That Stupid Book Meme

[originalpuck]

Everyone and their mother has been posting this thing, so I figured I'd use it as a break from writing (it was this or start a new video game, and I figured this would be done in time to let me get The Skinny up in a timely manner

Comments

[niprhidel]

You really need to read 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath.

[originalpuck]

I'll take that into consideration. I always hear that it's miserably depressing, and so I never end up picking it up. ^^;;

((Awesome icon, btw.))

[niprhidel]

It's actually a very good look into the mind of a severly depressed/mentally ill person (although Plath wasn't ever spefically diagnosed - the book is semi-autobiographical) - it wasn't very depressing to me as much as enlightening and wonderfully open...

I wrote a review about it - it's at my book journal: bookofdust if you really want to see it.

I really, really urge you to read it.

*thanks - I love V for Vendetta*

[eles_cave]

I arrive at having read twelf or thirteen of the items listed, although nearly all of them are English literature and I'm not coming from that cultural background. Who wrote this list anyway? I don't find it very plausible... #14 says 'complete works of Shakespeare', but then Hamlet is listed again (#98), many authors appear twice or even thrice while others are not mentioned at all... What's with Wilde's 'Dorian Gray' or Henry James' 'Portrait of a lady'? Why by all means is Dan Brown's rubbish (sorry, it is badly researched) listed? Further on, if there is Tolstoi (and others) as someone who has nothing to do with British literature, then why is there not a single one of those dozens of valued German authors (Mann, Gothe, Schiller, Brecht etc.) included? What of Virginia Woolf?

I'm sure you'll tell me that there is a reason for the strange selection. Yet, what remains is that it is not a list of titles that I find worthwhile to read...

[originalpuck]

Lols, I have no reasoning for the list (wish I did). It's one of those crazy memes that's been circulating. That said, I totally agree with you. A lot of options on this list were dubious at best, and there were a lot of redundancies and good authors left off. I'd be curious to see a remake of the "must read" list, so I could post that sucker here, too. ^^

[niprhidel]

lol, you should make a list - I'd like to see that.

And i've done this "crazy meme", so watch it! ;)

But I do agree Virginia Woolf should have been on there.

[jaketoday]

If you got cover to cover with it, then yes, you read it, even if you were forced to. There were books that had to be read that were never finished, no, you didn't read it, really (and I can say there were at least a few books that ended this way in AP English.)
However, I'm kind of confused, like the person above me, in wondering why you have, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as separates when the latter is just part of a whole. I think the person at Big Read who generated this list should have been a bit more careful with redundancy.

[originalpuck]

Sounds good. Yeah, there were quite a few where I just didn't make it cover-to-cover -- time was too short, I was too lazy, the book was dull, lols.

Yeah, The Chronicles of Narnia was arbitrarily split up on the list, and so has some Shakespeare works. Lols -- I think it's one of those times were the original meme-makers were half-drunk. Instead of wondering how "literate" we were, they were wondering how many of us would catch all the inconsistancies and the constant wtf-ery. ^^;;