Saturday, August 09, 2008

random book list meme

i've seen this reading list a number of places and now tangobaby tagged me to do it too (thereby forcing me to learn the html for strikethrough). i have to admit that it has been on my mind, because i find some of the books that made this list to be very strange. it's a mix of classics and contemporaries and i don't really know if it's a "must read" kind of list or just a random list (i lean towards the latter). it's been on my mind, because i was thinking of coming up with a list of my own, but for now, i will do this one. so, here's what you do:

The Big Read (whatever that is) reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. (does that mean that this is the top 100 books printed? that sounds really weird.)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or for whatever reason loathe.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

  1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
  3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
  4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  6. The Bible (have read some of it, do not believe i will ever have the desire to read the rest, but i do like the apocrypha)
  7. Wuthering Heights
  8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
  9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (wish i hadn't read this, what a waste of time.)
  10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
  11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (adore this. read it countless times as a kid.)
  12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
  13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
  14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (not that i object to this, i just don't envision myself having time and i've pretty much already read the shakespeare that i have had the desire to read.)
  15. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier again, nothing against this, just no desire to read it.
  16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (if i had wanted to read these books, i would have done it when i was 10.)
  17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (never heard of it.)
  18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
  19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (totally adored this book, go read it now if you haven't already.)
  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 (have actually read this one several times!)
  25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (have read this one too many times to count. it's witty, erudite and totally hilarious and you must read all five books of the trilogy--yes, you read that correctly.)
  26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (no interest here.)
  27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (this is a must read!!)
  28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
  29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
  31. Anna Karenina (again, have read it multiple times, tho' i wouldn't recommend that.)
  32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
  33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (have read these more times than i can count and didn't get the "god thing" in them until well into my 20s--i just loved the marvelous stories and so wished i'd find such a wardrobe.)
  34. Emma - Jane Austen (these jane austen blur a bit for me, did i read them or see the movies?)
  35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (these jane austen blur a bit for me, did i read them or see the movies? i think i did read them.)
  36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (who made this list? this IS one of the chronicles of narnia, so we've already answered this!!!)
  37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (i started this one and didn't finish it, but would like to give it another go at some point. it's on the shelf.)
  38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres (my copy did not have nicholas cage on the front. :-) )
  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 (i read this while sitting in the back of a dark closet so no one could see me doing so. yes, i had to read it because everyone was talking about it and i hate feeling left out. i wish, in this case, that i'd been comfortable with being left out, but that's because the writing was so hackneyed and awful, the premise is good--all the world's problems blamed on catholicism, ya just gotta like that.)
  43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (i love, love, love this book. it's like in my top 5 of all time. give me magical realism any day.)
  44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (this too is in my top 5 of all time.)
  45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (never heard of it.)
  46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (no desire.)
  47. Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (no desire.)
  48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
  49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (deeply disturbing, but i have read it.)
  50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
  51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (another one that's on the shelf and which i started, but didn't finish. i'll go back at some point.)
  52. Dune - Frank Herbert (?)
  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 (great book, not in my top 5, but a recommended read nonetheless.)
  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 (have seen a lot of people talking about this book, must pick it up.)
  60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (love this book, if it weren't wrong to have two gabriel garcia marquez in my top 5, it would be there, as it is, it's #6.)
  61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (another truly great book, tho' pale fire is my favorite nabokov. how many are in my top 5 now?)
  63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (?)
  64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (?)
  65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
  67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (nothing against it, i just missed my window on thomas hardy. it's too late now.)
  68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
  69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (good, but not the best rushdie, in my opinion.)
  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 (he's so hilarious, he's a must-read)
  75. Ulysses - James Joyce (i had a whole class in grad school devoted to this book and still i'm not sure that i actually read the WHOLE thing. i probably did and blocked it out.)
  76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (strangely, i have not read this.)
  77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (never heard of it.)
  78. Germinal - Emile Zola (again, like with hardy, i've missed the window on 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 (had to read the book after seeing the film. that's kinda in the wrong order, i know.)
  85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (read this book as i was leaving my starter husband. very impactful (such a 90s word, isn't that?) at such a time.)
  86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (?)
  87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White (a great book that i will pick up and read again whenever i need a good cry.)
  88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Ablom (this is one of those that you feel you have to read because everyone is talking about it, but i shall resist.)
  89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (no desire.)
  91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  92. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery
  93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (never heard of it.)
  94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (had a high school teacher who loved this book. it appears to be about rabbits, but it's not really about rabbits.)
  95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (never heard of it, tho' if it's about bush, i might reconsider.)
  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 (had to read it after seeing the musical. isn't that a bit sad?)
i'm not going to tag anyone for doing this because it was pretty time-consuming and i had to learn some HTML code...please do it if you want to and do let me know in the comments so i can come and see your list. :-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved your comment about the DaVinci Code. You sound just like my sister, who is a champion reader.

You really should finish The Kite Runner; the movie of it was a sad, pale shadow of the power of the story, so skip the movie.

Owen Meany is among my top favorite books. I need to get the Gabriel Garcia Marquez...I've been meaning to for a while.

I don't understand the reasoning behind which books are on the list when so many are ones I've never heard of. I did the meme, too. It's interesting to read what others don't like and why.

tangobaby said...

Dear julochka,

I am such a complete dork. Now I realize where your little "nickname" comes from. Egads.

I had to tag you for this. I hope you understand that I knew your list would be awesome and I would love it. I tagged you for my own selfish reasons. That is why I did not tell you about how long it would take to do the stupid coding.

But now I am worried if you will still like me because I have not read Crime and Punishment and have fallen asleep trying to read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

But I am totally with you about the CS Lewis and Lolita. You have made me want to try some of these books (some again).

ps. I can imagine how Madame Bovary would have been quite an influence on you. Those starter husbands...

xoxo

Barb said...

Don't think I'm going to do this meme ... don't feel like searching out the code, but found the list interesting. I felt disappointed that "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck and "Pillars of the Earth" and "At Worlds End" by Ken Follet weren't there.

I have read all three of these classics numerous times and still find them fresh and exciting every time I pick them up.

My husband always knows when I pick them up because the house work doesn't get done and the house in inhabited by dust (rabbits) ... I just can't put them down.

But I digress, back to your list, a classic with such beautiful pieces of literature.

Thanks for sharing. B

Jaime said...

I would so love to post this as well, but I know I would procrastinate till the end of time.
Was so interesting to read not only what made this list, but your ideas about these books. I too think you should finish The Kite Runner, as it is an incredible piece of writing, and is on my top 10. But definitely hard to read at times...very sad. Life of Pi is fantastic as well!
You have left me feeling quite intrigued about some of the ones I haven't read.

Seriously? The average adult has only read 6?!?!?!?! That can't be!

d smith kaich jones said...

Oddly enough, I know who one of these "average" adults is. And even more odd, he's Danish. Well, his mom is & he's spent quite a bit of time in Denmark, but is now settled back in Texas with a wife & baby. An ex-employee. We were talking about books one day (actually , I guess I was the one talking about books) when he mentioned that he could name all the books he'd ever read, there being only 2. I had absolutely no idea how to repond to such a statement. He seemed to think it was perfectly normal. I mentioned reading Harry Potter, and he said no, he'd read the the first book from Lord of the Rings, so he'd done the fantasy/magic thing. I can't remember what his #2 book was.

Debi