One of the things I love about Good Reads is that users can set reading challenges every year. This year I had to up my goal a few times because I read a lot of picture books. The challenge doesn’t make you specify what kind of books or number of pages; it just counts the quantity of books.
As of this posting, my “to-read” shelf is at 631 books.1 I can’t possibly read that many books in a year; I fall asleep when I read (hey, it relaxes me!). Still, on average it takes me a week to get through a 300 page book. So a realistic challenge for me would be to read 52 books in 2014 (not including picture books).
But what to read? With over 600 choices, I thought it would be best to put down the titles on a “short list” and read those first. I tried to get a variety of genres as well as finish up some series I started. So, divided by genre, here are the 52 books I will read in 2014:
Classic
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston3
Fiction
Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Non-Fiction
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Lucky by Alice Sebold
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck
Love You More by Jennifer Grant
College Girls by Lynn Peril
Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
The Tao of Martha by Jen Lancaster
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Unlikely Friendships by Jennifer S. Holland
The Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich
102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer
For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich
Young Adult and Teen
The Void of Mist and Thunder (13th Reality #4) by James Dashner
Reached (Matched #3) by Ally Condie
Divergent (Divergent #1) by Veronica Roth4
Lovesick (Ghostgirl #3) by Tonya Hurley
Delirium (Delirium #1) by Lauren Oliver
Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s #2) by Ransom Riggs5
Shelter Me by Alex McAuley
The One (The Selection #3) by Kiera Cass
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Fever (Chemical Garden #2) by Lauren DeStefano
Sever (Chemical Garden #3) by Lauren DeStefano
Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano
Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans
Ascend (Trylle #3) by Amanda Hocking
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Me Since You by Laura Wiess
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Rule of Thoughts (Mortality Doctorine #2) by James Dashner
Unhinged (Splintered #2) by A.G. Howard
The Testing (The Testing #1) by Joelle Charbonneau
The Fire Chronicle (The Books of the Beginning #2) by John Stephens
The Curse of the Broomstaff (The Janitors #3) by Tyler Whitesides
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions #2) by Lemony Snicket
Shutdown (Glitch #3) by Heather Anastasiu
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
So, just over half of the titles I picked are young adult and teen. This really doesn’t surprise me since it’s what I read most of the time. A lot of the titles, from all the genres, were books that I bought on impulse6 because I HAD TO READ THEM RIGHT AWAY. Some I’ve had for years. Others, just a few months. Either way, I thought I should whittle them down first before trying to accumulate more, even if they are just digital.
The ones I don’t currently own, I will rely on getting from the library. Now that I’m in a smaller town, access to free books is a bit more limited. Indy had over 20 libraries to pull from so almost everything I wanted was available. Here, not so much. There are only a handful of libraries at my disposal so my choices are more limited. Should I not be able to get a title through the library and am unable to afford to buy a copy, I will substitute the title for another in that genre.
And if when I get through my list, I’ll refill my coffee mug and start a new one.
1. To give you an idea, my “read” shelf, compiled over 7 years, is at 567. So, it would take me a good 8 years to read everything on my “to-read” shelf if I don’t add anything to it.2
2. Yeah, right.
3. I was supposed to have read this for a class in college. I don’t remember which class and the only thing I remember about the book was the beginning, which I liked, so I think that I didn’t actually finish it. Oops.
4. I want to read this before I see the movie, which is set to release in theaters in March.
5. It’s been over two years since the first book, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, came out and left its readers hanging off a cliff!
6. No, Mom, I don’t own ALL of the books on my list. Just most.
