the reading challenge

I noticed that lately some of my friends have been obsessed with books à la Fifty Shades of Grey.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to insult anyone, but am I the only one who feels like that the book shops have been swamped with books like these?

I am not denying that I read some of these books after my friend had so warmly recommended them to me. So I read one and got a bit hooked on that series and ended up buying the first four volumes of the series that appears to never end. And then I read another book from another author and series. And another one. And then I realised (after starring at my bookshelf which is home, among others, to classics by Kafka, Hesse, Sylvia Plath, Mark Twain, George Orwell, etc.) ... I realised that I was letting myself turn into an "easy-to-read, oh-there-are-good-sex-scences, I-need-to-continue-the-series, I-wish-my-life-was-a-book zombie".

Most of these books are written by authors who do self-publishing or at least had done it before they were discovered by the big publishing houses. I think it is great that authors have these possibilites nowadays and that they can do the self-publishing thing online. But I find it sad that it seems to be the same kind of stories over and over again. "Poor, little, innocent plain Jane, preferably with some troubled family, meets a mysterious, hard-to-tame, insanely attractive stud who shows her how it's done." Oh, not to forget that the first half of the book should be about how hard our Jane tries to refuse his witty, arrogant charm but since she can see that he is always looking at anyone but her and seems to be soooo crazy about her, she finally gives in to her heart and of course her thighs that are extremely on fire ... and lets herself get banged like she has never been before in her life.

Ok, sorry, I just drifted into the sarcasm corner a bit too much. As I said before I do not want to insult anyone who reads this kind of books. If you love them and that is the only thing bearable for you to read, then it is also great. At least you are reading something.

Well, what I was trying to express with my wonderful short essay on this subject is that there are so many great books out there. Even trivial literature that goes a bit deeper than beneath the sheets. There are good books on love stories out there. You just need to find them.

As for myself I decided to read/re-read some classics that I think should be read by everyone at least once in his/her lifetime. So here comes my personal reading challenge. I call it "10 classics in 10 weeks". So I hope that I am really finishing these books by the end April/beginning of May despite my busy work schedule. And I hope that you like the reading challenge list and that it maybe even inspires you to catch up on your reading.

1. 1984 by George Orwell

2. The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger

3. The bell jar by Sylvia Plath

4. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

5. Little women by Louisa May Alcott

6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

7. Wuthering heights by Emily Brontë

8. The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway

9. The great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

10. Great expectations by Charles Dickens

So, let's get started :-)