Filling in the 'Gaps' 2016

Do you think classic books (even modern classics) are best left to students? Or do you indulge throughout your life?

I am in the latter camp. I read some great books in school, but there are too many good books to simply stop because no grades are involved.

As a result, I have begun "Filling in the Gaps" of my reading. The original challenge was to make a list of 100 books to read in five years. My list was originally published in 2010, was ambitious — and one that was destined to change. I realized some books were not worth reading after all, and others I discovered I already had read.

Additionally, the list was influenced by an interactive project with my friend Carole: Weighty Reads, in which we chose 20 books to read together in the next decade, with a few related books tucked into our repertoire along the way.

Frankly, one should adjust one's list as time goes on. Is Asimov as important as Bradbury? Should I keep three Dickens at the cost of Jerome K. Jerome and Patricia Highsmith? Do I sacrifice classics for modern classics? The answers differ depending on who one is at the time the decision is made.

Here is the most recent iteration of the list, with a few more books marked off since it was published.


Fill in the Gaps, 2016

1. 1001 Nights / Arabian Nights
2. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
3. Highsmoor, Peter Ackroyd
4. Foundation, Isaac Asimov
5. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
6. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
7. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
8. √ Sundays With Vlad, Paul Bibeau
9. Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly
10. √ The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
11. The Early Fears, Robert Bloch
12. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
13. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
14. Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
15. √ The Land that Time Forgot, Edgar Rice  Burroughs
16. √  Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
17. √  Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
19. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
20. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
21. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
22. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
23. The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
24. Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
25. √ The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
26. Moll Flanders, Daniel DeFoe
27. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
28. Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens
29. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
30. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
31. The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas
32. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
33. Middlemarch, George Eliot
34. So Big, Edna Ferber
35. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
36. Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
37. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
38. The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
39. In the Woods, Tana French
40. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
41. √ Unbroken, Lauren Hildenbrand
42. √ Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton
43. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
44. The Bone People, Keri Hulme
45. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
46. The  Lost Weekend, Charles R. Jackson
47. √ The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
48. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
49. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
50. √ Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
51. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
52. √ Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
53. √  The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
54. The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
55. The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling
56. A Separate Peace, John Knowles
57. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John LeCarre
58. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
59. Sliver, Ira Levin
60. Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis
61. √ The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis
62. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
63. √ The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft
64. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
65. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
66. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
67. The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers
68. √ Atonement, Ian McEwan
69. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty
70. Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
71. Beloved, Toni Morrison
72. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
73. Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky
74. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy O'Toole
75. The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
76. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
77. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
78. Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
79. Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
80. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
81. Home, Marylynne Robinson
82. The Human Stain, Philip Roth
83. The God of Small Things, Arundathi Roy
84. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
85. √ A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
86. Prayers to Broken Stones, Dan Simmons
87. Enemies, A Love Story, Isaac Bashevis Singer
88. Angle of Repose, Wallace Steigner
89. √ Dracula, Bram Stoker
90. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
91. The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
92. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
93. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
94. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
95. Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt
96. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
97. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
98. Night, Elie Weisel
99. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
100. The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
101. The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

I tried to make my list as inclusive as possible. If you have suggestions, please share your ideas with me.

Do you have a Fill in the Gaps list? What's on it? If you haven't compiled such list yet, what would you put on it? Let me know!