Rereads and The Lord of the Frickin' Rings

As I mentioned in my first post, I have read a few of these books already, and I intend to re-read all of them when their turn comes, except for possibly one.

The Lord of the Rings.

Now don't get me wrong, I actually really enjoyed reading the Lord of the Rings.  The world the Tolkien creates is incredible, and his attention to detail is unmatched.  He created his own freakin' language, for crying out loud!  But reading the Lord of the Rings is actually reading 3 books, or even 6 depending on how you break it down.  It is also a work I have already read multiple times, and don't want to get bogged down in it again, at least right now.  It is also a work that recently was released as a major motion picture trilogy (if you haven't heard of them, I will pause now so you can smack yourself), which I have seen multiple times and find it hard to seperate the literature from the film.  I may not skip it enitrely, but if it is one of the first books that pops up in my randomizer, I will at the very least, push it back.  I may hold off reading it as the cherry on top of this project, as book #100.  Or if the Hobbit film ever gets rolling, I may read them in anticipation for its' release, we will see.

Just a friendly heads up that I have already started creating exceptions to my own rules.  It is my project, don't judge me!

The List and Order

Here is a link to the list I will be working off of:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1951793,00.html

As these books are in alphabetical order, I will be using a randomizer to choose the order I will read the books in, and unless I can't get my hands on a certain book when its' turn comes, I will stick to what is randomly chosen for me.

What's the point?

Hey everyone out there who either stumbles across this blog or humors me when I tell them what I am doing and checks this out.  This blog is an attempt to record my attempt to read all of the novels that appear on a list that Time.com published on their website in 2005.  This list was compiled by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, two critics working for Time at that time.  I honestly know very little about these guys, but I wanted to find a reasonable list I could work off of, and this seemed as good as any.  If you have any interest in how they put their list together, here is a link to their explanation:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1952021_1952025,00.html

So why am I doing this?  To many, this task probably seems akin to choosing to pull out every hair on their forearms one by one.  Even to people who love literature, there are probably many books on this list that they wouldn't get near even if an envelope containg the secrets of the universe were contained within.  The answer to the question "Why?" is that as someone who believes themselves to be reasonably well educataed, I have a BA in History and Religion, and a JD in...well, the law, I was ashamed to find when I came across this list I have read a grand total of 7 of these books.  From middle school on through high school, college and law school, I have only read 7 of the 100 greatest books of the last 90 years.   Though many books on this list are certainly up for debate, I felt like I should have been batting better than .070.  So in order to right that particular wrong, and to open myself up to reading more than military history, biographies, case law, and Sports Illustrated, and to hopefully learn a little bit about literature, writing and maybe myself in the process, I am going read every book on Time's All Time 100 Novels list.  Lord help me.