The List

Three years ago I posted that I was into the final fifty books on the List. Given that I average roughly one of the books a month, it isn't a surprise to note that I am now down to twenty remaining volumes. It is possible that I might get one more finished by the end of the year, but given that I've hit my goal I may well not push it - and indeed there are certain advantages of going into the year with a long book nearly finished!

Of the twenty remaining books there is one from the British side of the List, being the "Complete Works of Shakespeare". My intent is to read that at the rate of an Act a day across several months (with the weekends dedicated to sonnets).

The remaining nineteen books are all from the American side of the List. (There are no longer any appearing on both sides.) The only duplicate author is Ayn Rand, who has both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" listed. I'm not exactly looking forward to these, which is one reason they've taken so long to get to. Margaret Laurence did also provide two books - I read "The Stone Angel" earlier this year, but don't know when I'll get to "The Diviners".

Finally, there are six very long books (at more than 1,000 pages each), seven short books (with fewer than 500 pages), and seven in the middle ground. My hope is to read four from each of these groupings next year, as that will allow for a predictable rate of progress.

And with that, here is the remaining List. Note that the numbers here don't correspond to those from the original lists (Shakespeare was #14, for instance), but they are at least in the same ranking as before...

1. Complete Works of Shakespeare
2. The Stand (Stephen King)
3. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
4. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
5. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
6. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
7. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
8. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
9. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
10. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
11. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
12. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
13. Shogun (James Clavell)
14. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
15. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
16. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
17. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
18. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
19. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
20. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

#60: "A Christmas Carol and other Christmas writings", by Charles Dickens (a book from The List)