Many years ago I gave myself a fairly ambitious goal, to ready as many popular books as possible. I asked you to ask yourself, “How many of these can you read in a year?”
And while I got through quite a few, there are always more.
I was originally spurred on via an article I’d previously read from The Federalist titled, “The Top Ten Books People Lie About Reading.”
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
- On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
- 1984, George Orwell
- Democracy in America, Alexis De Tocqueville
- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu
- The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli:
- Ulysses, James Joyce
And while I’ve actually read about half the list in some capacity (Or am I lying? hmmm…) I thought to myself it would be a great year’s goal to go through the list and read again. The list actually includes 11 books. I’ve previously read maybe 4 or 5 of them in full with another 2 or 3 I’ve read in pieces. A few I remember going through in college.
One that jumps out is Atlas Shrugged, my favorite book and one I read every two or three years. Every time I read it, it gets me motivated to take some big tasks on, so now is a great time to read it again. The last time I read it was years ago when I was dealing with a difficult situation with a deceptive business partner. It got me motivated to work even harder and take charge of my life again.
Because #goals, I’m going to see how many of these 11 I can finish by next year, December 31, 2021, in addition to the other reading I’m doing and work through my original list. While I’ve picked up and finished plenty of other books along the way, I’ve got my sights set on that ambitious goal of finishing my original 50 I set in March of 2015.
I found my old blog post from November 20, 2016! I’m including it here so I can mark off my book completion.
About a year and a half ago I set a goal to read 25 classic books out of a list of 50. Over the months that followed I began reading and listed out my progress. I made marks next to the names of the books; updated with the approximate dates I finished.
Some of the books I had read before and decided to read through again, though for the majority, I was reading anew. Don’t short yourself by avoiding some of these classics, or, as most people do, nod your head and fake a smile when someone asks if you’ve ever read it. There seem to be fewer and fewer people who make reading a consist part of their schedule.
I’ll use this page as an update to my reading goals. In addition to the 50 titles on my original list, I’ll be adding additional works as well. Due to a business project I’m working on, I’ll be acquiring a number of classic books that I’ll have available to read.
MY READING GOALS
* While I prefer to have physical copies, I may download some via ebooks if I need to.
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- Waiting for Gadot – Samuel Beckett
- The Wasteland – T.S. Elliot
- Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
- Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
- For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
- Paradise Lost – John Milton
- The Stranger – Albert Camus
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – Completed September.
- Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
- Arabian Knights aka One Thousand and One Nights – Completed.
- The Trial – Frank Kafka
- Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Completed.
- War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
- The Brother’s Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
- A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking – Completed.
- Steal This Book – Abbie Hoffman
- The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli – Completed.
- Other Writings of Machiavelli (less “The Prince”)
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
- As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
- Slaugterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
- The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
- The Divine Comedy, Inferno – Dante Alighieri – Completed.
- The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio – Dante Alighieri
- The Divine Comedy – Paradiso – Dante Alighieri
- The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
- A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac
- The Stand – Steven King
- Animal Farm – George Orwell
- Dune – Frank Herbert
- The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – Completed November, 2016
- David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – Completed.
- Ulysses – James Joyce
- The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
- 1984 – George Orwell
- A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – Completed.
- Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
- The Art of War – Sun Tzu
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville
- Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand – Completed.
- On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life – Charles Darwin
