One year on! Family and friends reading alphabetically, Tuesday 25 March 2014

This morning, my family and some friends embarked on a most exciting project: to read each and every chosen Amazon 100 books of a life time, released earlier on in the year. Some in the group have read a number of these books several times as part of their studies or leisure while others have read fewer and younger ones less…The intention now is to read and discuss and enjoy each of the 100 within the family (mama, papa, children [10/11+? – families, please make this age choice!]), couple, friend, and individual contexts. There are only 2 rules in this enterprise:

(a) No skipping! The titles have to be read alphabetically– starting from George Orwell’s 1984 and ending with Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are

 (b) The group only moves to the next text on the list when every member of the circle has completed their reading

Not-club

This is not a reading competition. It is not a club. Please start the exercise whenever you choose. There is no prize outcome except of course the priceless joy of reading and discussing great books in fellowship with loved ones. There is, therefore, no timeframe in completing this journey. If someone wants to share any updates on progress, say, at the end of the year or indeed whenever, it is all left to them. This is completely voluntary. No one is expecting updates from anyone else! Please extend this venture to other families and friends if you could.

Amazon 100 books – 2014

1. 1984 by George Orwell

2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

        3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

4. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

5. A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition by Lemony Snicket

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

7. Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro

8. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

        9. All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

10. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

11. Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

12. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

13. Beloved by Toni Morrison

14. Born To Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

15. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

16. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

17. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

18.Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

19. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese

 20. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown

21. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney

22. Dune by Frank Herbert

23. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

24. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson

25. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

26. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

27. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

28. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond

29. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

31. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

32. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

33. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

34. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

35. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

36. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

37. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

38. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

39. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

40. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

41. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

42. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

43. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

44. Moneyball by Michael Lewis

45. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

46. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

47. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

49. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

50. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

51. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

52. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

53. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

54. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

   55. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

     56. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

57. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

58. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

59. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

60. The Color of Water by James McBride

61. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

             62. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

63. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

64. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

65. The Giver by Lois Lowry

         66. The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

67. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

69. The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

70. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

71. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

72. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr

              73. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan

74. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

75. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

76. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

77. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

            78. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

         79. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

80. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

81. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

                 82. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

83. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

84. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

85. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

86. The Shining by Stephen King

87. The Stranger by Albert Camus

88. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

89. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

90. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

91. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

                  92. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami

93. The World According to Garp by John Irving

94. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

95. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

                 97. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

98. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

99. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

100. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

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