Raved Reads

The RAVED READS CHALLENGE asks you to:

• create (and read) a list of books that you’ve always heard others rave about, and thought you should read yourself, but always put off reading …until “later”.

OTHER Rules:

• you can include e-books and audiobooks
• you can change your list at any time
• the challenge is perpetual / ongoing
• every book on your list MUST be “raved-about” (*you can’t just add books because they look good)
• you have to have at LEAST 3 BOOKS on your list

My List:

** anything by Jane Austen (Persuasion; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Sense and Sensibility)
A Breath of Fresh Air – Amulya Malladi
A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest J. Gaines
A Perfect Day – Richard Paul Evans
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini^
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Atonement – Ian McEwan^
Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
Beloved – Toni Morrison^
Bitten – Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld, book 1)
Black – Ted Dekker (Circle Trilogy, book 1)
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures – Vincent Lam
Blue Like Jazz – Donald Miller
Breaking Dawn (Twilight, book 4) – Stephenie Meyer
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games, 2)
Crocodile on the Sandbank – Elizabeth Peters^
Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris (“Sookie“, book 1)
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
Eclipse (Twilight, book 3) – Stephenie Meyer
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
From Baghdad, with Love – Jay Kopelman, Roth^
Gilead – Marilynne Robinson^
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J.K. Rowling (book 2)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling (book 3)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling (book 4)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling (book 5)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling (book 6)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling (book 7)
Hunger Games, The – Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games, book 1)
Inkspell – Cornelia Funke
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Kartography – Kamila Shamsie^
Literacy and Longing in L.A – Kaufman and Mack^
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Marley and Me – John Grogan
Marked – P. C. & Kristin Cast (House of Night, book 1)
Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis
Moby Dyck – Herman Melville
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games, 3)
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf^
Nefertiti – Michelle Moran^
New Moon (Twilight, book 2) – Stephenie Meyer
Origin of Species - Charles Darwin^
Orthodoxy – G. K. Chesterton^
Peace Like a River – Leif Enger
Possession (or Babel Tower) – A. S. Byatt
Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers^
Same Kind of Different As Me – Rob Hall, Denver Moore
Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon^
Slammerkin – Emma Donoghue
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See
Sweetness in the Belly – Camilla Gibb^
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
The Amulet of Samarkand – Jonathan Stroud^
The Awakening - L. J. Smith (Vampire Diaries, book 1)
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath^
The Birth of Venus – Sarah Dunant
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
The Crimson Petal and the White – Michel Faber^
The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim
The Hours – Michael Cunningham^ [TBR *after* "Mrs. Dalloway"!]
The Intelligencer – Leslie Siebert
The Last Lecture – Dr. Randy Pausch
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Rule of Four – Caldwell / Thomason
The Sex Lives of Cannibals – J. Maarten Troost^
The Shack – William P. Young^
The Surrogate – Judith Henry Wall^
The Tea Rose – Jennifer Donnelly
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield (finished it early!)
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett^
The Usual Rules – Joyce Maynard
Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott^
Twilight – Stephenie Meyer (see mini-review)
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt