Here goes nothing!

As I ignore the wealth of information being lectured at me in my almost 6 hour Hematology lecture this fine Monday night, I've decided to start a new blog with a purpose. My last attempt at a blog ended quite swiftly with an impressive single post for my entire semester in Ireland. Granted I was too busy enjoying my surroundings to have enough dedication to sit and write about them. Now that I'm back in suburbia with a 15 credit semester and 3 jobs to tend to, any spare time I have has been dedicated to trying to enrich my literary knowledge. I was an avid reader as a kid, my parents thought I was some sort of Wunderkind. If how your life turned out was somehow based on your Terra Nova test score percentile, I would be a very successful lady; to my dismay, your knowledge is unfortunately tested again after the 4th grade. Doesn't everyone's life pretty much go downhill after 4th grade anyway? I mean, how much better can life get after being on a diet of Gushers and CapriSun.  Anyhow, my appreciation for literature fell by the wayside during my tween stage and I'm hoping to rediscover a lost hobby. My aim for this blog is to give my humble opinion and review of the offensively long list of books I've decided to challenge myself to read. I have absolutely no right to do so being that I have spent my entire high school and college career ignoring books of any kind and, as is probably quite apparent already, am absolute shit at writing ( I think I need just one more sentence that begins with 'I'). Nonetheless, I am embarking on this journey to improve. The complete list of literature I am working on, in no specific order, is as follows:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Alienist - Caleb Carr
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Nine Stories - JD Salinger
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Crash - NicoleWilliams
Men Without Women - Ernest Hemingway
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Odyssey - Homer
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
Dubliners - James Joyce
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Howard's End - E.M. Foster
A Farewell to Arms -Ernest Hemingway
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
Tess of D'Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
1984 by GeorgeOrwell 

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by ToniMorrison
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built aVillage in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair thatChanged America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee,Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rdPresident by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi andCurt Gentry (TBR)
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A.Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angelson Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and GillianMcCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education ofPaul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – read
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell

A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making ofthe Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia deBurgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by AnneCollett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber

Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia PlathUnless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by DanielSinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Animal Farm - George Orwell 

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling
Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea - Chelsea Handler
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Invisible Monsters - Chuck Palahnuik 
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
The Psychopath Test -  Jon Ronson 
In The Hand of Dante - Nick Tosches
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins
She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs - Hunter S.
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Bossypants - Tina Fey
You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers 
I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl - Laurie Notaro
The Princess - William Goldman
The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
The Man Who Planted Trees - Jean Giono
Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl - Susan McCorkindale
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Prey - Linda Howard
The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
The Last Song - Nicholas Sparks
Safe Haven - Nicholas Sparks
Murder on Astor Place - Victoria Thompson
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby         
 The Pub Across The Pond - Mary Carter
The Guardian - Nicholas Sparks 
The Fault In Our Stars - John Green
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Giver - Lois Lowry

It's a pretty eclectic list, most of it stemming from 'The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge', peppered with some other recommendations. After I finish a book, or books, as I usually will be reading two or three at a time, I will try my best to review in some sort of intelligible manner. I don't doubt some will be tossed aside, for example, I'm not too excited about, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore. That would be an impressing one to bring to the beach though...