1001 Books to Read: How Many Have You Read?

So two years ago I wrote a post about this list of 1001 "must read" books and how many of them I had read. I had intended to come back a year later and see how many I could add to my "read" list. Well...It's been two years now. Yesterday was my 32nd birthday. So let's see how I did, even if it is a whole year late.  From my original post two years ago:

Yesterday was my 30th birthday and I wanted to see how generally well read I am, so after some web surfing I came across a list of 1001 "must read" books on listology. Here's the link to the list. It's from a British book that I will leave the information for at the bottom of the post. It's not a definitive list by any means, so it is obviously subjective, but this is just for fun so no worries. 

Let's see how I did in two years:

Books I've read in the past two years are in bold.

From before 1700 - 3 (was 2) total

1000. Aesop's Fables - Aesupus
1001. Metamorphosis - Ovid
991. The Pilgrim's Progress

1700s: - 3 (Was 0)
985. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
983. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
984. A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift

1800s: - 36 (Was 29)
938. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin 
937. Mansfield Park - Jane Austin
931. Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
915. The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
913. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
905. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
904. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
903. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
902. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
899. Shirley - Charlotte Bronte
898. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
897. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorn
896. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
891. Villette - Charlotte Bronte
886. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
883. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
881. The Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne
880. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
876. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
873. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
868. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol
867. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
848. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
846. Far From the Madding Crows - Thomas Hardy
843. Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
840. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
839. Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
837. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
835. Ben-Hur Lew Wallace
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
808. Tess of the D'urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
799. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
790. The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells
794. Dracula - Bram Stoker
789. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

1900s: - 43 (was 31)
785. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
784. Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
780. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
767. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
761. A Room With a View - E. M. Forster
752. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
726. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
727. Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
723. Ulysses - James Joyce
722. Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis
717. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
704. Billy Bud, Fortetopman - Herman Melville
699. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
671. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
667. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
663. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
610. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
608. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
592. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
587. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
565 Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
564. Animal Farm - George Orwell
559. The Plague - Albert Camus
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
529. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
521. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
508. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
494. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
484. One the Road - Jack Kerouac
456. To Kills a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
375. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
347. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
335. Ragtime - E. L. Doctorow
320. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
312. The Shining - Stephen King
291. Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
227. Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons
99. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
92. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

2000s: - 2
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
8. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

Two years ago I had read 64 books from the list. I've now read 87. That means I read 23 books from the list in two years. I think that's pretty decent progress.

Question: How many books on this list have you read?

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Comprehensive Reference Source, Chronicling the History of the Novel
Preface by Peter Ackroyd, General Editor Peter Boxall
ISBN 1-84403-417-8

I Want to Be a Writer

I want to be a writer. It's something that has always been a part of me. Even when I was pursuing other goals in graduate school, there was always a part of me that wanted to be a writer but doubted I was talented enough. Obviously making it as a writer is a tough job and I'm still not sure I will ever succeed, but I'm giving it a shot and I want to be the best writer I can be.

Part of becoming a better writer is just getting your words out there. Not necessarily worrying that every word is exactly what you want. That comes with editing.  To that end, I'm going to attempt to write daily posts here, not about anything in particular, but about whatever I feel like.

The point is to become comfortable with writing my own voice and my own point of view. I figure the more I practice the easier it will be to get words on the page. This won't be the most polished blogging experience. I'm not going to spend a lot of time editing aside from basic spelling and grammar. I don't want to slow down the stream of thoughts. I do not want to interrupt them.

I'm am starting my writer's journey. Every word is a step, thought I do not know the end destination.

1-Star Reviews and Young Adult Novels

Recently I gave a book a dismal 1-star rating. I also had someone on Goodreads call my review "rude" and express a hope that I would write a book someday so that they could write "a cruel review about it." I've also noticed that my review on Amazon has gotten several "dislikes." I still think the book deserves the rating I gave it, but the whole experience so far is making me reconsider doing reviews of books in the young adult genre.

The book I reviewed has mostly good ratings on Goodreads and on Amazon. Most of the positive reviews on Goodreads are from teens, and pretty much all of them are from girls. Teen girls are a demographic that seem to have their own set of literary tastes, and when they just can't get enough of books that I think are just awful-I have to wonder-do I have any business reviewing these books?

My answer is still yes. And here's why:

Review: When Destiny Knocks by Heather M. White

When Destiny Knocks by Heather M. White

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

When Destiny Knocks is one of the worst books I've ever read. It seems to have been reviewed well so far, but I have no idea why. This books needs better editing, more fleshed out characters and more interesting settings and baddies.

The Good: The only thing I have good to say about When Destiny Knocks is that the action is fast-paced and short.

The Bad: When Destiny Knocks is full of typos and grammatical errors. The author has done a disservice to indie authors as a whole by releasing her book without the polish is deserves. This type of writing is what gives indie authors a bad reputation. The Kindle edition has grammar errors or typos on nearly every page. The narrator also can't seem to decide whether to use past or present tense verbs, sometimes even within the same sentence.

Even with grammar errors aside, the writing isn't very good. The setting is flat, the characters are either cliches or flat, the monsters are definite cliches, and the heroine is a whiny brat that everyone feels like they have to protect (which they apparently aren't very good at).

Relationships form at the drop of a hat and for no particular reason. Everyone loves the heroine even though all she ever does is whine and have super powers. Most of her whining has to do with really vapid things. Even though ostensibly her mother has just died, she spends most of time whining about how she can't be with a character she just met but apparently can't live without.

Whenever the action gets slow, the author just throws in another monster cliche for good measure. None of the monsters are created in interesting ways and piling them on one after the other is just imaginative laziness.

The Bottom Line: This is some of the worst writing I've ever read. I won't be reading the sequel.

Diary of Teenage Serial Killer

Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer by Jem Fox

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer is a thriller with an interesting, fleshed out heroine, but superficial in it's other characters and with fast paced, but still not very exciting action.

The Good: Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer surprised me. Darla is a surprisingly well fleshed out character for the thriller genre. I was not expecting her motivations and viewpoint to be so thoroughly thought out. The best parts of the novel are when Darla is reasoning and thinking through how she will react to the situations she finds herself in. Jem Fox has done a great job bringing a character to life. She is also a character that can kick some serious behind. It's good when a thriller heroine can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

"The Prisoner" by Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë, always the the super-romantic imagery...


IN the dungeon-crypts, idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!" 
He dared not say me nay–the hinges harshly turn. 
"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than blue;
(This was when glad spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Aye, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide.
Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue;
I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flag-stones rung:
"Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here? "
The captive raised her face, it was as soft and mild
As sculpted marble saint, or slumbering unwean'd child;


It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,
Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there! 
The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
"I have been struck," she said, "and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong,
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long."
Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: "Shall I be won to hear;
Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?
Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans?
Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.
"My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
But hard as hardest flint, the soul that lurks behind;
And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me."
About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn,
"My friend," she gently said, "you have not heard me mourn;

Interview with Monica Leonelle

Today we have an interview with Monica Leonelle, author of the  YA novel Social Punk.


Thank you, Monica for joining us.


Q1: In just a few sentences, tell us why we should read Socialpunk.

ML: Socialpunk is fun and face-paced and has a strong female lead but is also a quick read, so you can enjoy it in one or two sittings if you'd like. 

Q2: Is there a character in Socialpunk that you identify with most?

ML: I think I would be Ember. She's one of the Socialpunks and she's very beautiful. She has long hair that is literally rainbow-colored—each strand is a different hue. She seems kind of terrible in the first book but hopefully she redeems herself with readers in later books.

Saintly Writer: Words Matter

Read an interesting guest post about word and sounds in fiction:

Saintly Writer: Words Matter: Welcome and thanks to my last guest of the challenge, Cathy Dreyer, the award-winning story writer who blogs about all things writing at wr...

Socialpunk: An Excerpt by Monica Leonelle

Excerpt #1: Prologue

After playing God for six years with the world he created, he couldn’t control any of his subjects, none at all. Over the years, he had watched them evolve and become the sum of their own choices rather than the sum of his; and for that, he regretted ever giving them life.

A small, blinking red light from just inside his eyelid reminded him of the news they sent him earlier that morning. The company had cancelled his funding and would shut down his project within three months. According to them, the project cost too much and took up too much space, and the inconclusive results couldn’t be published reputably, now or in the future.

Six years of his work, tens of thousands of lives at stake—and he could do nothing to save any of it. He bowed his head, letting his chin rest on the rim of his breakfast smoothie. The smoothie reeked of powder—crushed pills—but he supposed he had better get used to it. He wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of real food after they canned him.

He closed his eyes and called up the camera view of one of his favorites, number 3281. She fascinated him; he couldn’t deny it. When he had designed her, her pre-teen rebelliousness lit fire in her eyes. A survivor, he’d thought. He’d meant for her to have it all—to grow up, to get married to the love of her life, and to have a beautiful family of her own someday.

I Read a Book Once...: Review & Giveaway: Socialpunk by Monica Leonelle ...

John at I Read a Book Once has a different take on Socialpunk. Read his review:

I Read a Book Once...: Review & Giveaway: Socialpunk by Monica Leonelle ...: I don’t think I’m cut out for Young Adult books.  Maybe that's why I didn’t enjoy Monica Leonelle’s new book Socialpunk as much as all ...