Book Awards Reading Challenge

It has taken me forever to pick the books I want to read for the Book Awards Reading Challenge hosted by 3M. The challenge started July 1st of this year and ends June 20th of 2008. The rules are that you read 12 award-winning books from the eligible lists picked by 3M ranging from Pulitizer Prize to Commonwealth Writers' to Nobel Prize and much more. There are so many lists to choice from and so many great books to pick. But here's my list:

1. The Singing - CK Williams (National Book Award Poetry 2003)
2. Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt (Pulitzer 1996)
3. Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich (National Book Critics Circle Award 1984)
4. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai (Booker 2006)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (Pulitzer 1961)
6. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (Booker 2003)
7. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (Pulitzer 2006)
8. Anything by Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk 2006
9. Anything by Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1982
10. Anything by Nobel Prize Winner John Steinbeck 1962
11. Anything by Nobel Prize Winner Shmuel Yosef Agnon 1966
12. On Beauty - Zadie Smith (Orange Prize 2006)

Alternates:

1. Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones (Commonweath/South Pacific and Overall 2007)
2. Vandal Love - Dy Bechard (Commonweath/Canada and Overall 2007)
3. Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (National Book Award Poetry 1978)
4. New & Selected Poems - Mary Oliver (National Book Award Poetry 1992)
5. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx (N.B.A. Fiction 1993)
6. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (N.B.A. Non-Fiction 2005)
7. The Echo Maker - Richard Powers (N.B.A. Fiction 2006)
8. The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan (N.B.A. Non-Fiction)
9. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (Booker Prize 1981)

more...

1. Passing Through: The Later Years - Stanley Kunitz (N.B.A. Poetry 1995)
2. Out Stealing Horses - Per Patterson (Impac Dublin 2007)
3. When I lived in Modern Times - Linda Grant (Orange 2000)
4. The Penderwicks - Jeanne Birdsall (N.B.A. young people's literature 2005)
5. Small Island - Andrea Levy (Orange 2004)
6. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (Orange 2002)
7. Novel Prize Winner Joseph Brodsky 1987
8. This Blinding Absence of Light - Tahar ben Jelloun (Impac 2004)
9. The Elementary Particles - Michael Houellebecq (International Impac 2002)

Yes I do realize that I have alot of alternates but since I am a very moody reader, I picked enought books that I should always be able to find something off the list to read thet will interest me. The prizes are credits ranging from 1 to 3 from Paperbackswap is what's going to keep me motivated.