Sweet Summertime...

I've been an avid reader all my life. I taught myself how to read before I was 5 and haven't stopped since. With college, having to read textbooks, study guides, and class notes, I don't get much time to do any free reading. All the books I used to just read for fun have to be pushed to the back burner & wait for summer to role around.

How many of you are the same way? You've got an EXTENSIVE list of books you've always wanted to read, but never have to. Well, there's no better time than right now to make a dent in that list. That's why I'm proposing a



not only for myself but for anyone else that wants to join me. I'm not going to make this like book club & everyone has to read the same book, that would be kinda hard to do online. I want everyone to set reading goals for the summer. Maybe there's a book on your shelf that you've never had the time to read. Maybe you've got a huge summer reading list for school & you don't want to even think about reading it (trust me, those books aren't so bad)

My goal? I've always had a soft spot for classic literature & feel like I don't have the education in the books that have really shaped today's books, movies, and even music, so I found a list of classics that everyone should read. I don't know how long it'll take me, but I'm gonna work my way through this list over the summer..

1. Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen)
2. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) I read this one in the 9th grade. It's one of my favorites and I totally plan to read it again.
4. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
5. Paradise Lost (John Milton)
6. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
7. Hamlet (William Shakespeare) Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare tragedies, not sure if I'll read through this one again or not.
8. Ulysses (James Joyce)
9. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
10. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

Along with this list of books...though there are some on here that I've read already.

Must Read Book List
Lady Chatterley's Lover	Rebecca
Animal Farm (read)	Iliad and the Odyssey
The Catcher in the Rye	Catch 22
Oedipus the King	A Farewell To Arms
Gulliver's Travels	Utopia
David Copperfield	No Exit
One Hundred years of Solitude	Crime and Punishment
Saint Joan	Poetics
The Way of the World	War and Peace
Frankenstein (read)	Don Quixote
Little Women	Wuthering Heights
Vanity Fair	Emma
Lolita	The Scarlett Letter (read)
The Canterbury Tales (read)	A Doll's House
Beloved	Color Purple (read/favorite)
The Birds	Moby-Dick
Oliver Twist	Robinson Crusoe
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	The Trial
The Republic	A Midsummer Night's Dream
Far from the Madding Crowd	The Lord of the Rings
The Great Gatsby (read)	The Prince
The Grapes of Wrath	Lord of the Flies
East of Eden	A Portrait of the Artist
Mill on the Floss	Silas Marner
Women in Love	1984

That's a lot of books!! I'm going to give myself the summer to see how many of them I get through. After I look over the list again in August, I guess I'll see if I made enough of a dent to hold off until next summer or just continue through the rest of the year until the list is done.

Hopefully you guys will take me up on the challenge. Summer is such a great time to read. You can read anywhere, in the car, on vacation, outside under a tree in your favorite park, at the pool, ANYWHERE!! So head out to your local library, or your bookshelf and pick up a book!!

Best of luck!

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