Texsain's 12 in 12

Ok, this sounds like a fun and exciting task. My categories are below. I may change them, but once the ball drops, I'm sticking to them. The books are fluid, however.

My goal is to read 3 in each category. All of the books on my list (except in category 12) I currently own. Some I've read already. That is because I recently started the arduous task of reading each and every book I own, one after another (http://areadingmarathon.blogspot.com). I don't want to get caught up in too many other books.

1. Russian Literature
2. Catholic Classics (Pre-Vatican II)
3. Epics
4. Popes
5. Presidential Biographies
6. Sci-Fi and Fantasy
7. Existentialism
8. United States History
9. Holy Books
10. Charles Dickens
11. Other Fiction
12. Group Reads

All the books below are the candidates for the ones I can read. I'm not planning on reading them all this year.

1. Russian Literature

Dostoevsky:
Crime and Punishment
Poor Folk
The Brothers Karamazov
House of the Dead
The Idiot
Notes From the Underground, The Double, and Other Stories

Tolstoy:
Anna Karenina
The Death of Ivan Ilych and other Stories
War and Peace

2. Catholic Classics (Pre-Vatican II)

Aquinas:
Summa Contra Gentiles vol 1
Summa Contra Gentiles vol 4
The Just War Theory
Summa of the Summa

Augustine:
Confessions
On Free Choice of the Will
City of God
On Christian Teaching
Instructing Beginners in the Faith

Other
Liberalism is a Sin - Don Felix Sarda y Salvany
Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm and Proslogion - St. Anselm
Apologia Pro Vita Sua - John Henry Newman
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma - Ludwig Ott
The Four Temperaments - Conrad Hock
The Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis
The Life of St. Francis - St. Bonaventure
Divine Mercy - St. Faustina
Christ the King: Lord of History - Anne Carroll

3. Epics

The Odyssey - Homer
The Iliad - Homer
The Aeneid - Virgil
Paradise Lost - Milton
The Divine Comedy - Dante

4.Popes

Benedict XVI:
Caritas in Veritate
Deus Caritas Est
Many Religions, One Covenant
Sacrament of Charity
Salt of the Earth
Jesus of Nazareth
Spe Salvi

John Paul II:
Tertio Millennio Adveniente
Evangelium Vitae
Fides et Ratio
On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World
On Social Concern
Mother of the Redeemer
Love and Responsibility
Ut Unum Sint
Theology of the Body
Crossing the Threshold of Hope
The Jeweler's Shop

Other:
Restoration of Christian Philosophy - Leo XIII
Mirari Vos - Gregory XVI

5. Presidential Biographies

Theodore Roosevelt - Louis Auchincloss
Mornings on Horseback - David McCullough
My Life - Bill Clinton
Lincoln - Russell Freedman
Decision Points - George W. Bush
The Vantage Point - LBJ
George Washington: The Founding Father - Paul Johnson
The Faith of Barack Obama - Stephen Mansfield
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Tom Wicker
John Adams - David McCullough

6. Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Tolkein:
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings

C. S. Lewis:
Out of the Silent Planet
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength

Other:
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr
The Time Machine - H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne

7. Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard
The Sickness Unto Death
Fear and Trembling
Repetition

Other
Irrational Man - William Barrett
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre - Walter Kaufmann
Man against Mass Society - Gabriel Marcel
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre

8. United States History

David McCullough
The Johnstown Flood
1776
Brave Companions
The Path Between the Seas

Other
American Cicero - Bradley J. Birzer
Jefferson Davis: His Rise and Fall - Allen Tate
Manhunt - James L. Swanson
The Words We Live By - Linda R. Monk

9. Holy Books

The Bible (Douay-Rheims Version)
The Qu'ran
The Book of Mormon

10. Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist
A Tale of Two Cities
The Battle of Life
David Copperfield
Hard Times
Great Expectations
Bleak House
The Pickwick Papers
Nicholas Nickleby

11. Other Fiction

Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
The Woman Who Was Poor - Leon Bloy
The Man in the Iron Mask - Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
All Different Kinds of Free - Jessica McCann
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Wall - Jean Paul Sartre
The Call of Cthulhu and other Dark Tales - H. P. Lovecraft
Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor

12. Group Reads

*See main page

Wow, this is an ambitious challenge! I look forward to seeing your progress!

We have a few of the same books on tap for 2012, check out the group reads for Great Expectations.

Welcome to the challenge, you've got quite a reading year planned!

Ambitious, to say the least. Good luck and happy reading!

Hmm...I gave up the challenge in april because it was too structured and I didn't want to read everything I had scheduled myself to read.

Looking back, I've read books in at least 7 categories.

4.Popes
Mirari Vos - Gregory XVI

5. Presidential Biographies
The Faith of Barack Obama - Stephen Mansfield

6. Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis
The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells

9. Holy Books
The Book of Mormon

10. Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

11. Other Fiction
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
The Price - Joseph Garraty

12. Group Reads
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

The other categories I have left are:

1. Russian Literature
2. Catholic Classics (Pre-Vatican II)
3. Epics
7. Existentialism
8. United States History

I'm going to try to read at least one book in the remaining categories in the next two months. I doubt I'll be able to finish it, but I'll give it a shot.

Hey, great to see you back! It is sometimes surprising how some books just seem to 'fit' the categories... for others, you can always take my approach and just shoehorn them in (yes, the square peg will fit in the round hole if I pound on it enough!). ;-)

Besides, the challenge is really second to the reading and having fun with exploring your reading.