In January 2019, I quietly started a fun reading challenge to expand my reading to more than just the newest bestseller. The idea started after taking a peek at my reading stats on Goodreads – I’m reading almost exclusively from the last 20 years and while there really is nothing wrong with that, I also think that it’s difficult to be wise about the future without learning from the past. SO! New ongoing challenge is to read one published book for each year of the 20th century. 100 books! Here are the books I’ve read so far:
The 20th Century in Literature Challenge
(1900-1999)
1900-1909
1900 – The Wizard of Oz by L.Frank Baum (review)
★★★☆☆ | Children’s Fiction | Dorothy, her dog, and three new friends travel to the Emerald City to look for a wizard who can help Dorothy return home to Kansas
1902 – Days on the Road: The Diary of Sarah Raymond Herndon (review)
★★★☆☆ | Non-Fiction | the diary of a 24-year-old woman who traveled by wagon train with her family to resettle in Montana
1903 – The Call of the Wild by Jack London (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a tale about a dog’s unbreakable spirit and his fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike
1907 – Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson (review)
★★★★☆ | Fiction | a dystopic vision of a near future world in which religion has been rejected or simply fallen by the wayside
1908 – The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a psychological thriller centering around seven anarchists who name themselves the days of the week
1909 – The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (review)
★★★★☆ | Science Fiction | a look at humanity gripped by “The Machine”
1910-1919
1913 – O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a Swedish immigrant girl, who inherits her father’s farm and transforms it from raw prairie into a prosperous enterprise, must overcome adversity to succeed
1915 – Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (review)
★★★★☆ | Fiction | new adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College
1920-1929
1924 – The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (review)
★★★☆☆ | Mystery | a young woman investigates an “accidental” death she witnesses at a London tube station
1925 – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Fiction | a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman’s life
1926 – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (review)
★★★★☆ | Mystery | because Roger Ackroyd knew too much, he was tragically stabbed to death; Hercule Poirot returns from retirement to solve the case
1927 – Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | the story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert
1928 – The Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich (review)
★★★★★ | Historical Fiction | the saga of one woman’s life on the Nebraska frontier
1930-1939
1932 – Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Satire | an orphaned socialite visits her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm and finds the miserable group in need of her organizational talent
1934 – Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (review)
★★★★☆ | Mystery | Hercule Poirot solves the case of a man murdered by a fellow passenger on a train
1937 – The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (review)
★★★★☆ | Fantasy | the story of a reluctant hero, a powerful ring and a dangerous dragon
1938 – Our Town: A Play in Three Acts by Thornton Wilder (review)
★★★★☆ | Play | a drama set in a small town village that becomes an allegory for all life
1939 – And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (review)
★★★★★ | Mystery | ten strangers are lured to an island and one by one, they begin to die
1940-1949
1940 – The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a “whiskey priest” is on the run during a purging of Catholicism in Mexico
1941 – The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (review)
★★★★☆ | Children’s Fiction | Saturdays can make dreams come true when the Melendy children take turns to spend their pooled allowances
1943 – Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie (review)
★★★☆☆ | Mystery | a wife is convicted of poisoning her husband and Hercule Poirot investigates what really happened
1944 – Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge (review)
★★★★☆ | Fiction | a magnificent epic of love, courage, and selfless devotion set in the Channel Islands and New Zealand in the 19th century
1945 – Animal Farm by George Orwell (review)
★★★★☆ | Fiction | a satiric fable that shows the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible
1947 – Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman (review)
★★★☆☆ | Historical Fiction | wholesome tale about a couple’s life in the harsh wilderness of the Great North
1948 – Communism and the Conscience of the West by Fulton J. Sheen (review)
★★★★☆ | Nonfiction | a look at communism and how it affects the West
1949 – 1984 by George Orwell (review)
★★★★☆ | Dystopian Fiction | a masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace, freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching
1950-1959
1950 – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (review)
★★★★★ | Children’s Fiction | four siblings pass through a wardrobe into a new world
1952 – The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day (review)
★★★☆☆ | Autobiography | an autobiography of a Catholic social activist
1955 – The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis (review)
★★★☆☆ | Children’s Fiction | two friends are hurled into another world where an evil witch intends to enslave them
1956 – Christmas and the Saints by Hertha Pauli (review)
★★★☆☆ | Religious | history and legend combine to share the origins of our Catholic Christmas traditions
1958 – Night by Elie Wiesel (review)
★★★★☆ | Memoir | a Holocaust survivor recounts his experience as a teenager in a Nazi death camp
1959 – Thrush Green by Miss Read (review)
★★★☆☆ | British Literature | a cozy novel about the happenings of a small English village
1960-1969
1960 – The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden (review)
★★★★☆ | Children’s Fiction | a story about a cricket who finds himself in NYC and the new friends he meets
1961 – Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (review)
★★★★★ | Children’s Fiction | a coming-of-age adventure about a boy and his two hunting dogs
1962 – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a grueling day in the life of a prisoner serving time in a Siberian labor camp
1963 – The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carre (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Espionage | a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage
1964 – Things As They Are by Paul Horgan (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a boy named Richard and his childhood stories learning lessons of right from wrong
1966 – The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman (review)
★★★★★ | Mystery | a widowed senior citizen becomes a spy
1968 – True Grit by Charles Portis (review)
★★★☆☆ | Historical Fiction | a teenage girl seeks vengeance for the death of her father
1970-1979
1972 – My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a coming-of-age novel about a Ladover Hasid and the struggle between his religion and his art
1974 – All the President’s Men: The Greatest Reporting Story of All Time by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward (review)
★★★☆☆ | Nonfiction | chronicles the Watergate investigation from the view of two reporters
1975 – Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Mystery | Amelia Peabody embarks on an Egyptian adventure and encounters a mummy!
1977 – Life of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen (review)
★★★★★ | Religious | a passionate portrait of Christ
1978 – The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Middle Grade | a bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will.
1980-1989
1980 – Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Fiction | a lyrical novel about three generations of women and how they deal with loss, survival, and transience
1981 – Divine Mercy in My Soul by Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska (review)
★★★★★ | Religious | the diary from a simple, uneducated religious sister that sparked the Divine Mercy movement
1982 – Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | an epic story of two friends and how the friendship holds them together as they grow up
1984 – The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become, told in vignettes
1985 – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (review)
★★☆☆☆ | Science Fiction | Earth is under attack by an alien species and it will take a brilliant child to save it
1988 – The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | a girl escapes her rural childhood town for Tuscan, Arizona and “meets the human condition head on”
1990-1999
1990 – The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi (review)
★★★★☆ | YA/Children’s Fiction | the adventures of a 19th century teenage girl on a long sea voyage with a cruel captain and mutinous crew
1991 – Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Phenomena in the Lives of the Saints by Joan Carroll Cruz (review)
★★★★☆ | Religious | a fascinating documentation of 36 Eucharistic miracles occurring from 800AD to present day
1992 – Trials of the Earth by Mary Mann Hamilton (review)
★★★☆☆ | Autobiography | the first-person account of a pioneer woman struggling to survive, protect her family, and make a home in the early American South
1993 – Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis (review)
★★★★☆ | Fiction | the tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine, based on an Athabascan Indian legend
1994 – The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (review)
★★★☆☆ | Dystopian | an allegory for a country’s fall into totalitarianism
1996 – Big Girls Don’t Cry by Connie Briscoe (review)
★★★☆☆ | Chick Lit | a coming-of-age story about an African American girl growing up in the 1960’s up to her adulthood in the 1980’s
1997 – Strangers and Sojourners by Michael O’Brien (review)
★★★☆☆ | Fiction | an epic story about one woman’s life in British Columbia and her search for truth and faith and love
1998 -These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy E. Turner (review)
★★★★★ | Historical Fiction | an American saga told in journal entries about a brave woman living in an unfamiliar frontier
1999 – Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger (review)
★★★★☆ | Mystery | Cork O’Connor joins a search party to find a young woman out in the wilderness, while others on the trail are out to kill her