So today is my birthday and I have turned the ripe old age of thirty one, which means I officially can no longer pretend I am in my ‘very late’ twenties, rather like at New Year I use my birthday to put the last year into perspective and focus myself for what I want in the year ahead. As it was the big 3-0 last year I pondered looking a decade forward and choosing forty books to read before I was forty. I promptly then went off the idea and popped it on the back burner for another time.
Well that time has arrived. I have spent the last few days whittling over books that I feel it would be good to give myself, albeit rather loosely, a nudge in the direction of reading. Some of the books were ones, like ‘Middlemarch’ which will get a special mention shortly, which I have been simply meaning to read, other more modern books I have been intrigued about. I was also greatly helped with my new edition of ‘1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die’ (not that I am suggesting this will be on my 40th heaven forbid) which I have spent long periods mulling over.
The rules, for there must always be some guidelines or things just get silly (see I even sound older), were simply that the books must be published by an author that I hadn’t tried before – thought I better throw that in there before I get some emails/comments telling me I have missed some absolute gems. Simple as that! And here is the list…
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
- Before Night Falls – Reinaldo Arenas
- Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
- The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
- Wild Swans – Jung Chang
- Claudine’s House – Colette
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Middlemarch – George Eliot
- Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- Lord of the Flies – William Golding
- The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
- Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
- For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
- Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Hoeg
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
- A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
- Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
- Independent People – Halldor Laxness
- Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
- The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
- Embers – Sandor Marai
- Fugitive Pieces – Anne Micheals
- A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
- The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
- Quartet in Autumn – Barbara Pym
- The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
- All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
- Pamela – Samuel Richardson
- Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
- A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
- Restoration – Rose Tremain
- Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
- The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
- Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
- Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
So there they are! I have also made sure I miss some famous classics (‘The Leopard’, ‘The Iliad’, etc) and some lesser known ones (‘The Odd Women’, ‘A Crime in the Neighbourhood’) but those are on my periphery too plus I also need to have some for when I do my fifty before fifty don’t I?
Now you may have noticed that there is one book which breaks the trend slightly and that is ‘Middlemarch’. Which leads me to a little announcement, and I hope those of you joining in with Classically Challenged won’t be cross, as I have decided to postpone writing about it on the last Sunday of March and am moving it to the end of June. I know, I know, June is ages away. However after some thought, and having only got eight chapters in so far, I decided I don’t want to rush this read (and I am enjoying it so far) because of a deadline and with a fairly long trip to London next week, plus a literary festival to prepare and read for, oh and those solo podcasts too… you get the picture. I simply want to enjoy ‘Middlemarch’.
So what do you make of the list? Which have you read and which have you been meaning to? Let me know and I promise I will be back next week, well tomorrow, catching up on all the comments that I have been meaning to for ages. In the meantime there are things to unwrap, candles to blow out, cake to eat and some serious applying of anti-aging cream to be done!
Savidge Reads 