Summer Reading

I'm twelve days too late to join this Summer Reading Challenge 2006. The main gist of the challenge is to try and read 2 books a week from a self-decided list, classics, books that have been on your pile forever, or any other fun theme you decide upon.

As it's now June 13, I should already almost be 4 books into the challenge. However, I'm going to start this week, which means I've got a lot of reading to do by next Monday. And how am I going to decide upon my list? Well, I've got some ideas. I figure between now and the end of the summer, that should equal a total of about 30 books (at least that's what I'm going for). So, here's my list, let me know what you think!

THE SUMMER READING 2006 CHALLENGE BOOK LIST:

1. I'm going to take the following titles from the 880 I still have left to read: The Sea, John Banville, Slow Man, J.M. Coetzee, The Master, Colm Toibin, Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell, City of God, E.L. Doctorow, and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres.

2. I'm going to read more poetry this summer, in big chunks instead of here and there: Beowulf, Seamus Heaney, Whetstone, Lorna Crozier, Strike Sparks, Selected Poems 1980-2002, Sharon Olds, Strike/Slip, Don McKay, Airstream Land Yacht, Ken Babstock and Inventory, Dionne Brand.

3. I'm going to catch up on the up next Canadian classics that have been on my to read pile forever: Runaway, Alice Munro, A Map of Glass, Jane Urquhart, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood, Cease to Blush, Billie Livingston, A Perfect Pledge, Rabindranath Maharaj and Until I Find You, John Irving (I know he's American, technically, but the book is set partially in Toronto so I'm counting it).

4. I'm going to read some classics: Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham, Pale Fire Vladmir Nabokov, The Good Soldier Ford Maddox Ford, Howard's End, E.M. Forster, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton and The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

5. Lastly, I'm going to read some mysteries just for fun: Thirty-Three Teeth by Chris Cotterill, Before the Frost, Henning Mankell, The Poe Shadow, Matthew Pearl, Affinity, Sarah Waters, The Children of Men, P.D. James and The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova.

And if I finish all of these, I'm going to throw in some nonfiction: London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd, Miracle in the Andes, Nando Parrado, Anna of the Russians: A Life of Anna Ahkmatova, Elaine Feinstein and Being Caribou, Karsten Heuer.

Add all the reading I've got to do for work and I should be super busy between now and September 1st. Oh, and I've got to get my Page A Day finished as well.

Go big or go home, I always, ahem, say.