I saw a challenge on a fellow bookblogger’s sidebar that intrigued me, and so I’m joining. The original challenge is 15 books/15 decades, but I couldn’t pick just one book per decade, so I’m doing 22 books spanning 11 decades.
In selecting my titles, I chose books from only years ending in 00 and 05, listed on Wikipedia’s novels by year search results pages, that I hadn’t read, but had been meaning to, or felt that I should, or just interested me in some way. I used a narrow field of choices because otherwise I’d have been picking novels for days.
This, then, is my list, by year of original publication:
1900 – Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
1905 – The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World, Jules Verne
1910 – Howard’s End, E.M. Forster
1915 – The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
1920 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
1925 – The Wind, Dorothy Scarborough
1930 – East Wind, West Wind, Pearl S. Buck
1935 – The African Queen, by C.S. Forester
1940 – For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
1945 – The Small Rain, Madeleine L’Engle
1950 – The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
1955 – A Charmed Life, Mary McCarthy
1960 – The Light in the Piazza, Elizabeth Spencer
1965 – Desolation Angels, Jack Kerouac
1970 – Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
1975 – Crocodile on the Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters
1980 – A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
1985 – The Sand Child, Tahar Ben Jelloun
1990 – The Ghost from the Grand Banks, Arthur C. Clarke
1995 – Northern Lights, Phillip Pullman
2000 – Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz
2005 – Comfort Food, Noah Ashenhurst – – Review
I may not read them in order, but reviews will be posted here after each book is finished.
Wow, that’s a great list! You don’t have to read them in order.
I’ll be checking in!
Hi, here via Michele’s.
Wow, that’s awesome! This challenge does sound good… I just don’t know if I’m up for it. I’ll have to think on it a bit more :)
I have a place for reviews now at the top of the challenge site. It’s not required, though!
http://15books15decades.blogspot.com/2007/04/post-completed-book-comments-here.html