Here We Go

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Reenie. I'm a twenty two (almost twenty three) year old customer service representative with a small internet retailer/English Lit student. Someday I want to be a writer. Or I guess I am a writer. Whatever. This is my Happiness Project. For more information on what exactly that means, either stay tuned, or check out Gretchen Rubin's website.

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading memoirs about people who made changes in their lives to improve them. Sometimes, these changes are huge, Elizabeth Gilbert’s quest across the world to find inner peace, or Gretchen Rubin’s small, but no less revolutionary Happiness Project (See I told you it would come back!), Julie Powell’s culinary insanity, and I’m about to start in on A.J. Jacobs’s two big quests, after reading about his smaller ones and being enchanted. There is a distinct theme in all of these stories.

These are all fairly normal people, with reasonably functional lives. Oh sure, Gilbert was a serial monogamist with self esteem issues, Powell a dissatisfied cubicle dweller (aren’t we all, at least on the inside?) and Rubin a, OK, I still can’t quite figure out what exactly was wrong in Rubin’s life, but that’s sort of what I love about her book (more on that later.) They all also took something that made them feel passionate, and excited and folded it into their regular routine to make their lives better. The only thing that has ever gotten me that excited, was books. I love books. I love them so much I want to take them out behind the middle school and get them pregnant. (Thank you Mr. Tracy Jordan for that gem.)

So for my big life change, here’s what I’m doing. I’m making a list of 50 books, I’m reading them, and I’m writing about them. Sounds easy? There are some rules:

I have to have read the book before.

1. I have to have had some visceral or passionate reaction to this book (love, hate, life changing awe and wonder, doesn’t matter. The book had to make me feel something other than just, “Oh, I read that book.”)
2. Before I begin the rereading, I have to outline my initial experience with the book, what it’s meant to me, when I first read it (if I can remember) and why it made the list
3. During the reading, I’m not allowed to write full sentences or paragraphs (notes are fine)
4. Once I’m finished I have to write what the book meant to me this time around. Has my opinion of the book changed, etc. and I have to categorize how it affected the project. Not all books will be equal, for example, I’m sure I’ll have much more to say about like Little Women than I will about say, Stephanie Meyers’s The Host. But they’re both on the list.
5. I must read at least one list book a month, for the next twelve months (more are allowed, of course, but at least one.)

So, those are the rules. Now, for the list:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

2. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

3. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

4. Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

5. Emma by Jane Austen

6. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

7. Avalon High by Meg Cabot

8. The Host by Stephanie Meyer

9. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

10. Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton

11. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

12. Looking for Mary or The Blessed Mother and Me by Beverly Donofrio

13. The Partner by John Grisham

14. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

15. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

16. The Hound of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

17. Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson

18. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

19. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

20. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

21. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

22. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

23. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

24. My Life in France by Julia Child

25. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

26. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

27. The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

28. Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan

29. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

30. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

31. Le Petite Prince (en Francais) by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

32. Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

33. Dearest Friend by Lynne Withey

34. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

35. Island of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

36. Ramona Quimby: Age 8 by Beverly Cleary

37. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

38. The Giver by Lois Lowry

39. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

40. The Catcher in The Rye by JD Salinger

41. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

42. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

43. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

44. The Voyage of The Dawn Treader by CS Lewis

45. The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

46. Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller

47. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

48. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

49. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

50. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton