On Being Well-Read - Donna Alward

This has been buzzing around the internet for a long time - the 1% Well Read Challenge (I picked it up at My Friend Amy's Blog post of last May). Basically it's a list of the 1001 books you should read before you die and the challenge to read 10 from the list in a year. (Now, mathematically this means I will never read all of them unless I discover the fountain of youth.) But you know I look at this list and there are a lot of books that well-read or not - I don't WANT to read them. I just don't. I still need to read a book I am going to enjoy.

I went through the list and discovered I have only read 44 of the books. With some of the authors on the list, I have read other works but not the ones listed. And what is astounding is that there are a number of books that I have seen movies or miniseries of. I am guessing nearly as many as I've read. We're talking...Forsyte Saga, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Atonement, The Golden Bowl, Vanity Fair etc. etc. etc. So maybe I'm equally as well-watched as I am well-read. Here's what I've managed:

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy

Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Silas Marner – George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
Adam Bede – George Eliot
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

Still, some of the books listed are in my TBR pile - Middlemarch (which happens to be the only Eliot book I HAVEN'T read), Suite Francaise, and Villette to name a few. I put North and South on my read list because I am in the middle of it right now. (And another that I saw on dvd before reading). I have a collection of Poe on my shelf as well. All in all, I shortlisted the 10 books I hope to get through before the end of the year:

Middlemarch – George Eliot
Suite Francaise - Irene N.
Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
The Pit and The Pendulum – Poe
The Old Man and The Sea
For Whom The Bell Tolls
A Farewell to Arms
To Have and To Have Not
The Sun Also Rises– all Hemingway
Villette - Bronte

So does this make me "well-read"? I doubt it. For one, I know if my CP took this list she would probably triple my number read or more.

And how much credence should we give this list anyway? I read lots of books not on the list - last year I read over 50 books in total.

I firmly believe people should just READ. Not read what they are supposed to read but just read whatever speaks to them. For my husband, it is non-fiction. He is not a big reader so any time I can find him something that he enjoys and will open, huzzah! My kids read a lot of kid's "classics" - we're reading Anne Frank right now, we have read Narnia books and Little Women and A Wrinkle In Time together and several more...but at the same time, when my eldest discovered Andy Griffiths a few years ago, how could I dispute the fact that I could hear her in her room, laughing and laughing as she read? Or how we all held our breath as Harry took on Voldemort time and time again?

I also read a lot of Romance, obviously, which would never make it near this list. And non-fiction for research. And craft books on writing.

So while I do hope to read more "should reads" this year, I also plan to read a lot of "want to reads" because they are enjoyable and speak to my heart and perhaps teach me something. I am a firm believer in making books accessible, and that does NOT equal 'dumbing them down'. Let's make that clear right now, and I know you know what I mean because I'm guessing most of the readers here LOVE popular fiction! It means books that speak to readers on some level. What is the point of reading something if you do not enjoy it, do not relate to it and get nothing from it? It's kind of like eating brussel sprouts to my mind. I hate them. But I bet I can get the same nutritional value out of another food I'll enjoy much more.

The bottom line is, just read. Open your mind, find something that you enjoy and while away a few hours.

Happy Reading!