Summer Reading List: The Book Challenge

It may come as no surprise to you that I consider myself a widely read individual, well I used to anyways. Fairly recently, my self-confidence took a knock when I was thrashed mercilessly at a game of Words with Friends. Although now I have learnt that this game has little to do with vocabulary and more to do with tactic, I’m still sticking to my original plan! Which is to read more this summer.

Trying to decide what to read during my quest I turned to BBC’s Book List Challenge, they think that the average person would have only read 6 and that the average Goodreads member would have read 25. Sadly I’m an in-betweener and have only read 17 (maybe 18 seeing as I don’t remember if I’ve actually read Oliver Twist or not) of the books on this list. Shocking! I was expecting to at least get to the 20’s!

Not as an excuse, but this mainly stems from the fact that I don’t particularly fancy old English literature, i.e. from the 17^thcentury etc because I was MADE to read some of them as part of AS English Literature, and so many novels of value by esteemed authors such as the Bronte sisters and Thomas Hardy have fallen to the wayside. It’s definitely an error that needs correcting and what better time to do it than in this summer that still stretches so long before me! After much deliberation I present you, my summer reading list 2012! (It doesn't come solely from the BBC Booklist)

1.     Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe

2.     The Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Balinger

3.     Lolita- Vladmir Nabokov

4.     Gone with the Wind- Margaret Mitchell

5.     Wuthering Heights- Charlotte Bronte

6.     Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen

7.     Persuasion- Jane Austen

8.     The Gods Are Not to Blame- Ola Rotimi

9.     Letter to My Daughter- Maya Angelou

1.    The Thing Around Your Neck- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

And anything else that may fall into my open palms. Stop judging me! I know there are some things on here that I should have read by now but “the lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did” (Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart)

Side note: I started reading it and the Igbo proverbs in it literally give me life! I know they are not meant to be funny but they have me in stitches every time! Thanks to none other than AfMag!

I’m so excited to start! Wonder how many I’d actually get through before university comes and takes all my free time away again!

How many books off this list, BBC Book List Challenge, have you guys read? Share your numbers with me in the comment box, (this is a safe place, there would be no judging. I hope) and if like me you've read under 25 then join me on my little challenge, and let's show the Goodreads members how it's done! It would be fun!