I’m 6-8% Well Read
Just recently, I found out about the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
I swore off lists several years ago, because I’m someone who can’t let them go. When I moved into my condo, I still had my reading lists from high school.
Give me a list like this, and I just have to sit, go through it, and cross things off. Movies, places to visit, books, etc. The subject matter doesn’t really make a difference.
But now, this list must have found me at just the right time. You may know about the 25 book challenge that many high schools around the country are doing. (Just look up “high school 25 book challenge.”) Also, one of my friends started a book club. I love book clubs, but they are so hard to keep up. I hope this one lasts.
In any case, I had intended to read more this year because I felt like I had fallen off of this activity—an activity that I used to love so much and consumed a lot of my time.
To help keep me on track, I signed up for the 1% Well-Read Challenge. This is a challenge where you try to read 10 of the top 1001 books in next 10 months. This year’s challenge kicked off two days ago.
Luckily, the next book for the book club is one of the 1001.
Do you want to see how you stack up? Here’s a copy of the original list. I crossed off 77 on that list.
Then, Boxall et al. went and updated the list last year. Now I’m only at 68. Grrr.
To make things easier to track, some folks online have put everything into Excel spreadsheets. As far as I know, the original version resides at Arukiyomi. The latest spreadsheets there are causing some problems, and I couldn’t use it with my older version of Excel so I pulled the one from turtlebutt.net. This one seems to be working fine for me.
I’m reading Their Eyes Were Watching God
Problems? If you have Office 2003 or 2007, there should be no problems.
Most ‘problems’ I’ve provided support for turn out to be not following the instructions I’ve provided. But any other problems I need to know about to fix this thing if it needs it.
Feedback appreciated…
Hi, Arukiyomi. Thanks for stopping by. The only problem I encountered is that my Excel version is not recent enough to be compatible with your spreadsheet. Yes, it’s older than 2003.
Your file worked fine on another computer.
Being a sucker for lists myself, I had to give this a go. I scored 112, but got very annoyed by some of the selections, particularly when it was a writer I’d read lots of, but not the oddly chosen books in the list.
Rol, 112 beats me by a mile. When I looked at the new list, I noticed that they pared down on Dickens and Dostoyevsky and hurt my total. I’d rather get a more varied list though.
I’m appalled at my paltry 22. But intrigued by the number of movies I’ve seen based on the books on the list. My number is much more impressive for these.
I had read, maybe, 20 of them?
But I have to say- I’ve seen a bunch of movie adaptations!
Does that count?
And a few cartoon versions here and there…
:)
griot and George, it is interesting how many on this list I only knew as movies. I didn’t see Mrs. Pettigrew Lives For a Day because it looked like such a dumb premise. I had no idea that it was an adaptation of a well-regarded book.
[...] upon a time, I was about 6.8% well-read according to the book on the right. The 1% Well-Read Challenge wanted me to read 10 more of these [...]