Finished: Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne). A fun read. :-) And now...I've read the top 50 authors of my 100! Generally this is not my type of book at all, but this was a fun read. I thought I would have to drag through it, but even though the premise is outlandish, it kept me turning the pages! I (like Axel) kept wondering...how are they ever going to get out?? The deeper they go, they'll never make it. Anyway, I liked the "new world" they found...and how they named each new large landmark after themselves, lol. And...it was clever how they eventually got out, even though highly unlikely. I suppose that's the idea with science fiction though!! I doubt I'll read more Jules Verne, but I'm so glad this project of mine is making me read authors I would have never looked at before. I do have an appreciation for each of their works! My favorite quote from the book, when Axel is arguing with his uncle about continuing their journey, the uncle convinces him (or bullies him) to continue because a theory of his is correct..."Once science has spoken, one should remain silent." Hee hee. :-)

So...as I said, I've now read the top 50 authors on my list! Yay! Of course, some I had read before this endeavor, but most I've read since I started! I only have 17 authors left to go in my top 100 and there are so many books I still want to read...repeats of different authors. Here's the list of the top 50:

1	Shakespeare, William
2	Dostoevsky, Fyodor
3	Dickens, Charles
4	Alighieri, Dante
5	Tolstoy, Leo
6	Faulkner, William
7	Kafka, Franz
8	Proust, Marcel
9	Cervantes, Miguel
10	Chekhov, Anton
11	Melville, Herman
12	Twain, Mark
13	Hemingway, Ernest
14	Woolf, Virginia
15	Poe, Edgar Allan
16	Marquez, Gabriel G.
17	Joyce, James
18	Orwell, George
19	Homer
20	Austen, Jane
21	Nabokov, Vladimir
22	Steinbeck, John
23	Goethe, Johann W. von
24	Camus, Albert
25	Hugo, Victor
26	Bronte, Charlotte
27	Eliot, George
28	Wilde, Oscar
29	Conrad, Joseph
30	de Balzac, Honore
31	Blake, William
32	Tolkien, J.R.R.
33	Milton, John
34	Chaucer
35	Dumas, Alexander
36	Sophocles
37	Hardy, Thomas
38	Doyle, Arther Conan
39	Keats, John
40	Salinger, J.D.
41	Eliot, T.S.
42	Fitzgerald, F. Scott
43	Beckett, Samuel
44	Bronte, Emily
45	Stevenson, Robert L.
46	Flaubert, Gustave
47	Verne, Jules
48	Dickinson, Emily
49	Shaw, George B.
50	Hawthorne, Nathanial