You know what I realized the other day? On my to-be-read shelf are books representing every decade from the 1890's to the 2000's (as well as a few earlier). "Wow," I said to myself, "this seems ripe for a challenge. There's got to be some kind of chronological, by-the-decade reading challenge geared to just this situation." And lo and behold, there is.
The Decades '09 Challenge began in January, so I'm a bit behind the ball, but I figure I'll join anyway. I've got all the books already, after all, and even if I don't finish by the "deadline," it'll still be a fun exercise. Here's what I'm thinking about for a list:
- 1890s: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- 1900s: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie
- 1910s: W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage
- 1920s: William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury
- 1930s: Edith Wharton's Roman Fever (and other stories) OR John Dos Passos's The Big Money
- 1940s: Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding
- 1950s: Truman Capote's The Grass Harp/A Tree of Night
- 1960s: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward
- 1970s: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
- 1980s: Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping
- 1990s: Peter Matthiesen's Lost Man's River OR Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Fun! I don't know how far I'll get, but it's somehow satisfying to find that I have a pre-made, unconsciously-selected reading list that spans a century so evenly.
Love this idea and your list. I'm going to see if my own to-be-read shelf will generate a decades list.