A Century of Books: How Am I Doing? May Report

In January, I foolishly decided to join Simon Thomas’s Century of Book Challenge, even though I knew that reading 100 books, one for each year in a century, from 1925-2024, would be tough because last year I only read 169. So, how am I doing?

Here are the holes in my project with the books listed for April below. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.

• 1925-1934: entries needed for 1926-29 and 1931
• 1935-1944: entries needed for all years except 1935, 1936, 1937, 1941, and 1943
• 1945-1954: entries needed for all years except 1946, 1947, 1952, 1953, and 1954
• 1955-1964: entries needed for all years except 1956, 1958, 1959, and 1962
• 1965-1974: entries needed for 1967, 1969, and 1973
• 1975-1984: entries needed for all years except 1975, 1976, and 1978
• 1985-1994: entries needed for all years
• 1995–2004: entries needed for all years except 1999 and 2004
• 2005-2014: entries needed for all years except 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014
• 2015-2024: complete!

Read since April 24th:

Unfortunately, too early to be counted, The Prophet’s Mantle by Fabian Bland (E. Nesbit) from 1885

Books that count:

• The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman from 1930
• Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz from 1937 (DNF)
• Westwood by Stella Gibbons from 1946
• The Dark Fantastic by Margaret Echard from 1947
• Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson from 1956
• Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker from 1962
• Endless Night by Agatha Christie from 1968
• Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett from 1970
• The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons from 1978
• Killing Me Softly by Nicci French from 1999
• La Rochelle by Michael Nath from 2010
• The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli from 2010
• Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown from 2020
• After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz from 2021
• Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley from 2022
• The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer from 2023 (DNF)
• The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright from 2023
• Weyward by Emilia Hart from 2023
• North Woods by Daniel Mason from 2023