The Final 50

Last night I finished my thirtieth book of the year, which takes me to halfway through my planned reading for the year. Perhaps more significantly, the novel that I finished, "She's Come Undone" (good book, by the way), was a book from The List, taking me down to a total of 50 books remaining. (Technically, it's actually 49, as the List contains both "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" and "Hamlet". But let's not dwell on that.)

That means that, at the current rate, I should finish up the list in July of 2021.

As I've mentioned before, The List is actually made up of a merge of two other lists, one British and one American. Of the books that remain, 6 appear on both of these lists, 11 only appear on the British list, while 33 only appear on the American one. (My suspicion is that many of the books that remain earned their place by being recommended by either Oprah or Richard & Judy for their respective book clubs. I'm not sure whether I find that amusing or sad, though in fairness many of the recommendations are pretty decent.)

My inclination for the next couple of years is to fucs quite heavily on the books that appear in the British list, finish that, and then turn my attention to the American version. Whether that actually happens or not will remain to be seen, of course.

In case you are particularly interested, the full listing of the final 50 is below. (Fair warning: If you're not interested, that's the end of the post!)

1. Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery)
2. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
3. Complete Works of Shakespeare
4. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
5. The Stand (Stephen King)
6. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
7. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
8. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
9. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
10. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
11. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
12. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
13. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
14. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
15. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M Auel)
16. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
17. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
18. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth)
19. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
20. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
21. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
22. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
23. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
24. On The Road (Jack Kerouac)
25. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
26. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
27. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
28. Shogun (James Clavell)
29. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
30. Ulysses (James Joyce)
31. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
32. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
33. Swallows and Amazons (Arthur Ransome)
34. Germinal (Emile Zola)
35. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
36. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
37. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
38. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
39. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
40. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
41. The Faraway Tree Collection (Enid Blyton)
42. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
43. The Good Earth (Pearl S Buck)
44. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
45. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
46. The Outsiders (SE Hinton)
47. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
48. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
49. Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
50. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

#30: "She's Come Undone", by Wally Lamb (a book from The List)