Book Meme - Okay, I'm caving!
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) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 and force books upon them!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Almost as good as the BBC mini-series! - just kidding)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (One of my best childhood friends that grew up with me into adulthood.)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (Loved the first half, was perplexed and disturbed by the second. I need to read this one again.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Fun Fluffy fluff that caused a revolution in Children's Literature! Plus, I love it.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (One of the best books I ever read as an adolescent.)
6 The Bible (parts of it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I prefer this one to Jane Eyre, but I don't think I'll revisit it.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (I must've read it over twenty times before I turned twenty.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Luckily, I got to take a class in which we read these books! Paradise Lost for sixteen-year-old fantasy geeks.)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (For school in 8th grade. I didn't much like it at the time.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (One of my favorite books growing up - and it got me an A on my first paper that was more than 10 pages, in fifth grade)
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Yes, I know! I'll get to it eventually)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (What I haven't read yet, I intend to later.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Reading it to my charges now, and they love it. Especially when I did my bad Cockney accent for the trolls!)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Didn't much like it the first time I read it, hated it the second time, liked it the third time, and have loved it ever since.)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (The longest book I had ever read at that point. I was in high school and very bored.)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (For school during an America Between the Wars class. It makes a lot more sense in its historical context.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (The entire "trilogy." Oh, Marvin! How I wish I could give you a hug.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Another one I read in high school because I was bored. I hate this book.)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (It made a lot more sense after I studied "Manifest Destiny" in high school.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (One of my favorite "children's" books. The Cheshire cat is still one of my favorite literary characters.)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Not my favorite, but it's a much better allegory than the Narnia series, in my opinion.)
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 (For class, in the fourth grade. Icky memories attached to that one.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (A page-turner the first time around, but it didn't hold my attention the second time around.)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (The Tao of Pooh: Pooh just is!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Perhaps singlehandedly responsible for bringing high art back to the masses through intrigue and mystery. Too bad it's poorly written and wildly inaccurate.)
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 (I should re-read this one, as it's been about fifteen years and I honestly don't remember if I liked it or not.)
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 (Fascinating book, though I'm still not sure what it was "trying to say.")
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Another "yes, I know!")
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 (I think I'd have enjoyed this one better if Dickens hadn't been paid by the line.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I loved this when I read it, and I now find it to be eerily prophetic.)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Everyone with even the slightest interest in autism, learning disabilities, or even simple human nature should read this. It's quick, easy, and will offer you brand new perspective into how a different neurology can really alter the way a person processes information and lives his life.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (A Russian friend of mine told me that this book would make me feel sick to my stomach but that it's one of the most beautiful pieces of literature ever written. I think this one will stay unread on my shelf for a while longer.)
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 (Didn't like it, didn't get it, but I can understand why it was such a hit, especially given the historical context.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (I'm lukewarm on this one. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't think it's quite deserving of the huge sensation it created.)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Learn more about whaling than you ever thought possible with this one . . . and find a fantastic book behind it.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (Nothing like any of the movies . . . surprisingly, I didn't enjoy reading this one, despite my interest in Vampires)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (A worthy read for children and adults, though I don't find it as good a novel as Burnett's A Little Princess. My favorite line in the book states that the two worst things you can do to a child is give them nothing that they want, or everything they want.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (Hate it!)
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 (In fifth grade. It's one of my favorite stories, and the Disney version with Scrooge McDuck as . . . Ebeneezer Scrooge is darling.)
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 (Oh, I love this book! And the animated movie is a staple film of my childhood.)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I read Tuesdays with Morrie, though. Didn't love it, didn't dislike it.)
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 (One of the best philosophical treatises of all time, disguised in a charming children's story! I must have read this over fifty times by now.)
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 (In French, my freshman year of high school.)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Only about fifty times . . . plus more if you count looking at that poster on my wall )
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (in French my senior year of high school. I need to give it a re-read, in English this time so I can actually understand it. I love the show, though! Does that count?)
Total: 48-50, depending on how you splice the "Shakespeare" and "Bible" sections.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 and force books upon them!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Almost as good as the BBC mini-series! - just kidding)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (One of my best childhood friends that grew up with me into adulthood.)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (Loved the first half, was perplexed and disturbed by the second. I need to read this one again.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Fun Fluffy fluff that caused a revolution in Children's Literature! Plus, I love it.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (One of the best books I ever read as an adolescent.)
6 The Bible (parts of it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I prefer this one to Jane Eyre, but I don't think I'll revisit it.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (I must've read it over twenty times before I turned twenty.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Luckily, I got to take a class in which we read these books! Paradise Lost for sixteen-year-old fantasy geeks.)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (For school in 8th grade. I didn't much like it at the time.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (One of my favorite books growing up - and it got me an A on my first paper that was more than 10 pages, in fifth grade)
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Yes, I know! I'll get to it eventually)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (What I haven't read yet, I intend to later.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Reading it to my charges now, and they love it. Especially when I did my bad Cockney accent for the trolls!)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Didn't much like it the first time I read it, hated it the second time, liked it the third time, and have loved it ever since.)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (The longest book I had ever read at that point. I was in high school and very bored.)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (For school during an America Between the Wars class. It makes a lot more sense in its historical context.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (The entire "trilogy." Oh, Marvin! How I wish I could give you a hug.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Another one I read in high school because I was bored. I hate this book.)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (It made a lot more sense after I studied "Manifest Destiny" in high school.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (One of my favorite "children's" books. The Cheshire cat is still one of my favorite literary characters.)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Not my favorite, but it's a much better allegory than the Narnia series, in my opinion.)
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 (For class, in the fourth grade. Icky memories attached to that one.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (A page-turner the first time around, but it didn't hold my attention the second time around.)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (The Tao of Pooh: Pooh just is!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Perhaps singlehandedly responsible for bringing high art back to the masses through intrigue and mystery. Too bad it's poorly written and wildly inaccurate.)
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 (I should re-read this one, as it's been about fifteen years and I honestly don't remember if I liked it or not.)
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 (Fascinating book, though I'm still not sure what it was "trying to say.")
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Another "yes, I know!")
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 (I think I'd have enjoyed this one better if Dickens hadn't been paid by the line.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I loved this when I read it, and I now find it to be eerily prophetic.)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Everyone with even the slightest interest in autism, learning disabilities, or even simple human nature should read this. It's quick, easy, and will offer you brand new perspective into how a different neurology can really alter the way a person processes information and lives his life.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (A Russian friend of mine told me that this book would make me feel sick to my stomach but that it's one of the most beautiful pieces of literature ever written. I think this one will stay unread on my shelf for a while longer.)
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 (Didn't like it, didn't get it, but I can understand why it was such a hit, especially given the historical context.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (I'm lukewarm on this one. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't think it's quite deserving of the huge sensation it created.)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Learn more about whaling than you ever thought possible with this one . . . and find a fantastic book behind it.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (Nothing like any of the movies . . . surprisingly, I didn't enjoy reading this one, despite my interest in Vampires)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (A worthy read for children and adults, though I don't find it as good a novel as Burnett's A Little Princess. My favorite line in the book states that the two worst things you can do to a child is give them nothing that they want, or everything they want.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (Hate it!)
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 (In fifth grade. It's one of my favorite stories, and the Disney version with Scrooge McDuck as . . . Ebeneezer Scrooge is darling.)
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 (Oh, I love this book! And the animated movie is a staple film of my childhood.)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I read Tuesdays with Morrie, though. Didn't love it, didn't dislike it.)
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 (One of the best philosophical treatises of all time, disguised in a charming children's story! I must have read this over fifty times by now.)
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 (In French, my freshman year of high school.)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Only about fifty times . . . plus more if you count looking at that poster on my wall )
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (in French my senior year of high school. I need to give it a re-read, in English this time so I can actually understand it. I love the show, though! Does that count?)
Total: 48-50, depending on how you splice the "Shakespeare" and "Bible" sections.