current endeavor

I'm a task-setter, goal-oriented individual with a need for a deadline. I know this is probably unhealthy. In fact, I'm sure it is. When my life is deadline-free, and therefore, stress-free, I look for ways to impose further due dates on myself. Surprisingly this is alleviating. Perhaps it inflicts a sort of order and routine which I find oddly relaxing. Anyway, the goal of the moment is to read great novels of all time. This is by no means a new idea, nor an immature desire; I've been trying to get a comprehensive list down and have gotten nowhere! But finally, tonight, or this morning, depending on when I actually finish this post, I'll have gotten at least ten titles set in stone, more or less. Here goes, in no particular order:

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell*
2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
3. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald *?
6. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf*?
7. 1984 by George Orwell
8. On the Road by Jack Kerouac*
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*
10. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain*
11. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
12. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens*
13. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
14. 100 Years of Solitude by GGM
15. Persuasion by Jane Austen
16. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
17. Fountainhead by Ayn Rand ?
18. Don Quixote by Cervantes ?
19. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley *?
20. The Odyssey by Homer*
21. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
22. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad *?

Ok so I ended up with more than ten but then after looking up all these great books, much to my satisfaction, I realized that I had read many of them and so rather than deleting them from the list I put stars (*) next to those I had already read and question marks (?) next to those I'm not quite done reading or that I would like to read again. In the end my reading list came down to fourteen books. And so I set off on my current passion.