Lofty Goals: Reading Lists

Ever since I was eight, I've had the urge to make a list of all of the books I've ever read. It started innocently enough--by my seventh birthday I'd already garnered the moniker "bookworm" and at eight, I'd decided to keep a list of books I read every year. Except, I never managed to keep up with said list. Oh sure, it always worked out for a month or two, but after that I'd forget...a month would go by, then two. By the time I'd remember my list, I'd have read another twenty, thirty, maybe forty books.

I read very quickly.


Anyway, here I am decades later, still wishing I'd managed to maintain a list. I must've read over a thousand books by now. I'm pretty sure my yearly count almost always flirts with 100, maybe more now that my "job" is reading.

The best I ever manage to do is keep a running list of favorites. This year, some of them are:

The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins,
White Teeth by Zadie Smith,
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz,
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler,
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely
Death Masks and Blood Rites by Jim Butcher
Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy,
Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte,
Eavan Boland’s Outside History and Object Lessons,
and Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers.