NEA Big Read meme

[sylvar]

[When reposting, please link to http://www.neabigread.org/ ]
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE

Comments

[discogravy]

This reminds me that I need to re-read Confederacy of Dunces. Ms Camacho gave it to me in 95 or 96. I heard it was being made into a movie starring Wil Ferrel, which might make it genius or the type of dreck that people walk out of because they started drooling.

I'm kind of surprised you didn't go through the narnia books and just stopped at the first one (the christian stuff is a bit more overt in the latter ones) and no Dickens. Seriously: how'd you make it through high school without reading lord of the flies or dickens?

Also, finish up dune and lotr dude (but skip everything else frank herbert did unless you capital-L Love Dune -- he's good, but Dune is far and away the masterpiece. Although if you know his personal history, the ending of the series that he started writing1 -- the 6th book, written when while his wife died, has a slant of ...feminist is too political a word, really, but it really shows how much he loved and missed her, and by extension all women. THAT SAID, Dune is the one that stands alone as a piece of I-can't-believe-you-held-that-together-so-well art, whereas the others are basically "so...people liked the first one? let's use it's idea to expound on other subjects!" -- the first is really heavy on ecology and what passed for psychology/politics in 60's/70's sci-fi.

Similarly, JRR Tolkien's masterpiece is the famous book or two (hobbit and lotr,) with everything else being strictly for fans (or hardcore philologists).

1. Not the bullshit that his kid hired some hack to put together for bucks -- for an astute analysis of this, please c.f. Penny Arcade's review of the post-Frank Herbert Dune books