The List

If you have never noticed, I tend to be a little bit arrogant about a few things. Well, maybe very arrogant, but you know what, I don't give a damn about your judginess, so whatever. Anyway, I've always taken a bit of pride in the fact that I am fairly well-read. Some of that is a reflection of taking the amount of English courses that I have taken, some of it is the fact that I love to read.

So I was sitting at work the other day the idea of these "best novel" lists came up and I was curious as to how many of these books I've read. I've seen several of these lists, the one from The Guardian is good, as is the one from the College Board, but for some reason, I was really drawn to this one from the Modern Library (which isn't really a group of librarians, but whatever). What was surprising to me is that I had only read eleven of the 100 books listed. Now I hear you saying to yourself, "Only eleven? You suck Francis..." trust me, I said it to myself as well. So I set myself a challenge: to read the other 89 in 2012 (preferrably before December when the world ends). Can I do it? I dunno, but I'm going to give it a roll. And lucky you, interwebz, you get to be subjected to my superficial ramblings about these books. Ha, ha!

For the record, prior to Wednesday, January 18 I had read the following books (with their ranking on the list):

2 - The Great Gatsby
5 - Brave New World
13 - 1984
18 - Slaughterhouse-Five
31 - Animal Farm
41 - Lord of the Flies
64 - Catcher in the Rye
67 - Heart of Darkness
69 - House of Mirth
74 - A Farewell to Arms
88 - Call of the Wild

Now, I'm going to be honest here, I've read about half of number 90, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a book that did a fantastic job of killing off the VanAusdal Family Reading Club, so I need to finish that one off to count it. The books on this list are pretty varied and should make for some interesting reading, and if I don't make it through the list this year, what's the worst thing that happened? I read some good books? Sounds good to me.

One last thing, I'm not going to go in any particular order, as you will notice in my first reading selection.