The Updated List

For you new readers, I decided to do a recap of the project (I'm just going to lift the text from an early post---nothing quite like self-plagiarism):

So I turned 37 in March. In honor of this usually unceremonious birthday, I've decided to try to tackle 37 "great" books in the calendar year of 2008. Why would I embark on such a task? I've no earthly idea, but it seems like something different to do.

It's definitely going to be a challenge, as I usually read around 35 books per year (last year I went into the 50s). So we'll see how that goes.

I'm including both fiction and non-fiction in the reading list (which will be developed on an ad hoc basis) and they'll all be in English (since I don't read any other language well at all) but this doesn't preclude reading translations. Since it's my project and likely nobody will read this blog but me, I'll be identifying books that are considered "great." I'll largely rely on other folks lists, such as the Modern Library Top 100 lists, but I want to get some 19th century stuff in there too (possibly some 18th as well). I've read quite a few of the books on the Modern Library list, so I know those are good recommendations. We'll see how it goes. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I'm still open to eliminating books and adding others.

Several of the books I've read before (mostly in high school) and I thought it might be a good idea to re-visit some of them as an adult. In looking at the list today (in July), it seems that I've chopped many of those off though a few remain.

Anyhoo, here's the current list:

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (finished Jan. 22)
   
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (finished Feb. 3)
   
3. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
4. All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (finished Feb. 19)
   
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison (finished August 25)
   
6. Deliverance by James Dickey (finished April 1)
   
7. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (finished June 6)
   
8. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
9. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (finished May 1)
   
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (finished March 6)
    
11. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Candide by Voltaire (finished Feb. 23)
    
14. Don Quixote by Cervantes
15. White Noise by Don DeLillo (finished May 29)
    
16. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (finished August 12)
    
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (finished September 5)
20. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
    
21. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (finished August 2)
    
22. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
    
25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (finished June 15)
    
26. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (finished June 25)
    
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (finished June 16)
    
28. Night by Elie Wiesel (finished September 7)
    
29. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (finished May 6)
    
30. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (finished July 26)
    
31. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (finished April 13)
    
32. The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward (finished March 27)
    
33. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (finished July 2)
    
35. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (finished April 28)
    
36. The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White (finished May 22)
    
37. (placeholder)