Books
According to my latest measurements, I have 45 linear shelf space of books. And that doesn't account for the fact that many of the books are double-packed on my shelves. The amazing thing is that I've probably given away about half of that amount in the last year. And I could still weed away more. The books I absolutely cannot bear to part with are the ones I loved as a child: Anne of Green Gables, all my Louisa May Alcotts, the Little House series. I still reread those on occasion. What takes up more space are the books I consider "reference books."
Time Magazine recently published its 100 Best English novels since 1923.
Discovered this from angua9, who, interestingly enough, appears to have almost opposite book taste than I do. At least, we differ in opinion on Judy Blume and Thomas Pynchon...
I've bolded those I've read and italicized those I started and didn't finish. I have *** next to ones I actually own.
The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume (one of myall-time favorites. I don't own it because my original copy, with Margaret sitting in a chair and looking out a window on the cover is long-gone, and I hate the new covers)
The Assistant, Bernard Malamud (I owned this, but gave it away)
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Beloved, Toni Morrison (I hated this book)
The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (Italicized because I've seen the movie but haven't yet read the book)
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood (I owned this, but gave it away)
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (read this when I was very young - maybe 11?)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
Call It Sleep, Henry Roth
Catch-22, Joseph Heller Hated it.
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger ***
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess *** (wrote a paper on this book with regards to reform of prisoners in high school. I used to love this book for the pseud0-Russian-language slang)
The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon *** (nice, because it's Pynchon, but short)
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
A Death in the Family, James Agee
The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance, James Dickey
Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone
Falconer, John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (also read when I was young - around 12?)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon *** (Loved this book, just wish I had the energy and time to re-read it)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald *** (Not a fan of Fitzgerald, yet own the book. See, I should get rid of it, but it's a tiny paperback, so it's not so urgent)
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
Herzog, Saul Bellow
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius, Robert Graves
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace *** (Liked this, but have not been a fan of other books by Wallace)
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Light in August, William Faulkner Excellent book.
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis ***
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies, William Golding *** (once again, own it, but have a hard time remembering details)
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien ***
Loving, Henry Green
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Money, Martin Amis
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (Just gave this one away!)
Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
Native Son, Richard Wright
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
1984, George Orwell
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (not sure what the hype is about...)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey ***
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski (Have always been intrigued by his books in used book stores. Will have to give him a try)
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
Possession, A.S. Byatt (Maybe because it's because I'm an archivist, but this book truly annoyed me. I found it pretentious and overblown and wanted to throw it against a wall after about four chapters)
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (Italicized because I saw the movie!)
Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow I barely remember it.
The Recognitions, William Gaddis
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee ***
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
Ubik, Philip K. Dick (love Philip K. Dick, but haven't read this one)
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise, Don DeLillo
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Read: 23, Started: 8
And I call myself a literate person. Who made this list, anyway? The truth is, I've read a lot of books by authors on this list, but not the books listed here. So there.