I saw this posted by a friend on Facebook and decided I would participate.
50 books to be read in 2015.
Well, to be exact, 52 (one of the assignments is for a trilogy).
I see this as a way to stretch out my literary abilities, push myself out of my comfort zone and read more than I have in a long time. Some of the books I’ll be reading I already own (such as Eight Men Out, The Day of the Jackal and Gorky Park). Others will be tougher to find, such as a book set in my hometown of Beeville, Texas (The Republic by Jeff Essary). Essary’s book I may have to buy online if I can’t find it in a library. If I can’t find any set in Beeville, I’ll have to see if my other two hometowns (Alvin, Texas and Colby, Kansas) have any books set there. Otherwise, there’s a book set in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where my family lived for a while in 1974.
Among the books to read are a book with more than 500 pages (I’ve chosen Dune), a book with a one-word title (Candide by Voltaire) and a book that scares me (The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh).
And for a banned book, I have chosen Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. I thought about getting a book from “Banned Books Week,” but I decided instead to focus on a book that has been banned rather than challenged or had a parent express concern over their child reading it. I know from my Russian teachers that Pasternak’s masterpiece was indeed banned in the former Soviet Union.
For a book that made me cry, no book really has, but one has made me very sad, even angry. It’s a book about a group of men who get punished for taking drastic measures, due in part to being grossly underpaid in their job.
The book? (See below)
As I work through the books, I’ll blog about them and write what it was like. Some will read quickly, including the assignment of the book that can be finished in one day, and others will take time. Some may even be tough to find. I see this as an adventure, since I’ll encounter new authors and books I wouldn’t normally read.
Should be quite an adventure.
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Richard Zowie, Writer 