The Modern 100 Reading Project

Last April, I looked at the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels and realized that I’ve only read about 30% of them. I didn’t even recognize some of the titles and authors on the list.

It feels strange to spend so much time writing when I don’t know the work of authors that have, undoubtedly even if indirectly, influenced me.

So, I got the idea in my head that I would read all 100 books. Many of the books that I’ve read, I haven’t look at since college, two decades ago. Those include some of my favorite novels like Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange.

I’m including them because I’m a different reader today than I was in my teens and 20s. I want to absorb them, find out how I feel now that I’ve spent more than 20 years writing fiction and non-fiction. Who knows how it will go.

The Rules (May They Please Not Be the Death of Me)

I don’t want to walk away from newly published books for too long. And I know that they will tempt me.

To avoid becoming some kind of hermit who refuses to participate with contemporary books, I’m setting a time limit that I hope will not a) kill me or b) make me hate reading.

With that said, it’s an ambitious schedule for someone who doesn’t see the point of speed reading novels that should bring pleasure to their audiences.

Here are the basic goals that I’ve set for myself:

1. Finish all novels by the end of May 2021 (that gives me a month’s wiggle room since I started the reading project at the beginning of this May (2019)).
2. I can skip around and read whichever books appeal to me at the moment. I don’t agree with the Modern Library’s list order. I also think that reading some of these books in a row would kill my desire to finish the project. I need the weight of momentum to keep me going. I loved Ulysses the one time that I read it, but reading it took a lot of time and effort. Starting with it would likely end the project. If I’ve read 50% of the books on the list, though, I’ll feel obligated to get through books like The Great Gatsby (I didn’t care for it the two times I read it) or, shudder, Finnegan’s Wake (the literature professor I read Ulysses with planned to read Finnegan’s Wake in his retirement, and even he was unsure whether he could get through it).
3. Keep a journal of my experiences reading the books. Ideally, the reading project will turn into a writing project. Standing here at the beginning, I have no idea how that will go. It could end up like Ammon Shea’s Reading the OED (I did this so you don’t have to) or Heidi Julavits’s The Folded Clock (here are the things that happened during this period of my life) or something different that I can’t foresee.
4. At the very least, publish monthly updates on my progress right here on the blog. I’m not committing to a specific schedule because I’ll buy most of these books used when I run into them.

Read Along and Share the Joy/Misery to Come

If you care to join me, these are the books I completed in May:

• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
• The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
• Ironweed, William Kennedy

Yes, I’m aware that I need to pick up speed. May is a long month. I should have finished at least six books. In my defense, I’m very near the end of The Naked and the Dead.

Wish me luck.