MizB’s “I Should Read” List:
Note: This is my *starter* list… more books coming soon! (It just keeps getting longer, and longer…)
((I am aiming to read at least 52 of these, but will hopefully read more))
** anything by Jane Austen (Persuasion; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Sense and Sensibility)
A Breath of Fresh Air – Amulya Malladi
A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest J. Gaines
A Perfect Day – Richard Paul Evans
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini^
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Atonement – Ian McEwan^
Bel Canto – Ann Patchett^
Beloved – Toni Morrison^
Black – Ted Dekker (Circle Trilogy, book 1)
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures – Vincent Lam
Blue Like Jazz – Donald Miller
Breaking Dawn (Twilight, book 4) – Stephenie Meyer
Crocodile on the Sandbank – Elizabeth Peters^
Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris (Southern Vampire series, book 1)
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
Eclipse (Twilight, book 3) – Stephenie Meyer
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
From Baghdad, with Love – Jay Kopelman, Roth^
Gilead – Marilynne Robinson^
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J.K. Rowling (book 2)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling (book 3)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling (book 4)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling (book 5)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling (book 6)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling (book 7)^
Inkspell – Cornelia Funke
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Kartography – Kamila Shamsie^
Keeping Faith – Jodi Picoult^
Literacy and Longing in L.A – Kaufman and Mack^
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Marley and Me – John Grogan^
Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis
Moby Dyck – Herman Melville
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf^
Nefertiti – Michelle Moran^
New Moon (Twilight, book 2) – Stephenie Meyer
Orthodoxy – G. K. Chesterton^
Peace Like a River – Leif Enger
Possession (or Babel Tower) – A. S. Byatt
Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers^
Same Kind of Different As Me – Rob Hall, Denver Moore^
Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon^
Slammerkin – Emma Donoghue
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See
Sweetness in the Belly – Camilla Gibb^
Testament – Nino Ricci^
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon^
The Amulet of Samarkand – Jonathan Stroud^
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath^
The Birth of Venus – Sarah Dunant
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
The Crimson Petal and the White – Michel Faber^
The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim^
The Hours – Michael Cunningham^ [TBR *after* "Mrs. Dalloway"!]
The Intelligencer – Leslie Siebert
The Last Lecture - Dr. Randy Pausch
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Rule of Four – Caldwell / Thomason
The Sex Lives of Cannibals – J. Maarten Troost^
The Shack – William P. Young^
The Surrogate – Judith Henry Wall^
The Tea Rose – Jennifer Donnelly
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield (finished it early!)
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett^
The Usual Rules – Joyce Maynard
Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott^
Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
===================
((Some of you may be shocked to learn that I’ve not read these, but sadly, it’s true!))
^ denotes books that I will have to either buy, or borrow from the library
12 Comments
May 16, 2008 at 4:26 pm
[...] My List [...]
May 16, 2008 at 9:09 pm
[...] you should read yourself — but always put off “until later”. For examples, see my List or the Suggestions page at the challenge [...]
May 17, 2008 at 12:21 am
There are some good ones on that list and quite a few I’ve put off. The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Book Thief and Mere Christianity are all personal favorites. Have you read Eat, Pray, Love? That’s another one that has gotten rave reviews. It’s on my TBRs and I am so going to get to that one, soon. Honest. You haven’t read Jane Austen at all? Oh, you must, you must.
May 17, 2008 at 2:17 am
LOL. No, I’ve not read any Austen at all. So sad. LOL. I haven’t yet read “Eat, Pray, Love”, either, but you’re right — that’s a “raved about” book, for sure! Lots of people I know have been talking about that one, lately! Thanks so much for your input!
May 18, 2008 at 12:30 am
Great list. I’m going to join in but will post when I have mine started. A couple will be the same as yours like Thirteenth Tale,which has been sitting on my TBR shelf for almost a year and The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay.
Mere Christianity is very good and Dracula was a surprising treat.
I did a review recently on Fingersmith, it is exquisite, and will be putting Affinity on my list.
May 18, 2008 at 4:22 am
I haven’t even heard of so many of these books. I can’t wait to read your reviews of Book Thief, Time Traveler’s Wife, and Owen Meany. All great reads.
May 18, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I made a list from some of your books. they are ones I have been meaning to read but keep putting off. This is a great idea for a challenge. thanks for doing it. I will make a more complete list later.
kim in ohio
May 19, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I just got done reading The Thirteenth Tale and may I just add to the rave about it – it was a fantastic book.
May 20, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I removed a few books from my list today, after reading their descriptions on Amazon. I want my list to be mostly consisting of books that, at the same time, both interest me (by their descriptions) AND have been *raved-about* by my book-loving friends. Mind you, I’m willing to step out of my reading ‘comfort-zone’ a little, but not so much that I’m bending my beliefs to do so. Like Sarah Waters’ “Fingersmith“, which I removed today. The description at Amazon said the book is filled with the s-x trade and also lesbianism. While I believe that everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs (and I’m not going to hack on them for those), I also don’t want to read about these particular things, so I removed the book from my list for “religious reasons”.
Also, I believe that there is just too little time to read books that don’t fully interest me… or at least catch my interest *a little bit*. Hence why I often don’t read everything my face-to-face (f2f) book group chooses to read. I have plenty of other books to keep me busy, so I don’t need to ‘waste my time’ reading books that I have to slog through, ya know?
So, there’s my reasoning behind the books I removed today. There were only 3 or 4, but I thought I should make note of that here, in case anyone who previously read over my list wonders where these books went!
May 21, 2008 at 1:14 am
[...] about “Raved-Reads” Posted on May 21, 2008 by mizb17 My list for my new “Raved-About Reads” Challenge is growing by leaps-and-bounds! Pretty soon I’m going to have a list 100 [...]
May 25, 2008 at 3:28 pm
[...] I’m wishing for some books from my “Raved-About Reads Challenge” list: “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “Love In the Time of [...]
June 27, 2008 at 1:18 am
I’ve been meaning to read Catcher in the Rye too! Will put that in my list!