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

[shlafe]

geez, I read seven of the first ten.

[shlafe]

...it also lists the complete works of William Shakespeare and Hamlet separately, as well as the chronicals of Narnia and The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. Hmmm.

[technomom]

I did the same meme fairly recently, but I was too lazy to look it up. It didn't come to me with the 6 books figure or the link. I just counted, and I've read 38 of them.

My family of origin are some of those people who pull the average down, though. My brother - an MD - brags that he's only read one book completely in his entire life (some dreck about Mother Teresa). My father just doesn't read, except for the Bible and his Sunday School lessons. I'm willing to bet that the Bible is the only book on that list that he has ever read. Mom says she loves reading, but pretty much sticks to the same material as Daddy, with a newspaper and a few magazines tossed in. I know that she has read Gone With the Wind, because it's her favorite book. My sister (a vice-principal)--well, if she's read ONE book completely in her life, I'd be shocked.

And they're considered the "educated" part of their huge extended families!

[sylvar]

I'm hoping he forgot about Gray's Anatomy.

[technomom]

I seriously doubt that he did.

[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

[srmm]

When I have more time I'll have to split this up into books I read before I was 16 (1980) and after. There are loads on here I've read, but I'm guessing an 80/20 split on high school. There's another list like this I've seen recently with fewer classics and more ideas of things to read.