Okay, here it is. The post you’ve been waiting for. My 5X5 Reading Challenge books revealed! You’ve been on the edges of your seats waiting for this one I know since I posted Part 1 over two weeks ago. Drum roll please…
CATEGORY 1: Authors I Want to Love
I have lots authors I really love. Some of them would even be considered great authors by the literary world, like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Mitchell. Some are children’s book authors, like Jan Brett, Barb Rosenstock, and Patricia Polaco. Some are less well-known, like Louis de Wohl.
There are also many authors that are very much beloved by others I know and/or by the world in general that I just don’t love. Primarily because I have little to no exposure to them. Hence, this first category.
I’m just going to start right off the bat here with a huge confession. The first book on this list is by an author that I tried to read several years ago and just couldn’t get into. She is a beloved author by many, including some of my dearest friends. I tried to read the book that seems like her most popular. The one everyone loves. The one made into multiple movies/miniseries. Who is this author, you ask? What is this book? I know I’m going to hear it on this one. I’m a little afraid to admit my prior lack of affinity for her work. It’s (gulp) Jane Austen. The book? “Pride and Prejudice,” of course. I just really couldn’t get into the whole Mr. Darcy thing before. Happily, I already jumped into this one and absolutely loved it the second time around. In fact, my devouring of this gorgeous book is the reason it’s taken me so long to finish this post. So, now I’m a Jane Austen lover and have purchased all of her books for my Nook for only a couple bucks. See, this reading challenge is already working!!
The second in this category is Anne Bronte. I wanted to find a love of a Bronte, but I just am not interested in what I’ve tried to read or what I know about Charlotte or Emily. So… Anne. The third is John Steinbeck. I don’t know why “The Pearl” is the only story from my literature textbooks that I remember reading, but I think I must have liked it, so I’m going to try to acquaint myself a bit better with Mr. Steinbeck. Fourth – William Faulkner, um, just because. Fifth – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because I’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes mystery and I just want to! The books to go with the authors:
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
- The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
- The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
- The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
CATEGORY 2: Books I Should Have Read in School
My girls have some amazing books on their reading lists for school, both now and in the upcoming years (I like to look ahead). And while there is no curriculum that is going to cover all the great books in a K-12 education, they have lots of really good ones. And there sure are a lot I think I should have read in school. A few of them, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I’ve already read and enjoyed, and some, like “Catcher in the Rye,” I’ve read and thought were horribly overrated. I’m all about rounding out my paltry education, though so here is a category to address my lack (and most of the books from the first category could be in this one too).
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
- A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
- Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
CATEGORY 3: Books to Reread
These are all books I enjoyed the first time I read them, and I’m either reading them again to share with my girls (“Little Women” on audiobook, “Watership Down”), or just planning to reread for the enjoyment. I’ve found that rereading books I read as a kid/adolescent has been very interesting, and often my perception of them is completely different as an adult/mother. For example (*”Little Women” spoiler alert*), when I read “Little Women” as a child, and even reread it as an adolescent/young adult, I was devastated that Laurie and Jo did not end up together. I hated Amy for “stealing” the guy who should have married her sister. Listening to it now with my girls, they are having the same reaction to the Jo/Laurie/Amy drama that I had back then, but I am seeing it completely differently. I absolutely love Laurie and Amy together now, and I completely agree with Marmee that Jo and Laurie would not have been good together. This has shocked me, as Amy has gone from being my least favorite March sister to my probable favorite!!
Having this experience of changed impressions of some of my favorite books, I considered rereading some books I didn’t like the first time around to see if I might appreciate them upon revisiting. However, I quickly decided that one slog through “Anna Karenina” was enough in my lifetime, and thinking about rereading “Slaughterhouse-Five” makes me want to cry. So I’m sticking to previously loved stories for this category:
- Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
- Animal Farm – George Orwell
- The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
- Watership Down – Richard Adams
CATEGORY 4: Catholic Books
I’m always reading Catholic books. I usually have at least one or two I’m working through at any given time. Here are five that I have in my lineup:
- Fabiola or the Church of the Catacombs – Nicholas Patrick Wiseman
- The Day is Now Far Spent – Robert Cardinal Sarah
- Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Phenomena in the Lives of the Saints – Joan Carroll Cruz
- The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience – Christine Watkins
- A Catholic Soul Psychology – Randolph Severson
CATEGORY 5: Books to Read Alongside my Kids
I mentioned that my kids are reading great books as part of their curriculum or sometimes what they choose to read for fun. I have found some great books by reading theirs. “The Wilderking Series,” “The Wingfeather Saga,” “Hatchet,” and “Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes” are just a few of the books I have loved through reading them with or to my kids. Honestly, I could probably write a lengthy post just about this, but I’ll narrow it down to only five for today, and keep it just to those books that I want to read for myself, not just those that I’m reading to my kids, since this challenge is supposed to help me to increase my grown up reading.
- The Giver – Lois Lowry
- Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
- Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster – Jonathan Auxier (also the author of Peter Nimble)
- Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
- Island of the Blue Dolphins – Scott O’Dell
So that’s it. I know it’s so dorky how much I’ve enjoyed planning my categories and books. If you’re a nerd too, I highly recommend it. I’ll give an update at the end of the year to let you know how it goes!
