A Five-Year Reading Challenge that Ended Almost Two Years Ago

In October of 2009, about seven months into my book blogging life, I came up with a plan to guide me read some fantastic books. I had just transitioned from reading 'everything' (or preferably pulp fiction) to literary fiction with focus on African literature. Realising how much I was missing, I set myself the target of reading 100 amazing books in five years. These books were to be exclusive of all other books I will read in the year. Thus, I can read other books but at the end of the five years I should have read these 100 books. I developed the list with vigour, with information from several sources (recommendations from friends and best books lists). This is the kind of challenge I cherish though I don't always complete challenges. However one challenging factor when it comes to challenges is book accessibility and it is because of this that I set the five-year target thinking that within that period the hurdle would have flattened out. 

So I made a list of books (here and there). Slowly, I grazed through the list and slowly time went by. However, by October 2014, when the challenge ended my reading slumped and my blogging life with it. It was so bad that it carried into 2015 and then 2016 making it impossible to talk about the end of the challenge and my level of achievement. Within this five years (or seven years as of 2016), I had changed jobs five times and each job had taken something away from my blogging life as every job I had taken had been quite different requiring new learning and new adjustments. 

Books Unread: Consequently, I have not been able to read 50 percent of the listed. In all, I read only 46 percent and of the 54 books not read I only have two on my unread bookshelf: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The following are the listed books I could not read:

1. Anowa by Ama Atta Aidoo 
2. A Dry White Season by Andre Brink 
3. The Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee 
4. The Blood Knot by Athol Fugard 
5. Bones by Chenjerai Hove 
6. Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona 
7. House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera 
8. Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo 
9. Song of Lawino by Okot P'Bitek 
10. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadwai 
11. Third World Express by Mongane Serote 
12. Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera 
13. Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee 
14. Osiris Rising by Ayi Kwei Armah 
15. Tsoti by Athol Fugard 
16. Toads for Supper by Chukwuemeka Ike 
17. Ake: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka 
18. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
19. Summertime by J. M. Coetzee 
20. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 
21. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 
22. Light in August by William Faulkner 
23. Kim by Rudyard Kipling 
24. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing 
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
26. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
27. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann 
28. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann 
29. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood 
30. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 
31. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 
32. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon 
33. Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon 
34. Vineland by Thomas Pynchon 
35. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 
36. Poker by Wittgenstein 
37. Mistress by Wittgenstein 
38. Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Wittgenstein 
39. Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein 
40. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 
41. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
42. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
43. Moby-Dick by Hermes Melville 
44. Ulysses by James Joyce 
45. Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis 
46. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 
47. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maughan 
48. Money by Martin Amis 
49. London Fields by Martin Amis 
50. The Information by Martin Amis 
51. We Won't Budge by Manthia Diawara 
52. Songs of Enchantment by Ben Okri 
53. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

Books Read: Though good books are difficult to come by, through benevolent friends and fate, I was able to read some really interesting titles listed below:

1. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe 
2. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 
3. The Beautyful Ones are not yet born by Ayi Kwei Armah 
4. Nervous Condition by Tsitsi Dangaremba 
5. The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta 
6. Burgher's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer 
7. A Question of Power by Bessie Head 
8. The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (I: Palace Walk; II: Palace of Desire; III: Sugar Street) 
9. Indaba, My Children by Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa 
10. Chaka by Thomas Mofolo 
11. A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiongo'o 
12. The Famished Road by Ben Okri 
13. Season of Migration to the North by Salih El Tayyib 
14. Death and the King's Horsemen by Wole Soyinka 
15. The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola 
16. The Healers by Ayi Kwei Armah 
17. They Say you are One of Us by Uwem Akpan 
18. Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams 
19. The Trial by Franz Kafka 
20. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
21. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
22. The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer 
23. Life of Pi by Yann Martel 
24. Possession by A. S. Byatt 
25. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
26. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner 
27. Beloved by Toni Morrison 
28. A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul 
29. A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul 
30. 1984 by George Orwell 
31. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee 
32. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
33. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 
34. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
35. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 
36. White Teeth by Zadie Smith 
37. The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald 
38. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre 
39. Theatre by Somerset Maughan 
40. Atonement by Ian McEwan 
41. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan 
42. God Dies by the Nile by Nawal El Sadaawi 
43. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 
44. Satanic Verses by Salman 
45. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 
46. Infinite Riches by Ben Okiri

Even though the challenge is officially over, I will still look for some of the titles on the list to read; however, time has changed my taste and there are some books on this list I may not actively look for. I am happy that I undertook this challenge and sad that I could not make a deep dent into the list.