There are days when I truly miss reading.
I cant remember when I stopped reading. I don't think there was a specific day. It was gradual, from one book a night, to one every two-three days, to one a week and so on. There were times where I would stay up all night without even realising it. The characters would come alive and for those few short hours it was like watching a movie in my minds eye.
It was great, but eventually I began to realise that the books were no longer individual. Suddenly the characters begun to morph and blur together and I honestly begun to forget which characters had been fighting with whom, or worse yet, which storyline belonged to which book. So I slowed down.
But I miss the intrigue. The characters. The ever changing storylines and the subtle variations of tone and gesture which each new author possesses. It is for this reason that I've decided to put together a list of the books I wish to read at some point or another in the near future as a reference for myself.
Unlike my usual selections of historical fiction and regency romance I've decided to broaden my horizon. While the list also contains some of the books I have previously read, the majority are new to me. I only hope I can find them all when the time comes.
- The Great Gatsby - E.S. Fitzgerald
- Life of Pi - Yann Maritel
- The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton (How can you not fall in love with Moonface & Silky?)
- Matilda - Roald Dahl
- Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Help - Kathryn Stockett
- The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
- The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
- The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
- Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
- A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
- Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (preferably the English translation as my Spanish is more than slightly rusty)
- Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
- Zen Mind, Beginners Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
- Into the Wild - John Krakauer (This one in particular sounds good)
- Cosmic Trigger 1: Final Secret of the Illuminati - Robert Anton Wilson
- Chocolate Lenin - Graham Diamond (I've always been interested in early 20th century Russia - no idea why)
- Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke, Reginald Snell
- Bad Reputation: The Unauthorised Biography of Joan Jet - Dave Thompson
- Diana: her true story (1993) - Andrew Morton
- Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings - Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James E. Irby
- A Course in Miracles - Combined Volume - Helen Shueman
- The Grapes or Wrath - John Steinbeck's
- 1984 - George Orwell, Erich Fromm
- Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
- Flight to Arras - Antoine De Saint-Exupére, Lewis Galaniére
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard
- Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- A Child Called "It" - Dave Pelzer
- The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
- The Host - Stephany Meyer
- A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
- The Secret Garden - Frances H. Burnett
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
- Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
- Spirit Junkie - Gabrielle Bernstein
- Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
- The Four Hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss
- The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
- The Art of War - Sun Tzu
- Cookwise - Shirley O. Corriher
- The Benchley Roundup - Robert Benchley
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- Colefax & Fowler: The Best in English Interior Decoration - Chester Jones (Just yes)
- Apartments for the Affluent: A Historical Survey of Buildings in New York - Andrew Alpern
- Making Faces - Kevyn Aucoin
- Being Peace - Thich Nhat Hahn
- Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson
- Without Feathers - Woody Allen
