Book Me

See that new list that's appeared in the left nav? One of my goals for the year is to read a non-fiction book each month. Another of my goals for the year is to read a "classic" each month. So I'm tracking the books here, to be accountable. It will help that I have a shiny new Kindle, and also that there's a shelf of books in the house that contains both non-fiction and "classics" that I haven't read. Please feel free to leave suggestions for me.

Note: I keep putting "classics" in quotation marks, because there's always the question of "What is a 'classic'?" The traditional canon of Dead White Men is quickly fading, as writers like Sandra Cisneros and Chinua Achebe have been on reading lists for almost as long as I've known how to read.

I've chosen a list to use as a guide. It's from a library in Wisconsin, which seems very normal and not something pretentious or political. It's called the College Bound Reading List, and I would assume that it's for students planning on going to college. I went to college, several times, so I really should have read all of these books by now. I chose this list because it's straightforward, because we already own some of these books, and because I've already read a lot of them (hey, I only have a year!).

Maybe I'll create a Google Doc version and share it, crossing off the ones I've already read -- although maybe I will decide to reread some of them -- it's my curriculum. That's also why I'm not going to read The Scarlet Letter. Life is too short for Hawthorne and maligned women.