Upon becoming a size queen (with update)

Well, I managed to slog through The Naked and the Dead (which took forever), Les Miserables, and Cousin Bette. And then, looking up from my welter of books, I realized it was almost October. Beginning to panic, I whipped through some shorter works, like Freaky Friday and The Art of Fiction. Two books in two days! BAM.

I came to a belated realization: the only way I was going to finish 75 titles this year would be to specialize in short, easy reads. Accordingly, I went through my lists and started sorting them by page length. I picked out stuff like The Little Prince, Howl, Fat Land, and The Awakening, and I'm determined to read only those from here until the end of the year. No more long woolly 19th century novels. Take that, Victor Hugo!

(When you focus on only that criterion, it's actually surprising how many books are less than 300 pages long.)

I'm currently reading Fat Land, which is almost as compelling and juicy as an episode of My 500 Pound Life. But more scholarly, and less smug.

Update: I finished Fat Land, listened to the Librivox version of Northanger Abbey (which was excellent! And free!) I also read Howl and The Awakening, both of which I enjoyed a lot, and not just because of the sense of accomplishment they afforded me.

Here are the rest of my Rory unreads, with all of the above deleted and some corrections:

1. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
2. Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
3. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
5. Bambi by Felix Salten
6. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
9. The Bhagava Gita
10. The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
11. Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
12. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
13. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
14. Brigadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
15. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
16. The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
17. Christine by Stephen King
18. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
19. The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
20. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
21. Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
22. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
23. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
24. Cujo by Stephen King
25. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
26. David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
27. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
28. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
30. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
31. The Divine Comedy by Dante
32. Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
33. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
34. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
35. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
36. Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
37. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
38. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
39. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
40. Ethics by Spinoza
41. Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
42. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
43. Extravagance by Gary Krist
44. Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
45. The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
46. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
47. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
48. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
49. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
50. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
51. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
52. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
53. Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
54. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
55. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
56. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
57. The Graduate by Charles Webb
58. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
59. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
60. Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
61. Henry V by William Shakespeare
62. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
63. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
64. Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
65. The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
66. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Lpr)
67. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
69. How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
70. I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
71. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
72. Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
73. It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
74. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
75. Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
76. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
77. The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
78. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
79. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
80. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
81. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke 
82. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
83. The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
84. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
85. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
86. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
87. Marathon Man by William Goldman
88. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
89. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
90. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
91. The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
92. Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken (Season 1, Episode
93. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
94. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
95. The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
96. Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
97. A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
98. Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
99. A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
100. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
101. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
102. My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken, (Season 1 Episode
103. My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
104. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
105. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
106. Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
107. New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
108. The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
109. Night by Elie Wiesel
110. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
111. Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
112. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
113. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
114. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
115. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
116. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
117. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
118. Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
119. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
120. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
121. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
122. Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
123. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
124. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
125. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
126. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
127. The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
128. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
129. Property by Valerie Martin
130. Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
131. A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
132. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
133. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
134. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
135. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
136. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
137. Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
138. Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
139. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin from Season 1 Episode (I believe this is the movie)
140. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
141. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
142. The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
143. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
144. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
145. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd – started and not finished
146. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
147. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
148. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
149. Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
150. Sexus by Henry Miller
151. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
152. Shane by Jack Shaefer
153. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
154. Small Island by Andrea Levy
155. Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
156. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
157. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
158. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
159. The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
160. Songbook by Nick Hornby
161. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
162. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
163. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
164. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
165. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
166. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
167. Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
168. Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
169. Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
170. Time and Again by Jack Finney
171. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
172. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
173. The Trial by Franz Kafka
174. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
175. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
176. Unless by Carol Shields
177. The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
178. Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
179. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
180. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
181. We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
182. What Color is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
183. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
184. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
185. Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
186. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
187. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

What's Left? 193 books, that's what.

This is an updated version of the Rory List, should I be in a bookstore and feel the need to acquire a title ... because the stack of unread books on my bedside table doesn't grow by itself. (Titles I already own are bolded.)

1. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
2. Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
3. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
5. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
6. Bambi by Felix Salten
7. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
8. Beloved by Toni Morrison
9. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
10. The Bhagava Gita
11. The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
12. Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
13. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
14. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
15. Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
16. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
17. The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
18. Christine by Stephen King
19. The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
20. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
21. Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
22. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
23. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
24. Cujo by Stephen King
25. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
26. David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
27. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
28. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
30. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
31. The Divine Comedy by Dante
32. Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
33. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
34. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
35. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
36. Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
37. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
38. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
39. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
40. Ethics by Spinoza
41. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
42. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
43. Extravagance by Gary Krist
44. Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
45. The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
46. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
47. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
48. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
49. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
50. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
51. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
52. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
53. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
54. Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
55. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
56. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
57. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
58. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
59. The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
60. The Graduate by Charles Webb
61. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
62. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
63. Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
64. Henry V by William Shakespeare
65. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
66. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
67. Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
68. The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
69. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
70. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
71. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
72. How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
73. Howl by Allen Ginsburg
74. I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
75. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
76. Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence
77. It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
78. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
79. Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
80. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
81. The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
82. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
83. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
84. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
85. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
86. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
87. The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
88. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
89. The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
90. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
91. Marathon Man by William Goldman
92. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
93. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
94. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
95. The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
96. Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken from Season 1, Episode
97. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
98. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
99. The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
100. Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
101. A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
102. Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
103. A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
104. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
105. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
106. My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken, Season 1 Episode
107. My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
108. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
109. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
110. Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
111. New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
112. The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
113. Night by Elie Wiesel
114. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
115. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
116. Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
117. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
118. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
119. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
120. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
121. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
122. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
123. Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
124. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
125. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
126. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
127. Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
128. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
129. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
130. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
131. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
132. The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
133. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
134. Property by Valerie Martin
135. Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
136. A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
137. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
138. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
139. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
140. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
141. "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King
142. Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
143. Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
144. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin from Season 1 Episode (I believe this is the movie)
145. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
146. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
147. The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
148. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
149. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
150. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
151. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
152. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
153. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
154. Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
155. Sexus by Henry Miller
156. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
157. Shane by Jack Shaefer
158. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
159. Small Island by Andrea Levy
160. Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
161. "Snow White and Rose Red" by the Brothers Grimm
162. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
163. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
164. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
165. The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
166. Songbook by Nick Hornby
167. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
168. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
169. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
170. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
171. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
172. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
173. Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
174. Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
175. Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
176. Time and Again by Jack Finney
177. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
178. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
179. The Trial by Franz Kafka
180. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
181. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
182. Unless by Carol Shields
183. The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
184. Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
185. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
186. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
187. We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
188. What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
189. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
190. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
191. Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
192. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
193. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

My 2017 Reading List: leftovers and new challenges

It's been pretty easy for me to get my reading done so far this year, since I've been ignoring my intellectual development in favor of drowning my sorrows in mystery stories.

I did manage to read The Secret History (what tripe) and finally finished Backlash. Also, I started re-listening to my Game of Thrones audiobooks, and rereading a book is one of the 2017 Read Harder Challenges. So I can feel pretty smug about knocking a big three books off my Mental Development Reading List.

This is what I have left over, as well as the stuff I've added to the list to get my total to 75 books. (I didn't actually reach 75, first because I've already read a boatload of mysteries this year, but also because I double-dip whenever possible with my challenging books, as in, if a book is on the Rory list and the Read Harder list, it's a twofer.)

Old stuff from the Rory list, which I've been planning to read since 2015

1] Allende, Isabelle: Daughter of Fortune
2] Cook, Blanch: Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol 1, 1884-1933
3] des Barres, Pamela: I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie
4] Mailer, Norman: The Naked and the Dead
5] Kagan, Donald: The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition
6] McKean, James: Quattrocento (currently reading)
7] The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age
8] Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace

from the BBC list

9] Tolkein, J. R. R.: The Return of the King
10] Faulks, Sebastian: Birdsong
11] Niffenegger, Audrey: The Time Traveler's Wife,
12] Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
13] de Bernières, Louis: Captain Corelli's Mandolin
14] Martel, Yann: Life of Pi
15] Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy
16] Ruiz, Carlos: The Shadow of the Wind
17] Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: Love in the Time of Cholera
18] Sebold, Alice: The Lovely Bones

The 2015 Read Harder Challenge

19] Stolze, Greg: SwitchFlipped (Read a book from an independent press)
20] Goldman, William: The Princess Bride (Read a romance novel)
21] Elliott, J. H.: Imperial Spain, 1469-1716, (Read a book recommended by someone)
22] Levy, Robert Joseph: Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary (Read a guilty pleasure)
23] Sedaris, Amy: I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Read a self-help book)

I also decided to read

24] Walker, Alice: The Color Purple

just because. Then there's the leftover

2016 Read Harder Challenge

Task 3: A collection of essays
25] McCarthy, Mary: A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays (also on RG list)

Task 4: read a book out loud to someone else
TBD

Task 6: Read a biography
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (Rory)
or
2] Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 1 1884-1933 (Rory)

Task 8: Read a book originally published in the decade you were born
9] The Return of the King (BBC)

Task 10: Read a book over 500 pages long
15] A Suitable Boy (BBC list)

Task 11: Read a book under 100 pages
26] Didion, Joan: The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play (Rory)
or
Tzu, Sun: The Art of War (Rory)
or
de St.-Exupery, Antoine: The Little Prince (BBC)

Task 13: Read a book that is set in the Middle East
27] Mahfouz, Naguib: Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, Volume 1

Task 15: Read a book of historical fiction set before 1900
12] War and Peace (Rory)

Task 16: Read the first book in a series by a person of color
29] Lewis, John: March

Task 17: Read a non-superhero comic that debuted in the past three years
29] Lewis, John: March

Task 20: Read a book about religion
30] Pagels, Elaine: The Gnostic Gospels (Rory)

Now for the new stuff, for which, in reaction to Gay Talese, I decided to feature female authors:

New titles from the Rory Gilmore list

31] Grealy, Lucy: The Autobiography of a Face
32] Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
33] Patchett, Ann: Bel Canto
34] Morrison, Toni: Beloved
35] Wurtzel, Elizabeth: Bitch
36] Ali, Monica: Brick Lane
37] Powell, Dawn: Complete Novels
38] Rodgers, Mary: Freaky Friday
39] Butler, Judith: Gender Trouble
40] Roy, Arundhati: The God of Small Things
41] Allende, Isabel: The House of the Spirits
42] Hathaway, Katharine: The Little Locksmith
43] de Beauvoir, Simone: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
44] Lakiri, Jhumpa: The Namesake
45] Tan, Amy: The Opposite of Fate
46] Metalious, Grace: Peyton Place
47] Hall, Rachel Howell: A Quiet Storm

New titles from the BBC list

48] Fielding, Helen: Bridget Jones' Diary
49] Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance
50] Blyton, Enid: The Faraway Tree Collection
51] The Bible yeah, I doubt this will happen

52] The Complete Works of Shakespeare or this

53] Ransome, Arthur: Swallows and Amazons
54] Zola, Emile: Germinal
55] Mitchell, David: Cloud Atlas
56] Robinson, Mistry: A Fine Balance
57] Albom, Mitch: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
58] Banks, Iain: The Wasp Factory
59] Shute, Nevil: A Town Like Alice
60] Hugo, Victor: Les Miserables

And finally, Brand! New! Titles! from the 2017 Read Harder Challenge

Challenge 1: Read a book about sports

61] Wade, Becky: Running the World

Challenge 6 and 18: Read an all-ages comic; read a superhero book with a female lead

Ms. Marvel

Challenge 8: Read a travel book

62] Post, Emily: By Motor to the Golden Gate

Challenge 10: Read a book set 100 miles or less from your location

63] Doyle, Brian: Chicago

Challenge 13: Read a non-fiction book about technology

64] Heffernan, Virginia: Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art

Challenge 15 and 20: Read a YA or middle-grades book by an author who identifies as LGBTQ; read an LGBTQ romance

65] Lo, Malinda: Ash

Challenge 22: Read a book of short stories by a woman

66] Welty, Eudora: Complete Short Stories

Challenge 23: Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.

67] TBD

Six months of Backlash

It took me six excruciating months, but I finally finished reading Susan Faludi's Backlash.

This is not to say it isn't a good book; it's amazing. The thing is, I started reading it on November 7, 2016. Then ... stuff happened. And every time I tried to pick Backlash up and continue, I'd get maaaaaybe 10 pages in and my head would start to make loud, inaudible car alarm noises, which is my subconscious's way of letting me know that my head is about to explode.

So I spent months of dithering, feeling guilty, avoiding GoodReads, and reading almost anything but Backlash: George Simenon's Maigret novels, Mrs. Polifax novels, Arnuldur Indridason's Rejkyvek murder mysteries, re-reading George R. R. Martin's The Game of Thrones (currently on book three, A Clash of Kings, and wow, it moves way more slowly than I remembered. I blame finally getting HBO. Books longa, TV brevis.)

I finally managed to finish Backlash by making it my task while my daughter went to her Broadway dance class at the local community center. Instead of running errands, working out, or sitting on the big comfortable sofa in the lobby Facebooking for 90 minutes, I read Backlash. And after a few weeks of doing this, I finished it!

Honestly, it's like eating less and moving more and discovering that it actually does make me lose weight.

Anyway, if, like me, you haven't gotten around to watching Game of Thrones reading Backlash, read it. It is so good. I underlined like a boss. I could type entire paragraphs into my many politically-charged Facebook groups and shut the trolls up BAM. I could use passages to troll www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/.

I'm currently sitting in the Admiral's Club awaiting a flight to New York, and I brought two much shorter, and it is to be hoped, quicker reads with me: The Princess Bride (from last year's Read Harder Challenge: Read a romance novel) and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which I believe is also from the Read Harder Challenge--Read a book set in Asia.) Wish me smooth skies and quick reads.

68 of 75; or, Dark times

OK, wow. Been a while.

So ... I kind of got swept up in politics, and, in common with other registered voters, my reading started to revolve around articles posted on Facebook. After a while, I smartened up and started ignoring articles from sites like HillaryClintonIsGod.co and the like, and stuck to stories from The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, etc. Mainstream media for the win! Even if my candidate lost, at least I wasn't wasting too many brain cells on junk news sites.

(Here's a tip for how to avoid seeing them—turn down the volume on those one or two people you know who share EVERYTHING to Facebook. Or find candidates from the opposing party and like their pages. This will give Facebook's algorhythm a much-deserved kick in the pants.)

But hey, good thing I read a book about Donald Trump last May! Because it's always best to be prepared.

I was going to paste in the most recently-updated version of my list, but it would be more efficient to say that I read Henry IV, Part I, and Girl, Interrupted, and am about 100 pages into Backlash. Because a long feminist tome doesn't make me feel at all ranty at the moment, no ma'am.

I also read—and see whether you can tell what I read before and after the election:

The Casino: A Century of Elegance, by Cecilia ... (a history of a private club in Chicago which for mysterious reasons has accepted me as a member.)

The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens

The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens

The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

Farewell my Lovely, by Raymond Chandler

The Third Man, by Graham Greene

Jar City and The Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason 

Mr. Kiss and Tell: Veronica Mars, Book II, by Rob Lowe and 

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, by Steve Martin

If you guessed that I threw myself down a deep well of noir murder mysteries after Hillary lost---ding ding ding! You're absolutely correct.

All told, I've read 68 of my 75 books. Which would be sort of impressive ... except the last eight were audiobooks. Come on, people—it's too much to expect me to turn actual pages.

Books, books, everywhere ... but what the hell should I read next?

I just finished Nicholas Nickleby, which is episodic and melodramatic, with a shiny perfect hero, doll-like heroines, daffy comic characters, warmhearted philanthropists, and dastardly villains of deepest dye.

So naturally, I loved it. I really don't understand why all the Thinking Individuals I know look down on Dickens. I mean, sure, he's sentimental, but he was agitating for social change, so his fiction resembles Social Justice propoganda. And it worked. And it inspired other writers to do the same thing, which is how we got Uncle Tom's Cabin and eventually, FINALLY, emancipation of the slaves. And yes, Dickens' stories are unrealistic, but hey! So are Gabriel Garcia Marquez's and Kurt Vonnegut's, and they seem get away with it.

So, Nicholas Nickleby, yay. But what to read next? Let's look at an updated list, with all the stuff I've read removed.

From the Rory list:

1] Daughter of Fortune, Isabelle Allende
2] Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol 1, 1884-1933
3] I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie
4] The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
5] The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, Donald Kagan
6] Quattrocento
7] The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age
8] War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

from the BBC list:

9] Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
10] The Time Traveler's Wife
11] The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
12 ] Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières
13] The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
14] Life of Pi
15] A Suitable Boy
16] The Shadow of the Wind
17] Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
18] The Secret History, Donna Tartt
19] The Lovely Bones

The 2015 Read Harder Challenge:

20] SwitchFlipped (Read a book from an independent press)
21] Half-Breed (Read an author who is a member of an indigenous people)
22]The Princess Bride (Read a romance novel)
23] Lays of Ancient Rome (Read collection of poems)
24] Imperial Spain, 1469-1716, J. H. Elliott (Read a book recommended by someone)
25] Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary (Read a guilty pleasure)
26] I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Read a self-help book)

and 37 other titles to be determined, one of which will be

27] The Color Purple, Alice Walker

And now, to fill out my 75 titles, additions from the 2016 Read Harder Challenge. This is a draft of my early picks, selected because they're either already on my list, or are on the Rory Gilmore reading list:

Task 3: A collection of essays
28] A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays, Mary McCarthy (Rory)

Task 4: read a book out loud to someone else
TBD

Task 7: Read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel
13] The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (BBC booklist)

Task 8: Read a book originally published in the decade you were born
29] Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (Rory)

Task 11: Read a book under 100 pages
30] The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play by Joan Didion (Rory)
or
The Art of War, Sun Tzu (Rory)
or
The Little Prince (BBC)

Task 13: Read a book that is set in the Middle East
31] Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, Volume 1, Naguib Mahfouz

Task 14: Read a book by an author from Southeast Asia
32] Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie (Rory)

Task 15: Read a book of historical fiction set before 1900
8] War and Peace (Rory)

Task 17: Read a non-superhero comic that debuted in the past three years
33] TBD

Task 19: Read a non-fiction book about feminism, or deals with feminist themes
34] Backlash, Susan Faludi (Rory)

or

The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (Rory)

Task 20: Read a book about religion
35] The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels (Rory)

Task 23: Read a play
36] Henry IV Part I (Rory)

Task 24: Read a book about a character who has a mental illness
37] Girl, Interrupted (Rory)

I've decided to go with Girl, Interrupted, because I can get the Kindle edition right away ... and I'll probably finish it by dinner tomorrow. But I've been digging through the books in my house in New Hampshire. There are lots of titles left by the previous owners, and I found a collection of plays by Noel Coward. I'm thinking of reading one of those instead of finishing Henry IV Part One. I've only managed to slog through a couple of acts of it .... I don't know; there's just something about Shakespeare's history plays that gives me the pip.

Things have slowed to a crawl

Wow, I have really not been updating. I'd castigate myself for being a horrible blogger if I hadn't been blogging elsewhere for OVER TWELVE YEARS jesus I can't even believe it myself.

Anyway, progress is being made! Albeit painfully. Fourteen books since June. Many of them audiobooks, due to the incredible amount of time I spent driving (around Lake Michigan for a family vacation, then to Oklahoma City and back to take Miss Buxom to college.)

Onward! Since I last blogged about what I'd read in May, I've finished (Rory books in bold)

Seven books in June

Trump Nation by Timothy L. O'Brien (a Book Bub e-reading bargain I couldn't resist)
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (went through two audiobooks before I found a narrator that didn't annoy me)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by P. G. Wodehouse (audiobook)
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (audiobook)
Bricking It by Nick Spalding (audiobook)
Ironweed by William Kennedy
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (audiobook)

Four books in July

Vintage Secrets: Hollywood Diet and Fitness, by Laura Slater
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens (audiobook)
Europe through the Back Door, 2016 by Rick Steves
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Three books in August

The Memoirs of William T. Sherman (audiobook)
A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow (audiobook)
Carrie by Stephen King

Currently reading

I picked up a few (OK, a lot) of books at the Full Circle bookstore in Oklahoma City. I started P. G. Wodehouse's The Small Bachelor. I've been bogged down in Henry IV Part One so I started The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. Could this be interpreted as a kind of commentary? Perhaps.