Reading Challenges

Here's my Reading List. 

▶ The Best Books of the 21st Century (by The New York Times)

As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review. I'm reading 70 of the 100 books.

[   ] Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson

[   ] Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

[   ] Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward

[   ] Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

[   ] On Beauty, by Zadie Smith

[   ] The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante

[   ] The Human Stain, by Philip Roth

[   ] The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

[   ] The Return, by Hisham Matar

[   ] The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

[   ] Frederick Douglass, by David W. Blight

[   ] Pastoralia, by George Saunders

[   ] When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut

[   ] Pulphead, by John Jeremiah Sullivan

[   ] The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante

[   ] A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin

[   ] An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones

[   ] Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

[   ] Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

[   ] Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

[   ] Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich

[   ] Childhood / Youth / Dependency, by Tove Ditlevsen

[   ] All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories, by Edward P. Jones

[   ] The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

[   ] Stay True: A Memoir, by Hua Hsu

[   ] Far From the Tree, by Andrew Solomon

[   ] The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth

[   ] Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill

[   ] 10:04, by Ben Lerner

[   ] Heavy, by Kiese Laymon

[   ] The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen

[   ] Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

[   ] The Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner

[   ] Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson

[   ] Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

[   ] Trust, by Hernan Diaz

[X] The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

[X] Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

[   ] A Mercy, by Toni Morrison

[   ] The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

[   ] Postwar, by Tony Judt

[   ] Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan

[   ] H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

[   ] A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

[   ] The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño

[   ] The Years, by Annie Ernaux

[   ] Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[X] Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

[   ] Citizen, by Claudia Rankine

[   ] Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward

[   ] White Teeth, by Zadie Smith

[   ] The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt

[   ] Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[   ] Atonement, by Ian McEwan

[   ] Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

[   ] The Overstory, by Richard Powers

[   ] Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, by Alice Munro

[   ] Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

[   ] Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

[   ] Erasure, by Percival Everett

[   ] Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe

[   ] Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

[X] The Sellout, by Paul Beatty

[   ] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon

[   ] Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee

[   ] Outline, by Rachel Cusk

[   ] The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

[   ] The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz

[   ] The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

[   ] Educated, by Tara Westover

▶ The Best Books of the 21st Century (by the Guardian)

I scanned the list and I've decided to read 85 of the 100.

[   ] Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

[   ] Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

[   ] Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich

[   ] Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

[   ] Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald

[   ] The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman

[   ] Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

[   ] Autumn, by Ali Smith

[   ] Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

[   ] Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[   ] My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

[   ] The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth

[   ] Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

[   ] Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters

[   ] The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert

[   ] The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

[   ] The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

[   ] The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein

[   ] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night‑Time, by Mark Haddon 

[   ] Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

[   ] Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari 

[   ] Tenth of December, by George Saunders

[   ] A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

[X] Normal People, by Sally Rooney

[   ] Capital in the Twenty First Century, by Thomas Piketty

[   ] Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories, by Alice Munro

[   ] A Death in the Family, by Karl Ove Knausgård

[   ] The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson

[   ] Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

[   ] Outline, by Rachel Cusk

[   ] The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal 

[   ] Experience: A Memoir, by Martin Amis

[   ] White Teeth, by Zadie Smith 

[   ] Atonement, by Ian McEwan

[   ] Moneyball, by Michael Lewis

[   ] Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine

[   ] Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit

[   ] Levels of Life, by Julian Barnes

[   ] Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney

[   ] Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

[   ] Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett

[   ] Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

[   ] Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín

[   ] Small Island, by Andrea Levy

[   ] True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

[   ] Women & Power, by Mary Beard

[   ] The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

[   ] Underland, by Robert Macfarlane 

[   ] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

[   ] Postwar, by Tony Judt 

[   ] The Beauty of the Husband, by Anne Carson

[   ] Dart, by Alice Oswald

[   ] This House of Grief, by Helen Garner

[   ] Mother’s Milk, by Edward St Aubyn

[   ] The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

[X] Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn 

[   ] Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli

[   ] The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker

[   ] The Constant Gardener, by John le Carré

[   ] The Infatuations, by Javier Marías

[   ] What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal], by Zoë Heller

[X] Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware

[   ] The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff

[   ] Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick 

[   ] Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk

[   ] Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

[   ] Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera

[   ] The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin

[   ] The Spirit Level, by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett

[   ] Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

[   ] Harvest, by Jim Crace

[   ] Coraline, Neil Gaiman

[   ] Tell Me How It Ends, by Valeria Luiselli

[   ] The Cost of Living, by Deborah Levy

[   ] Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood

[   ] Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

[   ] Bad Blood, by Lorna Sage

[   ] Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck

[   ] The Siege, by Helen Dunmore

[   ] The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

[   ] Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan

[   ] A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

[   ] The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

[   ] Broken Glass, by Alain Mabanckou

[   ] I Feel Bad About My Neck, by Nora Ephron

▶ Time Magazine's The 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time - In progress!

I've already read 45 of the books and I've seen the film adaptation of 5, which means I have 50 books to read of the 100. 

[Update: In 2021, the original list was revised by TIME magazine with the help of contemporary YA authors (who included their books on the list) to feature more than fifty books published in the last decade. In my opinion, their new selections have not stood the test of time and have not long been considered excellent literature, so I will continue to read books from TIME's 2015 YA list for this challenge.]

[X] A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle 

[X] Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

[X] Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor

[X] Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

[X] From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg

[X] Looking for Alaska, by John Green

[X] The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo

[   ] The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White

[X] Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

[X] A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

[X] The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier

[X] A Series of Unfortunate Events Series, by Lemony Snicket

[   ] Johnny Tremain, by by Esther Forbes

[   ] A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly

[   ] The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

[X] Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers

[   ] For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

[X] The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, by Peter Sís

[   ] A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness

[   ] The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

[   ] A Wreath for Emmett Till, by Marilyn Nelson

[   ] Where Things Come Back, by John Corey Whaley

[   ] Private Peaceful, by Michael Morpurgo

[   ] The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare

[X] Frindle, by Andrew Clements

[   ] The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

[   ] Boxers Saints, by Gene Luen Yang

[   ] City of Beasts, by Isabel Allende

[   ] Dogsbody, by Diana Wynne Jones

[   ] The Pigman, by Paul Zindel

[   ] The Lost Conspiracy, by Frances Hardinge

[   ] Alabama Moon, by Watt Key

[   ] Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan

[   ] The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness

[   ] Boy Proof, by Cecil Castellucci

[   ] Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers

[   ] A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes

[   ] The Tiger Rising, by Kate Dicamillo

[   ] When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

[   ] Saffy’s Angel, by Hilary McKay

[   ] The Grey King, by Susan Cooper

[   ] Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brien

[   ] The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke

[   ] The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart

[   ] The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

[   ] Tiger Lily, by Jodi Lynn Anderson

[   ] The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret #1), by Pseudonymous Bosch

[   ] Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe

[   ] Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher

[   ] The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander