That book meme...

[sanalayla]

Originally posted by kdbleu at that book meme...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline those you LOVE. 4) Strikethrough the books you’d rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read (or finish). 5) ASTERISK ** next to books partially read (and add a comment explaining).

______________________________________________________ 01. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 02. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien  03. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (I DETESTED THIS BOOK.)  04. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling  05. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 06. The Bible ** (I've read the whole Qur'an - does that count? I have no need to read the whole Bible.)  07. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 08. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 09. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman  10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ** (I've read various abridged versions; do not plan to read the real thing)  11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy  13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14. Complete Works of Shakespeare ** (I'm sure there are some I haven't read but I've read most. I do LOVE a few of them but not all.) 15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien ** (I tried, but did not like it. I do adore the LoR trilogy.)  17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (I absolutely hated this book.)  20. Middlemarch – George Eliot 21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky ** (I've read abridged versions and half of the original; I probably won't ever finish it. It's too long. However, it's also one of my dad's favorite books ever... so maybe I will.)  28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34. Emma – Jane Austen 35. Persuasion – Jane Austen 36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (WHY is this separate from the entire series?)  37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres 39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41. Animal Farm – George Orwell 42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert ** (I need to finish this one; I've just never had time.)

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I saw the movie - I think.)

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt  ( I hated this book.)

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (my dad read this book and said it was great)

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses – James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Also in French)

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

*****
All together, I've read about 45 of the books. I probably would have read a lot more of these when I was younger - now I'm old enough to think my time is precious and I don't read classics just for the sake of it; I pretty much only read for fun and pleasure & most of those books seems REALLY depressing. 

Comments

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

The Qur'an totally counts. I would also accept the Torah and the Bhagavad Gita.

Once upon a time, I would have felt bad about the number of these books I hadn't read, but I too am too old to read anything I won't enjoy. :D

When I posted this before we finally decided that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Hamlet were both listed in addition to the body of work they come from because if you hadn't read the whole thing work you should have at least read that one. Although I still think it's odd.

[xenokattz.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same thing. I guess they're representative of that author's body of work?

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

That was the only thing we could reason out before. I think it sticks out so much because they doubles (for lack of a better word) are listed so separately.

[xenokattz.livejournal.com]

What if there's a book you're ambivalent about? Something you wouldn't read but don't outright hate?

[sanalayla.livejournal.com]

I would probably put it in italics or strike-through with a note next to it.

[quoth-the-ravyn.livejournal.com]

This would have been worth doing if just to put a line through Memoirs of a Geisha. But if you read it, do tell me what you think. (And also, try to read it like fiction!)

[sanalayla.livejournal.com]

Does is suck? I'm of half minds about that book. Chances are quite high that I'll never read it, so I guess I should have struck it through.

And, yeah, doing this list took awhile! LOL

[quoth-the-ravyn.livejournal.com]

Sorry this took so long to respond. It is... well, the Geisha who he based the story one sued him. And then had to write her own book to fix what she felt was a gross misrepresentation of what a geisha is. In that sense, I find it awful. I haven't actually let myself sit down and read it. (My senior thesis actually had to do with Geisha, so I had to do a huge amount of research and I just can't make myself.) But I know lots of people who liked it, its just going to be seriously lacking in accurate historical portrayal. If you want to read something honest and fascinating, I have recommendations!

[sanalayla.livejournal.com]

You had to write a senior thesis? Not many colleges make you do that; my husband is a professor at Bard College and I thought it was one of the relatively few colleges that had that requirement. What school did you go to, if you don't mind me asking?