Thursday, October 24, 2013

Reading Down the House




A reading challenge has been issued at "An Exacting Life" and I am taking it on. It really does mesh well with the reading challenges I began at the beginning of the year.
The goal is to whittle down those many books we have on our shelves that we haven't read. I have soooo many of those! Read Down the House
My problem (but also my obsession!) is that when I see a book I have to read (especially at Costco), I end up buying it.
I have decided that for the rest of the year I will not buy any more books, but focus on the books on my many shelves that are calling out to be read.
There are 10 weeks left of this year (!) and 52 weeks next year which adds up to 62 books (my age next year - I like the symmetry there). So minimum of 1 book a week (although I may read more.)

Here are the first 26 I plan to read (not in any particular order):


Fiction
Three Day Road  by Joseph Boyden
U is for Understanding  by Sue Grafton
The Hobbit  by JRR Tolkien
The Time Keeper  by Mitch Albom
Unless  by Carol Shields
Lives of Mothers and Daughters  by Alice Munro
And the  Mountains Echoed  by Khaled Hosseini
Suite Francaise  by Irene Nemirov
Alice I Have Been  by Melanie Benjamin
The Year of the Flood  by Margaret Atwood
The Casual Vacancy  by J.K. Rowling

Non-Fiction
Wheat Belly  by William Davis
Undiet  by Meghan Telpner
Salt Sugar Fat  by Michael Moss
Forks over Knives  by Gene Stone
On Writing  by Stephen King
If You Want to Write  by Brenda Ueland
Lucky Man  by Michael J. Fox
The Bread Winner Trilogy  by Deborah Ellis
Into the Abyss  by Carol Shaben
12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women  by Gail McMeeken
Inner Excavation  by Liz Lamoreaux
The Outliers  by Malcolm Gladwell
Life is a Verb  by Patti Digh
A Woman's Worth  by Marianne Willaimson
Living Me to We  by Craig and Marc Kielberger
Julie and Julia  by Julie Powell

 Why not join in the challenge - a great way to "Read Down the House"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your list! Now you've reminded me that I'm not quite up to date on my Sue Graftons. I have only read to T! Very timely to read Alice Munro. I have got Salt Sugar Fat home from the library but I am afraid to read it so I might just send it back!

Jennifer said...

oh my goodness what a fantastic idea. I have so many half read books on my shelf that I need to read the entire thing.

Coreopsis said...

I actually donated 35 boxes of books to the Friends of the Public Library sale two summers ago. You'd never guess that looking at the books I have left. But it was almost all of my fiction (the ones I won't ever reread), most of my college textbooks (which I'd been keeping because I felt like somehow they defined me--but Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, really?) and other things that I know I will never look at or lend to anyone.

I haven't read anything on your fiction list above, but did enjoy a number of those nonfiction books, especially the Malcolm Gladwell one. Wheat Belly had a lot of interesting information, but after the whole book of saying "lose the wheat, lose the weight" it said at the end "Oh, by the way, if you replace wheat with any other refined carbohydrates, you won't get any of these benefits," which seemed a little disingenuous to me.