Filling in the 'Gaps' in 2016
Do you think classic books (even modern classics) are best left to students? Or do you indulge throughout your life?
I am in the latter camp. I read some great books in school, but there are too many good books to simply stop because no grades are involved.
As a result, I have begun "Filling in the Gaps" of my reading. The original challenge was to make a list of 100 books to read in five years. My list was originally published in 2010, was ambitious — and one that was destined to change. I realized some books were not worth reading after all, and others I discovered I already had read.
Additionally, the list was influenced by an interactive project with my friend Carole: Weighty Reads, in which we chose 20 books to read together in the next decade, with a few related books tucked into our repertoire along the way.
Frankly, one should adjust one's list as time goes on. Is Asimov as important as Bradbury? Should I keep three Dickens at the cost of Jerome K. Jerome and Patricia Highsmith? Do I sacrifice classics for modern classics? The answers differ depending on who one is at the time the decision is made.
Here is the most recent iteration of the list, with a few more books marked off since it was published.
Fill in the Gaps, 2016
I tried to make my list as inclusive as possible. If you have suggestions, please share your ideas with me.
Do you have a Fill in the Gaps list? What's on it? If you haven't compiled such list yet, what would you put on it? Let me know!
I am in the latter camp. I read some great books in school, but there are too many good books to simply stop because no grades are involved.
As a result, I have begun "Filling in the Gaps" of my reading. The original challenge was to make a list of 100 books to read in five years. My list was originally published in 2010, was ambitious — and one that was destined to change. I realized some books were not worth reading after all, and others I discovered I already had read.
Additionally, the list was influenced by an interactive project with my friend Carole: Weighty Reads, in which we chose 20 books to read together in the next decade, with a few related books tucked into our repertoire along the way.
Frankly, one should adjust one's list as time goes on. Is Asimov as important as Bradbury? Should I keep three Dickens at the cost of Jerome K. Jerome and Patricia Highsmith? Do I sacrifice classics for modern classics? The answers differ depending on who one is at the time the decision is made.
Here is the most recent iteration of the list, with a few more books marked off since it was published.
Fill in the Gaps, 2016
- 1001 Nights / Arabian Nights
- Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
- Highsmoor, Peter Ackroyd
- Foundation, Isaac Asimov
- Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
- √ Sundays With Vlad, Paul Bibeau
- Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly
- √ The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
- The Early Fears, Robert Bloch
- The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
- A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
- √ The Land that Time Forgot, Edgar Rice Burroughs
- √ Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
- √ Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
- Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
- O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
- The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
- The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
- Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
- √ The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
- Moll Flanders, Daniel DeFoe
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
- Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens
- Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
- The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
- So Big, Edna Ferber
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
- Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
- The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
- The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
- In the Woods, Tana French
- The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
- √ Unbroken, Lauren Hildenbrand
- √ Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
- The Bone People, Keri Hulme
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- The Lost Weekend, Charles R. Jackson
- √ The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
- The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
- Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
- √ Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac
- √ Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
- √ The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
- The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
- The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling
- A Separate Peace, John Knowles
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John LeCarre
- The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
- Sliver, Ira Levin
- Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis
- √ The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis
- The Call of the Wild, Jack London
- √ The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft
- Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
- The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers
- √ Atonement, Ian McEwan
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty
- Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy O'Toole
- The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
- Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
- Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
- Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
- Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
- All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
- Home, Marylynne Robinson
- The Human Stain, Philip Roth
- The God of Small Things, Arundathi Roy
- Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
- √ A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
- Prayers to Broken Stones, Dan Simmons
- Enemies, A Love Story, Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Angle of Repose, Wallace Steigner
- √ Dracula, Bram Stoker
- The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
- The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
- Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt
- All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
- Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
- Night, Elie Weisel
- Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
- The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
- The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
I tried to make my list as inclusive as possible. If you have suggestions, please share your ideas with me.
Do you have a Fill in the Gaps list? What's on it? If you haven't compiled such list yet, what would you put on it? Let me know!
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