110+ Books I Have Every Intention of Reading Next, Revisited

New addition.

Last February (16 months ago), I wrote a post about all the books I have been meaning to read. In some cases, the books were newer releases I'd heard good things about. In others, I've owned to the books for over a decade and I like to imagine the characters inside of them as actors who've given up on the performance that will never come and instead spend their days tanning by the pool (or probably by the pond since most of these books are oldies) and their nights playing snooker and getting wasted on cocktails. I am 100% sure this daydream of mine is a result of my obsession with Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, in which all of our books are constructed in the BookWorld from the sets down to the casting of actors. Because I love that series, I had no trouble at all catching up with the one book I was behind on and then the next one, which was published after my initial list post. Likewise, I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with Eve and Roarke in J.D. Robb's In Death series. I am now adamant about listening to every installment, after plowing through six audiobooks to catch up in the last year and a half. The only problem with that series is that NORA ROBERTS IS TOO DAMN PROLIFIC AND EVERY TIME I CATCH UP THERE IS  A NEW RELEASE! YOU'RE KILLING ME, SMALLS! (FYI Thankless in Death comes out September 3rd.)

All told, I have finished 26 books from my list thus far. Here they are:

1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (9/12)
2. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1/13)
3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (6/12)
4. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (6/12)
5. The Twits by Roald Dahl (5/12)
6. The Witches by Roald Dahl(3/12)
7. Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt (5/12)
8. One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde (8/12)
9. The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde (2/13)
10. Deadline by Mira Grant (3/13)
11. Hallowed by Cynthia Hand (8/12)
12. Boundless by Cynthia Hand (3/13)
13. Indulgence in Death  by J.D. Robb(6/12)
14. Treachery in Death by J.D. Robb(5/12)
15. New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb (6/12)
16. Celebrity in Death by J.D. Robb (7/12)
17. Delusion in Death by J.D. Robb (12/12)
18. Calculated in Death by J.D. Robb (5/13)
19. Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (2/13)
20. The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson (4/13)
21. The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (6/13)
22. Beekeeping for Beginners (Short Story) by Laurie R. King (9/12)
23. All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (2/13)
24. Being Billy by Phil Earle (2/13)
25. The Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger (1/13)
26. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (6/13)

Not too shabby but still a bit embarrassing. Several other bloggers were inspired by my list and made lists of their own but I'm not going to link to them because they all seem/ed to be far more successful than I was thus far and this is the part of the internet where I can pretend I kick ass even when I am just meh at something...like completing this list of books to read. Lately (read: since about two months into this challenge until now), I've been thinking about revisiting this list and amending it. I think it would be better for fickle ol' me to have a list, yes, but a list that has some fluidity to it. Therefore, I am going to nix these 26 off the list as well as about 20-30 more that I have an inkling I will never want to get to in the time period and those I don't want to read anymore at all. Also, I think it was optimistic (read: delusional) of me to include long series to finish. Sometimes series go horribly wrong midway (Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse, & the Undead series, anyone?) and I need at least the first book in a series to see whether it will be a good fit so I have deleted the remaining books in series that are new to me and only left on the first books.

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In terms of new categories of books I want to add onto my list, I have done some serious thinking about this. I have been having a really hard time keeping up with blogging lately but I do love doing it and I especially love doing some of our feature posts. For that reason, I want to include a few books that I really want to compare to their movie counterparts, so here goes:

1. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
3. An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
4. Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth
5. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
6. It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
7. Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I chose most of these because they are movies I have seen so many times that I know them nearly by heart. Several of them I have read before but want to read anew to compare them to their respective movie/s. This is particularly true for Little Women because I signed up for Classics Retold, a feature coming up in September hosted by Alyssa at Books Take You Places, Alison at The Cheap Reader, and a few other bloggers in which tons of different bloggers tackle all the versions (book, movie, tv show, etc.) of a classic and compare the retellings. I've chosen Little Women for that event and I'm excited to get started on all of it. What are your favorite books that have been made into movies? I have so, so many that I don't even know where to begin.

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My next new category is books I've bought or my friends have bought for me that I have not gotten around to, but instead of the ones I included last time (that had been sitting on my shelves for ages), I am picking only the books I acquired in the last few months:

9. Bronze Gods by A.A. Aguirre
10. Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield
11. Pivot Point by Kasie West
12. Golden by Jessi Kirby
13. A Brief History of Montmoray by Michelle Cooper
14. The Amber Amulet by Craig Silvey
15. Wildlife by Fiona Wood
16. The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler
17. Girl, Defective by Simmone Howell
18. All This Could End by Steph Bowe
19. A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
20. The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint
21. The ZigZag Effect by Lili Wilkinson

And a few arcs (of the many) that I really want to read:

22. Vortex by S.J. Kincaid
23. Raven Flight by Juliet Marillier
24. Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis
25. 15 Days Without A Head by Dave Cousins
26. The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand by Gregory Galloway
27. The 100 by Kass Morgan
28. This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales
29. Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce

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A lot of my recent reading time has been taken up by graphic novels, and I am hoping to keep that up for years to come. Though I have quickly plowed through a lot of the "must reads" in that area, there are a bunch that I want to get to so I can be more well-read in that format. I don't think I can consider myself any sort of superior recommender of graphic novels until I've completed these ones I haven't crossed off yet:

30. The Watchmen by Alan Moore
31.  Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan (read the first, at least 1 more)
32. The Transmetropolitan series by Warren Ellis (at least 1)
33. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
34. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
35. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman (at least 1)

While perusing my shelves, I found a lot of books I bought with the intention of reading them because I loved something else I read by that author. With that in mind, here are a few additions to the list that are around because I love the author (for one reason or another):

36. A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
37. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
38. Hold Still by Nina LaCour
39. Stories of My Life and Others by Ted Chiang
40. The Musician's Daughter by Susanne Dunlap

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That's 40 new additions, so here are the former list items I am keeping, in hopes that I will get to them. All told, I am back up to a few more than 110 so I can keep my arbitrarily made up challenge title of '110+ Books I Have Every Intention of Reading Next':

1. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
2. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
3. Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning
4. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
5. All The King's Men by Robert Penn
6. Animal Farm by George Orwell
7. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
8. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
9. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
10. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
11. 1984 by George Orwell
12. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
13. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
14. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
15. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
16. Earthseed by Pamela Sargent
17. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
18. Green Rider by Kristen Britain
19. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
20. Matilda by Roald Dahl
    
21. The BFG by Roald Dahl
22. Esio Trot by Roald Dahl
23. The Boy by Roald Dahl
24. The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl
25. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
26. Going Solo by Roald Dahl
27. Danny and the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
28. George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
29. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl
30. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
31. The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye
32. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
33. Wanderlust by Ann Aguirre
    
34. Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre
    
35. Killbox by Ann Aguirre
    
36. Aftermath by Ann Aguirre
    
37. Endgame by Ann Aguirre
    
38. Blackout by Mira Grant
39. The Hidden Star by M.K. Hobson
40. The Likeness by Tana French
    
41. Faithful Place by Tana French
42. Broken Harbour by Tana French
43. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
44. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
45. Soulless by Gail Carriger
46. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
47. As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
48. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgalov
49. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
50. Madapple by Christina Meldrum
51. Between Shades of Gray by Rita Sepetys
52. Kristin Lavransdattar by Sigrid Undset
53. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
54. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
55. The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge
56. The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell
57. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
58. The Taste of a Man by Slavenka Drakulic
59. The Stand by Stephen King
60. Chime by Franny Billingsley
61. Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres
62. The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan
63. How To Save A Life by Sara Zarr
64. Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
65. The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
66. Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
67. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
68. Blindness by Jose Saramago
69. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
70. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
71. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
72. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
73. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

So, what do you think? Did you start your original list after me and then LEAVE ME IN YOUR DUST? (*cough*BONNIE*cough*) Are you still working on a list of your own? If so, leave me a link in the comments and I'll swing by and harass you about it every once in a while. Feel free to do the same for me. Or maybe start a list of your own and link me to that! I LOVE lists, especially goal lists of books to read.