Attention Good Folk! I Hereby Announce A Showdown of Epic Proportions! Gather Ye Rosebuds to My Bosom, and Attend to This Our Harrowing Adventure!
Today begins the kickoff of the literary duel of the century. For I have found a worthy adversary to take on my challenge to race to 100 books in a single year! A foe of incomparable strength and dignity! A Yankees to my Red Soxery, a Louis to my Frazier, a Kenny to my Spenny. None other than ALABAMAPINK!
That’s right. I’m fighting a chick with cancer.
Many warriors would cringe and walk away from such a battle, but I am not fettered by such weak ties as dignity and self-respect. Honor and integrity are mere words that get sewn into collegiate insignias. And, much like the marathon this is, we do not battle one another. We use the other’s drafts to gain speed. We exchange the lead, using the other as a catalyst for breaking through wall after wall. We make each other stronger for it.
Still. I’m totally kicking her ass.
I mean, yeah, she’s totally going to have all that time, sitting in a hospital bed, to luxuriously read, while I toil away at my daily grind. Some of have a day job, missy. And I don’t want to hear any of that boo-hooing about having a child to raise and a husband to tend to. Those are cohorts who can inspire you. I will not fall for your ruse!
I still stick by my word that I will take any legitimate reading suggestion thrown at me. I am fully expecting to be Mario Karted with some Tolstoy and Dostoefvsky. Hell, I am doing this to myself with the inclusion of Don Quixote later in the year.
Anyway, root for both of us in our endeavor. At make sure to hit her up with some reading suggestions. We are working together to kick one another’s asses on this. Stand back and marvel at our exploits. To keep on track, we’re going to have to be reading approximately 2 books a week. Cakewalk.
It’s on like Donkey Kong, chilluns.
Shouldn’t there be a consideration of what type of books? I mean you put Seuss, Dan Brown and Judith Krantz in the mix and you’d be done by Christmas.
Just a thought, Amanda
I made a rules list for the books in “The Hundred Leaves War”. But I shall copy it and place it in the recommendations list for people to see and bear witness.
Ok, here are some good recommendations…..
You have probably already read these, but I am always way behind on the book curve. I spent several years trying to catch up on the “classics” so I was reading
“Gone With the Wind” and the Ayn Rand library when everybody else was out having fun!!!!
Anywho…
1) World War Z–Max Brooks
2) Zombie Survival Guide–Max Brooks
3) Heart-Shaped Box–Joe Hill
4) The Stupidest Angel–Christopher Moore
5) A Dirty Job–Christopher Moore
so, there’s a good start….
By the way, can anyone join this challenge? I’d love to!!!
Prisco,
Anything by Carl Hiaasen can be blazed through pretty quickly. His books move fast and are old enough you may not have read him yet. Striptease, Tourist Season, and Native Tongue are particularly great. Yes, Striptease was a Demi Moore movie. An awful, awful Demi Moore movie.
In the better-than-usual-thriller categories I would put about anything by Doug Preston and Lincoln Child. Relic, Thunderhead, The Ice Limit, Brimstone, etc.
The Thursday Next series by Jasper Ffyord if you haven’t gotten to it.
I read quite a lot, as does my wife. Email me with preferences and I can give you some more suggestions depending on genre.
BTW, I’m on a new blog at http://www.rufkm.net (Are You F’ing Kidding Me?), it’s a humor site with a couple other bloggers. I think you’d dig it, check it out if you get a chance.
Good luck with the 100 books!
I’ll make this fun. Lee Child, Nowhere to Run; Chang Rae Lee, Native Speaker; Alec Wilkinson, Happiest Man in the World; William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow; Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking/Salvador (to get to 200 pages).
I like to make recommendations. So I will. You’ve probably read half of these, but half of these are good for you, so you could always take some more.
*) Lolita, Nabokov
*) Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov
*) The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
*) Demons, Dostoevsky
*) The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
*) Darkness at Noon, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
*) We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
*) The Magus, John Fowles
*) The Collector, John Fowles
*) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami
*) Confessions of a Mask, Mishima
*) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mishima
*) The White Guard, Bulgakov
And I’m spent. I can’t take the challenge myself, though I’ve likely accomplished it over numerous years without noticing. But this year is second year university and I’m taking the maximum course load, so the majority of my reading will consist of sociological methods and the criminal justice system, yay! Good luck to you, and have fun.
I have one recommendation: Snow Crash. It meets all the qualifications and it’s extremely fun and quick to read (the pacing of the language is fast). It was written in 1990 and set around 2015, envisioning where the internet would go. So, again:
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
Here’s the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Bantam-Spectra-Book/dp/0553380958/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221056762&sr=8-1
dammitjanet — I’ve read them all. Joe Hill’s got a new one coming out soon that sounds spectacular. About a blind painter and an eyeglass. Of course you can join, just jump in the water.
Mr. Durden — I’ve read all the Thursday Next in America, and I’m an avid Preston-Child fan. The next Agent Pendergast comes out in 2009. I’ve been meaning to add Hiaasen, just never knew where to start. I’ll hit you up for suggestions.
Lola — Lolita is my favorite book of all time, and Nabokov is the man. I’ve only read the one Dostoevsky, so I’ll add Demons. I’ve been meaning to read the Reader, as well. John Fowles and I have a frightening relationship. I loved both those books, but The Magus got a little too close for comfort at times.
Lucas — I read Cryptonomicon, and thought it was pretty good, so Snow Crash makes the cut!
Book Of Joe- Jonathan Tropper
Lullaby-Chuck Palahucknik
I Peed On Fellini- David Stratton
you should definitely read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami.
[...] to complete the terrifying circularity, here’s the link to his blog: The Gospel According to Prisco. He details all the other brave souls taking part and the reasons for so doing. Me? I just [...]
I posted a comment on Pajiba and then realized DUH, I should just click on the link and post it here!
My best recommendation: http://www.bookcrossing.com
It’s a website where people register books then leave them in public places for others to find them. This is how I started getting rid of the books I didn’t love enough to keep forever. I swear, my books mate when I’m not looking because I have hundreds of books all over the house.
The other great thing about Bookcrossing is that most of the people there love to read, so they have tons of recommendations. There are so many random books I never would have heard of without seeing recommendations there. They also have bookrings, which is sort of like a book club. One person picks a book they are willing to part with. Everyone who wants to read the book signs up. The organizer makes a list of all the participants (I reorder the list geographically so that the book travels as quickly as possible), then sends the book to the first person on the list. After the first person finishes, they send it to the next person. You can write book reviews on the site too. People also offer their books for trade so you can get rid of any extra books you have lying around and get something that you want to read. This was really helpful for me because I realized that I read more when I have more books around. Sounds obvious, but when my reading went down last year, I realized it was because I didn’t have as many unread books lying around the house.
Although I wish I’d started a book journal ages ago, all the books I have registered at Bookcrossing are now my online book journal. I read so many books that sometimes I get a weird feeling of deja vu before I remember DAMN IT, I ALREADY READ THIS BOOK. Having all the books I’ve read (at least since I joined) in one place has been a huge organizational help for me.
Lastly, I found that just the act of registering my books and writing short reviews really encouraged me to read a lot more. The first year, I read 62 books. The second year, I read 110 books. The year after that, I slacked off and only read 67 books. I only count new books in my annual list, but I do re-read a lot of my favorite books often, so it’s really up to each person to decide what counts. For me, non-fiction definitely counts. Keeping all my books listed on the site also made me see a lot of trends in my reading. I go through phases where I read very similar books – sometimes it’s biographies, other times it’s travel memoirs, etc. and I wouldn’t have realized my reading trends otherwise.
Good luck! 100 books in one year is a good goal. My other friend’s New Year’s resolution was to read 30 books this year. He started a blog about it and hasn’t made any new entries since February, so I’m afraid to ask if he just gave up.
general author recommendations:
David Sedaris
Nick Hornby (High Fidelity and About a Boy are musts, the others are good but not great)
Ruth Reichl
Mark Salzman
specific book recommendations:
Kick Me by Paul Feig
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Going Down by Jennifer Belle
America the Beautiful by Moon Unit Zappa
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Heat by Bill Buford
Candy Freak by Steve Almond
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky
Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn