To that end I've been thinking. There are a lot of books that, as an English teacher, people just assume I've read. Being a British Literature teacher seems to up the ante somewhat although I'm not sure why being a Brit Lit teacher should mean that I am any better read than any other English teacher, but oh well. On a fairly regular basis someone launches into an observation that assumes I've read what they are referring to. Mostly, this is students who seem to think that I've read every classic in existence, but it also happens at times with family, friends, coworkers, and the parents of students.
In most cases, there is no particular reason I haven't read the books in question. Usually it's a case of haven't gotten around to it yet, so I put together a list of 100 books. To show up on the list, someone at some point has expressed the idea that it's a surprise to find out I haven't read it. Obviously, I only put books on the list that I haven't read yet (or haven't fully read - no matter how many times I've started them.) The list is pretty heavily weighted towards heavy classics which is also not a surprise. Just as a reality check, I somewhat indiscriminately estimated the total number of pages by pulling page numbers from goodreads. I didn't worry too much about editions, so the total number in reality could be either over or under my estimate. I came up with 41,511 pages which means reading about 114 pages a day which feels doable.
So, here's the new project: Student graduation was yesterday. I'm going to try reading all the books on the following list by graduation next year. Since I'm reading some really serious classics here, the last thing the world needs is another review, instead I'm going to journal daily about the experience.
If I start a book and it turns out I have read it before, I will simply swap it out on the list for a book I haven't. (Having finished the list, I immediately came up with five more titles that could have been on the list.)
100 Books People Tend to Assume I've Read....But I haven't
- Adams, Douglas - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
- Adams, Richard - Watership Down
- Alcott, Louisa May - Little Women
- Andrews, V.C. - Flowers in the Attic
- Angelou, Maya - I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Atwood, Margaret - Handmaid's Tale
- Atwood, Margaret - Oryx and Crake
- Austin, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
- Babbitt, Natalie - Tuck Everlasting
- Blume, Judy - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange
- Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Tarzan of the Apes
- Camus, Albert - The Stranger
- Capote, Truman - In Cold Blood
- Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote
- Crichton, Michael - Andromeda Strain
- Clarke, Arthur C. - 2001
- Clarke, Susanna - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
- Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
- Dahl, Roald - Matilda
- Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
- Delillo, Don - White Noise
- Dickens, Charles - Christmas Carol
- Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations
- Dickens, Charles - Oliver Twist
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Brothers Karamozov
- Du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca
- Dumas, Alexandre - The Count of Monte Cristo
- Follett, Ken - Pillars of the Earth
- Forbes, Esther - Johnny Tremain
- Frank, Anne - Diary of A Young Girl
- Greene, Graham - Power and the Glory
- Greene, Graham - Brighton Rock
- Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
- Hemingway, Ernest - The Sun Also Rises
- Herodotus - The Histories
- Jordan, Robert - Eye of the World
- Kafka, Franz - Metamorphosis and Other Stories
- Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Kerouac, Jack - On the Road
- King, Stephen - Cujo
- King, Stephen - It
- Kingsolver, Barbara - Poisonwood Bible
- Krakauer, Jon - Into the Wild
- Larsson, Stieg - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Lawrence, D.H. - Lady Chatterley's Lover
- Le Carre, John - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- Lewis, C.S. - Out of the Silent Planet
- London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
- Lowry, Lois - Number the Stars
- Machiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
- Martel, Yann - Life of Pi
- Martin, George R.R. - A Game of Thrones
Matheson, Richard - I am Legend(finished 5/29/2019)- McCammon, Robert - Swansong
- Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - Death of a Salesman(finished 6/8/2019)- Milton, John - Paradise Lost
- Moliere - Tartuffe
- Montgomery, L.M. - Anne of Green Gables
- Morrisson, Toni - Beloved
- Myers, Walter Dean - Fallen Angels
- Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita
- O'Dell, Scott - Island of the Blue Dolphins
- Orwell, George - 1984
- Ovid - Metamorphoses
- Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
- Rand, Ayn - Atlas Shrugged
- Rawlings, Marjorie - The Yearling
- Rawls, Wilson - Where the Red Fern Grows
Sachar, Louis - Holes(finished 5/18/2019)- Sagan, Carl - Contact
- Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
- Satrapi, Marjane - The Complete Persepolis
- Shakespeare - Othello
- Shakespeare - King Lear
- Shaw, Bernard - Pygmalion
- Shonagon, Sei - The Pillow Book
- Sinclair, Upton - The Jungle
- Smith, Zadie - White Teeth
- Speare, Elizabeth George - The Witch of Blackbird Pond
- Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men
- Steinbeck, John - East of Eden
- Stevenson, Robert Louis - Kidnapped
- Sun-Tzu - Art of War
- Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
- Tan, Amy - The Joy Luck Club
- Thompson, Hunter S. - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina
- Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
- Toole, John Kennedy - Confederacy of Dunces
- Travers, P.L. - Mary Poppins
- Verne, Jules - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Vonnegut, Kurt - Sirens of Titan(finished 6/2/2019)- Vonnegut, Kurt - Breakfast of Champions
- White, T.H. - The Once and Future King
- Woodson, Jacqueline - Brown Girl Dreaming
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
Alternates:
- Collins, Wilkie - The Woman in White
- Euripides - The Trojan Women
- Jones, Dianna Wynn - Howl's Moving Castle
- Sophocles - Antigone
- Wharton, Edith - Ethan Frome
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