the books that have appeared in all versions of the list.
Do you use lists to track your reading or to help you choose books?
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