I have my books/And my poetry to protect me
I've never done any of the book memes I've seen around, but this one seems pretty nifty. According to it, "The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed." Well, not to toodle my own noodle but if that's what they reckon I'm apparently pretty snazzy since I've read at least 35 of them:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline Highlight in purple the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading,
4b) and put asterisks beside things you were forced to read at school and hated. I'm skipping these since I'm putting in a little commentary as needed and my eyeballs can't deal with so much monkey business as all this underlining and asterisks and whatnot.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen I've read a bit of Jane Austen but it never really appealed to me.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien This is very high on my list to read.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Bronte's like Austen for me, just never got the attraction.
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling It's still kind of sad not to have a new book to look forward to. I want to go on vacation to Hogsmeade.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman I've heard this recommended so many times, I have to see if it's really all it's cracked up to be.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens I went through a big Dickens phase as a teenager, and read just about everything he's done. It's been years, I should really go back and reread them.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Working on it, but certainly haven't made it very far.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger I've always wanted to read this, but I've never been able to separate the book from the unfortunate connection to John Lennon's death any time I've tried.
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell This is a sentimental favorite of mine. I still remember when I read it for the first time in the fourth grade, and how I reread it so many times I went through three copies. Now that I'm older I can't help but bristle at some of the horribly prejudiced...everything...but I still love it and will sit down and watch an hour or twelve when it's running on tv (it's a long movie).
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 Obviously, very near and dear to my heart.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 Wasn't this just number 33? This list is kind of weird, a bunch of these "books" are really a series.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden I liked the movie, so I picked up a copy but haven't any pressing desire to dive into it.
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne I read all the Pooh books over and over as a kid. Still love him, though I prefer the book version of Pooh to the international Disney super star version.
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez One of my favorite books of all time, in fact one of a few that constantly jockey for position as my absolute favorite ever ever (others include Hitchhiker's Guide and Angela's Ashes).
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
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'm halfway through this, that counts!
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Rather fond of this, along with Cannery Row. Never read Grapes of Wrath.
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
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 I've read Howl though.
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker Boooooring.
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 I loved all the EB White books, but I read Charlotte's Web at least a couple of times a year.
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 I have a copy of this in Spanish that I picked up on a lark to see if I could get through it. I so fail at Spanish.
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams I understand it's about bunnies.
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
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline Highlight in purple the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading,
4b) and put asterisks beside things you were forced to read at school and hated. I'm skipping these since I'm putting in a little commentary as needed and my eyeballs can't deal with so much monkey business as all this underlining and asterisks and whatnot.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen I've read a bit of Jane Austen but it never really appealed to me.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien This is very high on my list to read.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Bronte's like Austen for me, just never got the attraction.
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling It's still kind of sad not to have a new book to look forward to. I want to go on vacation to Hogsmeade.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman I've heard this recommended so many times, I have to see if it's really all it's cracked up to be.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens I went through a big Dickens phase as a teenager, and read just about everything he's done. It's been years, I should really go back and reread them.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Working on it, but certainly haven't made it very far.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger I've always wanted to read this, but I've never been able to separate the book from the unfortunate connection to John Lennon's death any time I've tried.
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell This is a sentimental favorite of mine. I still remember when I read it for the first time in the fourth grade, and how I reread it so many times I went through three copies. Now that I'm older I can't help but bristle at some of the horribly prejudiced...everything...but I still love it and will sit down and watch an hour or twelve when it's running on tv (it's a long movie).
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 Obviously, very near and dear to my heart.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 Wasn't this just number 33? This list is kind of weird, a bunch of these "books" are really a series.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden I liked the movie, so I picked up a copy but haven't any pressing desire to dive into it.
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne I read all the Pooh books over and over as a kid. Still love him, though I prefer the book version of Pooh to the international Disney super star version.
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez One of my favorite books of all time, in fact one of a few that constantly jockey for position as my absolute favorite ever ever (others include Hitchhiker's Guide and Angela's Ashes).
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
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'm halfway through this, that counts!
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Rather fond of this, along with Cannery Row. Never read Grapes of Wrath.
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
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 I've read Howl though.
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker Boooooring.
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 I loved all the EB White books, but I read Charlotte's Web at least a couple of times a year.
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 I have a copy of this in Spanish that I picked up on a lark to see if I could get through it. I so fail at Spanish.
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams I understand it's about bunnies.
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