I planned to attack this challenge during the summer of 2009 (original post), but, well, as of 2011 haven’t been doing so great. I noticed that Vega
had started an a-to-z author personal reading challenge – something that I’d been vaguely considering for a year or so, so thought it would be fun to traverse my to-read list and pick out my 26. (at this point, 24, for lack of an I and X.)
Selected with some preference for classics and books that have been on my reading list for especially long, but I tried to mix it up, too. Heavily-represented letters have several potential choices, if there were too many things that I was excited about.
Current status: 5/24
A – Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
B – Elizabeth Mary Braddon – Lady Audley’s Secret
C – Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White
D – Philip K. Dick – A Scanner Darkly
E – Jeffrey Eugenides – Middlesex (Aug. 18, 2010)
F – Jasper Fforde – The Eyre Affair
G – William Gibson – Count Zero
H – Joseph Heller – Catch-22
OR
Robert Heinlein – Starship Troopers
I – TBD
J – Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Jan. 24, 2011)
K – Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms
L – John Ajvide Lindqvist – Let the Right One In (Jul. 23, 2009)
OR
Thomas Ligotti – The Nightmare Factory (or anything Ligotti) Tried and gave up on Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Oct. 8, 2010)
OR
Scott Lynch – The Lies of Locke Lamora (would I get bonus points for this one, Scattergories-style?)
OR
anything by Kelly Link: Magic for Beginners (2010)
M – Thomas Mann – Death in Venice
N – Larry Niven – Ringworld
OR
Naomi Novik – His Majesty’s Dragon
O – Patrick O’Brian – Master and Commander
P – Charles Palliser – The Quincunx
OR
Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow
Q – TBD (no Quinns or Quincys? I guess not)
R – Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea
S – Hubert Selby – Requiem for a Dream (Jul. 29, 2009)
T – William Thackeray – Rose and the Ring
U – John Updike – The Witches of Eastwick
V – Catherynne M. Valente – The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden (Jul. 2010)
W – Sylvia Townsend Warner – Kingdoms of Elfin
X – TBD (wish me good luck on this one)
Y – Jane Yolen – The One-Armed Queen
Z – Robert Zelazny – The Lord of Light