I’ve found my challenge for 2013 (or maybe even the rest of college, with how busy my life ends up being).
Besides watching “Homeland” and “Breaking Bad,” I’m going to take some time to disconnect from anything with a screen (sans possibly my iPad) and … read.
My friend Sara posted a link to a “Gilmore Girls” reading challenge on my Facebook wall about a week ago. “Gilmore Girls”? Books? I’m in. I don’t take the time to read, and I need to because I miss it.
I’ve marked the ones I’ve read (fewer than I thought, sadly) and commented about them. The others? Challenge accepted.
(Note: I’ll also go back and cross off ones as I read them.)
“1984” — Orwell (“Thought police, Big Brother, dreams about your mother” — or so our parody went in Ms. Sander’s lit class freshman year)
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — Twain (thanks, Evansdale’s Literary Guild)
“The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland” — Carroll (read this after I accepted the role of Alice in my first play)
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” — Chabon
“An American Tragedy” — Dreiser
“Angela’s Ashes” — McCourt
“Anna Karenina” — Tolstoy
“Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” — Frank (It broke my 9-year-old heart this story was real.)
“Archidamian War” — Kagan
“The Art of Fiction” — James
“The Art of War” — Tzu
“As I Lay Dying” — Faulkner (GHP + American Lit. My mother is a fish.)
“Atonement” — McEwan (in the middle of this now, actually. I promise I’ll finish.)
“Autobiography of a Face” — Grealy
“The Awakening” — Chopin
“Babe” — King-Smith
“Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” — Faludi
“Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” — Sijie
“Bel Canto” — Patchett
“The Bell Jar” — Plath (I wrote my junior year research paper on this novel. I am. I am. I am.)
“Beloved” — Morrison (thanks, AP Lit)
“Beowulf: A New Verse Translation” — Heaney (another AP Lit read. I actually really didn’t like this one.)
“The Bhagava Gita”
“The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews” — Duffy
“Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women” — Wurtzel
“A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays” — McCarthy
“Brave New World” — Huxley
“Brick Lane” — Ali
“Bridgadoon” — Lerner
“Candide” — Voltaire
“The Canterbury Tales” — Chaucer (AP Lit/Brit Lit)
“Carrie” — King
“Catch-22” — Heller
“The Catcher in the Rye” — Salinger (what a classic teen angst book before that was even really a thing)
“Charlotte’s Web” — White (I feel like everyone read this. And saw the movie.)
“The Children’s Hour” — Hellman
“Christine” — King
“A Christmas Carol” — Dickens (read before I saw the classic play at the Alliance)
“A Clockwork Orange” — Burgess
“The Code of the Woosters” — Wodehouse
“The Collected Short Stories” — Welty
“A Comedy of Errors” — Shakespeare (I know I’ve acted out scenes from this, but I don’t think I’ve ever read it in full.)
“Complete Novels” — Powell
“The Complete Poems” — Sexton
“Complete Stories” — Parker
“A Confederacy of Dunces” — Toole
“The Count of Monte Cristo” — Dumas
“Cousin Bette” — de Balzac
“Crime and Punishment” — Dostoevsky (We only spent two months on this book in AP Lit, nbd.)
“The Crimson Petal and the White” — Faber
“The Crucible” — Miller (Hello, American Lit.)
“Cujo” — King
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” — Haddon (What a wonderful book. I finally got to it senior year.)
“Daisy Miller” — James
“Daughter of Fortune” — Allende
“David and Lisa” — Rubin
“David Copperfield” — Dickens
“The Da Vinci Code” — Brown (one of the first “adult” books my mom gave me to read)
“Dead Souls” — Gogol
“Demons” — Dostoyevsky
“Death of a Salesman” — Miller (I know I read this multiple times when I did a lot of theater.)
“Deenie” — Blume
“The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America” — Larson
“The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band” — Lee, Neil, Mars and Sixx
“The Divine Comedy” — Dante (My friend and I made a stick-puppet video for one of the circles of Hell sophomore year.)
“The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” — Wells
“Don Quixote” — Cervantes
“Driving Miss Daisy” — Uhrv
“Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” — Stevenson
“Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems” — Poe (I read so much of Poe’s work in high school English classes that I’m just counting this as read.)
“Eleanor Roosevelt” — Cook
“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” — Wolfe
“Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters” — Dunn
“Eloise” — Thompson (Let’s be real: I’ve always dreamed of this Manhattan penthouse life.)
“Emily the Strange” — Reger
“Emma” — Austen
“Empire Falls” — Russo
“Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective” — Sobol (I’m pretty sure I checked out every children’s mystery book in the Dekalb County Public Library as a child.)
“Ethan Frome” — Wharton
“Ethics” — Spinoza
“Europe through the Back Door, 2003” — Steves
“Eva Luna” — Allende
“Everything Is Illuminated” — Foer
“Extravagance” — Krist
“Fahrenheit 451” — Bradbury
“Fahrenheit 9/11” — Moore
“The Fall of the Athenian Empire” — Kagan
“Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World” — Critser
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” — Thompson
“The Fellowship of the Ring” — Tolkien
“Fiddler on the Roof” — Stein
“The Five People You Meet in Heaven” — Albom (read this when I was pretty young)
“Finnegan’s Wake” — Joyce
“Fletch” — McDonald
“Flowers for Algernon” — Keyes (For some reason, the only memory I have of my eighth grade lit class is discussing this book.)
“The Fortress of Solitude” — Lethem
“The Fountainhead” — Rand (I tackled her books right before college.)
“Frankenstein” — Shelley
“Franny and Zooey” — Salinger (I went through a bit of a J.D. Salinger phase.)
“Freaky Friday” — Rodgers (I loved the movie with Lindsay Lohan. How could I not read the book?)
“Galapagos” — Vonnegut
“Gender Trouble” — Butler
“George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President” — Weisberg
“Gidget” — Kohner
“Girl, Interrupted” — Kaysen
“The Gnostic Gospels” — Pagels
“The Godfather: Book 1” — Puzo
“The God of Small Things” — Roy
“Goldilocks and the Three Bears” — Granowsky
“Gone with the Wind” — Mitchell
“The Good Soldier” — Ford
“The Gospel According to Judy Blume” (I don’t think this is actually a book title, but I went through a nice Judy Blume phase. Some of her books were pretty scandalous for a fourth-grader.)
“The Graduate” — Webb
“The Grapes of Wrath” — Steinbeck
“The Great Gatsby” — Fitzgerald (We had “Gatsby Day” at our high school when all the girls would dress as flappers and all the guys would dress up and we would have ’20s-themed parties in American Lit.)
“Great Expectations” — Dickens
“The Group” — McCarthy
“Hamlet” — Shakespeare (AP Lit + Georgia Shakespeare. To be or not to be?)
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” — Rowling (I only dressed up and waited in line for all of these books at midnight. This one came out on my birthday, I remember.)
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” — Rowling (Still love this book 12 years later.)
“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” — Eggers
“Heart of Darkness” — Conrad (Another AP Lit read.)
“Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders” — Bugliosi and Gentry
“Henry IV, part I” — Shakespeare
“Henry IV, part II” — Shakespeare (I’m pretty sure one of my audition monologues was from this play, though I don’t think I ever read the entire thing.)
“Henry V” — Shakespeare
“High Fidelity” — Hornby
“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” — Gibbon
“Holidays on Ice: Stories” — Sedaris (my 2012 Christmas Eve reading)
“The Holy Barbarians” — Lipton
“House of Sand and Fog” — Dubus
“The House of the Spirits” — Allende
“How to Breathe Underwater” — Orringer
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” — Seuss (Have I read this? I can practically recite this.)
“How the Light Gets In” — Hyland
“Howl” — Gingsburg
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” — Hugo
“The Iliad” — Homer
“I’m with the Band” — des Barres
“In Cold Blood” — Capote
“Inherit the Wind” — Lawrence and Lee
“Iron Weed” — Kennedy
“It Takes a Village” — Clinton (This was Dekalb County Schools’ mantra for a while.)
“Jane Eyre” — Brontë
“The Joy Luck Club” — Tan
“Julius Caesar” — Shakespeare (Thanks, Ms. Z.)
“The Jumping Frog” — Twain
“The Jungle” — Sinclair
“Just a Couple of Days” — Vigorito
“The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar” — Alexander
“The Kite Runner” — Hosseini (I don’t think I met anyone in high school who didn’t love this book.)
“Lady Chatterleys’ Lover” — Lawrence
“The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000” — Vidal
“Leaves of Grass” — Whitman
“The Legend of Bagger Vance” — Pressfield
“Less Than Zero” — Ellis
“Letters to a Young Poet” — Rilke
“Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” — Franken
“Life of Pi” — Martel
“The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” — Lewis (I’m pretty sure I read all of the books in this series as a child.)
“Little Dorrit” — Dickens
“The Little Locksmith” — Hathaway
“The Little Match Girl” — Andersen (Another thanks to Literary Guild.)
“Little Women” — Alcott (I always related to Jo, but so did everyone else.)
“Living History” — Clinton
“Lord of the Flies” — Golding
“The Lottery: And Other Stories” — Jackson
“The Lovely Bones” — Sebold (Such a sad story. This was another popular one in high school.)
“The Love Story” — Segal
“Macbeth” — Shakespeare (AP Lit + Georgia Shakespeare again.)
“Madame Bovary” — Flaubert
“The Manticore” — Davies
“Marathon Man” — Goldman
“The Master and Margarita” — Bulgakov
“Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter” — de Beauvoir
“Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman” — Sherman
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” — Sedaris
“The Meaning of Consuelo” — Cofer
“Mencken’s Chrestomathy” — Mencken
“The Merry Wives of Windsro” — Shakespeare
“Metamorphosis” — Kafka (Another AP Lit read.)
“Middlesex” — Eugenides
“The Miracle Worker” — Gibson
“Moby Dick” — Melville
“The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion” — Irvin
“Moliere: A Biography” — Taylor
“A Monetary History of the United States” — Friedman
“Monsieur Proust” — Albaret
“A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister” — Mars
“A Moveable Feast” — Hemingway
“Mrs. Dalloway” — Woolf
“Mutiny on the Bounty” — Nordhoff and Hall
“My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath” — Hersh
“My Life as Author and Editor” — Mencken
“My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru” — Guest
“My Sister’s Keeper” — Picoult
“The Naked and the Dead” — Mailer
“The Name of the Rose” — Eco
“The Namesake” — Lahiri
“The Nanny Diaries” — McLaughlin
“Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature” — Jensen
“New Poems of Emily Dickinson” — Dickinson
“The New Way Things Work” — Macaulay
“Nickel and Dimed” — Ehrenreich
“Night” — Wiesel (I’m pretty sure I wrote an epilogue to this for World Lit.)
“Northanger Abbey” — Austen
“The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism” — Cain, Finke, Johnson, McGowan
“Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born” — Powell
“Notes of a Dirty Old Man” — Bukowski
“Of Mice and Men” — Steinbeck
“Old School” — Wolff
“Oliver Twist” — Dickens
“On the Road” — Kerouac
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch” — Solzhenitsyn
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — Kesey
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” — Marquez
“The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life” — Tan
“Oracle Night” — Auster
“Oryx and Crake” — Atwood
“Othello” — Shakespeare
“Our Mutual Friend” — Dickens
“The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War” — Kagan
“Out of Africa” — Dineson
“The Outsiders” — Hinton (We read this in middle school and went to see the play as a class. The play was awful.)
“A Passage to India” — Forster
“The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition” — Kagan
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” — Chbosky
“Peyton Place” — Metalious
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” — Wilde
“Pigs at the Trough” — Huffington
“Pinocchio” — Collodi
“Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain”
“The Polysyllabic Spree” — Hornby
“The Portable Dorothy Parker” — Parker
“The Portable Nietzche” — Nietzche
“The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill” — Suskind
“Pride and Prejudice” — Austen (The two AP Lit classes held a “Pride and Prejudice” ball.)
“Property” — Martin
“Pushkin: A Biography” — Binyon
“Pygmalion” — Shaw
“Quattrocento” — Mckean
“A Quiet Storm” — Hall
“Rapunzel” — Grimm Brothers (another Literary Guild classic)
“The Raven” — Poe (I’ve studied this poem in way too many lit classes.)
“The Razor’s Edge” — Maugham
“Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” — Nafisi
“Rebecca” — du Maurier (I’ve read this one a few times.)
“Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” — Wiggin (I have some particular memory associated with this book, but I can’t remember what it is.)
“The Red Tent” — Diamant
“Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad” — Holman
“The Return of the King” — Tolkien
“R Is for Ricochet” — Grafton
“Rita Hayworth” — King
“Robert’s Rules of Order” — Robert
“Roman Fever” — Wharton
“Romeo and Juliet” — Shakespeare (We read this and watched both movies in freshman lit.)
“A Room of One’s Own” — Woolf
“A Room with a View” — Forster
“Rosemary’s Baby” — Levin
“Sacred Time” — Hegi
“Sanctuary” — Faulkner
“Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay” — Milford
“The Scarecrow of Oz” — Baum
“The Scarlet Letter” — Hawthorne (We read this in American Lit right before “Easy A” came out. What convenient timing.)
“Seabiscuit: An American Legend” — Hillenbrand
“The Second Sex” — de Beauvoir
“The Secret Life of Bees” — Kidd (I read this when I was eight or nine and have loved it ever since.)
“Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette” — Thurman
“Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965” — Powell
“Sense and Sensibility” — Austen
“A Separate Peace” — Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
“Sexus” — Miller
“The Shadow of the Wind” — Zafon
“Shane” — Shaefer
“The Shining” — King
“Siddhartha” — Hesse (AP Lit, once again.)
“S Is for Silence” — Grafton
“Slaughter-house Five” — Vonnegut
“Small Island” — Levy
“Snows of Kilimanjaro” — Hemingway
“Snow White and Rose Red” — Grimm Brothers (Literary Guild)
“Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World” — Moore
“The Song of Names” — Lebrecht
“Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos” — de Burgos
“The Song Reader” — Tucker
“Songbook” — Hornby
“The Sonnets” — Shakespeare
“Sonnets from the Portuguese” — Browning
“Sophie’s Choice” — Styron
“The Sound and the Fury” — Faulkner
“Speak, Memory” — Nabokov
“Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” — Roach
“The Story of My Life” — Keller
“A Streetcar Named Desire” — Williams (An American Lit read. STELLA!)
“Stuart Little” — White (It came with “Charlotte’s Web,” if I remember correctly.)
“The Sun Also Rises” — Hemingway
“Swann’s Way” — Proust
“Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals” — Collett
“Sybil” — Schreiber
“A Tale of Two Cities” — Dickens (Literary Guild strikes again.)
“Tender Is The Night” — Fitzgerald
“Term of Endearment” — McMurtry
“Time and Again” — Finney
“The Time Traveler’s Wife” — Niffenegger
“To Have and Have Not” — Hemingway
“To Kill a Mockingbird” — Lee (World Lit?)
“The Tragedy of Richard III” — Shakespeare
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” — Smith (appropriately given to me by my New York-hailing grandmother)
“The Trial” — Kafka
“The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters” — Robinson
“Truth & Beauty: A Friendship” — Patchett
“Tuesdays with Morrie” — Albom (I read this at about the same time as his other book.)
“Ulysses” — Joyce
“The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962” — Plath (I chose to buy this instead of a Brown sweatshirt at the Brown bookstore. In the long run, that was a good choice.)
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — Stowe (freshman lit?)
“Unless” — Shields
“Valley of the Dolls” — Susann
“The Vanishing Newspaper” — Meyers
“Vanity Fair” — Thackeray
“Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico” — Harvard
“The Virgin Suicides” — Eugenides
“Waiting for Godot” — Beckett (I’m pretty sure this was another AP Lit read.)
“Walden” — Thoreau
“Walt Disney’s Bambi” — Salten
“War and Peace” — Tolstoy
“We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews” — Sinker
“What Colour is Your Parachute?” — Bolles
“What Happened to Baby Jane” — Farrell
“When the Emperor Was Divine” — Otsuka
“Who Moved My Cheese?” — Johnson
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” — Albee (American Lit!)
“Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” — Maguire (OF COURSE I read the book on which “Wicked: The Musical” is based. What a silly question.)
“The Wizard of Oz” — Baum (Literary Guild)
“Wuthering Heights” — Brontë (It took a lot of patience for me to finish this, but I finally did.)
“The Yearling” — Rawlings (thanks again, Literary Guild)
“The Year of Magical Thinking” — Didion
“A Confederacy of Dunces” — Toole