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I just noticed that this discussion section exists. :) I'm veeeeeeery slowly reading books from the list, but I'll list them here.

Books are listed here according to when I first read them. (I seem to be rereading a lot, particularly of the ones I read a very long time ago.) I started tracking my reading on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ in 2009, so everything from before that I don't have dates for, though for some of them I can remember roughly how old I was. I think it was in 2018 that I started casually trying to read books from the list.

Read before 2009 (before I started tracking my reading, most of them in high school or thereabouts, in no particular order):
1) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
4) Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
5) The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
6) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
7) Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
8) Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
9) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
10) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
11) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
12) Dracula by Bram Stoker
13) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
14) The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
15) The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
16) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
17) Foundation by Isaac Asimov
18) At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
19) Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Read in 2009:
20) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
21) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
22) Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Read in 2011:
23) The Shining by Stephen King

Read in 2012:
24) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Read in 2013:
25) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (this one in particular I've read a lot of times since!)

Read in 2018:
26) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
27) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
28) Moby-Dick or, the Whale by Herman Melville
29) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
30) Emma by Jane Austen

Read in 2019:
31) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
32) The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
33) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Read in 2020:
34) Persuasion by Jane Austen

Read in 2021 (so far):
35) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

And I have a few more in progress and upcoming!

So, as of mid-2021, I'm at 3% of the combined list. Umm, wish me luck?? I have 21 list books on my TBR pile (books I own), and at last count, the public library has about 875 of the list books.

Your local library seems to be great. My library here has tons of list books, sometimes I‘m truly amazed by the titles they have.

Lianne (The Towering Pile) wrote: "the public library has about 875 of the list books...."

How do you know that? do they have a search filter for this list? I'm trying to imagine a way to do this without searching 1315 times...

Sean wrote: "Lianne (The Towering Pile) wrote: "the public library has about 875 of the list books...."

How do you know that? do they have a search filter for this list? I'm trying to imagine a way to do this ..."

*laughs nervously* Yeah, I definitely didn't do that...

Haha yes that's exactly what I did. I have a copy of the spreadsheet and have a column for marking if the library has a copy. I searched for each book in the library catalogue. It took a while! But it's also the kind of task I enjoy.

Ellinor wrote: "Your local library seems to be great. My library here has tons of list books, sometimes I‘m truly amazed by the titles they have."

Yes, I'm pretty lucky! And that's without even getting into inter-library loans, which they aren't doing right now because of the pandemic. Eventually that will be an option for some of those harder-to-find titles.

Zeejane wrote: "I'm at 48 list books completed, we can get through the list together :) That's fantastic that your library has so many of the list books!"

We've got this! 50 book milestone, here we come! :D

Haha, I did the same thing at my library and also at openlibrary 🙈 It took me forever but it was worth it. It helps me so much when deciding which books I‘ll buy. And I also like doing this kind of work.

Lianne (The Towering Pile) wrote: "Haha yes that's exactly what I did. I have a copy of the spreadsheet and have a column for marking if the library has a copy. I searched for each book in the library catalogue. It took a while! But it's also the kind of task I enjoy...."

Haha. That's awesome. Also the kind of task I enjoy.... also the kind of task that results in days of no actual work getting done...

Fortunately I've been able to use our inter-library loan to get most of the list books. I've been disappointed in my own library in not having very many of the classics. My library focuses on current bestsellers.

Update from the last few months:

36) The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
37) Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Still in progress are The Thousand and One Nights, Les Misérables, and most recently House of Leaves. And I've been neglecting my Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe; if I spend more time on that it won't be too long before I get to his other two list stories.

The last of 2021:

38) House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

And I also reread A Christmas Carol again. :)

Only four in 2021! I'm hoping to do a lot better in 2022. Got a couple lined up!

In the first bit of 2022:

39) King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

Plus a reread of 1984 by George Orwell.

And a whopping four more on the go, but they're long.

Since my last post:

Reread Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Definitely enjoyed it more as an adult than I did as a kid (and having watched Our Flag Means Death didn't hurt lol).

40) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
41) The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

One very long one and one very short one knocked off the list this year lol!

Right after my last update I read:

42) The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

Then in January I read:

43) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Les Mis is still in progress, but being neglected in favour of Clarissa. I hate Les Mis so much. It's been years and I feel like I'll never see the end of it. I hate that I haven't given up and keep wasting my life on it. Clarissa is OK so far but I fell way behind on reading the letters on the right dates, which has taken the fun out of it. I also fear it becoming another Les Mis.

The Arabian Nights are also still in progress but on hold. I finished volume 1 at the end of last year but haven't started volume 2 yet.

Finished in November 2023:
44) Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Finished in January 2024:
45) Pierre & Jean by Guy de Maupassant

I abandoned Clarissa because I don't hate myself. I'm still trying to finish Les Mis because I'm not perfect.

Finished in December 2024:
46) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

It's. Finally. Over. I started this book in April 2021. It was the group's 2021 long read. Little did I know I would wrestle with it for almost four years. I read the ebook, and I think the lack of a tangible book where I could physically see my progress, combined with the fact that I only really read ebooks at bedtime and not for long before I fall asleep, made this a terrible choice.

In December, I decided to make a huge effort to finish the final 20% before the end of the year. A friend lent me her paperback copy, and I'm convinced that's the only reason I made it. I actually ended up enjoying the last bit! This was surprising after years of intense hatred lol.

Anyway, maybe I'll actually read other list books now. I feel like being bogged down with that one was keeping me from doing so.

Finished in March 2025:
47) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I loved this one! Look at me, reading an achievable list book!