Planning for 2012--The Reading Challenge

With the exception of Anna North's America Pacifica and Justin Torres' We the Animals, I haven't done as much reading as I would like. I'm finally reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I was pushed to get going on it so that I could sit in on classes with an11/12th grade English elective. I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot.

I have a lot of books I haven't read. Blame Iowa. Blame my book buying habits. Blame the insistence that I have a job and can no longer lounge about on my couch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette (on those days when I smoked, they were very, very, few) and get lost inside my books. There are so many things to blame but mostly, there never seems to be enough time. I have only knit one completed project this year. One. WTF? So....Next year, I'm knitting and I'm reading, and I'm writing.

Here's the starter list, the first 15 books that I'm going to attempt to tackle. Now, some of them are still in Iowa, some of them might be on their way as I write this. Some, I have yet to purchase.  I'll be adding and scratching off books from the list as I start reading. Since I decided not to join a formal reading challenge,--I couldn't find one I liked--I'm making my own. I'm calling it my: Read 100 Books from my TBR (to-be read) shelf, some of which might be considered "classic"works of literature and some I have not yet bought, Reading Challenge. 


(Feel free to make suggestions)


The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2666 by Roberto Bolano
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Io no ho paura by Niccolo Ammaniti (in Italian, I'm going to be ambitious)
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai


I will also knit one complete project a month. On the docket: Socks, shawls, fingerless gloves and headbands. I will attempt to sell the things I knit.

Wish me luck.