To Be Read Reading Challenge

I decided I could handle one more reading challenge for next year. The idea of the To Be Read Challenge is to pick 12 books that you have been wanting to read but just haven't gotten to. The details of the challenge are here. Here's my list:

1. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
2. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
3. Dracula by Bram Stoker
4. Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
6. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
7. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
8. Bel Canto by Ann Patchet
9. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
10. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
11. The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
12. Talismans of Shannara by Terry Brooks

I also have alternates, because with some of my picks, I don't know what I'm getting myself into!

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2. Austenland by Shannon Hale
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
4. Shake Down the Stars by Frances Donnelly
5. March by Geraldine Brooks
6. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
7. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
8. Roots by Alex Haley
9. The Known World byEdward P. Jones
10. Othello by William Shakespeare
11. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
12. The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud