Wednesday, January 02, 2013

R.J. Moeller's "Books to Read by Christmas 2013"

I haven't joined any reading challenges for 2013 ... yet. I do know that I will challenge myself to read books from my TBR shelves as much as possible. Like many book bloggers, my TBR shelves (mine is more of a TBR storage system) are *ahem* quite full so it makes sense to focus on reading those books. With that said, I wanted to share a reading list that is not only an extraordinary list of MUST READS but has the added personal benefit of listing 13 books on my TBR shelves!

The list, Books to Read by Christmas 2013, is created by R. J. Moeller who writes at Acculturated: Why Pop Culture Matters.

Here is the list in short, but I encourage you to go read Moeller's article which includes his comments on the books:


January - The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
February - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
March - Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
April - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
May - The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
June - No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
July - The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
August - Moby Dick by Herman Melville
September - 1984 George Orwell
October - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
November - That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
December - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

As you can see, the books are spread out over 12 months which provides some nice pacing and looks to be quite doable.

You can join any of the discussions on Twitter by using the appropriate hashtag. The hashtag for the January read is #TheGambler. You can also banter with @rjmoeller on Twitter. Feel free to chat with me @MsTerriB.

Happy Reading!

4 comments:

  1. There are some great choices on that list--I'm particularly fond of Moby Dick and We. 1984 and Brave New World were both influenced by We...maybe add a little Huxley to your list? :)

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  2. Huh. The only woman is Ayn Rand, who barely counts (LOL). And everyone's white (except I guess Dumas, who once again barely counts). I guess he broke out of the Anglo-American box at least for some Russians and a Frenchie. ;)

    Oh dear. Just went to the article & discovered these are some of his favourite novels, not books he wants to read w/in the next year. Suspect R.J. and I would be in for some awkward conversations in we met at a party. lol

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  3. This is good! What I've been thinking these few days after I read another blogger's post. Yes, I must read some of the books in my TBR boxes and shelves. I may not join you with all of the titles on your list, but for the titles I do have, I'll join you... oh I only have Moby Dick. But I'd like to read Huck Finn too. I look forward to chatting with you on Twitter when these two come up. And then of course I have my Bonhoeffer Read-Along and Proust, you know, they are from my TBR shelf too.

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