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