I don’t know about you, but I used to be one of those people that would sometimes pick up a book, start to read it, and then figure out about 20, 30 or 75 pages in that, wait a minute…I think I’ve read this before!!!

In 2013, I discovered Goodreads, which not only gave me access to book reviews, quotes and hundreds of recommendations, but also enabled me to track what I was reading. At the same time, I discovered their annual reading challenge where you set a target number of books per year to read. I’ve completed this challenge successfully almost every year since then, so this year I decided to add a little bit of a twist.

I’ve already set my numerical target for 2017 (72 if you must know)…but in addition, I’ve decided to read at least one book by an author with a surname beginning with every single letter of the alphabet. I’ve come up with a list to guide me, but it is by no means set in stone, and if you have any suggestions, jump in and comment! I intend to use this page not so much to review every single book I read in depth, but more to tell you about my journey, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

The List

A – Reza Aslan (No God but God); Nadeem Aslam (The Blind Man’s Garden)

B – Paul Beatty (The Sellout); Alan Bennett (The Uncommon Reader); Tim Butcher (Blood River); Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Before We Visit the Goddess); NoViolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names)

C – James Clavell (Shogun); Justin Cronin (The Passage); Emma Cline (The Girls); Lucy Cruickshanks (Trader of Saigon)

D – William Dalrymple (City of Djinns); Jennifer Donnelly (The Wild Rose)

E – Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad); Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain)

F – Zdenka Fantlova (The Tin Ring: Love and Survival in the Holocaust); Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You For Being Late); Sydney Finkelstein (Superbosses)

G – Diana Gabaldon (Outlander)

H – Ernest Hemingway (For Whom The Bell Tolls); Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls)

I – Laila Ibrahim (Yellow Crocus); John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)

J – Jonas Jonasson (The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden)

K – Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)

L – Halldor Lanxess (Independent People); Hugh Laurie (The Gun Seller); Erik Larson (Dead Wake)

M – Haruki Murakami (The Strange Library); Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)

N – Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You)

O – Helen Oyeyemi (What is Not Yours is Not Yours); Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope)

P – Orhan Pamuk (A Strangeness in my Mind); Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

Q – Kate Quinn (The Alice Network)

R – Hannah Rothschild (The Improbability of Love); J.K Rowling (The Harry Potter Series)

S – John Steinbeck (East of Eden); Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)

T – JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings); Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing)

U – Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil’s Highway)

V – Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone); Menna van Praag (The House at the End of Hope Street)

W – Joby Warwick (Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS); Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)

X – Xinran (China Witness)

Y – Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life); Mingmei Yip (Petals from the Sky)

Z – Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)