I get asked this question a lot, either by a commenter on the blog or someone I know: What am I going to do AFTER I finish the 101 Books?
Great question.
And it’s one I don’t quite know the answer to…yet.
I have a few ideas rolling around in my brain, with either new lists, self-created lists, and no list at all. Whatever the case, I’m pretty certain this blog will still exist and, hopefully, I won’t have run out of ideas by then.
As I mentioned in my preview post for 2014, I hope to have more definite plans on a book later this year. Whether that is through a traditional publisher or not has yet to be determined.
How that pans out could possibly determine the direction of the blog, but I don’t really know for sure. The only thing I do know for sure is that I enjoy writing about books, and, at the moment, I plan to keep on writing about books.
So when might I finish the 101 Books project?
Another good question.
Seeing that I’m approaching my 70th book, I still believe about two more years is a safe bet. I’d like to think I’ll be wrapping up the Time list sometime around the end of 2015.
Speaking of what’s left, here are the 32 remaining books I still need to read. I’ll be tackling The Lord of the Rings this summer, and Ulysses will be my 101st book. Other than that, I don’t currently have anything planned out.
- The Adventures of Augie March (1953) by Saul Bellow
- Appointment in Samarra (1934) by John O’Hara
- At Swim-Two-Birds (1938) Flann O’ Brien
- The Berlin Stories (1946) by Christopher Isherwood
- Brideshead Revisited (1946) by Evelyn Waugh
- The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron
- The Death of the Heart (1958) by Elizabeth Bowen
- Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
- The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene
- Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
- Housekeeping (1981) by Marilynne Robinson
- A House for Mr. Biswas (1962) by V.S. Naipaul
- Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
- The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
- The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
- Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
- Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs
- On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
- The Painted Bird (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski
- Play It As It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
- Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
- The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis
- Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
- The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
- The Sportswriter (1986) by Richard Ford
- To The Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
- Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
- Under the Net (1954) by Iris Murdoch
- White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
- White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
So today’s post is just an update on where the 101 Books project stands and some of my preliminary thoughts about the future.
As always, thanks for joining in on the fun!
