create a list of 100 must-read books and read them.

I finished Anna Karenina and I really liked it, considering how long it was. I didn’t really understand what the author was trying to say about Anna though, whether he meant the reader to sympathize with her or not. He seems to blame the men in the book for her unhappy ending. Now I am reading The Once and Future King and I really like it so far! It’s interesting to read and the author is very witty at times. =-)

I read Brideshead Revisited and it kind of depressed me. I didn’t like it that much. I think I was just in a downer state when I read it so it affected my opinion of it. Now I am reading Anna Karenina. I haven’t gotten very far so I don’t have much of an opinion about it yet.

I finished the Mysteries of Udolpho. It was long and tedious. I have since then read The Last of the Mohicans, Oroonoko, Never Let Me Go, Beloved, Like Water for Chocolate, and North and South. (I know; I haven’t logged on in a while.) The Last of the Mohicans was hard to get into, but I felt really sad and emotional after reading Never Let Me Go, as well as Beloved. They were both very moving. I didn’t like Like Water for Chocolate very much, because it was hard for me to sympathize with the main character’s unyielding love for Pedro. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell made my heart skip a beat—I would compare it to Pride and Prejudice, if that’s even possible. I loved North and South.

I started reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles about a month ago, and it was hard to get into. In the middle of this, my friend gave me the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer to read, and told me I had to at least read the first book. I loved the Twilight series, became obsessed with it, depressed by its fictionality, etc.

After this it seemed impossible to get back into Tess. I gave up on it for a few weeks. Finally, I decided to just start on a different book, Howard’s End by E.M. Forster. I finished that and it motivated me to finally finish reading Tess of the D’urbervilles, which turned out to be a very emotionally wrenching novel. It was very sad, very frustrating, very moving.

On the coat tails of this book, we had a snow day so I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I didn’t like it very much. Now I am reading Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe, trying to make a dent in my list while the snow lasts. I’ve been a slacker and am trying to make up for it.

I finished Crime and Punishment. It was an epic story and lived up to my expectations. It was a little hard to get into at first. It was kind of a dark, depressing book. The author’s style reminded me a little of Charles Dickens, with his story of traditional morals and certain characters who represented goodness and evil.

After this I read Lolita, which was not really what I had expected. I mean, it is a simultaneously humorous and tragic account of a pedophile whom you both sympathize with and dislike. Only toward the end of the book does the reader become more sympathetic toward Lolita, the little girl. Up until then, her abductee centers mostly on his own feelings and experience, and at the end he begins to allude more to what the whole spiel was like for her.

Finally, (because I haven’t logged in in quite a while), I just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I don’t really know what to think of it. It was a good story, but hard to comprehend because there was so much information to cover. I was a little disturbed by how promiscuous the characters were, and sometimes with their close relatives. In some ways the story was very tragic, especially when it alluded to civil wars and bloody massacres that were covered up by the government. It was both creative and heartbreaking how he demonstrated through the different generations in the family that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The book also had a magical aspect to it which made it more interesting—how much of the story is true and how much is fable?

Finished The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. It was kind of depressing, honestly. I didn’t like it that much. It painted a very cruel picture of society. Now I am reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is pretty good so far, but I haven’t read much yet.

Just finished the Scarlet Letter. I am not sure what number that is so far..The Scarlet Letter was better than I thought it would be. I expected something much stuffier and more boring. It was actually easy to read and very thought-provoking!.

I finished As I Lay Dying and To the Lighthouse. To the Lighthouse was very beautiful but a little…well, it was really interesting and poetic, but sometimes it seemed to go on and on…it was not what I could call “light reading.” Now I am reading The Scarlet Letter.

My list has become more organized and stream-lined. I am trying to think of different ways I should read the books in—whether in random order, or maybe by genre (Russian authors, sci-fi, etc) or by chronological order (1920s, 1950s, etc.) It has really boosted my confidence by seeing titles crossed off the list. I feel…it sounds so lame, but good about myself! Like I can actually accomplish goals that I make!

I feel like a big excited dork—I go into the library with my list and select a few that strike my fancy at the moment. With a list in hand I know just what I need. Sometimes wandering around the library looking for random good reads is fun, but occasionally I look back on all the years spent in libraries, and wish I could have had a goal then, too.

I am also working on making the full list more “balanced,” you know, with a little of everything.

I loved Watership Down! I didn’t know if I would get into it or not but it was really good! I also read A Room with a View by E.M. Forster—also excellent. I am becoming more enthusiastic about reading! Right now I am reading Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. It’s somewhat shocking but I can’t help but get into it! I’m a Psychology major so a lot of the Freud jokes in the book are really funny to me. I am trying to discipline myself into better managing my time. I try to read a little every day instead of frittering my time away.

Next to conquer—As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne.