2022 Audiobook Challenge -- My Wrap-Up Post

 THE 2022 AUDIOBOOK CHALLENGE

WRAP-UP POST

COMPLETED

I blew past my challenge goal of reading 50+ audiobooks this year! I've read 63 books with my ears in 2022 and will probably finish 65 before the the new year. See list below.

CHALLENGE

Caffeinated Reviewer and That’s What I’m Talking About host a popular audiobook challenge every year, although 2022 was only the second time I participated. I signed up at the Marathoner level to read 50 or more audiobooks in 2022. 

I love reading with my ears! I download audiobooks from the library to my phone using the Libby app and listen all the time. In good weather, I like to walk to work, which gives me a good hour of audiobook reading in a day. I also listed when I drive, cook, fold laundry, and do other chores. In 2021, I read 131 books and 70 of them were audiobooks. 

One thing I started doing in 2022 was to combine my love of audiobooks with my desire to clear book books off my TBR shelves. I went through my TBR list, found which ones were available as audiobooks from the library, and put them on my Libby wishlist. It may seem odd to listen to the audiobook when I have the physical book already, but I have soooooooooo many book books on my shelves that it would take me years to get to all of them. If I can free up shelf space (and brain space) by reading a book with my ears and getting rid of the paper book, I'm happy. 

MY 2022 AUDIOBOOKS

Here is the list of books I read as audiobooks in 2022, in the order I read them. Do you see any of your own favorites here?

• Katherine by Anya Seton (TBR shelf) 

• The Bostonians by Henry James (TBR shelf) 

• A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym (TBR shelf) 

• Murder at the Mill by M. B. Shaw 

• Dangling Man by Saul Bellow (TBR shelf)

• The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz 

• The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty 

• A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris 

• The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney 

• The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth (TBR shelf)

• In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park (Book Club) 

• The Falls by Ian Rankin (TBR shelf) 

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Book Club) 

• Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (TBR shelf, reread) 

• The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz 

• Little Big Man by Larry McMurtry (TBR shelf) 

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (TBR shelf)

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 

• Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty 

• The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth (TBR shelf)

• The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz 

• Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (National Book Award)

• Trio by William Boyd

• As Husbands Go by Susan Isaac 

• Lucky by Marissa Stapley (Book Club) 

• The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James (TBR shelf)

• Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel (TBR shelf) 

• Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci (Book Club) 

• Only in Naples by Katherine Wilson 

• A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz 

• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (TBR shelf)

• Holy Orders by Benjamin Black 

• Blue Moon by Lee Child (TBR shelf)

• The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

• Broken Harbor by Tana French (TBR shelf)

• The Counterlife by Philip Roth (TBR shelf)

• Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie

• Mr. Majestyk by Elmore Leonard (TBR shelf)

• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Book Club) 

• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

• Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter

• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (TBR shelf) 

• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Book Club)

• Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty 

• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (TBR shelf)

• The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

• The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie (TBR shelf)

• Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro (TBR shelf)

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (Victober)

• The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie (TBR shelf)

• The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (TBR shelf)

• The Underdog and Other Stories by Agatha Christie (TBR shelf)

• The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz (TBR shelf)

• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

• Literary Life: A Second Memoir by Larry McMurtry (TBR shelf)

• What to Read and Why by Francine Prose

• Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater (TBR shelf)

• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston (TBR shelf)

• Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick (TBR shelf)

• White Teeth by Zadie Smith (TBR shelf)

• One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell (TBR shelf)

• The Mistletoe Murder: And Other Stories by P. D. James (TBR shelf)

• The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier (buddy read)

The College Board's List of 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers -- BOOK LIST

THE COLLEGE BOARD'S LIST OF 101 GREAT BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR COLLEGE-BOUND READERS

Back around the turn of the Millennium, when Top 100 book lists were all the rage, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century List, the College Board came up with a list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers." 

Leave it to the creator of the PSAT, the SAT, etc. to come up with a list of books guaranteed to make  every reader feel humble. I'm a fan of classics and do not have a problem with the idea of a "canon" to provide a solid grounding in Western literature. But to suggest that students should read all "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" while they are still in high school is setting some pretty high standards! Maybe that's why the list has completely disappeared from the College Board's website. 

I can now, in my 50s, look at this list and say that I've read most of them, 86 of the 101. But I read 66 of those when I was in college -- as an English Lit major -- or after college. I only read 20 of these when I was in high school, and I was a complete nerd. The idea that I would have read all of them in high school is enough to trigger that nightmare where I am back in school as an adult, trying to take an exam for a class I never attended!

Here is the list, with notes about whether I have read the book and when, if it is still on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

Beowulf  FINISHED (college and adult)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED (adult)

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED (adult)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED (college)

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED (adult)

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett FINISHED (college)

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte FINISHED (high school)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte FINISHED (high school)

The Stranger by Albert Camus FINISHED (adult)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED (adult)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes TBR SHELF

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED (college)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Awakening by Kate Chopin FINISHED (college)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED (high school)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ON OVERDRIVE

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED (adult)

Inferno by Dante FINISHED (college)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe FINISHED (adult)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED (high school and adult)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky FINISHED (adult)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass FINISHED (college)

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED (adult)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas FINISHED (adult)

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot FINISHED (adult)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED (adult)

Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson FINISHED (high school)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner FINISHED (college)

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding FINISHED (adult)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED (high school and adult)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED (adult)

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford FINISHED (adult)

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED (college)

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED (adult)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED (college)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED (high school)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED (adult)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED (adult)

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED (college and adult)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED (high school)

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka FINISHED (high school)

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee FINISHED (adult)

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED (adult)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London FINISHED (adult)

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann TBR SHELF

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez FINISHED (adult)

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville FINISHED (high school)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller FINISHED (high school)

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED (college)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED (adult)

Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill TBR SHELF

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED (adult)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED (adult)

Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe FINISHED (high school)

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust TBR SHELF

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED (college)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque FINISHED (adult)

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED (high school)

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED (college)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn TBR SHELF

Antigone by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED (high school)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED (adult)

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift FINISHED (college)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray FINISHED (adult)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED (adult)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED (adult)

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED (high school)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain FINISHED (high school and adult)

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED (adult)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED (college)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED (adult)

Collected Stories by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED (high school)

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams FINISHED (high school)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED (college)

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED (adult)

NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a reposting of a list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing, particularly the link to the College Board because the book list itself is no longer available on the College Board's website. 

The wonderful book blogger and book reviewer, Rebecca Reid at Rebecca Reads, is also working on this list. 

If anyone else adopts this list, please let me know in a comment and I will add your link.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you reread books? 

I didn't used to. But in the last year or so I've been revisiting some favorite books that I read in high school and college. It's time. So far, I've concentrated on my favorite classics, like Lucky Jim, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities. But I plan to make more of a habit of rereading and broaden my scope to include general favorites.

What are you reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) with us here on Book Beginnings. You can also share the first lines from a book you want to highlight, even if you aren't reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I am rereading my favorite book from high school:

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. 

-- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I went through a big Fitzgerald phase in high school. Jazz Age Paris and the American authors who were part of that scene are always popular and I fell hard for the whole thing. 

Reading Tender is the Night again, I am surprised that I remember none of the plot! I remember that Dick and Nicole Diver hang out at the French Riviera. But I remember nothing about what happens. I find it more entertaining -- if less fraught with meaning -- than I did as a teenager. 

My reread of Tender is the Night is one of my Classic Club books. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Tender is the Night:

They were all very nice people for a while, very courteous and all that. Then they grew tired of it and they were funny and bitter, and finally they made a lot of plans.

Author of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was my favorite author when I was a dreamy-eyed high school girl and read The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night until the covers about fell off. I read all the novels and most of the short stories before graduation.

Lately, I have wondered if Fitzgerald's work would appeal to me as an adult the way it did as a teenager. Enough time has passed that, with the exception of Gatsby that I remember well, to read his books would be to read them anew. It may be time to give that a try.

Those I have read at least once are in red.

NOVELS

This Side of Paradise (1920)

The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

The Great Gatsby (1925)

Tender Is the Night (1934)

The Last Tycoon (published posthumously, 1942)

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (as published, with duplicates)

Flappers and Philosophers (1920)

• "The Offshore Pirate"
• "The Ice Palace"
• "Head and Shoulders"
• "The Cut-Glass Bowl"
• "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
• "Benediction"
• "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong"
• "The Four Fists"

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

• "The Jelly-Bean"
• "The Camel's Back"
• "May Day"
• "Porcelain and Pink"
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
• "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
• "Tarquin of Cheapside"
• "Oh Russet Witch!"
• "The Lees of Happiness"
• "Mr. Icky"
• "Jemina"

All the Sad Young Men (1926) (hard to find)

• "The Rich Boy"
• "Winter Dreams"
• "The Baby Party"
• "Absolution"
• "Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les"
• "The Adjuster"
• "Hot and Cold Blood"
• "The Sensible Thing""
• "Gretchen's Forty Winks"

Taps at Reveille (1935)

• "The Scandal Detectives"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "He Thinks He's Wonderful"
• "The Captured Shadow"
• "The Perfect Life"
• "First Blood"
• "A Nice Quiet Place"
• "A Woman with a Past"
• "Crazy Sunday"
• "Two Wrongs"
• "The Night of Chancellorsville"
• "The Last of the Belles"
• "Majesty"
• "Family in the Wind"
• "A Short Trip Home"
• "One Interne"
• "The Fiend"
• "Babylon Revisited"

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960)

• "The Ice Palace"
• "May Day"
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
• "Winter Dreams"
• "Absolution"
• "The Rich Boy"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "Babylon Revisited"
• "Crazy Sunday"
• "The Long Way Out"

The Pat Hobby Stories (1962)

• "Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish"
• "A Man in the Way"
• "'Boil Some Water - Lots of It'"
• "Teamed with Genius
• "Pat Hobby and Orson Welles"
• "Pat Hobby's Secret"
• "Pat Hobby, Putative Father"
• "The Homes of the Stars"
• "Pat Hobby Does His Bit"
• "Pat Hobby's Preview"
• "No Harm Trying"
• "A Patriotic Short"
• "On the Trail of Pat Hobby"
• "Fun in an Artist's Studio"
• "Two Old-Timers"
• "Mightier Than the Sword"
• "Pat Hobby's College Days"

The Basil and Josephine Stories (1973)

• That Kind of Party"
• "The Scandal Detectives"
• "A Night at the Fair"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "He Thinks He’s Wonderful"
• "The Captured Shadow"
• "The Perfect Life"
• "Basil and Cleopatra"
• "First Blood"
• "A Nice Quiet Place"
• "A Woman with a Past"
• "A Snobbish Story"
• "Emotional Bankruptcy"

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1989)

• "Head and Shoulders" (Feb. 1920)
• "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (May 1920)
• "The Ice Palace" (May 1920)
• "The Offshore Pirate" (May 1920)
• "May Day" (July 1920)
• "The Jelly-Bean" (Oct. 1920)
• "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (May 1922)
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (June 1922)
• "Winter Dreams" (Dec. 1922)
• "Dice, Brassknuckles, & Guitar" (May 1923)
• "Absolution" (June 1924)
• "Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les" (July 1924)
• "The Sensible Thing" (July 1924)
• "Love in the Night" (Mar. 1925)
• "The Rich Boy" (Feb 1926)
• "Jacob's Ladder" (Aug. 1927)
• "A Short Trip Home" (Dec. 1927)
• "The Bowl" (Jan. 1928)
• "The Captured Shadow" (Dec 1928)
• "Basil and Cleopatra" (Apr. 1929)
• "The Last of the Belles" (Mar. 1929)
• "Majesty" (July 1929)
• "At Your Age" (Aug. 1929)
• "The Swimmers" (Oct. 1929)
• "Two Wrongs" (Jan. 1930)
• "First Blood" (Apr. 1930)
• "Emotional Bankruptcy" (Aug. 1931)
• "The Bridal Party" (Aug. 1930)
• "One Trip Abroad" (Oct. 1930)
• "The Hotel Child" (Jan. 1931)
• "Babylon Revisited" (Feb. 1931)
• "A New Leaf" (July 1931)
• "A Freeze-Out" (Dec. 1931)
• "Six of One" (Feb. 1932)
• "What a Handsome Pair!" (Aug. 1932)
• "Crazy Sunday" (Oct. 1932)
• "More Than Just a House" (June 1933)
• "Afternoon of an Author" (Aug. 1936)
• "Financing Finnegan" (Jan. 1938)
• "The Lost Decade" (Dec. 1939)
• "'Boil Some Water- Lots of It'" (March 1940)
• "Last Kiss" (Apr. 1949)
• "Dearly Beloved" (1969)

OTHERS

"Magnetism" (short story, 1928) (available to read on-line)

The Vegetable (play, 1923)

The Crack-Up (essays, 1945)

NOTES

Last updated April 19, 2012.

If anyone else is reading all the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and would like to keep track here, please leave a comment with a link to your progress report and I will add it to this post.