Resolution

Okay, so I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions, as I'm pessimistic in nature and don't enjoy the idea of setting myself up for self-imposed failure. However, the competitive part of me really likes the idea of challenging myself, and, so long as I can come up with something worth pursuing, the idea of a New Year's Resolution has a lot of potential. I'm really excited about what I came up with this year:

For the year of 2011, I am making it my goal to read all of the books that I own but have yet to read. This will be a big challenge, as I cannot seem to enter a bookstore without making a purchase. This challenge will exclude both textbooks and religious texts, even though I am loserish enough to sometimes read these for fun. There just isn't enough time in the year for me to include them and to actually absorb the content as well.

For this challenge, I am starting my first blog to chronicle my progress with reviews of each book I read. My reading list is as follows:

1. Before We Were Free - Julia Alaverez
2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
3. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
4. River, Cross my Heart - Breeana Clarke
5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
6. The Watsons go to Birmingham - Christopher Paul Curtis
7. The BFG - Roald Dahl
8. Matilda - Roald Dahl
9. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
10. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
11. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
12. Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
13. Four Souls - Louise Erdrich
14. The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
15. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
16. Martin Luther King, Jr - Marshall Frady
17. The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
18. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green
19. Grendel - John Gardner
20. The Brethren - John Grisham
21. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
22. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
23. Lancelot Du Lethe - J. Robert King
24. The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
25. The Whiskey Rebels - David Liss
26. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
27. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
28. Anne of Windy Poplars - L.M. Montgomery
29. As You Like It - William Shakespeare
30. Richard III - William Shakespeare
31. The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
32. The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien
33. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
34. The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
35. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
36. Queen Bees and Wannabes - Rosalind Wiseman
37. John Dies at the End - David Wong
38. Native Son - Richard Wright
39. The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon


As you can see, I have quite the eclectic list. Some of them are books that I've always wanted to read, so I picked them up when I saw them in order to read them some day. Others are bargains that I've found at garage sales, thrift stores, and sale bins over the years. They are currently all listed alphabetically by author's last name for no other purpose than to make it easier for me to find specific books when I wish to recall them. I'm not actually reading them in that order, or I may go crazy if I get stuck on a particular author. I do believe I shall begin with Tolkien's The Return of the King. That is all for now. If you have favorites, be vocal about it, as it may convince me to give precedence to your suggestions.