Alexandra's 75, 2011 Edition

After successfully falling off the face of the Internet at the start of the recently ended school year, I'm back with a renewed will to KEEP READING even in the face of things like strange duties at all hours and stacks of freshman papers. Fortunately, I've been trying to keep track of what I read this year.

I'm also taking a Children's Literature course this summer, so there will be some younger reads mixed in!

Here we go...

January
1. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
2. Venetia by Georgette Heyer
3. Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley
4. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
5. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

February
5. Mythology by Edith Hamilton
6. Assorted satire, sonnets, and other poetry by William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, Katherine Philips, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, and William Hogarth

March
7. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
9. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
10. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
11. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
12. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
13. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

April
14. Much poetry from Literature: A Portable Anthology, ed. Janet E. Gardner et al.
15. Much more 19th and 20th Century poetry (Romantics, Victorians, and Modernists) by William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, and T.S. Eliot (these guys went into May, too)

May
16. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
17. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
18. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
19. Araby by James Joyce
20. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
21. Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson
22. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
23. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
24. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

June
25. Pegasus by Robin McKinley
26. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
27. Heartless by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

July
28. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
29. The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by Barbara O'Connor
30. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
31. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
32. Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky
33. Diamond Willow by Helen Frost
34. The Old Country by Mordecai Gerstein
35. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
36. Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
37. Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill
38. Ballet for Martha by Jan Greenberg

You can almost trace the patterns of when most of my reading was for school and for when we were out on break!

I'm a little behind a 75-in-a-year pace, but I'm actually not doing as badly as I thought, now that I tally it all up. Happy reading, everyone!

Welcome!

Um, hello, cousin of mine! You didn't tell me you started a thread here!

If you count rereads (I don't; for the purposes of this I try for 75 new books), you'll soon have seven to add when you do your Harry Potter run through. :)

Cool.

Welcome back, Alexandra!

It will be interesting to see what books are on the children's literature reading lists these days!

#2, 4, 5, 6: Thank you for the welcome! I'll keep it updated!

#3: Sorry, I completely forgot in the midst of all of the HP emotions! You're far more ambitious than I am, my dear... without my rereads I would never make it to 75! I do make the concession of not counting the same book twice in one year. For example, I think I'm going to reread The Hunger Games to use for my final paper for the class, but I'm not going to count it again. I AM, however, going to count Wild Magic, Lirael, and Wolf Speaker, which I'm also planning to use.

Ooh, can I read your paper when you're done with it? Anything citing some of my favorite Tamora Pierce books is going to be brilliant, no matter how nervous you say you are about it! :)

Looks like we have some similar reading tastes, so I'll be hanging about in the background somewhere. Great list so far, I look forward to what will crop up during the rest of the year. :D

Lots of variety in your reading this year...Neil Gaiman to John Steinbeck. I took a children's literature course in the fall of last year and would love to compare our reading to yours.

We had lists of recommended books in the back of our text and for most of our reading records were required to pick from the list for each topic, usually 2 to 3 books. Then, one book was a required book that we all read for each topic. In that way, we discussed the book we all read and shared our impressions of the books we picked independently, which gave each of us lots more exposure.

All the best with the class!

#9: Glad to have you here! I'll do another update with the rest of July soon (with, I'm hoping, a little bit more detail)!

#10: Thank you Michelle! It's actually almost over-- we're in the midst of a conference at which several of the authors are speaking! Your course sounds fantastic, too-- that's such an interesting approach, and you must have gotten such a range of reading from your classmates! I can send you our reading list-- it's based around the theme of "The Body Electric" (taken from Whitman!) so the general topic was the representation of the body, and we got more specific for each class. I'd be interested to know what you read for yours, too!

July 2011 (cont.)

39. Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
40. Clementine by Sara Pennypacker
41. Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos
42. Le Divorce by Diane Johnson
43. Prime Baby by Gene Luen Yang
44. Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same! by Grace Lin
45. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
46. Lirael by Garth Nix
47. Feed by M.T. Anderson
48. Stitches by David Small
( and a reread of the Hunger Games, which I'm not counting, but do want to mention)

That wraps up July! On to August, and more delicious reading while I have time for it! (I promised myself a complete HP reread once my summer course was over.) I plan to write more detailed impressions of these books at some point, too...

Looks like July was a good reading month for you!

As I probably could have predicted, my reading (and my diligence in keeping track of it and writing about it here) fell off again once school started. I blame many things, including my lack of time and sleep deprivation, my newfound love for my Netflix account (oh, Downton Abbey!), and being halfway through some rather difficult reads that are making me go slowly (Nabokov, you task me!). Plus, there were the rereads for school. And the essays. I DO read a lot (I promise myself), but unfortunately, not enough of it is in book form to make me happy. However, here's the rest of my tally for 2011:

49. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone
50. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
51. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
52. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
53. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
54. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
56. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
57. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (again, for my BritLit class)
58. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares
59. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
60. The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
61. The History Boys by Alan Bennett
62. Chalice by Robin McKinley
63. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
64. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters
65. Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse
66. Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth
67. Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
68. Mastiff by Tamora Pierce
69. Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce
70. Short Stories: "Everyday Use," "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," "The Story of an Hour," "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Chrysanthemums," "The Yellow Wallpaper," and "The Cask of Amontillado"
71. Excerpts from The Canterbury Tales
72. Excerpts from Paradise Lost
73. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
74. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
75. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Whew! Made it! Here's to a goal of not needing to scrape through for my 75 in 2012! Happy New Year everyone!