As mentioned in my last blog, I am not doing an online reading challenge this year. The main reason is I really want to clear my TBR pile and most challenges seem to require me to buy at least one or two new books. I usually buy any such books on my Kindle because at least they don’t take up physical space but I have a ridiculous amount of unread books on there now so I really need to reign it in a bit.

Last year, I attempted an alphabetical challenge and while I didn’t quite manage it (I missed Y) I did enjoy it and was tempted to do it again. However, that would require me buying a book for Q, X and Y and I don’t want to have to do that. While I was bemoaning the fact that I like to have a list of what I will read for the year but I couldn’t find challenge I wanted to do – and probably to shut me up – my husband suggested that I let him choose a list of possible books to read this year – from our shelves and my kindle. I agreed. Possibly foolishly as he seemed to get a lot of glee out of putting things on the list that he knows I’ve been avoiding.

Anyway, here is my list. Although there are no requirements, I’m going to try to write a review for each one. I want to blog more this year anyway so it will help with that as well. There are a lot more classics here then I would normally read so we’ll have to see how it goes. As I don’t usually make a list of all the books I will read and as I am terribly bad at sticking to a list, there may be additions over the year.

1. The Girl in a Swing – Richard Adams
2. The Testaments – Margaret Atwood Finished 8/1/21
3. Emma – Jane Austen
4. Jews Don’t Count – David Baddiel Finished 7/10/21
5. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin Finished 9/6/21
6. The Coral Island – R. M. Ballantyne
7. Peter Pan – J. M. Barrie Finished 4/8/21
8. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
9. The Killing Habit – Mark Billingham Finished 28/6/21
10. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
11. Kindred – Octavia E. Butler Finished 12/6/21
12. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John le Carre Finished 2/4/21
13. My Antonia – Willa Cather
14. The Long Call – Anne Cleeves
15. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
16. The Burning Page – Genevieve Cogman Finished 16/5/21
17. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
18. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
19. All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr Finished 2/8/21
20. Lake of Dreams – Kim Edwards
21. Middlemarch – George Eliot Finished 9/3/21
22. Engleby – Sebastian Faulks 30/11/21
23. A Passage to India – E. M. Forster
24. The Collector – John Fowles – 13/11/21
25. Take Nothing With You – Patrick Gale – Finished 11/2/21
26. Pincher Martin – William Golding
27. England Made Me – Graham Greene
28. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy – Finished 29/7/21
29. Mysterious Skin – Scott Heim Finished 14/12/21
30. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway Finished 19/2/21
31. The Problem with Men – Richard Herring – Finished 7/4/21
32. Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith Finished 27/9/21
33. The Aspern Papers / Turn of the Screw – Henry James
34. The Institute – Stephen King
35. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi Finished 22/3/21
36. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D. H. Lawrence Finished 31/12/21
37. Tishomingo Blues – Elmore Leonard
38. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
39. No one Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
40. I am Legend – Richard Matheson Finished 16/8/21
41. Machines Like Me – Ian McEwan – Finished 19/4/21
42. Moby Dick – Herman Melville Finished 15/5/21
43. Utopia Avenue – David Mitchell -finished 3/3/21
44. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng – finished 9/5/21
45. How to be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind – James O’Brien Finished 24/5/21
46. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman Finished 15/9/21
47. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens Finished 13/3/21
48. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
49. Bleeding Hearts – Ian Rankin
50. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque Finished 28/4/21
51. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth Finished 17/1/21
52. Austerlitz – W. G. Sebald
53. Autumn – Ali Smith Finished 25/1/21
54. On Beauty – Zadie Smith Finished 26/10/21
55. Here We Are _ Graham Swift Finished 11/8/21
56. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
57. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
58. The Fellowship of the Rings – JRR Tolkien Finished 24/8/21
59. Bech at Bay – John Updike
60. Candide – Voltaire
61. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead Finished 4/2/21
62. A Streetcar named Desire – Tennessee Williams
63. Green River Rising – Tim Willocks
64. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham – Finished 2/6/21
65. I am the Messenger – Markus Zusak – Finished 31/8/21