Waaaaay back in December, I mentioned an upcoming book project and asked for recommendations. I meant (of course) to post the official book list at the beginning of January, but (as always) my plans went awry. I won’t bore you with the details of my slovenly self-discipline. Instead, we’ll get right to the meat of this post.
I’ve scoured book lists such as Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. I’ve read book list books such as Honey for a Woman’s Heart and The Well-Educated Mind. I took stock of the year’s upcoming events such as CC Challenge B, Ancient history studies, CiRCE’s Pacific Northwest Regional Conference, book club meetings, and the CC Parent Practicum. I asked you for suggestions.
And this is what I came up with: a wildly ambitious reading list.
Reach for the stars, I say. [When I first typed that I accidentally typed “read” for the stars. Ha! That works, too.]
It always feels good to start a to-do list with items already crossed off, doesn’t it?
Wake up. Done.
Check Facebook. Done.
Drink an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. Shazam.
Now that it is already March [gulp!], I can post my to-read list with books already crossed off. Shall we take bets on how many more I’ll manage to read before the end of the year? 10? 20? 70? Or how many I add to the list (or read off-list) as the year goes by?
[Someday, I won’t promise when because I’ll be lying, I will post my much longer list of books I’ve already read and loved. And I’ll also post reviews of the books crossed off below.]
Without further ado…
Novels
Lila: A Novel
Hood
The Sunday Philosophy Club
A Girl Of The Limberlost
The Brothers K
The Road
Dune
The Once and Future King
The Chosen
Beloved
The Book Thief
Clouds of Witness
Catch-22
Lord of the Flies
The Great Gatsby
Invisible Man
The Return of the Native
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
The Grapes of Wrath
Slaughterhouse-Five
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Signature of All Things
Classics
Pride and Prejudice
Gulliver’s Travels (An abridged re-telling)
Moby Dick
Paradise Lost (ChocLit Guild)
The Brothers Karamazov
The Lord of the Rings
Frankenstein
No Name (Or something else by Wilkie Collins. ChocLit Guild)
Hamlet (CC Moms Book Club)
Ancients
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Children’s and YA Novels
The Door in the Wall (CC Challenge A)
A Gathering of Days (CC Challenge A)
Crispin: The Cross of Lead (CC Challenge A)
Where the Red Fern Grows (CC Challenge B)
Non-Fiction
Biography/History
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (ChocLit Guild)
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (ChocLit Guild)
The Hiding Place (CC Challenge B)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Faith, Culture, and Education
The Pursuit of God (ChocLit Guild)
Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age (CiRCE Conference)
Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (CiRCE Conference)
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
The Soul of Science (CC Parent Practicum)
Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art (CC Parent Practicum)
Honey for a Teen’s Heart
Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You’ve Always Wanted to Read
That’s a good start, right? What is on your to-read list this year?