Summer is slipping through my fingers like a soft ice cream cone on a sweltering afternoon.  Can it really be the middle of July?  Where the heck did June go?

In my bewilderment at this unnaturally speedy passage of summertime, I completely missed writing about my little summer reading challenge when I actually started it.  So, while I’ve been purposefully reading specific books for a good month, I’m only now getting around to writing about it here.

And what is this reading challenge, you ask?  First, I believe a brief back story is on order.

I occasionally read the blog The Bookshelf of Emily J.  Among other things, Emily is working her way through The BBC Top 100 Must Read Books List*(her list is here). The BBC Top 100 is a Facebook meme** which has the audacity to claim most people have read no more than 6 of its 100 selections.  Reading Emily’s list prompted me to revisit my results of the same compilation which I completed about two years ago.  At that time, I’d read 33 of the 100 suggestions but I have since completed several more books.  I also realized that many of the books I still hadn’t read were languishing around my home just waiting for some curious soul to crack them open.

And that, dear readers, was when The BBC Top 100 Summer Reading Challenge was born.  The goal: to read as many unread books on The BBC Top 100 as I can this summer and still live a somewhat productive life.  No buying, borrowing, bartering or stealing allowed; books must to be located somewhere in my house.  I’m posting my list below with the books I’ve read so far in bold type.  Books with an asterisk beside them are ones I’ve read since the the Summer Solstice (only three so far).  Italicized books are selections I’ve started but not finished.

Stephany’s BBC Top 100 Must Read Books List 

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë*
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
8. Nineteen Eighty-four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Baugh
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll*
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma -Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville 
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker*
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Inferno – Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom*
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

When I began this challenge, I’d read 38  selections (40 books total).  To date, the tally is up to 43.5.  After reading Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (not part of the challenge but I couldn’t help myself), I felt my reading was taking a definite turn down a very dark road.  To lighten things up, I chose The Ultimate Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  And, I’m struggling with it a bit.  When I’m in the mood for light and fluffy, the book is fine.  However, sometimes I find myself craving more substance and then reading it feels like a chore.  This is not a criticism of the book, by any means. It’s more an observation of my capriciousness.

Once I finish The Guide, I have several other choices:

1. The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling
2. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
3. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
4. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis
5. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
6. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. The Count of Monte Christo by Alexander Dumas
8. Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens
9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
11. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The BBC Top 100 List Summer Reading Challenge ends on September 21,2013.  Looks like it’s going to be a classics kind of reading adventure and that’s just fine with me.  Wish me luck!

What are you reading this summer?

*The BBC Top 100 Must Read Books List was probably designed by a Facebook user and doesn’t have any official ties to the BBC.  The list slightly resembles The BBC’s Big Read compilation from 2003 but that is probably is as far as the connection goes.  Even though the origins of the list are sketchy, it contains many worthy books and that’s why I decided to use it for my little challenge.  

**meme:  an Internet chain letter that is sent from person to person.