At the start of 2017 I set myself a challenge, through Goodreads, to read a total of forty books. Nine months into the year I have completed the task. I should have probably set the target a little higher but I wanted a goal that would encourage consistent reading as well as open my horizons to fresh authors and ideas. The following list is what I have read since January. Some of these texts were incredibly short (such as the Penguin black classics and books of poetry) which may be why I finished the challenge so early. Other books, like the denser Philosophical texts and anthologies, took weeks to finish. On balance I think my reading list contains a little something for everyone. Hopefully you find a title for you, one of your favourites or are able to leave me a suggestion or two.
Fiction
Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro (3/5)
The Remains of the Day by Kazou Ishiguro (5/5)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (3/5)
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (4/5)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (5/5)
Madam Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (3/5)
Anasi Boys by Neil Gaiman (4/5)
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (3/5)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (5.5/5)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (4/5)
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (4/5)
A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar (3/5)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (4/5)
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr (5/5)
Maurice by E.M Forster (4/5)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (3/5)
The Plague by Albert Camus (4/5)
Candide by Voltaire (5/5)
The History Boys by Alan Bennett (5/5)
Demian by Hermann Hesse (4/5)
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (5/5)
Poetry
I Knew the Bride by Hugo Williams (4/5)
The Poetic Edda by Anonymous (4/5)
The Complete Poetry by Maya Angelou (5/5)
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara (3/5)
Complete Poems by Karen Boye (4/5)
Making Cocoa for Kinsley Amis by Wendy Cope (5/5)
Selected Poems and Letters by Arthur Rimbaud (3/5)
Nonfiction
23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang (4/5)
Aphorisms on Love and Hate by Friedrich Nietzsche (4/5)
A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift (4/5)
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (2/5)
The Republic by Plato (5/5)
Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast by Oscar Wilde (5/5)
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky (4/5)
Five Dialogues by Plato (4/5)
Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud (3/5)
The Symposium by Plato (4/5)
The Culture Industry by Theodor W. Ardono (3/5)
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (4/5)
